Apparently there is to be a vote later today on a bill regarding Puerto Rican statehood. They are calling it “non-binding” but it is not non-binding! It is a trap. The bill makes eventual Puerto Rican statehood a virtual certainty. This is despite the fact that statehood has been voted down repeatedly. The Puerto Rican people don’t want it!

But since when has that stopped the Left from ramming what they want down people’s throats? And why do they want this? The same reason they want everything, to further entrench their power. Statehood would mean two new senators, six or seven new representatives, a whole slew of new voters and tons of opportunities to spend more of your money. As Examiner.com’s Robert Moon points out:

Due to its dense population of poverty-stricken minorities, Puerto Rico can be counted on to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and all their handouts, and their representation will also consequently outnumber that of 25 other existing U.S. states.

Meanwhile, with Puerto Ricans having an average income of less than half that of our poorest state, they will instantly become eligible for dozens of our welfare programs. Truckloads of taxpayer dollars will also have to be perpetually dumped into the territory, by federal law, to bring it up to American infrastructure and environmental standards.

Oh, and never mind us. We don’t get a say in this either. Puerto Rico, which doesn’t want statehood, is being forced to vote, while we American citizens, who have a vested interest in the outcome, will not be given the opportunity to vote! Simply incredible!

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Liberals in congress are trying to sell the Dodd bill as a bill that would stop the bailouts by regulating Wall Street, but, it actually creates permanent bailouts that will fund corrupt Wall Street executives who make poor decisions. Did I mention that these bailouts will come at the taxpayer’s expense? The Heritage Foundation put together a great video explaining why this bill is a Wall Street Bailout Bill.

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The growing American protest movement has met the Obama Administration’s effort to regulate the Internet, as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been flooded with almost 50,000 individual demands to stay away from their broadband.

Just as a majority of Americans now opposes the Administration’s increased spending and government intrusion into the free economy, a clear majority opposes the President’s move to assert authority over the Internet.   According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 53 percent of Americans oppose FCC regulation of the Internet – and only 27 percent support such regulations.  In fact, support for Internet regulations has plunged by 22 points just since June 2008.

Monday marked the close of the reply comment period at the FCC for the network neutrality rulemaking proceeding, and the opposition to Internet regulation could not be clearer.  Traditionally, a “reply comment period” for a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” at the FCC attracts little attention by the American public, but this blatant power grab – and the attempts to regulate the Internet like a telephone line in the 1930s – has made thousands stand up and take notice.

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Oh my.

The SWAT Team was called in today at the Quincy Tea Party Rally. Obama was speaking at the convention center this afternoon.
Unreal.

They didn’t want any violence from these threatening protesters.

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For quite some time, Noam Chomsky has joined other radical luminaries on the “Editorial Advisory Group” of the ACORN-linked Social Policy magazine.  Published by ACORN founder Wade Rathke, the magazine airs the views of Chomsky, Frances Fox Piven, Gloria Steinem, and Peter Dreier, among others.

This is the same publication that ran an analytical piece on Barack Obama’s 2004 primary campaign for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, written by a Chicago ACORN leader.

The article contained such gems as: “By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends.”  The point is not to bring up President Obama’s apparently forgotten memories, but instead to point out Chomsky is not some nut that is isolated – he runs with the big dogs.

Chomsky recently painted a disturbing picture of America in the Russian news outlet Pravda, when he compared the opposition to President Obama and the Congress’ policies to what happened in Germany just prior to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

“It’s very similar to Weimar Germany, the parallels are striking.

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In observing the mainstream media’s treatment of the Tea Partiers I am reminded of two things: A) the mainstream media regularly pollutes public discourse in this country with false charges. I depict the phenomenon as Kultursmog in my new book, After the Hangover: The Conservatives’ Road to Recovery; and B) the mainstream media really hates the American middle class.

Astoundingly, last week the Kultursmog had all media responding to charges that the Tea Party movement embraced violent racists. Boy Clinton even summoned up the evil image of Timothy McVeigh in remonstrating against the Tea Partiers. Actually the Tea Partiers represent a civic upheaval of good-natured people defending the salient American values of personal liberty, limited government, and the U.S. Constitution—to say nothing of their proper concern for the government’s looming debt.

As Michael Barone pointed out last week at a seminar we held on Hangover at the Heritage Foundation, in the late 1930s a revulsion against the New Deal’s lavish spending and many encroachments on American liberties rattled the New Dealers’ smug statism to the point that Barone could see FDR being defeated in his 1940 reelection bid had World War II not threatened. Obviously today’s Tea Party movement is not new. In fact, their concerns have been episodic for generations, and the smoke stacks of the Kultursmog always depict such protests as extremist. Today, of course, limited-government conservatives out number statist Liberals two to one—extremist indeed!

Further the so-called Liberals hate the middle class. A perfect example of this is the diabolizing of the pulchritudinous Sarah Palin. She is the embodiment of the American middle class—and, what is more, she is very cute.

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As self-righteous Senators grill Goldman Sachs about their role in the housing bubble, it would not be far fetched to request that the Senators switch seats with the Goldman executives.

After all, it wasn’t Goldman that passed the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to make loans to people who could never pay them back. It wasn’t Goldman that created and supported Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And it wasn’t Goldman that drove interest rates down to a below market level to cause a housing rush not seen since gold was found in them thar’ hills in the mid-1800s.

But if Senators were really interested in finding out the cause of the housing bubble, they would call one Eric Stein to the dais.

Mr. Stein is currently that Deputy Secretary of Treasury for consumer protection and is likely to head the vastly powerful Consumer Bureaucracy currently being pushed by big banks and Wall Street. But prior to his appointment to Treasury, Mr. Stein the bag man for the Center for Responsible Lending and its many Self Help subsidiaries, was singly responsible for more bad loans than all Goldman employees together. Working with billionaire con-man John Paulson, Stein lobbied to pass the laws at the root of the crisis and pressured banks to make bad loans that caused their portfolios to collapse when the economy turned. They were the Bonnie and Clyde of the subprime mortgage world.

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Since when are private businesses forced to hire people they don’t want to? What if people stood outside your house with huge sign saying, “Shame On” you for not buy our product or using our services? Especially if their product or service costs more and would be poor in quality.

The SEIU and other unions across California run a campaign called “Shame On” ‘Insert Business Name Here’. They stand outside businesses trying to make them look bad for not using union workers. This kind of tactic cannot go on any longer! PRIVATE business should be able to choose who they hire and not be forced to do anything that could possibly damage their business. It is time for people to start fighting against these tactics and exposing these people for what they really are.

On April 14th I confronted the local “carpenters union” outside The Padre Hotel in Bakersfield, CA with their sign saying “Shame On The Padre Hotel” and “labor dispute”. They are upset that The Padre Hotel chose to use private contractors instead of union workers for new advancements to the hotel. These people that stand outside of businesses claim they are volunteers but are actually paid somewhere close to minimum wage, have little to no knowledge about the dispute, and have never actually worked for the business they are picketing.

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Last night (Tuesday) on his TV show, Glenn Beck dropped another bombshell — on Thursday, Congress will take up a bill to make Puerto Rico a state. Why is our Congress doing this now? Secretly? Quickly? If it hadn’t been for one of Beck’s “Refounders” (a Congressional insider), would we even know about this? Why is this important to you and me?

Well, the word is out, and my local 9-12/Tea party organization sent this out this morning. First thing to hit my mailbox, in fact…

There is a bill to make Puerto Rico a state. Again, they are trying to pull one over on us and on Puerto Ricans, who have consistently said they do not want to become a state. Read below for more information (from Eagle Forum). This was also discussed by Rep Tom Price on a conference call yesterday.

Please consider this:

* The U.S. would transform, overnight, into a bilingual nation. At least half of Puerto Ricans do not speak English, the language of our U.S. Constitution and founding documents. The Washington Times article, “Puerto Rican statehood,” analyzes all the implications of adding a foreign language-speaking state to the Union.

* It would bring immediate demands for massive federal spending. The average income of Puerto Ricans is less than half that of our poorest state, and infrastructure and the environment are far below American standards. Puerto Rico has a population with a median national income of $17,741, nearly a third of that for the U.S.

* Puerto Rico is already a democracy. Despite the bill’s deceptive title, Puerto Rico already has an elected government and exists as a self-governed commonwealth of the U.S.

* Statehood would give Puerto Rico more congressional representation than 25 of our 50 states! It would inevitably give Democrats two additional U.S. Senators and 6 to 8 additional Members of the House.

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The New Yorker Magazine published a classic cover illustration for its January 29, 2009 edition. It showed the newly-inaugurated President Obama in a classic pose as George Washington.

It could be my favorite picture of Barack Obama. It emphasizes the continuity of our traditions, the debt we all owe as Americans to the Father of our Country. Sober, thoughtful, wise, it bestows on our new President all the dignity of the office. It stresses the fact that the President is not only leader of a party, or an administration, but he is also the chief of state. What a stately portrait it is.

That inauguration was a great moment of unity for all Americans. We had achieved peacefully not only a transfer of power, but an historic first. We had reason to congratulate ourselves on a post-racial future. We had reason to hope that Dr. King’s famous cry—that we would each be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character—would at last be realized.

Americans—even the millions like me who did not vote for Barack Obama—had reason to be proud that as a candidate, he had garnered 41% of white male voters and 43% of white voters overall. This was better than John Kerry’s 35% of white males and 42% of all white voters. This was convincing evidence that if America was really the racist country some liberals portray it, Barack Obama would still be sitting in the Illinois state senate.

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I’m thinking SEIU may need to hire itself a new communications consulting firm.  Am I the only one confused by this messaging conflict?

To protest Illinois state budget cuts, thousands (which in lefty stats must mean 10, as in ten people) took to the steps of Illinois’ state capitol building, demanding the Governor shut down the state house.  They chanted, “Shut it Down Now. Shut it Down Now”.

Then, at the same protest, they marched and chanted outside, “Save Our State.  Save Our Schools.”

I don’t know which it is they’d like the Governor to do – shut down the state, or save it?

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The people of Pennsylvania, and Americans across the country, will not quickly forget April 28, 2009 – the day Arlen Specter broke the trust of voters and switched political parties in order to save his political career. After telling voters that he would stay a Republican, Specter announced one year ago today that he would switch to the Democratic Party because he was, “…not willing to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”

To commemorate the one-year anniversary of Specter’s jump, hardworking Americans can tell Specter exactly what they think of his opportunism by logging on to www.SpecterSwitch.com and making a one-time, one-day-only donation.
American families have paid a steep price for Specter’s switch.

Only five weeks after telling voters that he would remain a Republican because it was critical to prevent Democrats from attaining 60 senate votes (The Hill, 03/17/09), Specter jumped ship and quickly became the automatic 60th vote and a rubber stamp for Harry Reid’s extreme and partisan agenda. In fact, just two weeks ago, The Hill newspaper even called Specter “a model Democrat,” (The Hill, 04/07/10).

Because of Specter’s blind obedience to Harry Reid’s big-government agenda, hardworking Americans will be saddled with trillion dollar deficits, sky-rocketing taxes, increased government control over their health care decisions, and more taxpayer-funded backroom deals.   (more…)

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Bill Clinton was absolutely right when he wrote the following in the New York Times:

Finally, we should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them.

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Criticism is part of the lifeblood of democracy. No one is right all the time. But we should remember that there is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedoms and the public servants who enforce our laws.

We are again dealing with difficulties in a contentious, partisan time. We are more connected than ever before, more able to spread our ideas and beliefs, our anger and fears. As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged.

We couldn’t agree with President Clinton more. We must all be vigilant in our efforts to avoid fostering an environment that offers quarter to extremist and violent elements.

This is as true for the Tea Party as it is for any other political movement – and while we are on the subject of other movements, we trust that President Clinton’s intellectual consistency would necessarily lead him to condemn Lisa Fithian’s United For Justice and Peace the Direct Action Tendency (DAT) anarchy group.

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The more details that emerge about the Obama-Dodd financial “reform” bill, the worse it smells. The bill is most certainly an attempt to give the government vastly more power and control over the economy. And despite the vocal, condescending, even mocking protestations from Democrats and their allies, this bill does in fact contain unlimited bailout authority for the Fed. It’s right there in the bill for the world to see.

But it is increasingly evident that there may be something more sinister going on behind the scenes that is driving this debate.  The President trotted up to New York to give a big televised speech and scolded Wall Street for “resisting reform” saying that if we are to prevent another crisis, we must pass his bill.

The whole charade amounted to little more than political theater.  Big Wall Street banks actually WANT this bill.  Executives for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs (two firms that both received bailout funds) have both made statements in favor of Obama’s financial reform bill.

So, one must ask, if this is so draconian on Wall Street, why do they want it so badly?  The answer to this question is in the details of the bill: Not only does this bill not rein in big Wall Street banks, its actually a very big gift to Big Banks and other special interests—gifts that will cost Main Street, the taxpayers and consumers.

The large financial institutions at the root of the financial crisis wouldn’t even be regulated by the CFPA. Their oversight would remain at the porn-surfing Securities and Exchange Commission. But of course the bill is full of burdensome regulations for smaller institutions with which they will struggle to comply and also remain profitable.  The larger banks that are covered will not only have the resources to adapt but will also likely grow even larger by swallowing up smaller institutions that can’t make it.

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After Republicans suffered consecutive bruising defeats in 2006 and 2008, boastful Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee officials warned that Republicans faced a difficult decision: Go along with the sweeping agenda of the new administration, or suffer the disastrous consequences of taking on an enormously popular president in the 2010 elections.

Perhaps the GOP of 2005 would have taken the bait and swallowed the administration’s bad medicine. After all, Republicans during that period were guilty of spending too much and growing government too much, both of which would become hallmarks of the February 2009 stimulus plan and the loaded agenda that would follow. That GOP became a bloated, go-along to get-along body that forgot how to lead. We blew it, and we were rightfully fired by our bosses – the American people.

But the GOP in the House today is different. Very different. Led by a new generation of young and energetic leaders, we are committed to restoring the public’s trust in our ability to lead as responsible adults.

Let’s take a look at the last 16 months.

In the face of one-party Democratic rule, House Republicans learned fairly quickly that an election won on ‘change’ would result in a far more intrusive and expensive government. At the time, many political pundits joined the chorus of Democrats who warned that House Republicans faced political suicide if they didn’t support the President’s signature inaugural initiative – his stimulus plan. Yet we decided to fight. And we fought hard. The reason we were able to credibly oppose such a popular President was because we presented a much more responsible approach that would have created twice the jobs at half the cost of the eventual stimulus law that has failed to deliver as promised. A 178-seat minority isn’t going to win many legislative battles in the House. But it did prove sufficient to offer a clear contrast and provide the first glimpse of a Republican Party that had returned to its fiscally conservative roots.

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Today, in 1789, Captain Bligh and 18 other crew members are set adrift after the Mutiny on the Bounty. Captain Bligh would navigate his rowboats over 2,000 miles to find safe harbor. The mutineers would not be so lucky.

In the novel, the hero Galt and his followers retreat to a hideaway where they wait for society to collapse. But in America, regular citizens have organised in masses against Obama’s vision of socialized medicine, and they’ve embraced their own John Galt – a Texan scholar-activist named John Goodman. Known to many as the inventor of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and a key figure in defeating Hillarycare in the 90’s, Goodman has become the intellectual heavyweight of Obamacare’s opponents and his arguments are increasingly embraced by the new “Repeal and Replace” movement.

According to Goodman, the real problems with the bill are only just starting to emerge. As soon it was set to pass, Caterpillar announced the bill would cost them $100 million in its first year alone. And Verizon told its employees their costs would go up almost immediately because of the 40% excise tax the bill puts on the kind of high-end plans the telco giant provides. But looking ahead it’s clear to Goodman that the legislation’s inverted incentives would result in much more than changes to the healthcare system and the company costs but that the impact on the economy would be disastrous: labor dislocation, hiring freezes, economic assaults on lower paid workers, and spikes in unemployment.

In a “the health alerts” email Goodman listed last week the troubles ahead for the economy and for Obamacare advocates:

1.       People will be required to buy a product whose price will be rising at twice the rate of growth of their incomes and they will be barred from doing many of the things needed to control these costs.

2.      A bizarre system of subsidies will profoundly disrupt the labor market, leading to massive layoffs, contracting and outsourcing.

3.      A health insurance exchange will give health plans incentives to attract the healthy and avoid the sick; and after enrolment, to over-provide to the healthy and under-provide to the sick.

4.      A weakly enforced individual mandate will give people incentives to game the system – remaining uninsured while healthy and obtaining insurance only after they get sick; choosing limited-benefit plans while healthy and scaling up to richer plans after they get sick.

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