The Stakes

If you don't already read Mark Steyn's Saturday column on National Review Online every week you're missing this:

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand-new, even-more-unsustainable entitlement at the health-care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen — because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is farther upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter Twenty (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter Seventeen or Eighteen.

and this

What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th-century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless, insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany, and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social-democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over.

finally

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn’t pay. You’ll wind up bailing out anyway. The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they’ve run out Greeks, so they’ll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?

Andy McCarthy, also of National Review demonstrates the why and how of the Democrats' plans for achieving this goal:

That is, I think our side is analyzing this all wrong: Today's Democrats are controlled by the radical Left, and it is more important to them to execute the permanent transformation of American society than it is to win the upcoming election cycles. They have already factored in losing in November — even losing big. For them, winning big now outweighs that. I think they're right.

I hear Republicans getting giddy over the fact that "reconciliation," if it comes to that, is a huge political loser. That's the wrong way to look at it. The Democratic leadership has already internalized the inevitablility of taking its political lumps. That makes reconciliation truly scary. Since the Dems know they will have to ram this monstrosity through, they figure it might as well be as monstrous as they can get wavering Democrats to go along with. Clipping the leadership's statist ambitions in order to peel off a few Republicans is not going to work. I'm glad Republicans have held firm, but let's not be under any illusions about what that means. In the Democrat leadership, we are not dealing with conventional politicians for whom the goal of being reelected is paramount and will rein in their radicalism. They want socialized medicine and all it entails about government control even more than they want to win elections. After all, if the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority. This is about power, and there is more to power than winning elections, especially if you've calculated that your opposition does not have the gumption to dismantle your ballooning welfare state.

The question for those of us that oppose this radical agenda is simple. How do we stop them?

Harry Reid has 50 votes for reconciliation and a compliant parliamentarian that will allow him to get whatever he wants to out of the Senate. This battle will be won or lost in the House.

Reps. Tierney, Tsongas, McGovern and Delahunt need to hear from their constituents from now until the moment the vote is taken. By electing Scott Brown, the voters of Massachusetts and their districts were very clear that they have no desire for the health care bill that is about to be shoved down our throats. In case any of these Representatives suffer from short term memory loss they need to be reminded of this fact. Tea Party anyone?

Ryan's Woodshed

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) in 6 minutes completely exposes the Democratic talking points as lies and more damned lies. Every American needs to see this.

Obama's Death Stare

The president looks like he's enjoying himself.

I wonder if he would have made this face if one of the members' of Congress had the sense to make the same point as this woman:

This morning I chatted with Ovid Lamontagne, a Republican businessman who's running for Senate in New Hampshire. He repeated a commonsense observation from a Granite State waitress about those special deals: "Any bill that people have to be bribed into voting for can't any good."

or if they had pointed out that Democrats in both the House and Senate voted to exempt themselves from the legislation. If they really believe that the health care system is going to be better after they get done "reforming" it, why don't they want their families subject to the plan?

For an answer let's look up north, after all the Democrats are always telling us how wonderful the Canadian health care system is and that we should be following their model:

If I were minded to make a health-care TV ad, I'd rustle up the premier of Newfoundland's interview on NTV last night. Justifying his decision to eschew the pleasures of the monopoly government health-care system he presides over for heart surgery in a Florida hospital, Danny Williams told his fellow Newfs:

It's my health, it's my choice.

By the way, the Canadian state does not accept that proposition, which is why, if a Canadian such as Mr. Williams wishes to exercise his choice he is obliged to leave the country.

If Obamacare passes where will Canadian politicians get their health care?

The Dems Then

This is what some of the leading Democrats in the country thought about changing Senate rules on judicial nominations. The Democrats at the behest of leftist pressure groups engaged in historically unprecedented filibusters of President Bush's nominees to the federal bench. Now, that they are trying to ram their health care plan down America's throat the filibuster is evil and the nuclear/reconciliation option is necessary for the preservation of Democracy. Hypocrites.

Dems Vow To Go Nuclear

In yet another example, if one were necessary, that the upcoming health summit is just political theater; the White House is threatening to use reconciliation to get their health care behemoth through the Senate. In announcing the $950 Billion downpayment on the government takeover of our health care system they were quite blunt:

In the course of unveiling Obama’s new health reform proposal on a conference call with reporters this morning, White House advisers made it clearer than ever before: If the GOP filibusters health reform, Dems will move forward on their own and pass it via reconciliation.

The assertion, which is likely to spark an angry response from GOP leaders, ups the stakes in advance of the summit by essentially daring Republicans to try to block reform.

“The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on the call.

The Obama administration sees nothing wrong with extending deadlines with the Iranian regime in its quest to achieve a nuclear weapon. When it comes to dealing with the mad mullahs negotiation is without limit.

President Obama has very different ideas when it comes to the government takeover of health care. As far as he is concerned the time for negotiation has ended, it's time for the Republicans to get on board or get run over.

Minority leader Mitch McConnell is already throwing his hands in the air claiming that he doesn't have the votes to stop reconciliation. That's no reason not to fight. The American people deserve a Senate Minority leader that is willing to use every tool at his disposal to make the fight last as long as possible. The more time the American public has to learn what the Democrats are up to and how little they value the opinion of the people they claim to represent, the more involved the people will beome. The Democrats in their hubris will awaken a righteous anger that will sweep across this great land and refresh the spirit of liberty that has been long dormant.

The Government Wants Your 401(K)

You try to be reponsible and save for your theoretical retirement. Then comes the market crash of September 08 and a large portion of those savings disappear in a gut wrenching couple of weeks. Now, it seems the federal government has its eyes and if the bureaucrats get their wish, their hands on what's left. Meanwhile, those that work for the government can still count on lavish pentions financed by the soon to be overwhelmed taxpayer. Our property rights are now dependent on their whims. Such is life in the US of A under the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Triumvirate.

Class Warfare's Next Target: 401(k) Savings
By NEWT GINGRICH AND PETER FERRARA
Posted 02/17/2010 06:52 PM ET


You did the responsible thing. You saved in your IRA or 401(k) to support your retirement, when you could have spent that money on another vacation, or an upscale car, or fancier clothes and jewelry. But now Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings.

BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on "the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams."

In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.

They will tell you that you are "investing" your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds.

This "conversion" may start out as an optional choice, though you are already free to buy Treasury bonds whenever you want. But as Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker Web site reports: "'Choices' have a funny way of turning into mandates, and this looks to me like a raw admission that Treasury knows it will not be able to sell its debt in the open market — so they will effectively tax you by forcing your 'retirement' money to buy them."

Moreover, benefits based on Treasury bond interest rates may be woefully inadequate compensation for your years of savings. As Denninger adds, "What's even worse is that the government has intentionally suppressed Treasury yields during this crisis (and will keep doing so by various means, including manipulating the CPI inflation index) so as to guarantee that you lose over time compared to actual purchasing power."

This proposal follows hearings held last fall by House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., of the Ways and Means Committee focusing on "redirecting (IRA and 401k) tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute," as reported by InvestmentNews.com.

The hearings examined a proposal from professor Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research in New York to give all workers "a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government" in return for requiring workers "to invest 5% of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration."

Obama and Acorn

Has there ever been a President that had this much trouble telling the truth?

Clintonites' To Attack Tea Party Movement

From Big Government:

A meeting of former Clintonistas and senior Democrat political operatives to coordinate a push-back to the burgeoning tea party movement. Consider it a Democrat party relief effort.

When tea party, 9/12 and townhall protests and rallies first erupted on the national scene, they were derided by national politicos as astroturf or a small fringe movement. Lefty journalists at MSNBC, CNN and elsewhere laughed away the movement with derogatory, pornographic references.

Then, Scott Brown won election to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. No one is laughing anymore. In fact, Democrats are facing political annihilation this November. Not only do Democrats face the possibility of losing their congressional majorities, massive losses in state house races could jeopardize redistricting next year and set back the progressive agenda for at least a decade.

So, the Clinton Empire is planning to strike back.

Big Government has learned that Clintonistas are plotting a “push/pull” strategy. They plan to identify 7-8 national figures active in the tea party movement and engage in deep opposition research on them. If possible, they will identify one or two they can perhaps ‘turn’, either with money or threats, to create a mole in the movement. The others will be subjected to a full-on smear campaign. (Has MSNBC already been notified?)

Big Government has also learned that James Carville will head up the effort.

Obviously, there is no love lost between Obama and the Clinton machine. It may at first seem odd that Clinton would rush to Obama’s defense, but the tea party movement poses a threat far beyond the immediate goals of the Obama Administration.

The tea party movement could evolve into a new political realignment, one founded on a belief in limited government and less government interference in the economy. The Progressive agenda, which has been painstakingly built up over the last three decades, could be left in tatters.

As the Clinton’s know, “politics ain’t beanbag.” Expect the counterattack soon. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

It looks like some folks are about to get the Joe the Plumber treatment from democratic apparatchiks. The Democratic machine is being faced with losing its dream of achieving a progressive state with cradle to grave dependence of the citizens on the government and they aren't happy. Since the Ohio state employees who violated Joe's privacy received nothing more than a slap on the wrist, we shouldn't be surprised that they're happy to resort to the same kind of scullduggery again.

So, to those members of the Tea Party Movement that are standing up for their country and are about to have their private lives put on public display, please know this. Thank you. Also, don't let the bastards get you down, our cause is just and for liberty's sake we must prevail.

The Wall St. Journal Gets it, Do The Democrats?

Another Liberal Crackup
The real reason Evan Bayh wants out of Washington.

The political retirement of Evan Bayh, at age 54, is being portrayed by various sages as a result of too much partisanship, or the Senate's dysfunction, or even the systemic breakdown of American governance. Most of this is rationalization. The real story, of which Mr. Bayh's frustration is merely the latest sign, is the failure once again of liberal governance.
For the fourth time since the 1960s, American voters in 2008 gave Democrats overwhelming control of both Congress and the White House. Republicans haven't had such large majorities since the 1920s. Yet once again, Democratic leaders have tried to govern the country from the left, only to find that their policies have hit a wall of practical and popular resistance.
Democrats failed in the latter half of the 1960s, as the twin burdens of the Great Society and Vietnam ended the Kennedy boom and split their party. They failed again after Watergate, as Congress dragged Jimmy Carter to the left and liberals had no answer for stagflation. They failed a third time in the first two Bill Clinton years, as tax increases and HillaryCare led to the Gingrich Congress before Mr. Clinton salvaged his Presidency by tacking to the center.

A fourth crackup is already well underway and is even more remarkable considering how Democrats were set up for success. Inheriting a recession amid GOP failures, Democrats had the chance to restore economic confidence and fix the financial system with modest reforms that would let them take credit for the inevitable recovery. Yet only 13 months later, Democrats are down in the polls, their agenda is stymied by Democratic opposition, and their House and Senate majorities are in peril as moderates like Mr. Bayh flee the scene of this political accident.
Democrats have responded by blaming "obstructionist" Republicans, who lack the votes to block anything by themselves; or a failure to communicate the right message, though President Obama is a master communicator; or even Madison's framework of checks and balances, though this system has worked better than all others for some 225 years.
John Podesta, who ran Mr. Obama's transition and heads the Center for American Progess that has supplied the Administration's ideas, summed up the liberal-media mood last week when he told the Financial Times that American governance now "sucks." If you can't blame your own ideas, blame the system.
The real source of this mess is the agenda that Democrats have tried to ram through the political system. Far from offering new ideas to reform the welfare state or compete better against rising global powers, Democrats have with rare exception tried to impose the same spending, tax and regulatory agenda that failed in the 1960s, 1970s and 1990s. Mr. Obama was a new face promising new hope, but his ideas are as old as the average Congressional Chairman.
To fix the economy, Democrats sent federal spending to peacetime heights in the name of replacing private investment with "public demand." But instead of spurring recovery, this spending spree has retarded it by frightening the public and business about future tax increases and the rising burden of public debt. The new jobs Democrats promised still haven't arrived, and while the recovery should finally produce job growth this year, Americans know they have received little for their $862 billion in "stimulus."
The rest of Mr. Obama's liberal agenda has foundered on its own overreaching implausibility. To fight the speculative threat of global warming, Democrats have tried to impose vast new taxes to raise energy prices. To address rising health-care costs, they proposed huge new health subsidies and political control of medical decisions. Medicare is heading toward bankruptcy, yet Mr. Obama's response is to make the entire health-care system like Medicare. And to fix the financial system, they have declared war on bankers while proposing reforms that would do little to prevent future bank bailouts.
The central contradiction in modern liberal politics is that Otto von Bismarck's entitlement state for cradle to grave financial security is no longer affordable. The model has reached the limit of its ability to tax private income and still allow enough economic growth to finance its transfer payments.
You can see this in bankrupt Greece, where government spends 52% of GDP; or in California and New York, where the government-employee unions have pushed tax rates to punishing levels and the states still can't pay their bills. Americans can see that this is where Mr. Obama's agenda is also taking Washington, and this is why they are rejecting it.

Can Mr. Obama still make a mid-course correction, a la Bill Clinton after 1994? Of course he can. What we don't know is whether he has the political instincts and nerve to do so. As a creature of Chicago politics and the legal class, he has lived his entire life in precincts dominated by the political left. On the other hand, he says he is not "an ideologue."
Americans have already sent one rebuke to Democrats in the form of Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts. Now Mr. Bayh, a senior Member of their own party, has sent another by skipping town and putting another Senate seat in play. Our guess is that it will take one more repudiation in November before Democrats relearn that you can't govern America successfully from the political left.

Evidently the White House will unveil their new health care plan on Monday. This unveiling comes with the promise/threat that if need be the White House and Harry Reid will force the plan through the Senate using reconciliation which only requires 51 votes.

Is it any coincidence that President Obama was just in Nevada helping Reid's flagging re-election effort? What Obama/Pelosi/Reid can't seem to undertand is that Americans don't want a radical remaking of our society, in short, they're stuck on stupid. If they force through a radical transformation of the health care system using the gimmick of reconciliation, which was never intended to be used in this way, the backlash will be enormous.

Listen up members of Congress. If you choose to ignore the wishes of your constituents and push through a hyper-partisan bill using a budgeting gimmick, the townhalls of last August will look like child play compared to what you have coming your way.

It's really very simple. Who are you more afraid of? Your party leadership? Or your constituents? At the end of the day only one has the power to end your career. You better start listening to them before you find yourself unemployed next January.

Unhappy Birthday Stimulus

The 862 Billion albatross is one year old today. President Obama is currently spinning this boondoggle as the savior of our nation. You see, if it hadn't been passed America would resemble the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max, complete with that wacky Thunderdome.

Mr. President, the American people simply aren't buying your snake oil anymore.

If you're wondering how such a large expenditure of the public wealth could have been frittered away to so little benefit I offer exhibit one from the Wall St Journal:

"Government data indicate that most of the jobs supported by stimulus spending belonged to public employees at the state and local level, including about 325,000 teachers and school staff.
Subsidizing those jobs avoided layoffs, or state and local tax increases that could have further undermined the economy. But they didn't result in substantial hiring of people who had lost private-sector jobs."

That's right the stimulus was meant to protect politically connected and Democratic supporting government employees from sharing the pain of the Great Recession with their fellow citizens. Sometimes, even with politicians at all levels of government watching their backs their arrogance will get the best of them and they will get their due. Like those teachers' at Central Falls High School in RI that refused to work an extra 25 minutes.

Exhibit 2:

A poll done by USA Today of 884 small business owners:

How has the Obama administration affected small-business success?

It has had a positive effect: 11%

It has hurt me: 77%

No effect: 13%

The majority of Americans work for and historically job growth comes from small businesses. The job market will recover when the Obama administration gives up its statist ambitions that are threatening to wipe out the small companies that enable the middle class to exist.

Democrats and the Party of No

When she was a newly minted House Minority leader, Nancy Pelosi hired an adveritising/marketing agency to get their advice on the best way to regain the majority. The advice as she relayed it was to oppose the Bush agenda lock, stock and barrell, in essence to become the party of no. After spending an hour fruitlessly trying to find the article I have given up. Maybe someone else will have better luck digging it out of the recesses of Google. From January of 2005 until November of 2006, Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues in the Senate followed this advice to the letter. They opposed President Bush on Social Security reform and refused to submit their own plan for saving the system from bankruptcy. On Iraq, they offered no solutions to achieve victory, in fact they were eager to declare defeat and cede that country to Al Qaeda. Cut to January 2007 and incoming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1576122,00.html.

When the G.O.P. pushed through a bill granting Bush the ability to suspend the
ancient right of habeas corpus for terror suspects, the man who would become the
Democratic Senate majority leader after the election, Harry Reid, said, "The
framers of our Constitution understood the need for checks and balances, but
this bill discards them." Across the country Democratic candidates for both
chambers of Congress painted their opponents as rubber stamps for Bush's failed
policy in Iraq. And the day before the Nov. 7 vote that would vindicate his
chairmanship of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, New York's Charles
Schumer said voters were flooding to Democrats in part because they had decided
that the country needed "some checks and balances in this government."

But when it comes to actually taking any action to check Bush's war
powers, there's not much bite to the Democrats' bark. Which raises the question:
will Democrats use their new power to rein in what they say is an overreaching
President? Or will they choose to continue what proved to be a successful
political strategy when they were in the minority: criticizing the
Administration for unpopular policies while avoiding taking action themselves
that could prove equally unpopular?

Politically, however, it's hard to
argue with a winning strategy. The ACLU's three races fly in the face of Harry
Reid's victorious approach throughout the 109th Congress: hammer the President
in every public forum on Iraq and executive overreach, but never, ever get on
the wrong side of tough national security policies.

If being the Party of NO was good enough for the Democrats, in fact they claimed it as the patriotic thing to do, why isn't it acceptable for Republicans to follow suit when they are in the minority?

The Democrats have shown little (Senate) to no(House) interest in negotiating with Republicans. As President Obama told Senator Kyl (R-AZ), "I won, I trump you on that". Holding the White House and large majorities in the House and Senate the Democratic strategy is to craft legislation that realizes progressives' dreams, in the case of nationalizing health care, a dream they have had for over a century. When Republicans predictably refuse to sign on to legislation they haven't had any input on drafting they will be labeled obstructionists by the Democrats and a compliant, complicit media.

Being labeled the Party of No scares the daylights out of Sen. McConnell, but it shouldn't. The fact is that Obamacare is not popular with the electorate and Republicans have nothing to lose in standing up for the rights of the people. From the invitation that Rahm Emmanuel sent out for the health care summit the fix is already in "Since this meeting will be most productive if information is widely available before the meeting, we will post online the text of a proposed health insurance reform package". As far as Obama/Reid/Pelosi are concerned this summit is just political theatre. They will make nice on camera and then ram a hyper-partisan bill through.

When President Obama met with House Republicans at their retreat he claimed he wasn't an idealogue. He could go a long way to proving that by pledging to veto any health care legislation that comes out of the Senate via reconciliation. If he refuses to make that promise Republicans should proudly accept the mantle of the Party of No! Or as that sign at one of the tea party rallies put it: The Party of Hell No!

The Ground We Should Fight 2010 On

From the inestimable Michael Barone:

Public-sector unions bleed taxpayers
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
February 7, 2010
(AP File)

Growing up in Michigan in the heyday of the United Auto Workers, I long assumed that labor unions were part of the natural order of things.

That's no longer clear. Last month the Labor Department reported that private-sector unions lost 834,000 members last year and now represent only 7.2 percent of private-sector employees. That's down from the all-time peak of 36 percent in 1953 and '54.

But union membership is still growing in the public sector. Last year 37.4 percent of public-sector employees were union members. That percentage was down near zero in the 1950s. For the first time in history, a majority of union members are government employees.

In my view, the outlook for both private- and public-sector unionism is problematic.

Private-sector unionism is adversarial. Economic studies show that such unions do extract premium wages and benefits from employers. But that puts employers at a competitive disadvantage. Back in the 1950s, the Big Three auto companies dominated the industry and were at the top of the Fortune 500. Last year General Motors and Chrysler went bankrupt and are now owned by the government and the UAW. Ford only barely escaped.

Adversarial unionism tends to produce rigid work rules that retard adaptation and innovation. We have had a three-decade experiment pitting UAW work rules against the flexible management of Japanese- and European-owned nonunion auto firms.

The results are in. Yes, clueless management at the Detroit firms for years ignored problems with product quality and made boneheaded investment mistakes. But adversarial unionism made it much, much harder for Detroit to produce high-quality vehicles than it was for nonunionized companies.

As economist Barry Hirsch points out, nonunion manufacturing employment rose from 12 million to 14 million between 1973 and 2006. In those years, union manufacturing employment dropped from 8 million to 2 million. "Unionism," Hirsch writes, "is a poor fit in a dynamic, competitive economy."

Moreover, federal laws passed since the 1950s now protect workers from racial and sex discrimination, safety hazards and pension failure. They don't need unions to do this anymore.

Public-sector unionism is a very different animal from private-sector unionism. It is not adversarial but collusive. Public-sector unions strive to elect their management, which in turn can extract money from taxpayers to increase wages and benefits -- and can promise pensions that future taxpayers will have to fund.

The results are plain to see. States such as New York, New Jersey and California, where public-sector unions are strong, now face enormous budget deficits and pension liabilities. In such states, the public sector has become a parasite sucking the life out of the private-sector economy. Not surprisingly, Americans have been steadily migrating out of such states and into states like Texas, where public-sector unions are weak and taxes are much lower.

Barack Obama is probably the most union-friendly president since Lyndon Johnson. He has obviously been unable to stop the decline of private-sector unionism. But he is doing his best to increase the power -- and dues income -- of public-sector unions.

One-third of last year's $787 billion stimulus package was aid to state and local governments -- an obvious attempt to bolster public-sector unions. And a successful one: While the private sector has lost 7 million jobs, the number of public-sector jobs has risen. The number of federal government jobs has been increasing by 10,000 a month, and the percentage of federal employees earning over $100,000 has jumped to 19 percent during the recession.

Obama and his party are acting in collusion with unions that contributed something like $400,000,000 to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle. Public-sector unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating machine that extracts money from taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor belt to the Democratic party.

But it may not turn out to be a perpetual motion machine. Public-sector employees are still heavily outnumbered by those who depend on the private sector for their livelihoods. The next Congress may not be as willing as this one has been to bail out state governments dominated by public-sector unions. Voters may bridle at the higher taxes needed to pay for $100,000-plus pensions for public employees who retire in their 50s. Or they may move, as so many have already done, to states like Texas.

Obama's Democrats have used the financial crisis to expand the public sector and the public-sector unions. But voters seem to be saying, "Enough."

A quick primer:

President Obama used TARP money to bail out GM and Chrysler to benefit the UAW. These companies acknowledge that the taxpayer will likely never be repaid. Instead the president is proposing a fee on banks' to recoup these losses.

The stimulus, as admitted by the administration was designed to bail out spendthrift state governments and protect public employees from layoffs.

There is no reason why public workers should be allowed to unionize and then use memeber dues to advocate for ever bigger government.

It's Always About Him

The president's ego is still quite healthy, even if his poll numbers aren't. Rasmussen has him at 44% approval and 55% of Americans disapproving of the job he's doing. None of that matters to our self reverential Commander in Chief though because one of his supporters wants to be buried in his t-shirt. Unbelievable.




UPDATE: She had health insurance. From the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

"When Melanie Shouse began feeling ill, eventually finding a lump in her breast, she couldn't afford a doctor. She and her partner had just used their savings to open a business.
A year later, doctors told her she had terminal, stage four breast cancer.

She spent the next 4½ years fighting for health care reform that she didn't live to see pass.

Ms. Shouse died Saturday (Jan. 30, 2010) at her home in Overland. She was 41.

...In a speech in November at the Arch grounds, she spoke about the need to "take on the Big Insurance Monopoly and liberate American families from the slavery of skyrocketing insurance premiums and canceled coverage, which leave millions of us in a state of perpetual fear and insecurity ..."

Using herself as an example, Ms. Shouse said she had put off going to a doctor because her health insurance policy had a $5,000 deductible. She called it "'hit by a bus' kind of insurance."'

NASA, Part Of The Warmist Racket

Et Tu NASA? The saddest part of this is that President Obama wants NASA to focus on "climate change" as its new mission. No longer will they be the government agency that inspires the adventurer in every child, but the apparatchik.

"The Science & Public Policy Institute has published an important paper on the manipulations to which surface temperature records have been subjected in order to promote the global warming dogma. It's called Surface Temperature Records: Policy Driven Deception? You should download and read it all; this is the executive summary:

1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant "global warming" in the 20th century.

2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term temperature trends.

3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.

4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.

5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.

6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.

7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island contamination alone.

8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.

9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.

10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.

11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-century "global warming".

12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.

13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.

14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC "chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations."

15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also requires a full investigation and audit."

Pres. Obama's Debt Bomb

Yesterday President Obama unveiled his budget for fiscal year 2011 and it comes in at a whopping $3.8 trillion, running a deficit of $ 1.6 trillion. For those of you keeping score at home, this deficit is the largest in our nation's history, beating the previous record of $1.4 trillion set just last year. President Obama promised that he and the Democratic majorities in Congress were going to "bring real change" to Washington DC. In the first three years of his administration President Obama will increase our national debt by $4.4 trillion. Somehow, I don't think the American people had this kind of change in mind back in 2008, when candidate Obama promised to actually cut federal spending.


Right wing zealot Rush Limbaugh lost no time attacking our president's fiscal profligacy "By President Obama's own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years." Oh wait, that's from the New York Times.


What are the spending levels that has the Times so concerned? President Obama envisions growing government to the point that even after raising taxes by $2.3 trillion, federal spending will outstrip revenues by $8.5 trillion from 2011-2020. If Congress agrees to go along with the president's spending requests our national debt will be $18 trillion by 2020. The president has traded in his "spread the wealth" rhetoric for a policy of spreading debt to future generations of Americans. President Obama's agenda is a budget buster of epic proportions. The American people simply can't afford his vision for turning our country into a European-style social democracy.

In considering the president's proposed budget and what it means for our future. I hope you take a moment to reflect on these words from our fortieth president.

"This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

Pres. Obama's Bowing problem

This time it's notorious trickster and Tampa FL Mayor Pam Iorio who gets our president to fall for the "your shoes untied" gag.

Note to President Obama:

You are the elected leader of a proud, sovereign nation. We bow to noone. Either get a spine or see a chiropractor.