The New START Treaty is an idea that may harm American national security.  The agreement between the United States and Russia purports to reduce nuclear weapons between two superpowers, yet, in an effort to get the Russians to sign the Treaty, President Obama may accede to a side agreement that will end missile defense.  Missile defense is a means to protect the United States from a rogue nuclear missile and a deterrent to a missile attack from Russia.  Any agreement to dismantle missile defense would a mistake.

The Treaty is officially referred to as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.  On April 8, 2010, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the treaty.  The New START Treaty, 111-5, was signed in Prague on April 8, 2010 then submitted to the Senate on May 13, 2010.  The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has had numerous hearings on the treaty and intends on a vote before the August recess.  For this treaty to pass, 67 Senators need to vote in favor of ratification.  The Democrat Caucus only has 59 members, therefore they need 8 Republicans to support the treaty for it to pass.  Republicans have the power to block this treaty or to stop consideration until the next Congress.

The White House has been very aggressive in efforts to get this treaty passed by the end of the year.  On Friday, Peter Baker of the New York Times reported that “with time running out for major votes before the November election, the White House is trying to reach an understanding with Senate Republicans to approve its new arms control treaty with Russia by committing to modernizing the nuclear arsenal and making additional guarantees about missile defense.”  The only way for this Treaty to pass in the Senate in a manner that would truly protect missile defense would be to add a reservation during Senate consideration of the treaty.  A reservation, offered during the consideration of the treaty much like an amendment to legislation, specifically stating that a diminution or reduction in missile defense is not on the table and not part of any side agreement would have the desired outcome of protecting missile defense.

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ACORN whistle-blower Anita Moncrief held a press conference Friday at the Right Online Convention in Las Vegas. She announced today that she will press FEC charges against the Obama Administration for the campaign’s illegal coordination with ACORN during the 2008 election.

Anita also rolled out her new website Emerging Corruption. The website will focus on fraud and corruption in ACORN and affiliated groups.

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Andy Stern has just gained yet another job.  Earlier this month, Stern also accepted a position on the Board of Directors for SIGA, a producer of anti-viral and biological warfare defense products.

But this job seems to have some policy teeth, with a think-tank title akin to Media Matters or the Center for American Progress, and it comes with perhaps some welcome company as well.

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, is joining Georgetown University’s public policy school as a research fellow.

Stern, 59, retired in May after building his union into one of the largest in the labor movement and increasing his own influence with President Barack Obama and Democratic lawmakers.

Stern will coordinate research at Washington-based Georgetown on wage reform, labor policy and retirement security, according to an announcement on the school’s website.

Stern of course maintains his position as an adviser on Obama’s deficit-reduction commission, a post to which Obama appointed him in February of this year.

This announcement comes only weeks after the announcement that Ed Montgomery, who has been serving in the White House as both a member of President Obama’s Task Force on the Auto Industry and as the Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, will leave the Obama administration to take over as Dean of Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute.  As very active leaders in the labor movement, both Mr. Montgomery and Andy Stern certainly know one another, and have shared visits at the White House for such activities as Obama’s White House Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth.

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When they teach American government and the history of the early American republic, political scientists and historians have a puzzle to explain. There is, within the American constitution, no mention of political parties. And yet it is impossible to make sense of American politics in and after the early republic without reference to parties. Moreover, the parties that did emerge in the United States bear only a faint resemblance to the parties that existed in England and on the European continent prior to the American civil war and even less to the parties that exist on the other side of the Atlantic today.

The two puzzles are related. It is true that the Framers of the Constitution had no liking and made no provision for organized political parties, and it is also true that all of the early Presidents made at least a half-hearted attempt to transcend partisanship. It was not until Andrew Jackson that we got our first unequivocally partisan President. It is also true that the partisan divide that emerged in the 1790s was viewed by both sides as something temporary and regrettable. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison formed a party, which in time they called the Republican Party, to counter what they considered a conspiracy on the part of George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and in response he formed a party to counter what he considered a conspiracy on their part. Absent the conspiracy, or in the eventuality of its defeat and disappearance, the American republic’s first partisans expected the parties to wither away.

In this presumption, as Martin van Buren came to realize, they were wrong. Given the separation of powers, it was virtually impossible to govern in the absence of partisan alliances. But the very structure of American government – in which Congressmen are elected by particular constituencies located in particular places and look to that locality for re-election, and in which Senators represent particular states and are no less sensitive to local concerns – subverts partisanship and promotes a species of moderation as well. Only the President sees the Union from the perspective of the whole. When Tip O’Neill remarked that all politics is local, he spoke in a fashion perfectly appropriate to his situation as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

We must, then, view political parties from a double perspective.

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CNN Newsroom: The Woman behind the controversy: Who is Shirley Sherrod? Don Lemon takes an intimate look into the life of the woman.

Listen to the whole thing:

CNN Anchor to Shirley Sherrod: Would you like to see [Andrew Breitbart's] site to be shut down?

Shirley Sherrod: “That would be a great thing. Because I don’t see how that advances us in this country.”

—-

Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA on JournoList: “I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull [Fox's'] broadcasting permit once it expires?”

Why so fascist?

As a proud dues-paying member of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, here’s a little peek behind the curtain to take home with you over the weekend…

Never once, not even in private — not even as the entire corrupted media was savaging Sarah Palin’s family and reporting on the status of a private citizen’s plumber’s license — not even as the whole of the MSM was spreading lies told by the Congressional Black Caucus about the Tea Party hurling racial slurs — not even after reading what we already knew to be true on JournoList — and not even now as we watch all the hypocritical sanctimony surrounding Shirley Sherrod drip from the same MSM lips that refused to broadcast videos proving the Tea Party had been defamed by members of Congress — never once have I heard a fellow Vast Right-Wing Conspirator even hint at the idea of silencing, quieting, or shutting down the other side. (more…)

The Hill reports today:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is suggesting a climate change bill could have better prospects in a lame-duck session.

Kerry made the comments to Bloomberg as the Senate abandoned plans to move on climate change legislation before the August break. The decision is expected to prevent a vote on the matter this year, though Kerry is still offering hope.

“I have to tell you, this is not dead. We are going to continue to work. It may well be that after the election — if that is what happens — I mean, we will continue to try over the next weeks, but if it is after the election, it may well be that some members are free and liberated and feeling that they can take a risk or do something. Or, you know, the whole political landscape may have changed in some way,” Kerry said Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt” that will be broadcast this weekend.

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If you’re impatient, fireworks being at about 1:50:

The near collapse of our financial institutions and the overall economy and the misguided notion that a few trillion dollars of additional federal spending would return us to prosperity moved us in early 2009 to suggest an alternate approach.  We proposed in an essay published in The American, the on-line journal of the American Enterprise Institute, a fifty percent tax credit up to a fixed limit for every taxpayer who purchased any consumer goods anywhere in the United States.

Our theory was that a robust economic recovery would be fueled by increased retail purchases, and that every dollar of cost to the treasury represented a prior retail purchase within the American economy. This, by definition, would have produced an immediate increase in revenues to our struggling business and manufacturing sectors.  That essay and the positive feedback it engendered provided the impetus for the establishment of the Of Thee I Sing 1776 website, the goal of which has been to produce weekly, timely, and hopefully, thought provoking essays.

This week we return to the subject of economic stimulus as more and more politicians from both sides of the aisle and columnists from left to right have pronounced the stimulus a disappointment, at best, and a disaster at worst.  More likely, given the nation’s accumulated debt, the latter may be the more apt description.

So is there a Plan B, so to speak, in the works?  The answer so far, based on bills recently considered and rejected by members of both parties in Congress, is that Mr. Obama would prefer to double down on the discredited Keynesian approach which didn’t work during the great depression and which failed miserably through the recently “ended” (at least by common definition) great recession.  Tell the 9.5% of the workforce who are still unemployed that the recession is over.  Tell that to those who have watched the average time the unemployed are out-of-work grow from six weeks to 12 weeks, to 25 weeks to 35 weeks.

The number of unemployed is essentially the same percentage of people who were unemployed before the Administration and the huge Democratic majority in Congress, in the name of “job creation”, started shoveling our tax money out the door (or as some might say burning it in a bonfire).  And just why won’t President Obama, Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi wake up and smell the fire that continues to burn?  The answer can be found in two very telling and, now, very familiar utterances of the president and his senior staff in the early days of the new Administration.  The president said he wanted to “fundamentally change America” and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, when economic disaster was around the corner, famously said, “Never waste a crisis.”

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In this week’s edition of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, we’re talking about GM’s purchase of Americredit, changes in FHA policy, deflation, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and more. We’re brought to you as always by Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com and LibertyPundits.com.

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You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Geithner Squashes Tax Cut Extension Talk
NYT: GM’s Free Ride on the Taxpayer Dime
Everything Happens Faster Under State Run Capitalism
The Coming Crisis for Social Security
When is a Tax Not a Tax? When the White House Says So

Can anyone tell me why suddenly race is the hot topic of national discourse?

According to Gallup polling of last week, the issues most on the minds of Americans are the economy and jobs followed by dissatisfaction with all aspects of government.

I didn’t notice racism on the list anywhere.

The NAACP says it was “snookered” by Fox News on the Shirley Sherrod story. I say we’ve all been snookered by the NAACP.

The NAACP has shown that those who have written this organization off as irrelevant are wrong.   It demonstrated this past week that if it so chooses it can dominate the national discussion with its racial agenda, regardless of what the real pressing issues of national concern may be.

The accusation about Tea Party racism is ridiculous.  But even if you don’t think it’s ridiculous, is this the discussion we need to be having when national unemployment hovers at ten percent, and when black unemployment is closer to 15%, double that of whites?

Now, of course, we should be talking about racism if this is what is driving black unemployment.  But is it?

I don’t think so.  Nor do most blacks.

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July 20, 2010, Wall Street Journal “White House on Perpetual Tour to Boost Stimulus”

“President Barack Obama and top officials are stepping up the pace of their travel to promote the economic stimulus package to skeptical voters—particularly in states with close mid-term election contests in the fall. The White House has announced a total of 172 trips outside Washington, D.C., in which administration officials have discussed the stimulus package and its economic impact in the year and a half since the package was signed.”

July 20, 2010, The White House. Office of the Press Secretary “President Obama Expands Greenhouse Gas Reduction Target for Federal Operations”

Washington, DC – President Obama announced today that the Federal Government will reduce greenhouse gas pollution from indirect sources, such as employee travel and commuting, by 13% by 2020….

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Ben Bernanke threw a curveball in his midterm report to Congress this week. The Fed view of the economy has been downgraded since it last reported in February. Although the official Fed forecast for 2010-11 is still 3 to 4 percent real growth, Bernanke sounded particularly gloomy when he characterized the economy as “unusually uncertain.” And he indicated that the majority view of the Fed Board of Governors and Reserve Bank presidents is that the risks to growth are “weighted to the downside.”

But here’s the disconnect. With no inflation and weaker growth, including stubbornly high unemployment, Bernanke mostly talked about an exit strategy that would shrink the Fed’s balance sheet by removing liquidity. This was the Fed’s bias last winter when the recovery looked stronger. Now that the recovery looks weaker, the stock market was hoping to hear Bernanke hint of an easier policy that would increase liquidity if necessary. Didn’t happen.

At the end of two days of testimony, Bernanke’s message seemed to be this: Expect the zero-interest-rate policy to be extended for another year. Futures markets now predict free money until September 2011.

Whether the economic outlook is as downbeat as Bernanke suggests is an interesting question. The vast majority of corporate profit reports for the second quarter show better-than-expected earnings and top-line revenues. In other words, the CEOs are a lot less pessimistic about the future economy than Wall Street or Main Street. And a combination of strong profits, a zero interest rate, and a positively sloped Treasury yield curve would certainly seem to rule out a double-dip recession.

However, one year into recovery, private jobs should be growing much faster and unemployment should be a lot lower. Following a deep recession, economic growth should be closer to 8 percent than 3 percent.

But there are limits to Fed fine-tuning. The central bank can produce more money, but that doesn’t mean it can produce more jobs.

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How much more stimulus money is spent in swing districts? A lot. Using the data from Recovery.gov and data about swing districts, we see on the chart below that swing districts on average have reported spending $13.5 million more of stimulus funds than non-swing districts. The numbers are the following:

Stimulus funds to the average swing district: $437,371,451.46

Stimulus funds to the average non-swing district: $423,870,363.65

Swing district premium: $13,501,087.81

The list of swing districts comes from the Real Clear Politics  map of congressional districts.  They have a breakdown of  districts using a dark blue to dark red scale and toss-up districts are in gray.  They also do a very credible breakdown based on polling to show which districts belong where.  Check it out here. The Recovery data comes from recovery.gov and is available for download here.

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As the November mid-term elections draw near, race arsonists’ political distractions are seen in full action.  Facing defeat at the polls, the Left is desperately resorting to its only remaining trick.

With different styles and brands of utopian-driven influence — from the dependent welfare state of the American Democratic party, the socialism of Marxist/Leninists’ Workers’ Paradise, the Open Society of Soros’ idol Karl Popper, or any of the current collective salvations of social justice — examining the tactics as they occur is an enlightening exercise.

On Sunday’s This Week, President Obama’s defacto spokesman, V.P. Joe Biden, was sent to poison the well. Host Jake Tapper asked, “The NAACP had a convention in the last week, and they passed a resolution saying that elements of the Tea Party are racist. Do you think elements of the Tea Party are racist?”

The presidential reply is as follows:

Well, the truth is that at least elements that were involved in some of the Tea Party folks expressed racist views, you saw that on television. But, I don’t think — I don’t — I wouldn’t characterize the Tea Party as racist.

There are individuals who are either members of or on the periphery of some of their things, their — their protests — that have expressed really unfortunate comments. And, again, it was all over TV, all over your network, you know? A black Congressman walking up the stairs of the Capitol.

But, I don’t believe, the president doesn’t believe that the Tea Party is, uh, is a racist organization.  I don’t believe that. Very conservative.  Very different views on government and a whole lot of things.  But it is not a racist organization.

The day before, on Geraldo at Large, New Black Panther Party leader Malik Zulu Shabazz, in more blunt language, likewise endorsed the NAACP:

“A black man, really, or a black leader cannot be a racist… I have the right to use different language… We endorse fully the NAACP resolution.”

Obama’s mentor, Saul Alinsky would describe his disciple as a “realistic radical,” while denouncing Shabazz as a “rhetorical radical.”

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From The Plum Line at The Washington Post:

Now this is going to drive the right bananas.

Check out this nugget in an interview that Shirley Sherrod did with Joe Strupp, in which she comes right out and claims Fox News is using her as a “pawn” in a racist plot to undo the gains African Americans have made:

She said Fox showed no professionalism in continuing to bother her for an interview, but failing to correct their coverage.

“I think they should but they won’t. They intended exactly what they did. “They were looking for the result they got yesterday,” she said of Fox. “I am just a pawn. I was just here. They are after a bigger thing, they would love to take us back to where we were many years ago. Back to where black people were looking down, not looking white folks in the face, not being able to compete for a job out there and not be a whole person.”

This is pretty incendiary stuff. Sherrod is clearly not going away, and now she appears determined to force a larger conversation about the Breitbart-Fox News axis’s broader efforts to stoke white resentment towards the nation’s first African American president.

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In case you missed it yesterday, America’s Anchorman weighed in extensively on the NAACP/Obama Admin./Sherrod scandal. A highlight:

Here’s really all you need to know. It turns out that Andrew Breitbart was exactly right. This woman did not have an epiphany when she was at the USDA. When she was speaking to the NAACP she did not have an epiphany about, “You know what? It isn’t about race, it’s about rich versus poor.” If you listen to the whole speech as people have, 43 minutes, she’s racist. The NAACP is racist. And this whole story has been manipulated, wined and dined, formed and flaked in order present the usual template that it’s us, that it’s conservatives who are racist. (more…)

The House Ethics Committee has filed charges against Rep. Charlie Rangel, which will precipitate a trial in the full House. File this away in “too little, too late.”

And, we can’t imagine a better birthday gift for John. Happy birthday!