Net Neutrality
Virginia leads the battle to protect the Internet from a Big Government take-over. They are defending the Constitution and YOUR free speech. The state of Virginia's Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli calls the FCC regulations (Net Neutrality) the "most egregious of all violations of federal law." He is going to begin a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in July or August.
The FCC Ignored the Courts
The FCC regulation is nothing more than a grab for more government power and control over the Internet. The FCC was told by the courts that they may NOT regulate the Internet. So what did they do? They ignored the court's ruling and passed a "government regulation" that did exactly what the courts order them not to do!
This activity "smells" of the work of Obama's Regulatory Czar, Cass Sustein. He's the guy who wrote "Nudge," a book that describes how to "influence" the masses when they don't do what YOU want them to do. He oversees all of Obama's governmental departments and has a lot of power - even though he was never vetted by the US Senate. Watch this guy and the Obama government. They are "regulating." anything and everything like never before. Be aware that your liberties are being regulated out of existence! Also do NOT allow this to happen. Take action against tyranny!
String of VA Suits
This lawsuit is one of several produced by Attorney General Cuccinelli against the Federal Government. He has tried to stop the Environmental Protection Agency to halt their "regulations" of greenhouse gasses (another Sustein "nudge" to change America's behavior via regulations) and he has tried to overturn a Federal mandate for individuals to purchase health insurance. He hopes that other states will also join forces against the Federal Government and their rigorous attempts to control the Internet.
Congratulations!
We encourage and support these actions against the Obama administration's ongoing and relentless attempts to steal more power and diminish our liberties. We should ask our own state's Attorney Generals to join Virginia in this effort to stop the government's take-over and control of the Internet and eventually Internet content (like this blog). Similar actions have given individual states more clout when trying to get the courts to rule on the legality of ObamaCare.
We cannot allow the government to "regulate" the Internet. If they get the slightest control, it will soon grow and morph into the the Fairness Doctrine or worse. Look at what the government has done to TSA and their abuse of government control over airport security in just a few years time.
United we stand, Divided , we fall.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
More Frigin' Bailouts!
The FAILED POLICIES Continue
Obama is rolling-out another BILLION dollars (that we have to borrow) in housing relief in order to BAILOUT 27 states! This is JUST SO WRONG!!! These government housing programs are just extending the pain and NOT fixing the problem. The housing market has to correct itself and cannot as long as the Obama BIG GOVERNMENT programs interfere with the natural market!
Recipients
So who are the chosen states to receive Obama's blessings? They are as follows:
Is Yours Listed?
Why not all 50 States? Who decides which states gets the bailouts and which ones don't? Is this fair to homeowners in the states NOT receiving the bailouts? Just what is the criteria for deciding who gets what? Doesn't his seem unfair to begin with? Why more bailouts anyway?
If you are a homeowner who is not paying your mortgage in one of the listed states, the Federal Government will make your payments for you!!
What about the homeowners who make their mortgage payments? Why should they have to pay for those who don't? There is no logic in this at all. Existing home sales are down 3.8% from a month ago. Past history proved that government bailouts on mortgages didn't help! Why repeat a failed policy?
The Cost
In 2010 we (US taxpayers) paid $80 BILLION dollars to help homeowners. This year we are committed to give deadbeat homeowners $64.1 BILLION more dollars. That's like throwing money away! The government forgets to tell you that of those giveaways, over $500 MILLION dollars was wasted in fraud!!
Proof of Failure
Home prices are still falling despite the billions spent by Big Government's failed policies. The market has to correct itself. These artificial "injections" only prolong the crisis. Some argue that government intervention actually makes the housing markets worse.
The Reasons Behind the Policies
It's a simple explanation. Obama does not want to quit spending and borrowing because then America would have to face reality. Housing prices would still go down and people would loose their homes. Obama does not want to be held accountable so he tries to push the problem to a later date - AFTER THE ELECTIONS!!
These bailouts have to STOP. It's getting easier to believe that Obama is deliberately trying to spend the USA into bankruptcy. If you believe that he is smart, then why does he keep repeating something he KNOWS will fail? This is his way to "Fundamentally Change America."
Obama is rolling-out another BILLION dollars (that we have to borrow) in housing relief in order to BAILOUT 27 states! This is JUST SO WRONG!!! These government housing programs are just extending the pain and NOT fixing the problem. The housing market has to correct itself and cannot as long as the Obama BIG GOVERNMENT programs interfere with the natural market!
Recipients
So who are the chosen states to receive Obama's blessings? They are as follows:
- Alaska
- Arkansas
- Colorado
- Hawaii
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Loiusianna
- Massachusetts
- Maine
- Montanna
- Minnesota
- Missouri
- Nebraska
- New Hampshire
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Dakota
- Oklahoma
- South Dakota
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
Is Yours Listed?
Why not all 50 States? Who decides which states gets the bailouts and which ones don't? Is this fair to homeowners in the states NOT receiving the bailouts? Just what is the criteria for deciding who gets what? Doesn't his seem unfair to begin with? Why more bailouts anyway?
If you are a homeowner who is not paying your mortgage in one of the listed states, the Federal Government will make your payments for you!!
What about the homeowners who make their mortgage payments? Why should they have to pay for those who don't? There is no logic in this at all. Existing home sales are down 3.8% from a month ago. Past history proved that government bailouts on mortgages didn't help! Why repeat a failed policy?
The Cost
In 2010 we (US taxpayers) paid $80 BILLION dollars to help homeowners. This year we are committed to give deadbeat homeowners $64.1 BILLION more dollars. That's like throwing money away! The government forgets to tell you that of those giveaways, over $500 MILLION dollars was wasted in fraud!!
Proof of Failure
Home prices are still falling despite the billions spent by Big Government's failed policies. The market has to correct itself. These artificial "injections" only prolong the crisis. Some argue that government intervention actually makes the housing markets worse.
The Reasons Behind the Policies
It's a simple explanation. Obama does not want to quit spending and borrowing because then America would have to face reality. Housing prices would still go down and people would loose their homes. Obama does not want to be held accountable so he tries to push the problem to a later date - AFTER THE ELECTIONS!!
These bailouts have to STOP. It's getting easier to believe that Obama is deliberately trying to spend the USA into bankruptcy. If you believe that he is smart, then why does he keep repeating something he KNOWS will fail? This is his way to "Fundamentally Change America."
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Guest Article: It's Really a Great Depression
Why the Jobs Situation Is Worse Than It Looks
by Mort Zuckerman - publisher/owner of the New York Daily News
We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression
"The Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression. In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.
The real job losses are greater than the estimate of 7.5 million. They are closer to 10.5 million, as 3 million people have stopped looking for work. Equally troublesome is the lower labor participation rate; some 5 million jobs have vanished from manufacturing, long America's greatest strength. Just think: Total payrolls today amount to 131 million, but this figure is lower than it was at the beginning of the year 2000, even though our population has grown by nearly 30 million.
The most recent statistics are unsettling and dismaying, despite the increase of 54,000 jobs in the May numbers. Nonagricultural full-time employment actually fell by 142,000, on top of the 291,000 decline the preceding month. Half of the new jobs created are in temporary help agencies, as firms resist hiring full-time workers.
Today, over 14 million people are unemployed. We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression. Nearly seven people in the labor pool compete for every job opening. Hiring announcements have plunged to 10,248 in May, down from 59,648 in April. Hiring is now 17 percent lower than the lowest level in the 2001-02 downturn. One fifth of all men of prime working age are not getting up and going to work. Equally disturbing is that the number of people unemployed for six months or longer grew 361,000 to 6.2 million, increasing their share of the unemployed to 45.1 percent. We face the specter that long-term unemployment is becoming structural and not just cyclical, raising the risk that the jobless will lose their skills and become permanently unemployable.
Don't pay too much attention to the headline unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. It is scary enough, but it is a gloss on the reality. These numbers do not include the millions who have stopped looking for a job or who are working part time but would work full time if a position were available. And they count only those people who have actively applied for a job within the last four weeks.
Include those others and the real number is a nasty 16 percent. The 16 percent includes 8.5 million part-timers who want to work full time (which is double the historical norm) and those who have applied for a job within the last six months, including many of the long-term unemployed. And this 16 percent does not take into account the discouraged workers who have left the labor force. The fact is that the longer duration of six months is the more relevant testing period since the mean duration of unemployment is now 39.7 weeks, an increase from 37.1 weeks in February.
The inescapable bottom line is an unprecedented slack in the U.S. labor market. Labor's share of national income has fallen to the lowest level in modern history, down to 57.5 percent in the first quarter as compared to 59.8 percent when the so-called recovery began. This reflects not only the 7 million fewer workers but the fact that wages for part-time workers now average $19,000—less than half the median income.
Just to illustrate how insecure the labor movement is, there is nobody on strike in the United States today, according to David Rosenberg of wealth management firm Gluskin Sheff. Back in the 1970s, it was common in any given month to see as many as 30,000 workers on the picket line, and there were typically 300 work stoppages at any given time. Last year there were a grand total of 11. There are other indirect consequences. The number of people who have applied for permanent disability benefits has soared. Ten years ago, 5 million people were collecting federal disability payments; now 8 million are on the rolls, at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $120 billion a year. The states today owe the federal insurance fund an astonishing $90 billion to cover unemployment benefits.
In past recessions, the economy recovered lost jobs within 13 months, on average, after the trough. Twenty-three months into a recovery, employment typically increases by around 174,000 jobs monthly, compared to 54,000 this time around. In a typical recovery, we would have had several hundred thousand more hires per month than we are seeing now—this despite unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus (including the rescue of the automobile industry, whose collapse would likely have lost a million jobs). Businesses do not seem to have the confidence or the incentive to add staff but prefer to continue the deep cost-cutting they undertook from the onset of the recession.
But hang on. Even to come up with the 54,000 new jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics assumed that 206,000 jobs were created by newly formed companies that its analysts believe—but can't prove—were, in effect, born in May under the so-called birth/death model, which relies primarily on historical extrapolations. Without this generous assumption in the face of a slowing economy, the United States would have lost jobs in May. Last year the bureau assumed that 192,000 jobs were created through new start-ups in the comparable month, but on review most of them eventually had to be taken out, as start-ups have been distressingly weak given the lack of financing from their traditional sources such as bank loans, home equity loans, and credit card lines.
Where are we today? We have seemingly added jobs, but it is not because hiring has increased. In February 2009 there were 4.7 million separations—that is, jobs lost—but by March 2011 this had fallen to 3.8 million. In other words, the pace of layoffs has diminished, but that is not the same thing as more hiring. The employment numbers look better than they really are because of the aggressive layoffs in the early part of this recession and the reluctance of American business to rehire workers. In fact, the apparent improvement in job numbers has been made up of one part extra hiring and two parts reduced firing.
Even during past recessions, American firms still hired large numbers of workers as part of the continual cycle of replacing employees. Of the 150 million workers or job seekers in America, about one third turn over in a typical year, leaving their old jobs to take new ones. High labor "churn" is characteristic of our economy, reflecting workers moving to better jobs and higher wages and away from declining sectors. As Stanford business professor Edward Lazear explains so clearly in the Wall Street Journal, the increase in job growth over the past two years is attributable to a decline in the number of layoffs, not from increased hiring. Typically, when the labor market creates 200,000 jobs, it has been because 5 million were hired and 4.8 million were separated, not just because there were 200,000 hires and no job losses. But when an economy has bottomed out, it has already shed much of its excess labor, as illustrated by the decline in layoffs—from approximately 2.5 million in February 2009 to 1.5 million this April. In a healthy labor market like the one that prevailed in 2006 and into 2007, American firms hired about 5.5 million workers per month. This is now down to about 4 million a month. Quite simply, businesses have been very disciplined in their hiring practices.
We are nowhere near the old normal. Throughout this fragile recovery, over 90 percent of the growth in output has come from productivity gains. But typically at this stage of the cycle, labor has already taken over from productivity as the major contributor of growth. That is why we generally saw nonfarm payroll gains exceeding 300,000 per month with relative ease. This time we have recouped only 17 percent of the job losses 23 months after the recession began, as compared to 207 percent of the jobs lost from previous recessions (with the exception of 2001). There is no comfort either in two leading indicators of employment, with no growth in the workweek or in factory overtime.
Clearly, the Great American Job Machine is breaking down, and roadside assistance is not on the horizon. In the second half of this year (and thereafter?), we will be without the monetary and fiscal steroids. Nor does anyone know what will happen to long-term interest rates when the Federal Reserve ends its $600 billion quantitative easing support of the capital markets. Inventory levels are at their highest since September 2006; new order bookings are at the lowest levels since September 2009. Since home equity has long been the largest asset on the balance sheet of the average American family, all homeowners are suffering from housing prices that have, on average, declined 33 percent (compare that to the Great Depression drop of 31 percent).
No wonder the general economic mood is one of alarm. The Conference Board measure of U.S. consumer confidence slumped to 60.8 percent in May, down from 66 percent in April and well below the average of 73 in past recessions, never mind the 100-plus numbers in good times. Never before has confidence been this low in the 23rd month of a recovery. Gluskin Sheff's Rosenberg captured it perfectly: We may well be in the midst of a "modern depression."
Our political leadership in both Congress and the White House will surely bear the political costs of a failure to work out short- and longterm programs to fix the job shortage. The stakes are too high to play political games."
by Mort Zuckerman - publisher/owner of the New York Daily News
We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression
"The Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression. In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.
The real job losses are greater than the estimate of 7.5 million. They are closer to 10.5 million, as 3 million people have stopped looking for work. Equally troublesome is the lower labor participation rate; some 5 million jobs have vanished from manufacturing, long America's greatest strength. Just think: Total payrolls today amount to 131 million, but this figure is lower than it was at the beginning of the year 2000, even though our population has grown by nearly 30 million.
The most recent statistics are unsettling and dismaying, despite the increase of 54,000 jobs in the May numbers. Nonagricultural full-time employment actually fell by 142,000, on top of the 291,000 decline the preceding month. Half of the new jobs created are in temporary help agencies, as firms resist hiring full-time workers.
Today, over 14 million people are unemployed. We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression. Nearly seven people in the labor pool compete for every job opening. Hiring announcements have plunged to 10,248 in May, down from 59,648 in April. Hiring is now 17 percent lower than the lowest level in the 2001-02 downturn. One fifth of all men of prime working age are not getting up and going to work. Equally disturbing is that the number of people unemployed for six months or longer grew 361,000 to 6.2 million, increasing their share of the unemployed to 45.1 percent. We face the specter that long-term unemployment is becoming structural and not just cyclical, raising the risk that the jobless will lose their skills and become permanently unemployable.
Don't pay too much attention to the headline unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. It is scary enough, but it is a gloss on the reality. These numbers do not include the millions who have stopped looking for a job or who are working part time but would work full time if a position were available. And they count only those people who have actively applied for a job within the last four weeks.
Include those others and the real number is a nasty 16 percent. The 16 percent includes 8.5 million part-timers who want to work full time (which is double the historical norm) and those who have applied for a job within the last six months, including many of the long-term unemployed. And this 16 percent does not take into account the discouraged workers who have left the labor force. The fact is that the longer duration of six months is the more relevant testing period since the mean duration of unemployment is now 39.7 weeks, an increase from 37.1 weeks in February.
The inescapable bottom line is an unprecedented slack in the U.S. labor market. Labor's share of national income has fallen to the lowest level in modern history, down to 57.5 percent in the first quarter as compared to 59.8 percent when the so-called recovery began. This reflects not only the 7 million fewer workers but the fact that wages for part-time workers now average $19,000—less than half the median income.
Just to illustrate how insecure the labor movement is, there is nobody on strike in the United States today, according to David Rosenberg of wealth management firm Gluskin Sheff. Back in the 1970s, it was common in any given month to see as many as 30,000 workers on the picket line, and there were typically 300 work stoppages at any given time. Last year there were a grand total of 11. There are other indirect consequences. The number of people who have applied for permanent disability benefits has soared. Ten years ago, 5 million people were collecting federal disability payments; now 8 million are on the rolls, at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $120 billion a year. The states today owe the federal insurance fund an astonishing $90 billion to cover unemployment benefits.
In past recessions, the economy recovered lost jobs within 13 months, on average, after the trough. Twenty-three months into a recovery, employment typically increases by around 174,000 jobs monthly, compared to 54,000 this time around. In a typical recovery, we would have had several hundred thousand more hires per month than we are seeing now—this despite unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus (including the rescue of the automobile industry, whose collapse would likely have lost a million jobs). Businesses do not seem to have the confidence or the incentive to add staff but prefer to continue the deep cost-cutting they undertook from the onset of the recession.
But hang on. Even to come up with the 54,000 new jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics assumed that 206,000 jobs were created by newly formed companies that its analysts believe—but can't prove—were, in effect, born in May under the so-called birth/death model, which relies primarily on historical extrapolations. Without this generous assumption in the face of a slowing economy, the United States would have lost jobs in May. Last year the bureau assumed that 192,000 jobs were created through new start-ups in the comparable month, but on review most of them eventually had to be taken out, as start-ups have been distressingly weak given the lack of financing from their traditional sources such as bank loans, home equity loans, and credit card lines.
Where are we today? We have seemingly added jobs, but it is not because hiring has increased. In February 2009 there were 4.7 million separations—that is, jobs lost—but by March 2011 this had fallen to 3.8 million. In other words, the pace of layoffs has diminished, but that is not the same thing as more hiring. The employment numbers look better than they really are because of the aggressive layoffs in the early part of this recession and the reluctance of American business to rehire workers. In fact, the apparent improvement in job numbers has been made up of one part extra hiring and two parts reduced firing.
Even during past recessions, American firms still hired large numbers of workers as part of the continual cycle of replacing employees. Of the 150 million workers or job seekers in America, about one third turn over in a typical year, leaving their old jobs to take new ones. High labor "churn" is characteristic of our economy, reflecting workers moving to better jobs and higher wages and away from declining sectors. As Stanford business professor Edward Lazear explains so clearly in the Wall Street Journal, the increase in job growth over the past two years is attributable to a decline in the number of layoffs, not from increased hiring. Typically, when the labor market creates 200,000 jobs, it has been because 5 million were hired and 4.8 million were separated, not just because there were 200,000 hires and no job losses. But when an economy has bottomed out, it has already shed much of its excess labor, as illustrated by the decline in layoffs—from approximately 2.5 million in February 2009 to 1.5 million this April. In a healthy labor market like the one that prevailed in 2006 and into 2007, American firms hired about 5.5 million workers per month. This is now down to about 4 million a month. Quite simply, businesses have been very disciplined in their hiring practices.
We are nowhere near the old normal. Throughout this fragile recovery, over 90 percent of the growth in output has come from productivity gains. But typically at this stage of the cycle, labor has already taken over from productivity as the major contributor of growth. That is why we generally saw nonfarm payroll gains exceeding 300,000 per month with relative ease. This time we have recouped only 17 percent of the job losses 23 months after the recession began, as compared to 207 percent of the jobs lost from previous recessions (with the exception of 2001). There is no comfort either in two leading indicators of employment, with no growth in the workweek or in factory overtime.
Clearly, the Great American Job Machine is breaking down, and roadside assistance is not on the horizon. In the second half of this year (and thereafter?), we will be without the monetary and fiscal steroids. Nor does anyone know what will happen to long-term interest rates when the Federal Reserve ends its $600 billion quantitative easing support of the capital markets. Inventory levels are at their highest since September 2006; new order bookings are at the lowest levels since September 2009. Since home equity has long been the largest asset on the balance sheet of the average American family, all homeowners are suffering from housing prices that have, on average, declined 33 percent (compare that to the Great Depression drop of 31 percent).
No wonder the general economic mood is one of alarm. The Conference Board measure of U.S. consumer confidence slumped to 60.8 percent in May, down from 66 percent in April and well below the average of 73 in past recessions, never mind the 100-plus numbers in good times. Never before has confidence been this low in the 23rd month of a recovery. Gluskin Sheff's Rosenberg captured it perfectly: We may well be in the midst of a "modern depression."
Our political leadership in both Congress and the White House will surely bear the political costs of a failure to work out short- and longterm programs to fix the job shortage. The stakes are too high to play political games."
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
NBC Did It On Purpose
Deliberate "Edits"
During a live national broadcast of the US Golf Open Tournament, the National Broadcasting Corporation deliberately edited-out a significant part of America's Pledge of Allegiance. The key words were "under God." This omission has created a firestorm.
NBC is following the cue from Obama in omitting any reference to our "Creator" like he does from the Declaration of Independence on a regular basis. Coincidence? Hardly. NBC is placating to Obama, their most favorite Secular Progressive.
Apology
Lacking in truth and honesty, NBC took so much heat from their political editing, that they issued the following apology:
"We began our coverage of this final round about three hours ago, and when we did it was our intent to begin the coverage of this U.S. Open championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being held in our nation’s capital for the third time. Regrettably, a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance that was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone and we would like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it."
This is a serious for of CANCER and we as Americans, should not tolerate it. Our nation was founded under Judeao-Christian beliefs. The Secular Progressives are trying to eliminate "God" whenever they can. Don't put up with it.
Left-Wing Media
NBC for all practical purposes is a state-owned media. Statistics prove that they supported Obama's election - hands-over that of John McCain. The bulk of favorable stories far out numbered the negative stories reported by NBC. They do not "report facts" any longer. No, they pump government propaganda instead.
This leads to the expectation that we should expect more of the same during the upcoming Presidential election. NBC will lead the Left-Wing media with a HATE FEST against Obama's opponent - no matter who that may be.
Action To Take
Simple. Boycott NBC. Stop watching them and stop buying their sponsor's goods. Let NBC and their sponsors know that you support this boycott. Tell them why!
During a live national broadcast of the US Golf Open Tournament, the National Broadcasting Corporation deliberately edited-out a significant part of America's Pledge of Allegiance. The key words were "under God." This omission has created a firestorm.
NBC is following the cue from Obama in omitting any reference to our "Creator" like he does from the Declaration of Independence on a regular basis. Coincidence? Hardly. NBC is placating to Obama, their most favorite Secular Progressive.
Apology
Lacking in truth and honesty, NBC took so much heat from their political editing, that they issued the following apology:
"We began our coverage of this final round about three hours ago, and when we did it was our intent to begin the coverage of this U.S. Open championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being held in our nation’s capital for the third time. Regrettably, a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance that was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone and we would like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it."
This is a serious for of CANCER and we as Americans, should not tolerate it. Our nation was founded under Judeao-Christian beliefs. The Secular Progressives are trying to eliminate "God" whenever they can. Don't put up with it.
Left-Wing Media
NBC for all practical purposes is a state-owned media. Statistics prove that they supported Obama's election - hands-over that of John McCain. The bulk of favorable stories far out numbered the negative stories reported by NBC. They do not "report facts" any longer. No, they pump government propaganda instead.
This leads to the expectation that we should expect more of the same during the upcoming Presidential election. NBC will lead the Left-Wing media with a HATE FEST against Obama's opponent - no matter who that may be.
Action To Take
Simple. Boycott NBC. Stop watching them and stop buying their sponsor's goods. Let NBC and their sponsors know that you support this boycott. Tell them why!
Monday, June 20, 2011
Guest Article - Obama's Rules
Obama's War on the Rule of Law
The Bush administration's worst policies live on in Obama's White House.
by A. Barton Hinkle is a columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. This article originally appeared at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
"Evidence that the growth of government is a one-way ratchet continues to mount in Washington, where President Obama's pieties about abiding by the rule of law are eclipsing "one word: plastics" as a punch line.
The day after he was inaugurated, Obama promised that the rule of law would be a touchstone of his presidency. Apparently this was not a solemn vow but rather a sop to those liberals and progressives who had fumed over the Bush administration's traducing of the Constitution. For eight years the printing presses of the left had been smoking with the heat generated by articles such as "Bush's War on the Rule of Law" (Harper's), "Cheney's Law" (PBS) and others far too numerous to list.
The brief against Bush encompassed numerous charges: his use of signing statements to provide a pretext for disregarding parts of certain legislation; the indefinite detention without trial of suspected enemy combatants in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay; the use of military tribunals; the Patriot Act; his administration's use of warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition; the use of national-security letters to comb through private information; and so on. Policies such as these "evoked the specter of tyranny," put America on the slippery slope to fascism, and were generally bad for children and other living things.
With Obama's election, the nation supposedly said goodbye to all that. The clouds broke, the fog lifted, and the sunlight of civil liberties once again bathed the nation in its golden hue. Except: Nothing like that happened. Instead, the Obama administration adopted every single one of the policies listed above. Some of the more principled progressives have voiced outrage and a sense of betrayal. The more partisan types have politely averted their gaze.
But Obama has not confined his disdain for the rule of law to the Bush inheritance. He has carved out new realms for it.
Take Libya. The president started a war—or "kinetic military action"—without bothering to give Congress formal notification. The War Powers Resolution says a president may do something like that in exigent circumstances, but the action must be limited to 60 days. The administration has blithely let the deadline pass.
Last week, Virginia Democratic Sen. James Webb gave a stirring call to accountability: "Was our country under attack, or under the threat of imminent attack? Was a clearly vital national interest at stake? Were we invoking the inherent right of self-defense as outlined in the United Nations charter? Were we called upon by treaty commitments to come to the aid of an ally? Were we responding in kind to an attack on our forces elsewhere? … Were we rescuing Americans in distress? … No, we were not." The administration ignored Webb, too. Say what you will about the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, at least he got congressional assent before launching it.
But that is not all. Consider the many waivers the administration has granted—around 1,500, though it is hard to keep up when the precise number grows so fast—to ObamaCare. Many of them—unions and the AARP, which supported ObamaCare, now have waivers from it—bear a distinctly political tinge. None of them bears the color of legitimacy: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains no statutory provision for the granting of waivers to itself. Neither has the administration offered any rationale for the approval or denial of waivers, despite its claims to transparency, and FOIA requests, and lawsuits.
But that is not all, either: Remember how the administration gave precedence to the United Auto Workers' claims upon Chrysler over the claims of the company's secured creditors—a direct contravention of U.S. bankruptcy law. Or how it mau-maued BP into creating a government-administered compensation fund in advance of any judgments against it. Or its Orwellian reinterpretation of labor law to stop Boeing from moving a plant from Washington state to South Carolina.
Critics on the right accuse the administration of socialism, but its economic approach more closely resembles fascism properly understood—in which the means of production are privately owned but business decisions are centrally made through a policy of dirigisme. Socialism and fascism are incendiary words, tossed about by people who are upset that they have not gotten their way. That does not render them entirely inapplicable.
Rulebooks, of course, are for losers. Nobody winning a big hand at poker demands that everyone stop to make sure they're playing according to Hoyle. Hence when Bush won the White House, Democrats rediscovered their constitutional scruples; with Obama in office, Republicans have rediscovered theirs. A pity that so many care about the rules only when they're in no position to enforce them."
The Bush administration's worst policies live on in Obama's White House.
by A. Barton Hinkle is a columnist at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. This article originally appeared at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
"Evidence that the growth of government is a one-way ratchet continues to mount in Washington, where President Obama's pieties about abiding by the rule of law are eclipsing "one word: plastics" as a punch line.
The day after he was inaugurated, Obama promised that the rule of law would be a touchstone of his presidency. Apparently this was not a solemn vow but rather a sop to those liberals and progressives who had fumed over the Bush administration's traducing of the Constitution. For eight years the printing presses of the left had been smoking with the heat generated by articles such as "Bush's War on the Rule of Law" (Harper's), "Cheney's Law" (PBS) and others far too numerous to list.
The brief against Bush encompassed numerous charges: his use of signing statements to provide a pretext for disregarding parts of certain legislation; the indefinite detention without trial of suspected enemy combatants in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay; the use of military tribunals; the Patriot Act; his administration's use of warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition; the use of national-security letters to comb through private information; and so on. Policies such as these "evoked the specter of tyranny," put America on the slippery slope to fascism, and were generally bad for children and other living things.
With Obama's election, the nation supposedly said goodbye to all that. The clouds broke, the fog lifted, and the sunlight of civil liberties once again bathed the nation in its golden hue. Except: Nothing like that happened. Instead, the Obama administration adopted every single one of the policies listed above. Some of the more principled progressives have voiced outrage and a sense of betrayal. The more partisan types have politely averted their gaze.
But Obama has not confined his disdain for the rule of law to the Bush inheritance. He has carved out new realms for it.
Take Libya. The president started a war—or "kinetic military action"—without bothering to give Congress formal notification. The War Powers Resolution says a president may do something like that in exigent circumstances, but the action must be limited to 60 days. The administration has blithely let the deadline pass.
Last week, Virginia Democratic Sen. James Webb gave a stirring call to accountability: "Was our country under attack, or under the threat of imminent attack? Was a clearly vital national interest at stake? Were we invoking the inherent right of self-defense as outlined in the United Nations charter? Were we called upon by treaty commitments to come to the aid of an ally? Were we responding in kind to an attack on our forces elsewhere? … Were we rescuing Americans in distress? … No, we were not." The administration ignored Webb, too. Say what you will about the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, at least he got congressional assent before launching it.
But that is not all. Consider the many waivers the administration has granted—around 1,500, though it is hard to keep up when the precise number grows so fast—to ObamaCare. Many of them—unions and the AARP, which supported ObamaCare, now have waivers from it—bear a distinctly political tinge. None of them bears the color of legitimacy: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains no statutory provision for the granting of waivers to itself. Neither has the administration offered any rationale for the approval or denial of waivers, despite its claims to transparency, and FOIA requests, and lawsuits.
But that is not all, either: Remember how the administration gave precedence to the United Auto Workers' claims upon Chrysler over the claims of the company's secured creditors—a direct contravention of U.S. bankruptcy law. Or how it mau-maued BP into creating a government-administered compensation fund in advance of any judgments against it. Or its Orwellian reinterpretation of labor law to stop Boeing from moving a plant from Washington state to South Carolina.
Critics on the right accuse the administration of socialism, but its economic approach more closely resembles fascism properly understood—in which the means of production are privately owned but business decisions are centrally made through a policy of dirigisme. Socialism and fascism are incendiary words, tossed about by people who are upset that they have not gotten their way. That does not render them entirely inapplicable.
Rulebooks, of course, are for losers. Nobody winning a big hand at poker demands that everyone stop to make sure they're playing according to Hoyle. Hence when Bush won the White House, Democrats rediscovered their constitutional scruples; with Obama in office, Republicans have rediscovered theirs. A pity that so many care about the rules only when they're in no position to enforce them."
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Federalist Papers Revised...
A Tough Read
Did you ever get a copy of the Federalist Papers and try and read through the arguments for accepting and defending the US Constitution? Chances are the answer is "No."
Refresher: The Federalist Papers defended the ratification of what was at the time - a revolutionary charter. The original version was written by none other than Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. The paper explains in depth the political structure of the newly formed Republic and the principles of God-given natural rights.
The Problem
There is one major problem with this document. It was written in 1788 and contains language that was common usage at that time. However, by today's standards, it is difficult to read and comprehend. It was written because the Founders foresaw that a vote against it would destroy the new government before it got off the ground. They were worried that New York would NOT ratify it and feared that other states would follow suit.
Consequently, the Founders wrote a series of essays explaining and defending the new Constitution. The Federalist Papers gives an analysis of the Constitution by the men who helped write it.
Unfortunately, too many people have tried to read this document today and find that they cannot understand it, or find that the have great difficulty reading it.
The Good News
There is good news for those who want to understand the thinking of the Founding Fathers. A young college graduate named Joshua Charles wanted to resolve the problem by re-writing the original essays in today's language. He approached Glenn Beck who produced "The Original Argument: The Federalists' Case for the Constitution, adopted for the 21 Century."
If you want to understand the birth of our country and understand the principles of the Constitution, this is a must read. If you know this material, you will see how much our Constitution is under attack and how much danger we all face in today's world.
Get it at Amazon.com in paperback or Kindle!
Did you ever get a copy of the Federalist Papers and try and read through the arguments for accepting and defending the US Constitution? Chances are the answer is "No."
Refresher: The Federalist Papers defended the ratification of what was at the time - a revolutionary charter. The original version was written by none other than Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. The paper explains in depth the political structure of the newly formed Republic and the principles of God-given natural rights.
The Problem
There is one major problem with this document. It was written in 1788 and contains language that was common usage at that time. However, by today's standards, it is difficult to read and comprehend. It was written because the Founders foresaw that a vote against it would destroy the new government before it got off the ground. They were worried that New York would NOT ratify it and feared that other states would follow suit.
Consequently, the Founders wrote a series of essays explaining and defending the new Constitution. The Federalist Papers gives an analysis of the Constitution by the men who helped write it.
Unfortunately, too many people have tried to read this document today and find that they cannot understand it, or find that the have great difficulty reading it.
The Good News
There is good news for those who want to understand the thinking of the Founding Fathers. A young college graduate named Joshua Charles wanted to resolve the problem by re-writing the original essays in today's language. He approached Glenn Beck who produced "The Original Argument: The Federalists' Case for the Constitution, adopted for the 21 Century."
If you want to understand the birth of our country and understand the principles of the Constitution, this is a must read. If you know this material, you will see how much our Constitution is under attack and how much danger we all face in today's world.
Get it at Amazon.com in paperback or Kindle!
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