Welfare, Not Work: Obama Shuts Down Minority Business Agency

March 20, 2012 | Filed Under Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Chicago, Democrats/Leftists, Detroit, Government, Government, Corruption, Jobs, Liberals, Los Angeles, New York City, President, Stimulus, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

Hosannas. Obama has finally cut some federal spending. But noting which agency he shut down is sort of emblematic of his whole welfare/big government-pushing presidency.

On Friday, the Department of Commerce announced that it would be shutting down all five regional offices of the Minority Business Development Agency, an agency that was created by Richard Nixon to help develop minority businesses.

The administration claims that it will be saving around $30 million per year by eliminating the offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush is not too happy about the decision.
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Fox Business Network Covering Illinois Primary Tonight at 7PM

March 20, 2012 | Filed Under Budget, Business, Capitalism, Economy/Finances, Elections, Fox Business Network, GOP, Illinois, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Republicans, Rick Santorum, TV, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

If you’re looking for some expert commentary on the Illinois primaries, Fox Business Network will be providing up-to-the-minute coverage tonight anchored by the inimitable Neil Cavuto. The coverage will kick off at 7PM and will feature Jeff Flock here on the ground in Chicago.

FBN’s Neil Cavuto has been covering the primaries quite extensively. Cavuto has even chided his rival cablers for practically ignoring the primaries, saying that he has been surprised at how “competitors drop the ball” on their coverage. He feels viewers deserve more.

I see rival networks giving a perfunctory, ‘So and so won this primary,’ and then they’re back to a Teflon commercial, or they’re running a seven-year-old special, and I think I owe my viewers more. I think that they deserve more. People are into this. And we as a financial network owe it to (our viewers to) be into this ourselves.

For his part, reporter Jeff Flock provided some of his analysis on the GOP filed from which Illinois will choose this primary election day.

“If you are a deficit hawk there is not much difference between the three front runners. Romney, Santorum and Gingrich all push lower taxes, spending cuts and changes to the Social Security and Medicare programs,” Flock said. “All would, by most economist’s measures, add trillions to the deficit over the next decade. Only Ron Paul’s plan would cut the deficit over time.”

Flock says that Romney will appeal quite a lot to the business class.
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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO — Newt Responds to President: Let Obama Be the Saudi Oil and Algae Guy, I’ll be the American Jobs Guy

March 15, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Barack Obama, Biofuels, Business, Capitalism, Elections, Energy, GOP, Government, Corruption, Jobs, Liberals, Natural Gas, Newt Gingrich, Oil, President, Republicans, Solar, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | 4 Comments

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Newt Responds to President: Let Obama Be the Saudi Oil and Algae Guy, I’ll be the American Jobs Guy
-By Warner Todd Huston

Republican Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich appeared at Otto Engineering in Carpentersville, Illinois this afternoon and had a few choice words for Barack Obama. Newt told the president than he can be the fantasy algae guy and he, Newt, will be the science candidate.

Newt Slams the President as a member of the “Flat Earth, Sierra Club Society.”

Earlier today Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland, President Obama claimed that anyone attacking his absurd reliance on wind power and algae to solve our massive energy problems are members of the “Flat Earth Society.”

Obama even went so far as to attack “one of my predecessors,” Rutherford B. Hayes who Obama quotes as saying that telephones are great but “who would want to use them”? “This is why he isn’t on Mount Rushmore,” Obama quipped. But Hayes was hardly a Luddite in the White House. For instance, on May 10th 1877 Hayes was the first president to install a telephone in the White House, so who knows what Obama is rambling about?

For his part, Newt is ridiculing Obama’s failures on energy.
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This Ship Needs a Captain not just a Businessman

March 11, 2012 | Filed Under Business, Capitalism, Christianity, Economy/Finances, Elections, GOP, Government, Jobs, Michael Bresciani‏, Mitt Romney, President, Religion, Republicans, Taxes | Comments Off

-By Rev Michael Bresciani

In this day of the history challenged it may not be safe to assume that everyone knows that it was Captain John Paul Jones who in the fall of 1779 said the famous words, “I have not yet begun to fight.” Even fewer may know that his ship the Bonhomme Richard had its upper decks nearly blown off and with what may have looked like a tattered raft the fight continued. Two hands assuming that both captain and first officer had been slain went about to lower the ship’s pendant from the mainmast, but were interrupted by Jones who flew toward them with pistols in hand.

The captain threw his unloaded pistols at the mates missing one and striking the other on the head leaving him unconscious. The master of the powerful British warship Serapis called out to Jones and asked if he was about to quarter. (Give up and surrender) Jones’ famous reply has been the example of every great naval officer since, but it doesn’t stop there. The best fighting men, statesmen and ordinary Americans, ever since, have been heard to say the same.
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Please Contact Advertisers That Dumped Limbaugh, Tell Them How YOU Feel — Here’s their Info

March 6, 2012 | Filed Under Business, Capitalism, Democrats/Leftists, Ethics, Liberals, Rush Limbaugh, Uncategorized, Warner Todd Huston | 2 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

So far, 22 companies have pulled their advertising from the Rush Limbaugh radio show. They have done this, some because they are big dollar Obama supporters (like Carbonite), many more because they were pressured by a concerted campaign to intimidate them launched by various left-wing groups.

Those of you that support Rush Limbaugh really need to contact these advertisers and let them know how upset you are with them for dropping his show. You need to speak up just as the extremist left-wing websites and Obama operatives have done.

Squeaky wheel, you know? After all, we have just as much right to tell these advertisers that we oppose their attack on Rush Limbaugh as the left-wingers do in telling them to drop Limbaugh as a client.

Below are links to the contact pages of each company’s website. Please call them all… and like a good Chicago election campaign, do so more than once!

On another note, Carbonite may be finding its actions are not helping its own bottom line. Apparently Carbonite’s stock has fallen through the floor.
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The Federal Reserve Rip-Off

March 2, 2012 | Filed Under Alan Caruba, Banks, Business, Congress, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Ethics, Government, Government, Corruption, Liberals, Money | Comments Off

-By Alan Caruba

I have not been kind to Ron Paul and his participation in the Republican primary campaigns and it has taken me a while to understand why he is doing this. It is clear that he wants to be around to influence the Republican platform and the issue about which he is abundantly correct is the Federal Reserve.

Anyone taking notice of Obama’s latest budget has to conclude that his mission is to crash the nation’s economy and turn America into a Socialist worker’s paradise. The only problem is that Socialism has been a dismal failure everywhere it has been tried.

One only has to look at the collapse of the Soviet Union for confirmation of that, the Chinese abandonment of Communist economic theory, and Obama’s odd notion that a nation can spend itself out of ever-increasing debt.

I am not a fan of Paul’s isolationism, but he is absolutely right about getting rid of the Federal Reserve.
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Competition or Cartel Control? An Entrepreneur’s Fight for Fairness

February 29, 2012 | Filed Under Business, Government, Government, Corruption, Illinois, Jobs, Republicans, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

How government uses its powers to regulate and license to act as a cartel for established businesses and to exclude new businesses

Artist, veteran, and entrepreneur Julie Crowe wishes to provide a female-friendly vehicle-for-hire service for students in the Bloomington-Normal community, but her attempts are thwarted by city officials who insist students have no need for her services. With the help of the Liberty Justice Center, Ms. Crowe fights back.

In Bloomington, Illinois we have just such a case. Julie Crowe had an idea for a business, one that seemed to be in demand in that college town. Crowe had the idea that she would start a driver-for-hire business, one where she would be sure to take passengers not to a single drop off and pick up spot but right to their door if they wanted.
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Sarah Palin’s Main CPAC Speech Points: Did She Sell Out?

February 12, 2012 | Filed Under Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Conservatives, Crony Capitalism, Elections, Energy, GOP, Jobs, Natural Gas, Oil, President, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

I am just now back home from CPAC and I thought I’d wrap up my CPAC reports with the main points from Sarah Palin’s CPAC speech. I will have video of a dozen or so GOP candidates for Senate and the House over the ensuing days as well as a short video interview with Daniel Hannan, the Member of European Parliament that made himself beloved to Americans for his impassioned speeches in favor of freedom and liberty.

Those videos will come later, but now, on to Sarah’s speech. As expected, Sarah Palin was met with the most adulatory applause of any CPAC speaker. When she came out onto the stage the house went wild. She had the longest sustained standing ovation of the entire event. Obviously, Sarah Palin is still a rock star to these conservatives.

I live tweeted her speech and following this introduction I’ll repost those live tweets here so that you can see her main points as she delivered them and as I tweeted them. But first my over all impressions.

Palin spent a lot of time smacking President Obama over the head with his smashing failures over the last three years. She made no effort to be coy about it but attacked him head on. As in all her speeches — and I’ve been in the audience for a few of them, myself — she made many allusions to the founders, citing them often. And she ended up with an urgent plea to those watching to fall in behind who ever becomes the GOP nominee “for the sake of our country.” This ending might have surprised, maybe even dismayed her more ideological fans because perhaps she just proved to be just another party woman instead of the ideologically pure representative they’d hoped for.
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CPAC Speeches: Contrasting Santorum, Gingrich, Romney

February 11, 2012 | Filed Under Budget, Business, Capitalism, Conservatives, Crony Capitalism, Elections, GOP, Government, Corruption, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, President, Republicans, Rick Santorum, Taxes, Uncategorized, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

CPAC 2012 featured appearances by the three top GOP contenders who came to ask for the support of the conservatives gathered there. First came former Penn. Senator Rick Santorum, then Governor Mitt Romney, and finally former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, all came to sell their ideas and candidacy.

Rick Santorum

Santorum came out to the most applause of the three, for sure. As he and his family mounted the stage the crowd was obviously eager to hear what the candidate had to say.

“Conservatism did not fail this country,” began the meat of the former Pennsylvania Senator’s remarks, “conservatives failed conservatism.”

Santorum said that in the past we, “listened to the voices that said we had to abandon our principles and our values to get things done, to win.” But no more compromise, he said. “The lesson we’ve learned is that we will no longer abandon and apologize for the policies and principles that made this country great for a hollow victory in November.”

Santorum went on to say that Obamacare was a “game changer” and with it, as the British found with their system, we will never be free again. “It’s about government control of our lives and it’s gotta stop,” he asserted to great applause.
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Stream Of Consciousness Observations Regarding The 2012 State Of The Union

February 9, 2012 | Filed Under Business, Congress, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Elections, Frederick Meekins, GOP, Government, Government, Corruption, House of Representatives, Liberals, President, Senate, Taxes | Comments Off

-By Frederick Meekins

Obama insists he doesn’t want our energy needs linked to unstable parts of the world. Service to do anything about the Occupy beatniks laying siege to a number of parks in Washington, DC?

Why should it be portrayed as a greater tragedy when a “single mother” loses her job rather than a man with a wife that stays at home? Seems both domestic arrangements are in similar positions without income.

In calling for a single source for the unemployed to seek information on training opportunities, doesn’t that involve the federal government assuming more control over education?

Obama insists it should be illegal for students to drop out of school before they are 18. Why should this be a matter of federal interference and what will the punishment be for those leaving prior to that age?
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The New American Elite

February 6, 2012 | Filed Under Alan Caruba, Anti-Americanism, Book Reviews, Budget, Business, Congress, Conservatives, Democracy, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Elections, Ethics, Free Trade, GOP, Government, Government, Corruption, House of Representatives, Jobs, Liberals, President, Republicans, Socialism, Taxes, WWII | Comments Off

-By Alan Caruba

The only constant in the life of individuals and nations is change. Since the beginning of the last century, the process or rate of change has accelerated with the invention and availability of a myriad of machines, technologies that have altered the lifestyle of Americans as well as of millions around the world.

Let me put it in personal terms. When I was born in the late 1930s, my Mother washed the family laundry by hand and hung it out to dry on sunny days or in the basement of our home if it was raining. We were not poor. We were middle class. My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and we lived in a spacious suburban home in an upscale New Jersey community. Mass produced washers and dryers would arrive after the end of World War Two.

The differences between lower economic classes, the middle class, and upper classes were well defined back then. All, however, generally held the same values regarding societal institutions such as marriage, religion, national pride. Those values have eroded since the 1960s and Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, whose new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” ($27.00, Crown Forum) tells you how and why.
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OCCUPY GENIUSES (The Constitution vs. Southern Occupiers)

January 31, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Business, Capitalism, Communism, Crime, Democrats/Leftists, Ethics, Government, Government, Corruption, Jobs, Liberals, President, Socialism, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston, Washington D.C. | Comments Off

Van Jones promised back in November that the Occupy gang will put up over 2,000 candidates for election in 2012. After AIM’s Ben Johnson did some man-on-the-street pop quizzes in the south this past week, we sure hope they come through on Jones’ promise. Ladies and gentlemen: we present to you the fruits of public school social studies programs.

In the meantime, is the Silliness Coming to an End? Occupy DC gets its eviction notice…

… naturally they are communists and anarchists.

Obama Set to Cost Each of Us Hundreds a Year in Higher Electric Costs

January 31, 2012 | Filed Under Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Congress, Democrats/Leftists, EPA, Ethics, Government, Government, Corruption, Liberals, President, Regulation, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | 4 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

Barack Obama’s avalanche of needless regulations on coal-fueled power plants are going into effect and the net result will be the closing of hundreds of power plants all across the country just when our need for power is increasing. This will absolutely necessitate the cost of our power to skyrocket. But, this is exactly what he wants. He wants to rape us for our power. He said so from the beginning.

Well, now that he’s had the opportunity to put into place just some of the new rules and regulations he wants — and he’s only pushed through a tiny bit of what he really wants, indeed — we are already seeing the results of his attack on us.

Look to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland where six coal-fueled power plants are being shut down by FirstEnergy because the retrofitting the power plants will have to undergo to satisfy Obama’s whims is just too expensive to justify.
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PG&E Wants Higher Rates Even While Collecting Millions for Improvements Never Made?

January 28, 2012 | Filed Under Budget, Business, California, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Energy, Ethics, Government, Liberals, Los Angeles, Natural Gas, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | 3 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

Since the several disastrous accidents that claimed the lives of too many Californians, Pacific Gas & Electric has been fighting criticism over its dismal safety record. In response, the energy provider cried poor and said it needed billions for upgrades and repairs and wanted ratepayers to pay even more for its services. But a new report says that PG&E collected millions from ratepayers for repairs and improvements that it never actually made.

Early last year PG&E got a large rate increase, but by August the energy provider was at it again asking for an additional $2.2 billion for upgrades, repairs, and improving its explosion-prone delivery system, a cost to be born on the backs of the ratepayers.

This January, though, the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) reported that PG&E has already collected half a billion dollars that was supposed to go to these repairs and upgrades yet the repairs were never made.
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Exposing a 40-Year Education Crime: Why California Needs School Choice

January 28, 2012 | Filed Under Budget, Business, Democrats/Leftists, Education, Ethics, Government, Corruption, Jobs, Larry Sand, Liberals, Los Angeles, Public Employees Unions, School Choice, Taxes, Teachers Unions, Unions | Comments Off

-By Larry Sand

Busting LAUSD and every other school district in the state for negligence should help kids, but it’s anyone’s guess as to when. In the meantime, giving families more educational options would be a great help, but don’t hold your breath, California.

With National School Choice Week underway, we see many positive things happening across the country. In states like New Jersey and Louisiana, governors are taking the lead in proposing ways to break the devastating monopoly that government run schools – their educrat leaders, corrupt and/or inept school boards and the powerful teachers unions — have held for far too long.

As an example of Big Education gone bad, I write in City Journal about a crime that has been perpetrated on the children of California for 40 years and the lawsuit that addresses it:
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Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy

January 27, 2012 | Filed Under Alan Caruba, Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Energy, Ethics, Government, Government, Corruption, House of Representatives, Jobs, Liberals, Money, Oil, President, Senate, Taxes | Comments Off

-By Alan Caruba

It is the crime of the century that America, home to some of the world’s greatest reserves of coal, natural gas and oil, is being deliberately destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior as they do everything in their power to restrict access and drive energy producers out of business.

It is common sense that a nation that cannot produce sufficient electricity to turn on its lights and power its manufacturing sector will be destroyed if current Obama administration regulations and actions continue. Our vital transportation sector and all others that utilize petroleum-based products will suffer, too.

While President Obama babbles about millionaires and billionaires, everyone will be impoverished by the loss of jobs and revenue our energy sector produces now and can produce in the future.

This isn’t an “energy policy.” It’s a “no-energy policy” and it is a guarantee of economic disaster.
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Conservatives: Occupy Wall Street Shows How We Can’t Get Our Message Out Over Old Media Din

January 26, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Business, Capitalism, Communism, Democrats/Leftists, Ethics, Government, Corruption, Jobs, Journalism, Liberals, Media, Media Bias, New York City, President, Socialism, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | 3 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

The gauzy puffery that the Old Media slathers upon the Occupy Wall Street movement has helped keep most Americans in the dark about how nasty, how violent, how outrageous, and even how incredibly lacking in integrity this movement is. On the conservative blogs the truth is well known, of course, but the fact that few Americans seem to know how bad the OWSers are shows that as conservatives we are not effectively getting our message out there.

For the initial two years of its existence the Old Media spent its every waking moment destroying, maligning, and out right lying about the Tea Party movement. Even today you’ll see an occasional swipe at the Tea Patiers made by some hater from the left and the Old Media is happy to “report” the slander, naturally.

You might remember when Obama operative Anna Park tried to start a counter movement that she prosaically called “the Coffee Party” during the heyday of the Tea Party. You may also recall that those Old Media mavens, while daily lying and lambasting the Tea Partiers, fell all over themselves to play up the silly and quickly failed and forgotten “Coffee Party” effort.
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Rep. Walsh Schools National Park Service Director About Occupy DC

January 25, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Congress, Conservatives, Democrats/Leftists, Ethics, GOP, Government, Government, Corruption, House of Representatives, Jobs, Joe Walsh, Liberals, Republicans, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

Why does the National Park Service think they should treat Occupy DC with kid gloves? Because they have “occupy” in their name… er… something. At least that is according to the head of the National Park Service, Jonathan B. Jarvis.

8th District Congressman Joe Walsh (R, ILL) wonders why Park Service personnel are not just tolerating the OWSers but actively assisting them and giving them aid for their protests!

Are we paying our taxes so that the Park Service can become part of an anti-American protest movement? Apparently we are.

Congressman Walsh did a great job showing that these OWSers are not something to be coddled.

(H/T Marathon Pundit)

SOTU Speech: Same Old, Same Old Obama Failure

January 25, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Education, Ethics, Government, Government, Corruption, Jobs, Liberals, President, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | 1 Comment

If you thought the 2012 State of the Union was very similar to President Obama’s past State of the Union speeches, you were right…

Video courtesy of www.gop.com/

If Republicans Want to Win, They Must Rebrand ‘Capitalism’

January 23, 2012 | Filed Under Budget, Business, Capitalism, Economy/Finances, Elections, GOP, Jobs, President, Republicans, Selwyn Duke, Taxes | Comments Off

-By Selwyn Duke

One of the simplest rhetorical truths is that the side that defines the vocabulary of a debate wins the debate. Yet, amazingly, we still see experienced conservative politicians with access to advanced polling operations and an array of advisors use the Lexicon of the Left. And this election cycle is no exception.

I could almost cringe when I hear – as I did repeatedly during Monday’s South Carolina GOP debate – Republicans talk about “capitalism.” “I believe in capitalism….” “Barack Obama doesn’t believe in capitalism…..” Capitalism this and capitalism that – look at me with my plump wallet, walking stick and tony top hat. Oh, it’s not that I don’t believe in free enterprise; it’s that we shouldn’t use words that conjure up sentiments akin to the preceding rhyme.

And polls inform that this is precisely what “capitalism” does. For example, Pew Research Center reports, “Slightly more than half (52%) react positively to the word ‘capitalism,’ compared with 37% who say they have a negative reaction.” According with this is a 2009 Rasmussen poll showing that, shockingly, “only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.” And the picture looks even worse with certain demographic groups. Writes Pew, “Fewer than half of young people, women, people with lower incomes and those with less education react positively to ‘capitalism.’”
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The U.S. is on a Suicide Watch

January 22, 2012 | Filed Under Alan Caruba, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Cold War, Communism, Democrats/Leftists, Ethics, Free Trade, Government, Liberals, President, Socialism, Taxes | Comments Off

-By Alan Caruba

In 1991, the Soviet Union, arguably the greatest experiment in Communism, collapsed. After Mao Zedong died in 1976, his successors moved to shift its Communist economy to one that embraced Capitalism while retaining centralized government control.

Following World War Two, the recovering nations of Europe were rescued from Communism by the Marshall Plan, but adopted Communism-Light in the form of Socialism. The U.S. was already headed in that direction, creating programs that we now call “entitlements.” For most of the nation’s history, such “entitlements” did not exist.

What binds together the financial problems of the West is the common thread of infantile behavior and thought. One might call it wishful thinking. Instead of encouraging people to provide for old age and possible illness, politicians decided to turn government into Big Daddy, the eternal source of money for everything.

Need to go to college, start a business, or plan for retirement? Government would be there to help. All this ignored the need to actually pay for these programs. In the case of Social Security Congress began to dip into its funding to pay for other programs! This is what children do.
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VIDEO: ‘Change has come,’ Alright! But How Good Has it Been?

January 20, 2012 | Filed Under Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Congress, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Elections, Government, Government, Corruption, House of Representatives, Jobs, Liberals, Money, President, Senate, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | 2 Comments

In 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced that change had come to America. After three years, the results of that change make many Americans ready to change it back.

And here is a great for-instance of how the Old Media establishment is covering for their Obammessiah. Let’s get in the way back machine and recall how the price of gas was used as a sledgehammer with which to beat George W. Bush about the head. Remember how it was front page news on a daily basis? Well now gas has lingered at highs that it never stayed at during the Bush years and now analysts are saying gas will reach to $4 a gallon this year — an all time high.

Where is the media on this story? Why isn’t it as big a deal as it was 5 and 6 years ago? Ah, yes. We have The One in office. Gosh. How could I forget that the Old Media doesn’t want negative stories about their messiah? Silly me.

Courtesy AllAmericanBlogger.com

Indiana Democrats Fleebagging Again, Abandoning Their Jobs

January 19, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Constitution, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Elections, Ethics, GOP, Government, Government, Corruption, House of Representatives, Indiana, Jobs, Liberals, Mitch Daniels, Public Employees Unions, Republicans, Right To Work, Senate, Teachers Unions, Unions, Warner Todd Huston | 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

Once again Indiana Democrats are playing the fleebagger game. Because they don’t have enough votes in the Indiana Statehouse, Hoosier Democrats are abandoning their rightful duties and fleeing the Capitol over Indiana’s right-to-work bill currently under consideration in Indianapolis.

Indiana Senate Bill 269 and House Bill 1001 would make it illegal to require workers in Indiana to join a union as a condition of being allowed to have a job. Allowing workers a choice seems like an inherently American idea, doesn’t it?

After all, how could anyone tell you that you must belong to a union or you’re not allowed to have your job? That sort of forced association seems so contrary to the American character. But forcing people to join unions just so that they can have a job is precisely what Indiana Democrats are fighting to protect.
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Raiding of the Treasury to Bribe the Irresponsible

January 19, 2012 | Filed Under Budget, Business, Congress, Crony Capitalism, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Ethics, Frank Salvato, GOP, Government, Liberals, President, Taxes | Comments Off

-By Frank Salvato

A little publicized political story, if played out to the satisfaction of California Democrats (read: Progressives), would not only set the stage for a politically motivated raid on the US Treasury, it would afford President Obama, his administration and political operatives plausible deniability in any “coincidental” benefit to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. And if you don’t think that has David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett and David Plouffe salivating, you haven’t been paying attention for the past three years.

According to a report by TheHill.com:

“A long list of California Democrats is urging President Obama to name a new housing regulator using a controversial recess appointment.

“In a letter to the president, more than two dozen House members said the temporary head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Edward DeMarco, simply hasn’t done enough to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure. The lawmakers are pushing the president to name a permanent director ‘immediately.’

“‘FHFA has consistently and erroneously interpreted its mandate far too narrowly and as such has failed to take adequate action to help homeowners,’ the lawmakers wrote. ‘Installing a permanent director of the FHFA will allow the FHFA to move forward to make key decisions that will help keep families in their homes and improve our economy.’”

Okay, let’s first examine the FHFA. According to their website:
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Occupy Wall Street Stealing From The Poor to Give to Themselves!

January 16, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Banks, Business, Crime, Democrats/Leftists, Ethics, GOP, Government, Corruption, Jobs, Liberals, New York City, PCism, Republicans, Society/Culture, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is more common everyday. A man buys a house, the market collapses and suddenly his house is worth less than the mortgage, then he loses his job until, as a single father, he finds himself in foreclosure with no place to raise his two preteen daughters. It’s a case made for the Occupy Wall Street movement to swoop in and right wrongs, right? Maybe not because the OWSers in New York stole this poor guy’s home away from him in order to give it to one of their own members. Confused? Read on.

A Brooklyn man living in an apartment with his two daughters was alerted to the fact that his in-foreclosure-home had been broken into and occupied by Occupiers, as in Occupy Wall Street activists. When he rushed to his home he found a group of strangers that had broken into his home claiming to have “reclaimed” the house and given it to another family.

“They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York.

Apparently Ahadzi had bought the house in 2007 for the princely sum of $424,500 but during the housing bubble of 2009 the house ended up being worth only half that. Then, when he lost his job and got behind on the mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the property.

Enter — illegally, mind you — Occupy Wall Streeters who discovered the home in foreclosure and decided that they’d steal it away from “the bank” with the ostensible goal of helping the needy.
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VIDEO: The Story of Broke Response, Why Annie Leonard is Wrong… AGAIN!

January 13, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Communism, Congress, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Ethics, Government, House of Representatives, Jobs, Liberals, Senate, Socialism, Stimulus, Taxes, Unemployment, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

Extremist “progressive” Annie Leonard recently perpetrated another video attempting to “explain” why capitalism and the United States is evil. Well, LearnLiberty.org couldn’t let her lies and left-wing propaganda go by unaddressed. So, they made this excellent video…

Prof. Art Carden responds to “The Story of Broke”, a recent video by the creators of “The Story of Stuff.” In “The Story of Broke,” Annie Leonard claims that the government isn’t actually broke. Rather, the government just wastes resources on the wrong things like subsidies to the dinosaur economy and war. She claims that the government should change its ways, and instead, subsidize firms that will bring us the future we really want.

Art Carden agrees with Leonard that war and subsidies are wasteful, but is skeptical of notion that there is one unified vision for the future. To Carden, everyone has a different vision for the future. Our path to the future, he argues, is determined by the interactions of billions of unique individuals pursuing their own objectives.

Additionally, Carden questions Leonard’s distinction between bad subsidies and good subsidies. Every subsidy, deemed good or bad, must be allocated through the political process. Lobbyists and special interests exert a large degree of influence on political decisions, and they use this power to direct subsidies in their own favor at everyone else’s expense.

Carden concludes that government spending won’t buy a brighter future. A brighter future will emerge when people are allowed to spend money on things they care about. Put another way, positive change will come from billions of people cooperating freely and voluntarily with one another, not from pushing trillions of dollars through a broken political process.

Barack Machiavelli

January 13, 2012 | Filed Under Alan Caruba, Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Congress, Democrats/Leftists, Elections, Ethics, Government, Government, Corruption, Liberals, Money, President, Taxes | Comments Off

-By Alan Caruba

The Founding Fathers, authors of the Constitution, were obsessed with any form of government that could become too powerful, too willing to use force to oppress citizens. They had cause. They had fought a long war against the greatest power of their age, ruled by a king with nearly absolute power. They fashioned an instrument designed to ensure that the President could not rule by edict and defused power among three branches of government.

We have a President currently running for reelection against Congress, Wall Street, Republicans, and the right of citizens to be free of an overly intrusive government.

Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution says: All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in the Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

All appointments of the President must be approved by the Senate while it is in session and the Senate, even over the Christmas and New Year’s vacation has remained in session, if only in a pro forma, technical manner. Every three days it has been convened to assert its powers.

Even so, President Obama has announced several “recess” appointments, all clearly a challenge to the Senate and all clearly a tyrannical power grab. He appointed Richard Cordray as the first director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new function that puts government between the lender and the citizen. In theory, all loans in the future will be subject to government approval. This is Communism, not Capitalism.

Obama Excuses Over 500,000 Union Members From Obamacare

January 12, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Congress, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Ethics, Government, Government, Corruption, Health, House of Representatives, Liberals, Obamacare, President, Public Employees Unions, Senate, Socialism, Taxes, Unions, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

-By Warner Todd Huston

Remember back in the days of the debate over Obamacare when unions were the biggest voices screaming in support of the legislation? Many labor union bosses said that nationalized healthcare was exactly what they wanted. Further they said it was what was good for the country. Yet now we learn that Obama has given waivers to some 550,000 union members so that they don;t have to suffer under Obamacare.

Paul Connor reports that a classic Friday evening document dump from the White House shows that unions employing up to 543,812 members have received waivers fro the Obama administration.

Fridays are often the one day of the week when government agencies satisfy transparency rules and release documents that show what they’ve been up to. They release them on Friday in the early evening because they understand that reporters are already headed home for the weekend and TV news departments have already programed their evening newscasts. These agencies also understand that news agencies don’t often cover heavy news on weekends. Further, by the time Monday rolls around the document will be “old news” and many of them will simply escape attention.
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Promises, Promises: The Reality of Campaign Speak

January 11, 2012 | Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Barack Obama, Budget, Business, Capitalism, Communism, Constitution, Crime, Democrats/Leftists, DOJ, Economy/Finances, Elections, Ethics, Frank Salvato, Government, Government, Corruption, Jobs, Liberals, President, Socialism, Taxes | Comments Off

-By Frank Salvato

As the campaign cycle progresses we are going to hear a lot about what one candidate or another is going to do about this or that. We will, to the point of weariness, be inundated with campaign promise after campaign promise, albeit, between gratuitous attacks, both political and personal. This is politicking and the American electorate – for better or for worse – has come to accept a certain amount of it from the people in the political class. But expecting grandiose pledges and believing in the unattainable, well, those are two different things. It is the truly foolish who believe half of what a political candidate says he can deliver, and the blame for that foolishness must fall on the shoulders of the individual voter.

While Presidents sign legislation into law, it is Congress – the House and the Senate; the Legislative Branch – that actually crafts and passes legislation. Therefore, any promise made on the campaign trail by a presidential candidate, be it by the incumbent or the challenger (or the field of candidates vying to be the challenger), is subject to the debate and acquiescence of those in the Legislative Branch; in Congress. It is because of this that any promise made by a presidential candidate must be received by the voting public as more of an intention, rather than a promise. To accept a campaign promise as an impending reality is to set oneself up for almost certain disappointment. And to blame a successful candidate for not living up to those campaign promises requires a level of certainty that the promise was actually ignored, not thwarted.

A good example of campaign promises thwarted comes in the form of the Republican TEA Party supported congressional freshman class who, during the 2010 Mid-Term Elections, promised to “repeal or defund Obamacare” and to “bring fiscal responsibility to Washington.” Each of those elected sincerely believed that they would be able to succeed in doing what they promised. In fact, HR2 of the 112th Congress did, in fact, attempt to repeal Obamacare and many of the TEA Party supported members of the House took it straight on the chin during the debt, deficit and budget debates. But for all of their good intentions and actions, the freshmen Republicans of the 112th Congress learned that unless you have a veto-proof majority in the House, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a friendly inhabitant in the White House, absolutes in campaign promises do not exist.

The same must be said about the Executive Branch and the President of the United States, although he has some additional quivers in his pouch where getting his way is concerned: the bully pulpit (self-explanatory) and the Executive Order.

RATE Coalition: We Are on Track to Have the Highest Corporate Tax Rate in the World

January 10, 2012 | Filed Under Budget, Business, Capitalism, Democrats/Leftists, Economy/Finances, Government, Government, Corruption, Jobs, Liberals, Taxes, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off

A group called Reform America’s Taxes Equitably (RATE) has a new video:

Reducing the corporate tax rate would be a boost for American competitiveness, investment and job creation,” the video concludes. “To get America back on track and bring jobs back where they belong, Congress must act and Reform America’s Taxes Equitably … This is our economy fair and simple.

RATE’s goals are to reform the tax code, making it fairer and simpler and improving the prospects of growth and jobs in the U.S. economy by reducing the corporate income tax rate to make it more competitive with our nation’s major trading partners.

http://www.ratecoalition.com/
http://www.facebook.com/RATECoalition

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