At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2010, Robert Spencer and I are launching a new organization, the Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI), by presenting a conference entitled “Jihad: The Political Third Rail — What They Are Not Telling You.” The conference is designed to speak the truths that others will not speak – and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is enraged.

The conference is designed to educate Americans about the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration at the highest levels of the U.S. government, as well as its war on free speech: its attempt to silence and discredit those who speak up against the jihad and Sharia encroachment in the West. Emphasis will be on the international character of the jihad against the West and on how the Islamic war on free speech (and the media’s self-imposed blackout on this issue, as in the Fort Hood massacre) is part and parcel of the same jihad against the West that terrorists are pursuing by violent means.

And that’s too much for CAIR. Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesman for the unindicted co-conspirator and front for the Muslim Brotherhood CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), said, “They’re free to be anti-Muslim bigots if they like, but it’s really up to the organizers of CPAC to determine if they’re going to allow their conference to be associated with the hate-filled views of those who will be speaking.”

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Yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden visited CBS’ “Early Show” for a “wide-ranging interview” during which he said, “We understand why people are angry…We get it.”

Um, no you don’t. Because if you did, Mr. Vice President, we wouldn’t keep hearing stories about the executive branch seeking ways to act unilaterally on domestic issues it can’t seem to get passed in the lopsided, Democrat-controlled Congress.

And we wouldn’t keep reading about SEIU and other bankrollers of the Obama campaign demanding swifter action on agenda items that are in their interest.

Vice Captain Obvious also had this observation: “Washington right now is broken.”  Help me out,  Joe. Your party controls 59 seats in the Senate.  You have a huge majority in the House.  Yet Washington is “broken?” Under whom is it broken, Joe?

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Several weeks after the Senate rejected Barack Obama’s plan to create a bipartisan congressional panel charged with decreasing the deficit, the president will use his executive authority to create the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

The less-powerful bipartisan commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, will be tasked with formulating a plan to decrease the federal budget deficit to 3% of GDP by 2015.

Yawn.

With the signing of this executive order, Obama will add fiscal responsibility to his growing library of political theater. Thus far, his other featured films have starred earmarks, lobbyists, Sonia Sotomayor, bipartisanship, etc. Unsurprisingly, they all share a common theme: disingenuousness. You’re welcome to grab some popcorn and take a seat, but as you watch the production of fiscal responsibility featuring Obama the deficit hawk, keep in mind you’re only being entertained.

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Yesterday, a group of, mostly DC-based, conservative figures released “The Mt. Vernon Statement,” because…well, we’re not really sure. Issuing statements is just a DC thing, it seems. Anyway, we include it below for your perusal.

Mt Vernon Statement –

Last summer, I released a web video targeting Washington Democrats’ trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill and asking “where are the jobs?”  Today, on the one-year anniversary of President Obama signing the “stimulus” into law, job-sniffing GOP bloodhound Ellie Mae still hasn’t found any jobs “created or saved” by the “stimulus.”  And I’m re-releasing the video for an encore performance.

The video features a down-home voiceover by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), and concludes with an appearance by me and Ellie Mae herself.

When Democrats rushed their massive 1,100 page, “stimulus” through Congress last year, they promised that unemployment would not rise above eight percent and that job creation would begin “almost immediately”.   But one year later, more than three million more Americans have lost their jobs, the deficit is set to hit a record shattering $1.6 trillion, and Administration reports on how many jobs were “saved or created” have been “riddled with inaccuracies and contradictions.”

By the metrics the Democrats themselves set, the “stimulus” hasn’t worked – it’s chock-full of wasteful government spending that’s funneled money to Congressional districts that don’t exist and claims of jobs “saved or created” were so exaggerated that the Administration quietly abandoned the metric at the end of last year.

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Picture an incandescent light bulb. This is your country.

Now imagine a compact fluorescent light bulb. This is your country on Progressivism.

What does a country on Progressivism look like? To start with, in the evening hours it’s pretty dim. Have you tried reading at night in a hotel room recently?

With more than 300 million of those little curly-Q fluorescent light bulbs now sold annually, our country is looking a lot less bright. Ever since Congress a few years ago declared that by 2012 Americans needed to be more energy efficient, it’s been out with Edison, in with the EPA. And turn on some more lights—I can’t see a thing!

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Last week, the Huffington Post (here) was all over this  new study showing that low-income workers got hit more severely during the recession than high-income workers (low-income workers suffer an over 30 percent unemployment rate, workers making about $138,000, only a 3.2 percent.)

The data in this study, which turned out to be quite misleading, certainly makes for nice populist headlines. But it is hiding the true debate that we should be having. And that’s not that low-skill workers are vulnerable to recession (duh) but that public-sector employees still have jobs and private employees don’t.

Look at the data:

In this chart, I compare seasonally adjusted unemployment rates across segments of the economy, dividing these segments using the super-categories designated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The chart compares the unemployment rates in January of 2009 (blue) with the unemployment rates in these same sectors a year later (yellow). (FYI, the difference would be even more dramatic if I had used not seasonally adjusted data)

In both years, the unemployment rate within the government has been small relative to the level of unemployment within the entire economy, and particularly so relative to the private sector.   In the course of a year, government employment has decreased by 296,000 jobs to 4.3% unemployment; during the same period, employment in the private, non-agricultural, sector has decreased by 2.3 million jobs to 11.1%. (And if you look at not seasonally adjusted unemployment data, the lose of private jobs reached 3.1 million and the lose of public jobs is roughly 70,000. That’s quite a gap.)

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On January 20, 2009 President Barack Obama promised to “begin again the work of remaking America.” He wasn’t kidding. In his first year Barack Obama and Democrats set all kinds of spending records. They managed to triple the national debt in a year and watched the unemployment rate jump to double digits. President Obama dithered and waffled on national security and joined with Marxist dictators to side against an American ally.

But you haven’t seen anything yet. The democrats in Congress are moving closer to passing the most radical anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-family bill through Congress that we have seen in decades.

HR4530 is a radical Safe Schools Czar’s dream come true.

Forget reading, writing and arithmatic, Democrats have more important subjects in mind for your child. Democrats are working to push HR 4530 through Congress. This bill will force educators to prohibit harassment, violence and discrimination faced by students based on their sexual orientation. That doesn’t sound so bad, but that’s not all it does.

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No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

– Mark Twain

The Obama peeps are actually trying to celebrate the one year anniversary of the $862 billion “drive us into perpetual debt” bill. Biden repeatedly told an audience in Saginaw, MI -unemployment 14% – that the “stimulus” is working.

Thanks, Joe! Hey, maybe that’s the next great achievement of The One. Back in the real world people are finally starting to notice that all this debt we’re racking up could lead to inflation, kill your savings and wages, and make it harder for you and businesses to borrow money.

Over the past year alone, the amount the U.S. government owes its lenders has grown to more than half the country’s entire economic output, or gross domestic product.

Even more alarming, experts say, is that those figures will climb to an unprecedented 200 percent of GDP by 2038 without a dramatic shift in course.

“Within 12 years&the largest item in the federal budget will be interest payments on the national debt,” said former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. “[They are] payments for which we get nothing.”

There’s no getting around the fact that eventually we have to pay this back and the interest payments are killing us.

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The Quincy (Ill.)City Council–with the support of all GOP Alderman–decided to reward a large contributor to Quincy Mayor John Spring’s campaign with a $6.69 million contract with the city.

US Senator Durbin Laughing with the Local Machine About the Spoils

City officials used an RFP process that pretty much guaranteed the company was going to keep doing business as usual with the city.

A committee of appointed city officals and a paid consultant recommended approval with Environmental Management Corporation (EMC), O’Fallon, MO, for the management of the city’s waste water treatment plant and biosolid disposal operations based upon a five-year contract.

EMC’s contract calls for the city to pay management fees of $717,000 in year one, $734,925 in year two, $753,298 in year three, $772,131 in year four and $791,434 in year five. The city’s cost for its own eight employees during that same period is $2,873,019 in salaries and up to $141,921 in overtime for a five-year total of $6,693,727.

A proposal EMC submitted using all of its own employees would have cost the city $7.1 million.

So, yes, the city is paying a private company about $750,000 a year over the next five years to manage public employees.

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The Greek Comedy that is playing out in Europe shows the tremendous impact one man can have on the world in his lifetime.

The fellow we owe an attaboy and backslap is Nobel Prize winner Robert Mundell, who I’d argue has done more for the cause of conservatism than maybe our own minor deity Ronald Regan.  A short primer on Mundell:

• Father of Supply-side economics
• Father of the Euro
• Top adviser to Bejing on the Yuan

Imagine that.  Saving us in the 80’s, Europe in 90’s, and China in this century.  Preaching the same gospel wherever he goes… less currency is more.

I’m joking, lightly, about America joining the EU.   I’d prefer we stop printing money, and convince them to adopt the dollar.  Joking again, even less.  It has been great fun watching old socialist Europe become fiscally conservative over the last eleven years as every member country must hold deficits to 3% of GDP. And for that we thank Mundell.  Surely, delicious statements from across the pond, like this:

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Last week, former President Clinton was rushed to the hospital in New York for an emergency heart operation. Medical experts said the procedure was “relatively routine” and predicted Clinton would make a full recovery and be back to his regular schedule soon. To the public, at least, that schedule revolves chiefly around earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. In fact, some Clinton associates cited the work in Haiti as exacerbating his heart condition. Clinton money man, Terry MacAuliffe, even noted that Clinton’s Haiti work continued right up until the operation:

Democrat colleague Terry McAuliffe said Mr Clinton had participated in a conference call on earthquake relief efforts as he was wheeled into the operating theatre.

We’ll take Terry’s word on that. But, Big Government has learned of at least one other conference call/meeting around this time. 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.

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Barack Obama wants higher tax rates on the so-called rich, including steeper levies on income, capital gains, dividends, and even death! Along with other greedy politicians in Washington, he acts as if successful taxpayers are like sheep meekly awaiting slaughter. In reality, class-warfare tax policies generally backfire because of the five reasons outlined in this video:

A new study from Boston College provides additional evidence about the consequences of hate-and-envy tax policy. The research reveals that high tax rates in New Jersey have helped cause wealthy people to leave the state, leading to a net wealth reduction of $70 billion between 2004 and 2008. Wealth and income are different, of course, so it is worth pointing out that another study from 2007 estimated that the state lost $8 billion of gross income in 2005. That’s a huge amount of income that is now beyond the reach of the state’s greedy politicians. Here’s a report from the New Jersey Business News:

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Did you ever wonder exactly what evidence-based medicine is? The National Center for Clinical Excellence bases it in on the philosophy “that as much medical practice as possible ought to be carried out using proven algorithms based on empirically valid evidence from controlled scientific experiments, rather than individual clinical judgment.”

Congressional health care reform relies heavily on both Evidence-based guidelines and evidence-based individual decision making to set the standards of care for medical treatment and outcomes. In fact, House bill 3962, in an effort to control costs, creates a new layer of government bureaucracy that inserts itself between the doctor and the patient. A national health commissioner and task forces will evaluate and decide everything from what medications a physician will be allowed to prescribe for a patient, to what surgery will be approved, to what outcomes will be expected for a particular medical condition. The ‘universal healthcare Czar’ along with the task forces will also decide whether or not hospitals will be reimbursed for care rendered based on predetermined outcomes. For example, if a patient is re-admitted within a prescribed number of days after discharge, the hospital will not be reimbursed for care given. It does not take into account factors such as how ill a patient may be. This new layer of government effectively removes the power of the individual physician and patient to decide what is the best course of treatment.

Why should you care?

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Toyota, which employs over 35,000 workers in the United States with factories in eight states, is the target of a government-led and union-supported attack due to recent recalls.

In the U.S., it is estimated that 15,000 Lexus HS250h and 133,000 Prius models will be recalled due to gas pedal issues, with another 500,000 Prius and other gasoline-electric hybrids needing anti-brake software modification. As unfortunate and inconvenient as recalls can be, this not the first, or last time an automobile will need to be brought back to the shop for a quick fix.

One might think this is the first auto recall in decades from the way government officials and Congressional Committees have pounced on Toyota. However, as recent as last month, Honda announced a recall of 646,000 Fit models (or Jazz in some markets) due to a faulty master switch that could allow water to enter the electrical components resulting in fires. Ford, less than one year ago, was forced to recall more than 4 million cars based on 550 vehicle fires. The recall concerned cruise-control deactivation switches that were installed in 16 million Fords. Part of the recall included nearly 1.1 million 1995-2003 Ford Windstar family van models.

There was no government outcry and no demand for Congressional hearings over these recent recalls. So why has Toyota suddenly become the target of a government-led witch hunt?

Toyota’s U.S. operations are extremely successful, not saturated by inefficient union monopolies, and are in direct competition with the now government-owned General Motors.

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A year ago, Obama had 70% approval ratings. Today, 52% of Americans say they wouldn’t vote to reelect him. Perhaps it is time for a new strategy.

When politicians are free from the demands of reelection, they often find their true, inner voice. They often speak with an honesty that eludes them on the campaign trail. Retiring Senator Evan Bayh provides the latest example with this quote:

“If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”

Ouch

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Writer Jamaica Kincaid has a long tradition of embarrassing comments at my college, Claremont McKenna, where she is a professor of literature. Remember, though, before you insist on calling her Professor Kincaid, that she only has a high school degree.

Jamaica Kincaid

Her essay, A Small Place, is written about her native Antigua and attacks British civilization and capitalism itself. The most revealing selection from that essay? Here it is, from pages 36 to 37 as she is discussing that the white colonizer is to blame for the very corrupt government of Antigua.

You will forget your part in the whole setup, that bureaucracy is one of your inventions, that Gross National Product is one of your inventions, and all the laws that you know mysteriously favour you. Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, it’s because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were the commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this is so strong, the experience so recent, that we can’t bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of. As for what we were like before we met you, I no longer care. No periods of time over my ancestors held sway, no documentation of complex civilizations, is any comfort to me. Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you.

And so yes, she’s teaches writing at a college whose motto is “civilization prospers with commerce,” even though it looks like she’s in favor of neither.

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Republicans ought politely to decline President Barack Obama’s invitation to a summit on health care reform. It’s not just a potential “trap,” as House Minority Leader John Boehner suspects, aimed at fast-forwarding a modified health care reform bill through Congress under a smokescreen of superficial “bipartisanship.” It’s also a violation of the spirit of our Constitution’s separation of powers.

The President has no legislative authority. He can propose laws—indeed, we expect him to do so—that are then introduced by legislators in Congress. He can sign a bill or veto it once it has been passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. He can mediate disputes among legislators to broker agreements. But the President cannot intervene directly in the legislative process until it is over.

The discussion that President Obama has proposed with Republicans for February 25th was, no doubt, inspired by his success at a question-and-answer session with the GOP last month. However, the new event is beginning to assume the trappings of a formal legislative session. Republicans will be asked to propose changes to the Senate version of the health care bill, and the President will offer compromises.

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