Benton GOP NEWS, Etc.

SOTU: Obama's January Surprise

2012-01-29T21:37:00.000-08:00

AEI/THE ENTERPRISE BLOG, 1/25/2012 by James Pethokoukis - Obama pulls trigger on January Surprise: a mass refinancing plan for U.S. mortgages. Read more at The Enterprise Blog...

Forget global warming - it's Cycle 25 we need to worry about

2012-01-29T18:24:00.000-08:00

‘World temperatures may end up a lot cooler than now for 50 years or more,’ said Henrik Svensmark, director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at Denmark’s National Space Institute. ‘It will take a long battle to convince some climate scientists that the sun is important. It may well be that the sun is going to demonstrate this on its own, without the need for their help.’

Read more: Mail Online
Read more (with charts and data): Watts Up With That

Scottish map-maker admits Greenland error

2012-01-29T17:28:00.000-08:00

Steve Milloy: There was considerable alarm when the word’s “most authoritative atlas” printed a map which wrongly showed that Greenland was rapidly turning green.

F.A. Hayek On "The Great Utopia"

2012-01-29T15:47:00.000-08:00

Hayek: There can be no doubt that most of those in the democracies who demand a central direction of all economic activity still believe that socialism and individual freedom can be combined. Yet socialism was early recognized by many thinkers as the gravest threat to freedom.

ZERO HEDGE, 1/28/2012 by Tyler Durden (Germany) - Durden offers the text of F. A. Hayek's chapter, "The Great Utopia," from Hayek's renowned book, The Road to Surfdom. This chapter is definitely worth reading, or rereading, as the case may be.

WSJ: The New American Divide

2012-01-28T02:31:00.000-08:00

WALL STREET JOURNAL, 1/21/2012 - The ideal of an 'American way of life' is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. Charles Murray on what's cleaving America, and why.

CHARLES MURRAY:

Americans love to see themselves this way. But there's a problem: It's not true anymore, and it has been progressively less true since the 1960s.

People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality. Read more at WSJ...

—Mr. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010" (Crown Forum) will be published on Jan. 31.

RELATED:
Bradley Lecture by Charles Murray, February 6, 2012: Alternative Futures for a Fractured American Culture (Full video will be posted at this link within 24 hours)
AEI: Society and Culture - About the book | Murray on "Coming Apart" | How thick is your bubble? (20 question quiz) | What They're Saying About "Coming Apart"

VC: The Moral Hazard Effects of Current Economic Policy

2012-01-26T17:20:00.000-08:00

Cassandra at VILLAINOUS COMPANY, 1/23/2012 - Robert Samuelson [Why the Fed Slept] explains how economic policies aimed at smoothing out the business cycle make the economy less stable in the long run:

There's a paradox to economic policy. The more it succeeds at prolonging short-term prosperity, the more it inspires long-run destabilizing behavior by businesses, banks, consumers, investors and government. If they think basic stability is assured, they will assume greater risks -- loosen credit standards, borrow more, engage in more speculation, relax wage and price behavior -- that ultimately make the economy less stable. Read more at Villanous Company...

RNC Adopts Resolution Exposing Agenda 21

2012-01-26T17:18:00.001-08:00

The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) calls upon the Republican National Committee (RNC) to release to the public it recently passed resolution regarding Agenda 21.

It has been reported that the Republican National Committee passed a resolution exposing Agenda 21 for what it is: a disregard for American freedom, private property rights, and a key player in the Leftist move toward a one world government. Agenda 21 (ICLEI) assaults the very foundation of America. The RNC has not yet made an official statement or released the resolution. We call on the RNC to release this immediately, and we salute the individuals who signed this document.

Text of the RNC Resolution:

RNC Resolution Exposing United Nations Agenda 21

WHEREAS, the United Nations Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control that was initiated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992; and,

WHEREAS, the United Nations Agenda 21 is being covertly pushed into local communities throughout the United States of America through the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) through local “sustainable development” policies such as Smart Growth, Wildlands Project, Resilient Cities, Regional Visioning Projects, and other “Green” or “Alternative” projects; and

WHEREAS, this United Nations Agenda 21 plan of radical so-called “sustainable development” views the American way of life of private property ownership, single family homes, private car ownership and individual travel choices, and privately owned farms; all as destructive to the environment; and,

WHEREAS, according to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy, social justice is described as the right and opportunity of all people to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment which would be accomplished by socialist/communist redistribution of wealth; and,

WHEREAS, according to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy National sovereignty is deemed a social injustice; now therefore be

RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee recognizes the destructive and insidious nature of United Nations Agenda 21 and hereby exposes to the public and public policy makers the dangerous intent of the plan; and therefore be it further

RESOLVED, that the U.S. government and no state or local government is legally bound by the United Nations Agenda 21 treaty in that it has never been endorsed by the (U.S.) Senate, and therefore be it further

RESOLVED, that the federal and state and local governments across the country be well informed of the underlying harmful implications of implementation of United Nations Agenda 21 destructive strategies for “sustainable development” and we hereby endorse rejection of its radical policies and rejection of any grant monies attached to it, and therefore be it further

RESOLVED, that upon the approval of this resolution the Republican National Committee shall deliver a copy of this resolution to each of the Republican members of Congress, all Republican candidates for Congress, all Republican candidates for President who qualify for RNC sanctioned debates, and to each Republican state and territorial party office.

Chief Sponsor:
Helen Van Etten
Republican National Committeewoman for Kansas
Co-Sponsors:Carolyn McLarty
Republican National Committeewoman for Oklahoma
Kim Lehman
Republican National Committeewoman for Iowa
Paul Reynolds
Republican National Committeeman for Alabama
Demetra DeMonte
Republican national Committeewoman for Illinois
Solomon Yue
Republican National Committeewoman[sic] for Oregon
Donna Cain
Republican National Committeewoman for Oregon
Cindy Costa
Republican National Committeewoman for South Carolina
John Sigler
Republican State Chairman for Delaware
Steve Scheffler
Republican National Committeeman for Iowa
Peggy Lambert
Republican National Committeewoman for Tennessee
Jim Bopp
Republican National Committeeman for Indiana
Bruce Ash
Republican National Committeeman for Arizona
DeMarus Carlson
Republican National Committeewoman for Nebraska

Also see Anti-Agenda 21: Currently New Hampshire, Tennessee and Mississippi have resolutions/legislation in the works opposing Agenda 21 and/or ICLEI activity in their states.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words: Obama’s Record of Unfairness to Middle Class

2012-01-24T13:43:00.000-08:00

CORNER (NRO), 1/24/2012 by Sen. Jim DeMint

House Republicans Announce 2012 Agenda: 50,000 Jobs in Five Years

2012-01-24T13:14:00.000-08:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 18, 2012
[OREGON] HOUSE REPUBLICANS ANNOUNCE 2012 AGENDA: 50,000 JOBS IN FIVE YEARS - Two-Part Agenda Includes Reforms to Reduce Red Tape, Bureaucracy Read press release...

ABC: U.S. Bridges, Roads Being Built by Chinese Firms

2012-01-21T14:44:00.000-08:00

(Hat tip: Lou Copes) - Cities hire Chinese instead of American workers for building projects. See video at ABC News.

IMPRIMIS: Do We Need the Department of Education?

2012-01-21T02:55:00.000-08:00

IMPRIMIS a publication of Hillsdale College
January 2012
Adapted from a speech by Charles Murray, American Enterprise Institute

THE CASE FOR the Department of Education could rest on one or more of three legs: its constitutional appropriateness, the existence of serious problems in education that could be solved only at the federal level, and/or its track record since it came into being. Let us consider these in order.

(1) Is the Department of Education constitutional?

At the time the Constitution was written, education was not even considered a function of local government, let alone the federal government. But the shakiness of the Department of Education’s constitutionality goes beyond that. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution enumerates the things over which Congress has the power to legislate. Not only does the list not include education, there is no plausible rationale for squeezing education in under the commerce clause. I’m sure the Supreme Court found a rationale, but it cannot have been plausible.

On a more philosophical level, the framers of America’s limited government had a broad allegiance to what Catholics call the principle of subsidiarity. In the secular world, the principle of subsidiarity means that local government should do only those things that individuals cannot do for themselves, state government should do only those things that local governments cannot do, and the federal government should do only those things that the individual states cannot do. Education is something that individuals acting alone and cooperatively can do, let alone something local or state governments can do.

I should be explicit about my own animus in this regard. I don’t think the Department of Education is constitutionally legitimate, let alone appropriate. I would favor abolishing it even if, on a pragmatic level, it had improved American education. But I am in a small minority on that point, so let’s move on to the pragmatic questions.

(2) Are there serious problems in education that can be solved only at the federal level?

The first major federal spending on education was triggered by the launch of the first space satellite, Sputnik, in the fall of 1957, which created a perception that the United States had fallen behind the Soviet Union in science and technology. The legislation was specifically designed to encourage more students to go into math and science, and its motivation is indicated by its title: The National Defense Education Act of 1958. But what really ensnared the federal government in education in the 1960s had its origins elsewhere—in civil rights. The Supreme Court declared segregation of the schools unconstitutional in 1954, but—notwithstanding a few highly publicized episodes such as the integration of Central High School in Little Rock and James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi—the pace of change in the next decade was glacial.

Was it necessary for the federal government to act? There is a strong argument for “yes,” especially in the case of K-12 education. Southern resistance to desegregation proved to be both stubborn and effective in the years following Brown v. Board of Education. Segregation of the schools had been declared unconstitutional, and constitutional rights were being violated on a massive scale. But the question at hand is whether we need a Department of Education now, and we have seen a typical evolution of policy. What could have been justified as a one-time, forceful effort to end violations of constitutional rights, lasting until the constitutional wrongs had been righted, was transmuted into a permanent government establishment. Subsequently, this establishment became more and more deeply involved in American education for purposes that have nothing to do with constitutional rights, but instead with a broader goal of improving education.

The reason this came about is also intimately related to the civil rights movement. Over the same years that school segregation became a national issue, the disparities between black and white educational attainment and test scores came to public attention. When the push for President Johnson’s Great Society programs began in the mid-1960s, it was inevitable that the federal government would attempt to reduce black-white disparities, and it did so in 1965 with the passage of two landmark bills—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act. The Department of Education didn’t come into being until 1980, but large-scale involvement of the federal government in education dates from 1965.

(3) So what is the federal government’s track record in education?

The most obvious way to look at the track record is the long-term trend data of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Consider, for instance, the results for the math test for students in fourth, eighth and twelfth grades from 1978 through 2004. The good news is that the scores for fourth graders showed significant improvement in both reading and math—although those gains diminished slightly as the children got older. The bad news is that the baseline year of 1978 represents the nadir of the test score decline from the mid-1960s through the 1970s. Probably we are today about where we were in math achievement in the 1960s. For reading, the story is even bleaker. The small gains among fourth graders diminish by eighth grade and vanish by the twelfth grade. And once again, the baseline tests in the 1970s represent a nadir.

From 1942 through the 1990s, the state of Iowa administered a consistent and comprehensive test to all of its public school students in grade school, middle school, and high school—making it, to my knowledge, the only state in the union to have good longitudinal data that go back that far. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills offers not a sample, but an entire state population of students. What can we learn from a single state? Not much, if we are mainly interested in the education of minorities—Iowa from 1942 through 1970 was 97 percent white, and even in the 2010 census was 91 percent white. But, paradoxically, that racial homogeneity is also an advantage, because it sidesteps all the complications associated with changing ethnic populations.

Since retention through high school has changed greatly over the last 70 years, I will consider here only the data for ninth graders. What the data show is that when the federal government decided to get involved on a large scale in K-12 education in 1965, Iowa’s education had been improving substantially since the first test was administered in 1942. There is reason to think that the same thing had been happening throughout the country. As I documented in my book, Real Education, collateral data from other sources are not as detailed, nor do they go back to the 1940s, but they tell a consistent story. American education had been improving since World War II. Then, when the federal government began to get involved, it got worse.

I will not try to make the case that federal involvement caused the downturn. The effort that went into programs associated with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 in the early years was not enough to have changed American education, and the more likely causes for the downturn are the spirit of the 1960s—do your own thing—and the rise of progressive education to dominance over American public education. But this much can certainly be said: The overall data on the performance of American K-12 students give no reason to think that federal involvement, which took the form of the Department of Education after 1979, has been an engine of improvement.

What about the education of the disadvantaged, especially minorities? After all, this was arguably the main reason that the federal government began to get involved in education—to reduce the achievement gap separating poor children and rich children, and especially the gap separating poor black children and the rest of the country.

The most famous part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was Title I, initially authorizing more than a billion dollars annually (equivalent to more than $7 billion today) to upgrade the schools attended by children from low-income families. The program has continued to grow ever since, disposing of about $19 billion in 2010 (No Child Left Behind has also been part of Title I).

Supporters of Title I confidently expected to see progress, and so formal evaluation of Title I was built into the legislation from the beginning. Over the years, the evaluations became progressively more ambitious and more methodologically sophisticated. But while the evaluations have improved, the story they tell has not changed. Despite being conducted by people who wished the program well, no evaluation of Title I from the 1970s onward has found credible evidence of a significant positive impact on student achievement. If one steps back from the formal evaluations and looks at the NAEP test score gap between high-poverty schools (the ones that qualify for Title I support) and low-poverty schools, the implications are worse. A study by the Department of Education published in 2001 revealed that the gap grew rather than diminished from 1986—the earliest year such comparisons have been made—through 1999.

That brings us to No Child Left Behind. Have you noticed that no one talks about No Child Left Behind any more? The explanation is that its one-time advocates are no longer willing to defend it. The nearly-flat NAEP trendlines since 2002 make that much-ballyhooed legislative mandate—a mandate to bring all children to proficiency in math and reading by 2014—too embarrassing to mention.

In summary: the long, intrusive, expensive role of the federal government in K-12 education does not have any credible evidence for a positive effect on American education.

* * *

I have chosen to focus on K-12 because everyone agrees that K-12 education leaves much to be desired in this country and that it is reasonable to hold the government’s feet to the fire when there is no evidence that K-12 education has improved. When we turn to post-secondary education, there is much less agreement on first principles.

The bachelor of arts degree as it has evolved over the last half-century has become the work of the devil. It is now a substantively meaningless piece of paper—genuinely meaningless, if you don’t know where the degree was obtained and what courses were taken. It is expensive, too, as documented by the College Board: Public four-year colleges average about $7,000 per year in tuition, not including transportation, housing, and food. Tuition at the average private four-year college is more than $27,000 per year. And yet the B.A. has become the minimum requirement for getting a job interview for millions of jobs, a cost-free way for employers to screen for a certain amount of IQ and perseverance. Employers seldom even bother to check grades or courses, being able to tell enough about a graduate just by knowing the institution that he or she got into as an 18-year-old.

So what happens when a paper credential is essential for securing a job interview, but that credential can be obtained by taking the easiest courses and doing the minimum amount of work? The result is hundreds of thousands of college students who go to college not to get an education, but to get a piece of paper. When the dean of one East Coast college is asked how many students are in his institution, he likes to answer, “Oh, maybe six or seven.” The situation at his college is not unusual. The degradation of American college education is not a matter of a few parents horrified at stories of silly courses, trivial study requirements, and campus binge drinking. It has been documented in detail, affects a large proportion of the students in colleges, and is a disgrace.

The Department of Education, with decades of student loans and scholarships for university education, has not just been complicit in this evolution of the B.A. It has been its enabler. The size of these programs is immense. In 2010, the federal government issued new loans totaling $125 billion. It handed out more than eight million Pell Grants totaling more than $32 billion dollars. Absent this level of intervention, the last three decades would have seen a much healthier evolution of post-secondary education that focused on concrete job credentials and courses of studies not constricted by the traditional model of the four-year residential college. The absence of this artificial subsidy would also have let market forces hold down costs. Defenders of the Department of Education can unquestionably make the case that its policies have increased the number of people going to four-year residential colleges. But I view that as part of the Department of Education’s indictment, not its defense.

* * *

What other case might be made for federal involvement in education? Its contributions to good educational practice? Think of the good things that have happened to education in the last 30 years—the growth of homeschooling and the invention and spread of charter schools. The Department of Education had nothing to do with either development. Both happened because of the initiatives taken by parents who were disgusted with standard public education and took matters into their own hands. To watch the process by which charter schools are created, against the resistance of school boards and administrators, is to watch the best of American traditions in operation. Government has had nothing to do with it, except as a drag on what citizens are trying to do for their children.

Think of the best books on educational practice, such as Howard Gardner’s many innovative writings and E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Curriculum, developed after his landmark book, Cultural Literacy, was published in 1987. None of this came out of the Department of Education. The Department of Education spends about $200 million a year on research intended to improve educational practice. No evidence exists that these expenditures have done any significant good.

As far as I can determine, the Department of Education has no track record of positive accomplishment—nothing in the national numbers on educational achievement, nothing in the improvement of educational outcomes for the disadvantaged, nothing in the advancement of educational practice. It just spends a lot of money. This brings us to the practical question: If the Department of Education disappeared from next year’s budget, would anyone notice? The only reason that anyone would notice is the money. The nation’s public schools have developed a dependence on the federal infusion of funds. As a practical matter, actually doing away with the Department of Education would involve creating block grants so that school district budgets throughout the nation wouldn’t crater.

Sadly, even that isn’t practical. The education lobby will prevent any serious inroads on the Department of Education for the foreseeable future. But the answer to the question posed in the title of this talk—“Do we need the Department of Education?”—is to me unambiguous: No.

END

Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He received his B.A. in history at Harvard University and his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has written for numerous newspapers and journals, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, and National Review. His books include Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, What It Means to Be a Libertarian, and Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality. His new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, will be published at the end of January.

Copyright © 2011 Hillsdale College. Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

Samuelson: Rejecting the Keystone pipeline is an act of insanity

2012-01-21T02:07:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON POST, 1/19/2012 by Robert J. Samuelson (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn’t often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and — beyond the symbolism — won’t even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his reelection that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.

Aside from the political and public relations victory, environmentalists won’t get much. Stopping the pipeline won’t halt the development of tar sands, to which the Canadian government is committed; therefore, there will be little effect on global-warming emissions. Indeed, Obama’s decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills.

Now consider how Obama’s decision hurts the United States. For starters... Read more at the Washington Post...

Contentions: Senate Republicans Turn Against SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-19T03:19:00.000-08:00

Commentary Magazine/Contentions, 1/18/2012 by Alana Goodman - Today’s [Wednesday's] Internet blackout protesting the SOPA/PIPA bills – which would allow the federal government to shut down accused copyright violators online without due process – is already making an impact. Legislators who support the bills are being barraged with angry phone calls, and this morning Sen. Marco Rubio withdrew his co-sponsorship of the PIPA legislation...
[...]
This comes after six Republican senators sent a letter to Sen. Harry Reid distancing themselves from the bill and asking him to postpone the vote:

“We have increasingly heard from a large number of constituents and other stakeholders with vocal concerns about possible unintended consequences of the proposed legislation, including breaches in cybersecurity, damaging the integrity of the Internet, costly and burdensome litigation, and dilution of First Amendment rights,” said Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) in the letter.Sens. Cornyn, Sessions and Coburn previously backed the bill, and Sens. Grassley and Hatch are co-sponsors. Read more at Commentary... (may require a subscription)

House votes against debt ceiling increase

2012-01-18T21:26:00.000-08:00

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to reject a request by President Obama to raise the debt ceiling -- a largely symbolic vote, since the Senate is expected to allow the debt ceiling hike. ✧ The House voted, 239-176, in support of a measure that voices opposition to the increase. Six Democrats voted along with Republicans to oppose the debt ceiling increase. House Republicans had only one defection -- California Rep. David Dreier. Read more at Fox News...

White House Rejects Keystone Pipeline Project

2012-01-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

President Obama announced Wednesday that he will deny a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, blaming Republicans for imposing a "rushed and arbitrary deadline" which he said did not give officials enough time. ✧ GOP lawmakers immediately excoriated the president for the decision. House Speaker John Boehner said Obama is "selling out American jobs for politics," and said Republicans in Congress would continue to push for the pipeline. Read more at Fox News...

Way to create jobs and energy independence, Mr. President! --bc

A Fine for Not Using a Biofuel That Doesn’t Exist

2012-01-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

Read more at the NY Times

Congress Must Fight Back Against Obama’s Unconstitutional Recess Appointments

2012-01-08T02:49:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON POST, 1/5/2012 by Edwin Meese III and Todd Gaziano, Obama’s recess appointments are unconstitutional

Obama’s Coup to Overthrow the Constitution

2012-01-08T01:18:00.000-08:00

54°40′ Or Fight! A media watchdog in Oregon, 1/7/2012 by Conservative Mom - The mask is off, and so are the gloves. ✧ Obama and his Leftist supporters see their window of opportunity to finally dispense with our constitutional republic and permanently install a ruling class that will “fundamentally transform” the country we love into their Socialist Utopia. They can almost see the finish line. ✧ We can’t say were weren’t warned.

The week before the 2008 election, Obama promised his supporters that he was “only five days away from fundamentally transforming this nation.”

In his 2011 State of the Union address, Obama bemoaned that our “messy” and “contentious” system makes things “harder because we…argue about everything,” a clear shot at the members of our co-equal branches of government who dared to assert their constitutional authority to represent the American people rather than bend the knee to the Executive branch’s every whim.

He then admiringly observed: Read more at 54°40′ Or Fight!...

You'll find a timeline of Obama's constitutional abuses in this article --bc

Obama's Tyrannical Abuse of Power

2012-01-07T15:24:00.000-08:00

HERITAGE.ORG/THE FOUNDRY/MORNING BELL, 1/5/2012 by Mike Brownfild (Hat tip: Jean Nelson) - Standing behind a podium on a stage just outside Cleveland, President Barack Obama delivered a speech yesterday that will reverberate throughout history. No, its lasting impact will not come because of its soaring rhetoric. Instead, it will make its mark because it was at that moment on a Wednesday afternoon in Ohio that the President announced his plans to act in total and utter disregard of the U.S. Constitution with his illegal appointment of Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Read more at Heritage.org...

Mark Steyn: Politics trumps Left's empathy

2012-01-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

Lest you doubt that we're headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within 10 minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the "crazy things" he's said and done.

Santorum has certainly said and done many crazy things, as have most members of America's political class, but the "crazy thing" Colmes chose to focus on was Santorum's "taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after childbirth home," whereupon he "played with it." My National Review colleague Rich Lowry rightly slapped down Alan on air, and Colmes subsequently apologized, though not before Mrs. Santorum had been reduced to tears by his remarks. Undeterred, Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist, doubled down on stupid and insisted that Deadbabygate demonstrated how Santorum is "not a little weird, he's really weird."

Read more at OCRegister.com

As Americans Await Obamacare, Canadians Wait Longer for Treatment

2012-01-04T10:04:00.000-08:00

The Fraser Institute of Canada reports that the median wait-time for a Canadian who needs surgery or other therapies rose to 19.0 weeks in 2011, the longest since the Institute first began tracking wait times in 1993. The wait time for a patient referred by a general practitioner to a specialist rose from a median of 8.9 weeks in 2010 to 9.5 weeks in 2011 (up 156 percent since 1993). Patients can then expect to wait an additional 9.5 weeks before actually receiving treatment from the specialist, up from 9.3 weeks in 2010 (a 70 percent increase since 1993).

Read more at Capitol Confidential

What is Laissez-Faire?

2012-01-04T07:23:00.000-08:00

The latest data show that book sales are way up this season. So much for the prediction that books will be killed by technology. On the contrary, technology has enabled the great literature of the ages and the present to be put in the hands of everyone. I can’t think of a better time to begin refurbishing Laissez-Faire Books (founded in 1972), because it is the market that laissez-faire celebrates that has made all the literature we love more accessible than ever.

Addison Wiggin, president of Agora Financial, and I were discussing the various challenges ahead of us as we infuse new life into an old and venerable institution. He drew my attention to a point that I’ve overlooked. Most people don’t know the term “laissez-faire.” They don’t know how to say it (that very day, I was introduced for a speech, and the host mispronounced it) and they don’t know what it means. Once in common circulation, this term has not been in common use, even in libertarian circles. So we have some work to do, in helping people even understand the name of the bookstore at lfb.org.

The pronunciation in English is lay-say-fair. Its French origins date back to the late Renaissance. As the story goes, it was first used about the year 1680, a time when the nation-state was on the rise throughout Europe. The French finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, asked a merchant named M. Le Gendre what the state could do to promote industry.

Read more at Laissez-Faire Bookstore

Economist Walter E. Williams loves greed

2012-01-04T04:02:00.000-08:00

What human motivation gets the most wonderful things done? It's really a silly question, because the answer is so simple. It turns out that it's human greed that gets the most wonderful things done. When I say greed, I am not talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, lobbying for special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I'm talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves. Let's look at it. Read more at Townhall.com...

Obama's Economic Record Chart

2011-12-27T22:57:00.000-08:00

The following FYI chart from FireGate Ministries is useful in assessing President Obama's performance as the end of his 3rd year in office approaches. (Hat tip: Stella Guenther)

Gingrich Divorce Papers Magically Appear In Media Hands

2011-12-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

To this day, Barack Hussein Obama remains a man of mystery. Copious amounts of documentation from his early life and academic career have never been released. It took years of pressure, plus Donald Trump as the ringmaster of a media circus, just to see his birth certificate.

When the L.A. Times obtained a potentially embarrassing videotape of Obama laughing it up at a party for Arafat minion Rashid Khalidi, the paper pursed its lips and fastidiously hid the tape from public view. Their newspaper account of the part didn’t even mention that domestic terrorist Friends of Obama Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn attended the event. Another important connection from Obama’s past, his long attendance at Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church of racial hatred, was carefully buried by the media until conservative radio hosts and bloggers dragged it into the open.

Read more at HumanEvents.com

A World Without Teachers

2011-12-26T09:38:00.000-08:00

The Kindle and Nook may make for not only the most important advance in reading since Gutenberg, but also, quite likely, a major lesson in unintended consequences. Especially for the educational establishment, because for the first time in history, Americans should be able to envision a future without public-school teachers -- indeed, a future without public-school administrators or state departments of education with their rigidly enforced, politically correct social-transformation curriculum. A future without onerous school taxes, "education president(s)," self-preening school boards, or million-dollar classrooms. But most happily, a future without a single supercilious finger wagging in our face as we're forever lectured about how much a securely tenured, part-time, self-important, overpaid class of public employees "cares" about our sons and daughters. Really, really, really cares. And, of course, knows much better than we do how to bring them up.

And it's all possible because these cheap, handheld, downloadable reading devices such as Kindle and Nook now give parents a choice between tutoring and classroom education.

Read more at AmericanThinker.com

Gov’t Wants Arabs to Pay for 1948 Pogroms against Jews

2011-12-26T09:35:00.000-08:00

The government has decided to tackle head-on the alleged “Arab refugees” issue by renewing efforts for compensation for Jewish victims of Arab pogroms .

Estimates of property losses range from $16 billion to $300 billion in Arab countries where Arab leaders seized their property or took it over after Jews were expelled or forced to flee because of anti-Jewish violence and harassment.

Dr. Avi Bitzur, director-general of the Pensioners' Affairs Ministry, told Voice of Israel government radio it has created a new department to try to collect claims for more than 850,000 Jews from Iran and other Arab countries. Approximately 80 percent of them moved to Israel.

Read more at Israelnationnews.com

Johnson: Koch Bros control Congress, push Keystone

2011-12-21T01:45:00.000-08:00

Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., protested today on the House floor that the libertarian Koch brothers "control Congress," arguing that the Republican push for President Obama to approve the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas is motivated by a desire to reward the Koch brothers for financing the Tea Party during the 2010 election. Read more at The Examiner...

Rep. Johnson once worried that Guam might 'tip over' if more U.S. Troops and their families were stationed there. --bc

D. Limbaugh: About Those Self-Evident Truths

2011-12-17T01:55:00.000-08:00

TOWNHALL.COM, 12/16/2011 by David Limbaugh - "We hold these Truths to be self-evident..." What truths? What has happened to our passion for liberty? I am concerned that we conservatives, instead of making our case as fearless champions of liberty, are too often on the defensive, preoccupied with trying to prove we aren't the demons the left says we are. Read more at Townhall...

Samuelson: Europe’s economic purgatory

2011-12-16T19:45:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON POST, 12/14/2011 by Robert J. Samuelson (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler)

Oregon Dept. of Fish & Wildlife: Positions open for experienced hunters or wildlife conservationists

2011-12-16T01:27:00.000-08:00

Hunter position open on advisory council (Democrat Herald Online) - CORVALLIS — ODFW is looking for someone with experience in hunting and/or wildlife conservation to serve as a hunter representative on the Access and Habitat Program’s South Willamette Advisory Council. ✧ Individuals living in Linn, Benton, Lincoln, Lane, Polk and southern Marion counties with an interest and experience in hunting and/or wildlife conservation are encouraged to apply. ✧ Applications are available online and due at the Corvallis ODFW office by Feb. 17, 2012. For more information or for application materials by mail, contact David Stroppel at 541-757-5237.

GOP questions ‘two-month gap’ in Kagan’s health care involvement

2011-12-08T10:29:00.000-08:00

The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee said Thursday that the Obama administration is fueling speculation about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s impartiality because it won’t turn over documents detailing her role in crafting the legal strategy to defend the health care law while she was serving in the administration.

Read more at The Washington Times

Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...

2011-12-08T09:44:00.000-08:00

Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine's offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company's printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine's lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that's a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.

Read more at Techdirt.com

What's stopping job creation? Too much regulation

2011-12-08T09:42:00.000-08:00

Editor's note: Clarence Otis Jr. is CEO of Darden Restaurants, parent company of Olive Garden, Red Lobster and LongHorn Steakhouse. He is a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

Orlando (CNN) -- "Businesses adding jobs" is a headline every elected official loves to read. Sadly, it's one that's getting harder and harder to find because of a policy and regulatory landscape that makes it increasingly difficult for businesses to see why and where creating new jobs makes sense.

That's especially true for me and my colleagues in the restaurant industry, who find ourselves facing a plate piled high with more and more federal, state and local regulations.

Read more at CNN.com

Five Big Lies in Obama's Economic Fairness Speech

2011-12-08T08:22:00.000-08:00

Election '12: One thing is certainly true about President Obama — no matter how many times people point out the falsehoods in his speeches, he just keeps making them. Case in point: his latest "economic fairness" address.

In that speech Tuesday, Obama once again tried to build a case for his liberal, big-spending, tax-hiking, regulatory agenda. But as with so many of his past appeals, Obama's argument rests on a pile of untruths. Among the most glaring:

• Tax cuts and deregulation have "never worked" to grow the economy. There's so much evidence to disprove this claim, it's hard to know where to start. But let's begin with the fact that countries with greater economic freedom — lower taxes, less government, sound money, free trade — consistently produce greater overall prosperity.

Here at home, President Reagan's program of lower taxes and deregulation led to an historic two-decade economic boom. Plus, states with lower taxes and less regulation do better than those that follow Obama's prescription.

Read more at Investors.com

CFP: Proof of U.S. citizenship is not required to vote in US Elections

2011-12-08T04:18:00.000-08:00

Jim Campbell - Incredulously, though it’s a felony to vote if the voter is not a United States Citizen, all one needs is a face to vote in our elections. It goes without saying; the Democratic Party wants it that way. Read more at Canada Free Press...

Obama Blasts Free Markets

2011-12-08T03:51:00.000-08:00

(CNSNews.com) - In a speech delivered at Osawatomie High School in Osawatomie, Kansas, on Tuesday, President Barack Obama argued that while a limited government that preserves free markets "speaks to our rugged individualism" as Americans, such a system "doesn't work" and "has never worked" and that Americans must look to a more activist government that taxes more, spends more and regulates more if they want to preserve the middle class. Read more at CNSNews...

Government didn't build the middle class. Freedom from an overbearing government allowed for the emergence of a healthy middle class. --bc

Subject: Fwd: Concealed Carry

2011-12-07T22:36:00.000-08:00

From a Vietnam Vet and retired Police Officer:

Did I feel stressed?
Did I feel threatened?
Did I feel like doing harm to someone?

The author is unknown so we cannot verify this email account. --bc

The Problem With The Occupy Wall Street Generation

2011-12-06T02:49:00.000-08:00

TOWNHALL.COM by John Hawkins

Does Benton County need a Chief Operating Officer?

2011-12-03T17:53:00.001-08:00

Corvallis Gazette-Times: County nears end of COO search

Should Republicans comment on this article and attend the interviews (if possible) and meet the candidates?

What: Public reception for the four finalists
When: 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6th
Where: Main meeting room, Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, 645 N.W. Monroe Ave.

TWS: The President And The Generals

2011-12-03T14:30:00.001-08:00

THE WEEKLY STANDARD, 12/3/2011 (12/12/2011 Vol. 17 No. 13), (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - The New York Times reported last week that President Obama decided not to apologize to Pakistan about the U.S. airstrikes that killed Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border in part because he did not want to be seen to be overruling his military commanders yet again. How ironic that the president should feel the need to accept the advice of his military leaders on diplomatic matters while regularly disregarding their opinions on military matters. This most recent incident illuminates the ongoing confusion in the White House and among the American political elite generally about how the president should take advice from his senior military commanders. The situation has become very dangerous for an administration that has overruled its commanders dramatically and frequently and is reportedly considering doing so again by announcing accelerations of the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan beyond what military commanders have recommended. Read more at The Weekly Standard...

Turn Oregon Red?

2011-12-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

On November 7th, MSNBC noted that Oregon "Leans Dem" as opposed to "Likely Dem (which takes a landslide to flip)." In other words, Oregon is flippable! Read First Thoughts: One year out...

OPB: OSU Study Casts Doubt On 'Worst Case' Climate Change

2011-11-28T22:17:00.000-08:00

A new study led by Oregon State University scientists casts doubt on a climate change worst-case scenario. The new study helps narrow down what the greenhouse effect might mean for the earth’s climate. Read more at OPB...

Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts

2011-11-27T22:41:00.000-08:00

This summer, I heard a brief newscast teaser stating that $16 Trillion was 'missing' with a reference to the Federal Reserve. I thought details would follow and expected a huge backlash but never heard more until Jean Nelson sent a link to the following article this evening. Jean wrote, "Ron Paul’s persistence has resulted in a tremendous expose of the Federal Reserve Bank." --bc

SILVER BEAR CAFE (via unelected.org), July 21, 2011 - The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill (HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander’s webpage earlier this morning [July 21, 2011].

What was revealed in the audit was startling:

$16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious - the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is "only" $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is "only" $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.

"This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else." - Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Ron Paul (R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.

Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy.

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows...

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places

View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve (July 21st, 2011): GAO-Fed-Investigation (on scribd.com)
Source: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-696
FULL PDF on GAO server: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf
Senator Sander’s Article: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3
Hat tip: SILVER BEAR CAFE (via www.unelected.org)

White House Christmas tree selected

2011-11-25T12:39:00.000-08:00

The 2-year old Obama/anti-Christmas/Holiday Tree email is circulating again.

The official White House Christmas tree has been selected and it's coming from Northeast Wisconsin. White House staff visited a tree farm owned by Tom and Sue Schroeder in Neshkoro Monday morning. The couple owns Schroeder's Forevergreens. ✧ White House Grounds Superintendent Dale Haney, responsible for selecting the Christmas tree(s) for the White House, referred to the tree as, "...the focal point for Christmas for the White House." Read more at Urban Legends/KXAN.com...

And, after public outcry, the good news is that the Obama Administration decided to delay its Christmas tree tax while the Department of Agriculture reconsiders its order. But what's troubling is that, had this story not come to light, and had Americans not spoken out, yet another tax -- another mandate from the federal government -- would have been imposed on industry and the American people without their knowledge.

Wisconsin schools buck union to cut health costs

2011-11-20T20:21:00.000-08:00

7/7/2011 - The Hartland-Lakeside School District, about 30 miles west of Milwaukee in tiny Hartland, Wis., had a problem in its collective bargaining contract with the local teachers union. ✧ The contract required the school district to purchase health insurance from a company called WEA Trust. The creation of Wisconsin's largest teachers union -- "WEA" stands for Wisconsin Education Association -- WEA Trust made money when union officials used collective bargaining agreements to steer profitable business its way. ✧ Read more at the Washington Examiner...

(Hat tip: Kim)

Oregon's Revenue Forecast Drops...Again

2011-11-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

REP. DENNIS RICHARDSON/NEWSLETTER, 11/17/2011 - Oregon’s latest revenue forecast was just released and the news is not good. ✧ The anticipated state revenue from the General and Lottery Funds has been readjusted downward by another $107 million. This $107 million reduction, follows the $198 million revenue decrease discussed in the August Forecast newsletter. ✧ In short, $305 million of expected revenue for the 2011-13 State Budget has evaporated since the 2011 legislative session adjourned on June 30th, and no meaningful economic recovery is in sight. Read more at Newsletters from Representative Dennis Richardson...

Episode Two: Economic Freedom in America Today

2011-11-17T00:34:00.000-08:00

(Hat tip: Stella Guenther)

U.S. Debt

2011-11-16T19:35:00.000-08:00

U.S. Debt hit $15,000,000,000,000 today!
Visit the U.S. Debt Clock to see your share of the debt.

Jaffe: Troops feel more pity than respect

2011-11-16T02:57:00.000-08:00

The event was a Wall Street gala that raised millions of dollars for homeless veterans in New York City. ✧ Kid Rock sang a ballad about helplessness, frustration and loss. On cue, several hundred soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines strode into position around him. The black-tie crowd rose to its feet and cheered. ✧ “The servicemen and women were regarded as heroes,” said David Saltzman, who organized the spring fundraiser. ✧ A senior military officer at the gala, also attended by the Joint Chiefs then-chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, saw the troops’ role differently. ✧ “They were rolled out like some sort of orphan kid,” the officer wrote in an e-mail. “I’m sure the organizers meant well. I know they did. But it wasn’t respect, really. It was pity.” Read more at the Washington Post...

(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler)

Put me in charge . . .

2011-11-14T21:45:00.000-08:00

Waco Tribune Herald (Requires subscription), Waco, TX, 11/18/2010 (Via email/Hat tip: Patricia Anderson)
Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats and piercings, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”

Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND While you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov’t welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

This was written by a 21 yr old female who gets it. These solutions are just common sense in her opinion.

BBC: Oregon voters await iPad election

2011-11-11T00:28:00.000-08:00

Residents in parts of the US state of Oregon are to cast their votes by iPad during a special election on Tuesday. ✧ The program, designed to make voting easier for disabled residents, is part of a five-county pilot in the north-western state. ✧ The counties are voting to nominate candidates to replace David Wu, who resigned from the US House of Representatives amid a sex scandal. Read more at BBC News (US & Canada)...

Was this a bipartisan decision? --bc

Ride with us on the Republican float in the Veterans Day Parade!

2011-11-10T19:35:00.000-08:00

Benton County Republicans will sponsor a float in the Albany Veterans Day Parade on Friday, November 11! This parade is the largest Veterans Day Parade west of the Mississippi!

You’re invited to help us get the float ready for judging (be at the float at 8:00 a.m. to prepare for judging at 9:00 a.m.) To ride on the float, be there at 10:30 a.m. We will be float # 173. To find us, go to the information booth in front of the Law Enforcement Building on Jackson Street in Albany. They can tell you exactly where to find us.

Veterans, you are encouraged to wear something that identifies you as a veteran. Patriots of all ages are welcome to ride on the float. Oregon’s candidate for Miss USA will be on the Benton County Republican float. Come ride with us and meet her!

Parade Route: The parade starts at the overpass on Pacific Highway, then right on Lyons, left on 2nd to Ferry St., left to 4th, ending at the Linn County courthouse at 300 3rd Ave. SW. For more information see City of Albany - Veterans Day Parade

ACORN Tied to Occupy Wall Street Protests

2011-11-07T01:11:00.000-08:00

ACORN Officials Scramble, Firing Workers and Shredding Documents, After Exposed as Players Behind Occupy Wall Street Protests (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler)

Samuelson: The world economy is adrift

2011-11-06T18:41:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON POST, 11/3/2011 by Robert J. Samuelson (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler)

Time was when the United States automatically assumed the leadership role. Beginning in 1948, the Marshall Plan provided Europe with the equivalent of $850 billion — needed desperately to buy food, raw materials and machinery — to recover from World War II. In the 1980s, the United States took the lead in defusing the Latin American debt crisis; in the late 1990s, it did the same with the Asian financial crisis. The architecture of the postwar global economy was largely a product of U.S. leadership.

But under President Obama — possibly no one else could have done differently — America’s capacity and desire to lead have flagged. Read more at the Washington Post...

White House REJECTS Solyndra Subpoena

2011-11-06T01:04:00.000-07:00

PATRIOT UPDATE, 11/4/2011 - President Obama’s attorney sent a letter to Congressional investigators on Friday, saying the White House would not cooperate with a subpoena requesting documents related to its doling out a $535 million loan guarantee to now bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. ✧ “I can only conclude that your decision to issue a subpoena, authorized by a party-line vote, was driven more by partisan politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation,” Obama’s counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, wrote in a letter to the top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce committee. (Read Ruemmler’s full letter here). ✧ Committee chairman Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich, blasted the White House response:

“We have been reasonable every step of the way in this investigation, and it is a shame that the Obama Administration and House Democrats continue to put up partisan roadblocks to hide the truth from taxpayers.

Local author releases new book: "No Lilies or Violets"

2011-11-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

Johathan Hayes' book, No Lilies or Violets, Reminiscences of a Fighter Pilot, is about to be released, just in time for Veterans Day! Hayes is active in local Republican politics and conservative causes.

Title: No Lilies or Violets, Reminiscences of a Fighter Pilot
Publication Date: November 4, 2011

Book Description (Amazon.com): No Lilies or Violets, Reminiscences of a Fighter Pilot, the first book written by author Jonathan A. Hayes, is a fast-paced, in-your-face trip into the world of an F-4 Phantom II fighter pilot and his exploits during eleven years and three tours into the tumultuous Vietnam war. Hayes recounts his reminiscences forty years after the experiences, lending a mature insight into the raucous adventures of a man and his machine. Visceral recollections are dished to the reader in a shotgun of images. This is a man putting his life on the line numerous times a week, having to react at lightning speed in concert with pilots around him as they pursue the ever-moving enemy in hostile and explosive environment. One of the weird things about aerial combat is how quiet it is. The air around you will be filled with explosions from anti-aircraft shells and missiles and the only thing you will hear is your backseater's quiet breathing and the occasional radio transmission. You are totally cut off from the sonic part of your surroundings. They lived hard and played hard in an effort to maintain their sanity and balance so that could go out there and do it again the next day. No Lilies or Violets puts the reader in the mind of a fighter pilot. Daily on-the-ground routines are predictable, but the mind and body are always braced and torqued for the next bombing run. Join Hayes for a journey into war.

Note from the author: Buy a copy for yourself, one for each member of your family and for all your friends, coworkers, people you ride the bus with. It's a great book (says he, modestly) and you'll love it!

Check six,
Jonathan Hayes
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Amethyst Moon Publishing, Tucson, AZ
ISBN: 978-1-935354-67-67-3 (13 digit)

Smoking-Gun Document Ties Policy To Housing Crisis

2011-10-31T07:38:00.000-07:00

President Obama says the Occupy Wall Street protests show a "broad-based frustration" among Americans with the financial sector, which continues to kick against regulatory reforms three years after the financial crisis.
"You're seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place," he complained earlier this month.
But what if government encouraged, even invented, those "abusive practices"?

Read more at Investors.com

County in Washington Ditches Sustainable Development

2011-10-28T19:22:00.001-07:00

THE NEW AMERICAN - Activists in Clallam County, Washington are celebrating their government's decision to pull the plug on membership in the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), a worldwide association of more than 1,200 local governments dedicated to promoting the United Nations' sovereignty-eroding sustainable development program known as Agenda 21. The county will save $1,200 in annual membership dues, but ICLEI critics say they've salvaged much more than that. Read more at The New American...

ABC: Obama: If We Lose in 2012, Government Will Tell People ‘You’re on Your Own’

2011-10-26T04:47:00.000-07:00

At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America. ✧ “The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008, then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘you are on your own,’” Obama told a crowd of 200 donors over lunch at the W Hotel. Read more at ABC News...

Via email (Hat tip: Stella/Juanita)
Subject: Isn't this what we want?

Why Herman Cain Has The Potential To...Win

2011-10-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

Pretending that Romney is the real frontrunner, the pundits and the press contend that the 2012 GOP presidential contest will be a re-run of the GOP 2008 race: the establishmentarian who is next in line will win. This is a prejudice masquerading as an insight.

Read more at Forbes.com

The Pulse: Former Phila. colleagues remember Cain fondly

2011-10-24T16:47:00.000-07:00

Herman Cain hopes his route to the White House has come through the Philadelphia area, where former colleagues recall him fondly.

"I ran the Philadelphia region, and I was with Burger King for a considerable number of years before I went to Godfather's" Pizza, Cain confirmed for me last week in an interview.

As he details in his book This is Herman Cain!, he spent four years (1982-86) as Burger King's vice president and regional manager. Cain writes about his career path, which led from a VP job at Pillsbury to Burger King at age 36 as a part of the company executive fast-track program.

Read more at Philly.com

Obama Science Czar Led UN Effort to Hide Proceedings, Subvert FOIA, Records Indicate

2011-10-21T02:59:00.000-07:00

10/17/2011 - CEI Files FOIA Request Seeking Public Records on Climate Change Policies

White House Refuses to Turn Over Internal Solyndra Documents

2011-10-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

10/17/2011 - As investigation reveals those closest to President Obama were warned about the Solyndra loan, White House violates own transparency pledge

Taxes: Republicans Unveil Their own ‘Buffett Rule’

2011-10-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

Republican lawmakers have introduced their own “Buffett Rule” that would allow billionaire investors like Warren Buffett who say they’re not paying enough taxes to voluntarily give more money to the federal government. ✧ Under the legislation, authored by Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Rep. John Scalise of Louisiana, taxpayers can donate at least a $1 to the Treasury fund for deficit reduction when they file their federal income tax returns starting next year. Read more at Fox News...

Lane County accepts planning agreement

2011-10-02T04:48:00.001-07:00

Portland Conservative Examiner, 9/30/2011 by David Mcnabb - Lane County Commissioners voted 3-2 to enter an agreement between Lane County, Eugene, Springfield, and the Lane Council of Governments to accept $1.45M in grant funding for the proposed Lane Livability Consortium. According to a staff report sent to the commissioners, the agreement establishes management authority to the general purpose governments, creates an accountability framework, and improves the budgetary and work product outcomes for Lane County. In English, it is an agreement to ensure more bureaucratic red tape at every level of the lives of local residents and businesses. It may not contain any new regulations as is, but it is a framework for future regulatory capacity. Reading through the agreement was similar to reading the email from the guy in Nigeria who has your inheritance, all he needs is your bank account number. Continue reading at Examiner.com

Word from Rev. Perryman - feel free to share

2011-10-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

(Via email/hat tip: Deborah)
Dear Friends-- My interview and debate on the issue of Race - today on Sean Hannity's radio show. It will air today [9/30/3011] at 5:00 PM Eastern time. The black professor who debated with me agreed that the Democrats owe blacks an apology. It got pretty heated when I defended the Tea Party. --Rev. Wayne Perryman, Seattle, WA

Rev. Perryman's most recent book: Blacks, Whites & Racist Democrats: The Untold History of Race and Politics within the Democratic Party from 1792-2009

Finally, The Cognoscenti Ask: What Could We Be Thinking?

2011-09-30T18:31:00.000-07:00

'The way I think about it," Barack Obama told a TV station in Orlando, "is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft."

He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53% of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation.

Read More at Investors.com

Longshore union fined $250,000

2011-09-30T18:15:00.000-07:00

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — A federal judge fined a Longshore union $250,000 on Friday for its tactics in a Longview labor dispute, and he warned that individual protesters could face their own penalties for future violations of his orders.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton has already held the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in contempt for blocking a train and storming a grain terminal earlier this month. Authorities have said the protesters overpowered security guards, damaged railroad cars and dumped grain

Read more at The Columbian

Fox: U.S.-Born Terror Boss Anwar al-Awlaki Killed in Yemen

2011-09-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

SANAA, Yemen – Terror mastermind and senior Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki is dead, senior U.S. officials confirmed to Fox News. ✧ Al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Islamic militant cleric who became a prominent figure in Al Qaeda's most active branch, using his fluent English and Internet savvy to draw recruits to carry out attacks in the United States, was killed Friday in the mountains of Yemen, American and Yemeni officials said. Read more at Fox News...

Sheriff Paul Babeu weighs in on 'Fast and Furious'

2011-09-29T23:17:00.000-07:00

9/27/2011 - Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu implicated the ATF, Eric Holder and the Obama Justice Department as 'accomplices' to murder involving weapons used in Operation Fast and Furious.

Obama's Denver 'jobs speech' panned

2011-09-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

Following President Obama's 'Jobs' speech in Denver today, Wayne Laugesen, editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette, wrote, "Obama’s presidency has done more to boost free-market advocacy than all conservative proselytizing combined. Americans understand more than ever that government cannot produce wealth, create jobs or make life free. Obama can’t put fuel in our cars or pay our mortgages. Americans understand that Obamacare and other onerous mandates on business have killed economic growth. They understand that our country is mired in debt and cannot simply write more IOUs in order to build things." Read more at CS Gazette...

NC Governor Proposes Ignoring Constitution and Suspending Congressional Elections for 2 Years

2011-09-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

THINK PROGRESS/JUSTICE, 9/27/2011 - Article I Section II of the United States Constitution specifically states, “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.” But North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) would rather we just skip over that section and suspend congressional elections for two years. Speaking at a Rotary Club event today, Perdue proposed holding off on elections for a while so lawmakers can focus on the economy — a suggestion that’s breathtaking just by virtue of how blatantly unconstitutional it is: Read more at Think Progress...

Gov. Perdue’s office responded to the 'hubbub' over her remarks on her Facebook page. Press Secretary Chris Mackey said, “Come on… Gov. Perdue was obviously using hyperbole to highlight what we can all agree is a serious problem: Washington politicians who focus on their own election instead of what’s best for the people they serve.”

Riparian Issue: Albany poised to act on controversial Goal 5 rules

2011-09-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

9/25/2011 - The Albany City Council is poised to act on new land use regulations potentially affecting an estimated 1,000 property owners, but how much depends on the individual case. ✧ The city staff says the changes are intended to protect natural resources such as fish-bearing streams and streamside habitat, along with significant wetlands. Read more at the Democrat Herald...

Western Republican Leadership Conference, October 18-21

2011-09-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

When: Oct 18 – 21, 2011
Where: The Venetian/The Palazzo Resort, 3355 Las Vegas Boulevard South Las Vegas, NV 89109 (map)
Description: A Welcome Message from WRLC Chairman, Jon Porter
Friends,
This year, Westerners will have an exciting opportunity to host the first Republican Presidential debate in the Western United States, providing us with a distinct and active voice in our 2012 Presidential Election. The Western Republican Leadership Conference, a four-day event immediately following the October 18th debate, is designed to educate, mobilize, and empower Republicans from our region. Additionally, the WRLC will serve to spotlight the specific issues facing the west and underscore the importance of our Nevada caucus in determining our next Republican Presidential nominee. On behalf of the WRLC, I am both pleased and proud to announce CNN as official debate host and Las Vegas’ Venetian Resort Hotel as our event host. I look forward to the success of this event and the support of your attendance.
With Kind Regards,
Jon Porter, WRLC Chairman

Free or Equal - A personal view by Johan Norberg

2011-09-25T01:45:00.000-07:00

Program Summary: "In 1980 economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman inspired market reform in the West and revolutions in the East with his celebrated television series “Free To Choose.” ✧ Thirty years later, in this one-hour documentary, the young Swedish writer, analyst and Cato Foundation Fellow Johan Norberg travels in Friedman’s footsteps to see what has actually happened in the places Friedman’s ideas helped transform. In location after location Norberg examines the contemporary relevance or Friedman’s ideas in the 2011 world of globalization and financial crisis. Central to his examination are the perennial questions concerning power and prosperity, and the trade-offs between individual liberty and income equality." ✧ Watch the 17-minute video preview at Free to Choose Media.

Visit the Benton GOP Food Booth at Corvallis Fall Festival

2011-09-24T13:23:00.000-07:00

It's Corvallis Fall Festival weekend and we hope you'll visit the Benton County Republicans' Pasta and Meatballs booth (#18) at Central Park near the main stage on Monroe (across from the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library). The food booth is a fundraiser to help the Benton GOP prepare for the 2012 election. On the menu is Spaghetti with or without Meatballs, Meatball Subs, Meatballs-on-a-Stick (with your choice of marinara sauce or Swedish style white sauce), Strawberry and Chocolate Sundaes and assorted beverages. We'd like to thank the many volunteers who have prepared for this event and those who have volunteered to man the booth. Can we count on you as a patron this weekend?

Don't want to fight the traffic and parking? There is FREE PARKING and SHUTTLE BUS SERVICE every 10-15 minutes from the Avery Square Parking Lot on 9th Street. Getting there can't get any easier than that!

‘America is MORE racist under Obama’: Morgan Freeman slams President’s Tea Party critics

2011-09-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

PATRIOT UPDATE

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman claims racism in the U.S. has actually got[ten] worse since Barack Obama took office in January 2009. ✧ The film star, who played Nelson Mandela in 2009 film Invictus, told CNN the President has become a target for the Tea Party’s ‘racist’ aggression. ✧ He backed President Obama during his election campaign and said the Tea Party’s anti-Obama stance is racist, reported the Huffinton Post. ✧ ‘Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term,’ he told Piers Morgan on CNN. ✧ ‘What underlines that? “Screw the country. We’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man out of here”.’It's policy, NOT race, but the left can't get any traction with a policy debate. --bc

FOX: Lawmakers Claim Justice Inspector Obstructed Probe Into ‘Fast and Furious’

2011-09-22T17:09:00.000-07:00

The two lawmakers leading the probe into the Obama administration scandal claim Justice Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar compromised their investigators' ability to get to the truth and potentially prosecute those responsible for selling thousands of weapons to the Mexican drug cartels. Read more at Fox News...

Using the Delphi Technique to Achieve Consensus

2011-09-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

Eagle Forum, 1998 - How it is leading us away from representative government to an illusion of citizen participation:

The Delphi Technique and consensus building are both founded in the same principle - the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, with synthesis becoming the new thesis. The goal is a continual evolution to "oneness of mind" (consensus means solidarity of belief) -the collective mind, the wholistic[sic] society, the wholistic[sic] earth, etc. In thesis and antithesis, opinions or views are presented on a subject to establish views and opposing views. In synthesis, opposites are brought together to form the new thesis. All participants in the process are then to accept ownership of the new thesis and support it, changing their views to align with the new thesis. Through a continual process of evolution, "oneness of mind" will supposedly occur.

In group settings, the Delphi Technique is an unethical method of achieving consensus on controversial topics.

The UN on Property Rights

2011-09-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

From Sovereignty.net - The United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I) met in Vancouver
May 31 through June 11, 1976. Agenda Item 10 of the Conference Report sets forth the UN's official policy on land. The Preamble reads:

"Land...cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interests of society as a whole. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable...."

June 9: Obama Signs Executive Order 13575 - Is it Agenda 21 Related?

2011-09-18T23:20:00.000-07:00

President Obama signed his 86th executive order (13575) on June 9, which established the White House Rural Council (WHRC). According to The Blaze, the Executive Order seems to be in line with the United Nations radical Agenda 21, as it is designed “to begin taking control over almost all aspects of the lives of 16 percent of the American people.” Read more at the New American...

Read: Executive Order 13575

Note: Sorry, I missed this when it was timely. It is important. Obama throws the whole cabinet at rural residents and land owners, including the Department of Defense! --bc

WSJ: EPA Again Delays Greenhouse-Gas Rule

2011-09-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

9/15/2011 - WASHINGTON—The Environmental Protection Agency is again delaying a plan to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, saying it needs more time to propose the rule. ✧ The move comes amid intense pushback from business groups and Republican lawmakers who complain a recent slate of EPA proposals are chilling business investment and hindering the economic recovery. Late last month, the White House forced the EPA to abandon an air-pollution rule that business groups said would kill millions of jobs. ✧ An EPA official said the agency is committed to the rule, which it is legally required to propose. "We are working on a schedule and will release it as soon as possible," the official said. "This is EPA's decision. It's a complex rule. We just needed more time." Read more at the Wall Street Journal...

Zak: It was Harry Reid who Proposed the Committee of Twelve

2011-09-18T16:23:00.000-07:00

Michael Zak - [Excerpt]: The Democrats have thought several steps ahead of the Republicans with their Committee of Twelve. They'll use this Super Committee to create a huge crisis -- for President Obama to resolve. They hope to blame the GOP for an impasse of their own making. Read the full article at Grand Old Partisan...

City has its eye on your wallet... again

2011-09-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

9/16/2011 - The City Council is considering a half-dozen strategies to generate more revenue to pay for government services. Read more at the Corvallis Gazette-Times...

Mark Steyn: Obama’s magical thinking on green jobs

2011-09-18T15:32:00.000-07:00

Pass this bill now, or I’ll say “Pass this bill now!” another two dozen times! With this latest inspiration, Obama has taken the post-modern phase of democratic politics to a whole new level. “Pass this jobs bill”? Simply as a matter of humdrum reality, there is no bill, it won’t “create” any jobs, and it will be paid for with money we don’t have. But the smartest president in history has calculated that, if he says the same four monosyllables over and over, a nonexistent bill to create nonexistent jobs with nonexistent money will be yet another legislative triumph in the grand tradition of his first stimulus (the original Dumb And Dumber to the sequel’s Stimulus And Stimulusser). Read more at the Orange County Register...

(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler)

Knight: Obama tears up the Constitution

2011-09-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON TIMES, 9/16/2011 by Robert Knight (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - The scope of his lawless disregard expands by the day. [Excerpt]: In his two years and nine months in office, President Obama has compiled a spectacular record of noncompliance with the Constitution. Here are just some of the ways his administration has failed to execute the laws while using raw, unauthorized power: Read more at the Washington Times...

IBD: No Place for Gov't

2011-09-16T01:10:00.000-07:00

IBD EDITORIAL, 9/14/2011 - Health Care: Another federal judge has ruled that ObamaCare's individual mandate is unconstitutional. It's hard to see how a court could possibly decide any other way. ✧ Presiding in Harrisburg, Pa., district court Judge Christopher Conner ruled Tuesday that the law's individual mandate that requires those who don't have health care insurance to buy it "cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny." Read more at Investors Business Daily...

NEW: Blacks file Class Action Racial Discrimination Suit Against Obama & Democrats

2011-09-14T02:01:00.000-07:00

#3
ACTION ITEM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Seattle. On September 11, 2011, blacks from the West Coast and the East Coast joined together and signed one of the most comprehensive legal briefs ever prepared on racial discrimination, then filed their brief today, September 12th, at 9:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time in US District Court in Seattle (Case No. C11-1503). The plaintiffs, who refer to the defendants as “Father of Racism,” allege that as an organization, the Democratic Party has consistently refused to apologize for the role they played in slavery and Jim Crow laws and for other subsequent racist practices from 1792 to 2011. Rev. Wayne Perryman, a former Democrat himself and the lead plaintiff in this class action lawsuit, said he was inspired to file this action after seeing the recent movie The Help. The movie takes place in the region that was exclusively controlled by Democrats for more than 150 years (the South). Mrs. Frances P. Rice, the Chair of the National Black Republican Association is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Mrs. Rice is a resident of Sarasota, Florida and has lived in the the South most of her life.

The case cites the collective work of over 350 legal scholars and includes Congressional records, case law, research from our nation's top history professors, racist statements from Democratic elected officials, citations from the Democrat's National Platforms regarding their support of slavery, excepts of speeches from Senator Obama, individual testimonies from blacks who lived in the Jim Crow South and opinions from the NAACP.

Perryman said President Obama was named as a defendant not only because he is the official leader of the Democratic Party, but because of certain statements he made about his own party in his book, Dreams from My Father (see attachment). In 2009, the President was asked to issue an apology to blacks on behalf of his party, but he refused. Unlike other reparations lawsuits, this lawsuit merely asks for a public apology, but no monetary damages.

In the 40-page brief, Rev. Perryman tells the court that the Democratic Party, (the party that is quick to call the Tea Party and Republicans racist), is the same party that refuses to confess and/or acknowledge (in public and on their website) that they are the party that supported the institution that packed millions of black men, women and children in the deep dark hulls of slave ships with just barely enough food and water to keep them alive, and forced them to lie in their own urine, feces, and vomit for the duration of a long trip across the Atlantic. And after arriving in America, it was the members of their party that forced these poor souls to work from sunup to sundown for the next 70 years and never paid them one dime. And when the black victims were fortunate enough to escape, it was the Democratic Party that passed Fugitive Slave laws to return them to their brutal slave masters. When their inhumane institution of slavery was challenged by the opposing party, Democrats countered by placing threats in their political platforms (1844-1856), - threatening anyone who dared to interfere with what they called, “the sectional issue of Domestic Slavery.” On May 21, 1856, they carried out their threats when they attacked their opposition, Senator Charles Sumner with a walking cane on the Senate floor and when they attacked with guns, freed blacks and abolitionists on the streets of Lawrence, Kansas. Six years later, Democrats called themselves 'Confederates” and went to war killing thousands to defend and protect their racist institution of slavery. After losing the war, they fought against constitutional amendments and civil rights legislation for blacks, and chose instead to form terrorist organizations, legislate Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws and support every landmark case that was designed to deny blacks their constitutional rights including the Slaughterhouse Case, Plessy v Ferguson, the Civil Rights Cases of 1881 to overturn the 1875 Civil Rights Act, and Brown v. the Board of Education. While many of these cases were pending, Democrats proudly adopted the name “The Party of White Supremacy” and committed every inhumane violent act known to mankind (from 1867 to 1977) to keep blacks in “their place.” And to add insult to injury, after killing millions of blacks through their racist institutions, they hired powerful attorneys to keep this information from blacks and to avoid apologizing to blacks.

Perryman said, “Any organization that has such a racist history and receives 97% of the African American vote (after doing all they could to deny blacks the right to vote), should willingly apologize without being forced do so through a lawsuit. He said, “I guess they feel they have nothing to apologize for.” Perryman went on to say that he is “convinced that Democrats will only apologize if the media, or the courts (with public pressure) will force them to do so. The man who authored the book: The Audacity of Hope, now has the “audacity” to refuse to apologize for his political party and their racist institutions, that took the lives of millions of his own people.

Apologies for Racism – Precedent Set

In the 40-page brief covering a period from 1792 to 2011, Perryman makes the following claims regarding past apologies for racism and racial injustices. Perryman said history reveals that an apology or reparation for blacks would not be an issue today had the Democratic President Andrew Johnson chosen to sign Senate Bill 60. Since Johnson’s veto of Senate Bill 60, the door for reparations involving racial injustices remained closed for over 120 years. In 1988, Congress opened that door with the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Under that new bill, Japanese internment victims received an apology plus $20,000 each in reparation pay. In 1993, the victims of the Rosewood, Florida Massacre received an apology and reparations from the State of Florida. On May 16, 1997, President Clinton issued an apology to the victims of the Tuskegee Experiment and paid the African American victims a total of $10,000,000 in reparations. On February 7, 2005, the 109th Congress issued Senate Resolution 39 and apologized for not enacting lynching laws to protect those who were victims of lynching. In that resolution, Congress stopped short of acknowledging that all of the lynchings took place in regions controlled by Democrats. And finally on January 20, 2007, the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party of North Carolina apologized for the 1898 riot and massacre that killed several black Republicans and drove them out of office. See attached copy of the brief.

Who is Rev. Perryman?

Rev. Perryman is the same Seattle minister who used his biblical research in 1994 to persuaded the world's two largest Christian publishers and the Encyclopedia Britannica to apologize and remove the “Curse of Ham” theory from all of their publications. The curse theory had existed for over 500 years and was used by Southern Christians and Democrats to justify slavery and their mistreatment of blacks.

How You Can Support This Case

Forward this e-mail to everyone on your e-mail list and post it on your facebook and ask others to do the same. We want to reach over 5 million persons.
Send a letter of support of this case to the court at the following e-mail address emecf@waed.uscourt.gov. We would like 50,000 letters of support going to the court. When sending your letter include the Case No C11-1503, Attention: The Honorable TSZ
If you lived in the Jim Crow South and have witnessed or experience racial discrimination while living in the South up to 1977, please tell your experience as a Friend of the Court. The Democrats controlled the South from 1792 to 1977. When sending a letter as 'A Friend of The Court' send copies to Wayne Perryman at Doublebro@aaol.com and to the Democratic Party at democraticparty@democrat.org and place the following statement at the end:
US District Courthouse Re: Case No. C11-1503 TSZ
Western Washington
U.S. Courthouse
700 Stewart Street
Seattle, WA 98101

Court's e-mail Address
cmecf@wawd.uscourts.gov
Dana_scarp@uscourts.gov

Perryman: Obama's References to His Party's Racist Past

2011-09-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

#2
President Barack Obama is one of the only black elected officials and one of the only black leaders in modern-day history - who has openly discussed how badly Democrats have treated black voters and he does so in his book: Dreams From My Father. The book highlights a conversation where black Democrats referred to their relationship with the Democratic Party as “Plantation Politics.” (p. 147). Obama reports that during this conversation blacks in the barber shop asked themselves, why do they keep voting Democrat when blacks have “the worst jobs, the worst housing, Police brutality rampant, … and we all line up and vote the straight Democratic ticket. Sell our soul for a Christmas Turkey. White folks spitting in our faces and we'd reward them with the vote.”

Obama also states in his book that some white Democrats said they would “vote Republican before voting for a black [Democrat] to be mayor” of Chicago. (p. 148)

During Obama's Victory Speech on November 5, 2008 he talked about Ann Nixon Cooper, a black woman who could not vote because of his party's voting policies in the South and during that same speech he referred to “the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, the bridge in Selma and the preacher from Atlanta,” - all racist situations that occurred in areas where Democrat elected officials were in control.

He also talked about his party's racist past during his March 18, 2008 speech regarding Rev. Wright. The then Senator Obama said, “…so many of the disparities that exist in the African American community today can be traced directly to the inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the [Democrat's] brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”

Obama, a student of history knew that his party made the following statements in several of their national platforms:

DEMOCRATS' 1844 PLATFORM for SLAVERY

“All efforts by the abolitionist and others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery... are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences....”

DEMOCRATS' 1852 PLATFORM for SLAVERY

“The Democratic Party standing on this national platform will abide by and adhere to a faithful execution of the acts [meaning Fugitive Slave Laws]... for reclaiming fugitives.... The Democratic Party will resist all attempts at renewing in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt is made.”

Not one Democrat voted for the 13th Amendment to end slavery and as a party, Democrats did not vote to pass the 14th Amendment to make blacks citizens nor did they support the 15th Amendment to give blacks the right to vote.

Obama is one of the only black leaders who have acknowledge these wrongs by his party. so with this lawsuit we are simply asking: based on what he knows about his party's racist past and how they have treated black folks, why is he and the leaders of his party reluctant to issue a public apology?

Rev. Wayne Perryman
www.wayneperryman.com

Received via email, September 13, 2011 as a PDF attachment (HT: Stella Guenther).

Rev. Perryman's most recent book is Whites, Blacks & Racist Democrats: The Untold History of Race & Politics within the Democratic Party From 1792-2009.

Interview: Rev Wayne Perryman Sued the Democratic Party for History of Racism

2011-09-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

#1
Breitbart.tv Editor-in-Chief Larry O'Connor and host of The Stage Right Show, interviewed Rev. Wayne Perryman about his new book Whites, Blacks and Racist Democrats (released Oct 2010). In the October 11, 2010 interview, Perryman spoke about his previous suit asking for a public apology from the Democratic Party for its racist history. He lost that suit on the grounds that he was from Seattle, and therefore, did not have 'standing.' Listen to the fascinating interview at Breitbart.tv. You will be very proud to be a Republican. The GOP's honorable history on the advancement of civil rights is being buried. Perryman is determined to not let that happen.

IMPRIMIS: The Constitution and Limited Government

2011-09-10T02:34:00.000-07:00

By Edward J. Erler, Professor of Political Science
California State University, San Bernardino
Published September 2011 by Imprimis

Two cases that are currently making their way to the Supreme Court may well in the short term decide the constitutional issue of the reach and extent of the federal government. At stake, in other words, is the future of limited government. And together, these two cases present an exceedingly odd situation. In the case of the Arizona illegal alien law, the federal government is suing a state for constitutional violations; and in the case of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—that is, Obamacare—more than half the states are suing the federal government, contesting the Act’s constitutionality. It is indeed a litigious season.

But the Supreme Court’s decisions in these two cases may not be the last word, because both of them present eminently political issues that will have to be decided ultimately by the American people.

The administrative state, of course, always seeks to extend its reach and magnify its power. This is an intrinsic feature of a system where administration and regulation replace politics as the ordinary means of making policy. If there are to be limits to the reach of the burgeoning administrative state, they will be political limits imposed by the people in the ordinary course of partisan politics. The advent of the administrative state poses the greatest challenge to limited government, because it elevates the welfare of the community—whether real or imagined—over the rights and liberties of individuals. The task today is to confine the federal government to its delegated powers. The minions of the administrative state seek to destroy constitutional boundaries in their desire to replace politics with administration. This is tantamount to denying that legitimate government derives from the consent of the governed, or that limited government rests on the sovereignty of the people.

One of the proofs offered in the Declaration of Independence that King George was attempting to establish an “absolute Tyranny” over the American colonies was the fact that “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.” Obamacare certainly fits the description of the activities denounced in the Declaration. The number of regulations and the horde of administrators necessary to execute the scheme are staggering. We have only to think here of the Independent Payment Advisory Board. It is a commission of 15 members appointed by the President, charged with the task of reducing Medicare spending. This commission has rule-making power which carries the force of law. The Senate, it is true, will have the power to override its decisions—but only with a three-fifths majority. There are no procedures that allow citizens or doctors to appeal the Board’s decisions. The administrative state—here in the guise of providing health care for all—will surely reduce the people under a kind of tyranny that will insinuate itself into all aspects of American life, destroying liberty by stages until liberty itself becomes only a distant memory.

The advent and extraordinary success of the Tea Party movement, with its emphasis on restoring limited government, has made this a propitious time to rethink what the Framers meant by limited government and how they understood the relationship between limited government and the protection of rights and liberties. It is rare to see a people acting spontaneously in a political cause. The Tea Party movement must be regarded as a testament to the independent spirit—the freedom-loving spirit—of the American people.

How did the Framers understand limited government? In the first place, limited government was not for the Framers identical with small government, as the Tea Party sometimes tends to believe. The identification of limited government with small government was the position of the Anti-Federalists who opposed the ratification of the Constitution. Limited government, for the Anti-Federalists, meant government that was too weak to threaten the rights and liberties of the people. Small government was, therefore, both the necessary and sufficient condition of political freedom. Consequently, the Anti-Federalists preferred a purely confederal form of government in which the states assumed priority.

The Federalists, on the other hand, regarded confederal government as an attempt to do the impossible: to create a sovereignty within a sovereignty. Conflicting claims to sovereignty would be debilitating and would render the government of the whole ineffective—as was surely the case under our first constitution, the Articles of Confederation.

The Framers of the Constitution settled upon a novel design for government, one that Madison said was “partly national, partly federal.” For some purposes, Madison explained, we will be one people; for others, we will be multiple peoples. With respect to the national features—those things that concern the nation as a whole—the federal government will have sovereignty—complete and plenary power to accomplish the objects entrusted to its care in the Constitution. Those objects are principally found in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. National defense, for example, is exclusively delegated to the federal government. And since the exigencies that face nations in foreign affairs are unpredictable and innumerable, the federal government must have sovereignty to fulfill this delegated trust. And if that trust is to be fulfilled, the federal government must also be accorded the necessary means to achieve that end. If this entails large government—and today it surely does—then large government must be compatible with limited government. Similar reasoning applies to all the objects delegated to the care of the federal government.

The Declaration of Independence provided the authoritative statement of America’s political principles. For the first time, government was said to derive its legitimacy—its just powers—from “the consent of the governed.” This was a turning point in world-historical consciousness: no longer would it be possible to argue that sovereignty belonged to governments or kings—even if kings claimed appointment by divine right.

In order to form just government, the people delegate a portion of their sovereignty to government to be exercised for their benefit. The fact that only a portion of sovereignty is ceded by the people is the origin of the idea of limited government. The people delegate only some of their sovereignty to government, and what is not granted is retained by the people—the people, for example, always reserve (and can never cede) the ultimate expression of sovereignty, the right of revolution. The Declaration describes this right as “the Right of the People to alter or to abolish” government when it becomes destructive of its proper ends—namely, the protection of the safety and happiness of the people. This right of revolution, as understood by the Founders, was the right that secures every other right, because it serves as a constant reminder of the sovereignty of the people.

The Anti-Federalists never understood these revolutionary implications; they seemed to believe still that governments, not the people, were the ultimate repositories of sovereignty, and that the only way to secure the rights and liberties of the people was to weaken the power of government—as if freedom existed only in the exceptions to government power. But as Madison wrote, “Energy in government is essential to that security against external and internal danger and to that prompt and salutary execution of the laws which enter into the very definition of good government.”

What limits the federal government is not a limit on its power to act, but the limited range of objects entrusted to its care—the enumerated powers of government. The powers not delegated to the federal government nor forbidden to the states in the Constitution (e.g., ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts) are reserved to the states. These are the police powers, which are generally described as the power to regulate the health, safety, welfare and morals of the citizens of the states.

In cases of conflict, the supremacy clause of the Constitution gives preference to the federal Constitution and laws made in pursuance of the Constitution. The supremacy clause was described by Madison as an essential improvement over the Articles of Confederation. Where there is no final authority to arbitrate disputes between the federal government and the states in this “compound Republic,” government will be paralyzed. Madison confessed, however, that the exact boundary between the powers of the federal government and the state governments will be impossible to determine in advance. The precise lines of demarcation will have to be worked out in practice. The Supreme Court—and through the supremacy clause, the state courts—will have to determine conflicts on a case by case basis.

An illustration of the difficulties of drawing clear lines between federal and state authority in our “compound Republic” is the Arizona illegal immigration bill, passed in April 2010. The law allowed police officers to verify the immigration status of any person after a valid stop or arrest if there “is a reasonable suspicion that the person is unlawfully present in the United States.” Everyone remembers the hysteria that was unleashed when the bill passed. The President called the law irresponsible, saying that it threatened “basic notions of fairness.” Others said the provision of the bill relying on “reasonable suspicion” would mandate racial profiling; and some of the more hysterical commentators even insisted that the law was tantamount to genocide. The Assistant Secretary of State felt compelled to apologize to members of a Chinese delegation visiting the United States for this egregious assault upon human rights. One can only imagine the bemused looks on the faces of the Chinese delegation.

The President ordered the Justice Department to intervene. And to the surprise of many, the Justice Department’s lawsuit did not seek to enjoin the law based on racial profiling or equal protection or due process, arguing instead that the law conflicted with the federal government’s exclusive power to regulate immigration. Perhaps someone had explained to the Attorney General that “reasonable suspicion” has been a part of our due process jurisprudence for many years. It means that a police officer can question on suspicion that is less than probable cause; reasonable suspicion, of course, must be something more than a hunch or a guess or an intuition—it must be based on articulable facts. In addition, the Supreme Court in 1975 ruled that ethnicity could be one of the factors determining reasonable suspicion. The Arizona law, in contrast, disallowed any use of ethnicity in determining whether a person could be asked about his immigration status.

In United States v. Arizona, the Federal District Court judge enjoined the operation of the law because it intruded upon the federal government’s exclusive power to regulate immigration and control foreign policy. On appeal from the District Court, one piece of evidence adduced by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the Arizona law was an unconstitutional impingement upon the federal government’s exclusive power to conduct foreign policy was the fact that the President of Mexico and the heads of several other Latin American countries had expressed severe criticisms of the bill both in the press and in amici briefs! Rarely do we encounter such humor in court opinions, however unintended the humor might be.

The Constitution, of course, does not specifically grant control over immigration to the federal government. Instead Congress has power to “establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Control over naturalization, however, seems to imply control over immigration—so uniform rules governing immigration would seem, by necessary implication, to fall within the scope of federal power. The real question here—although it was not addressed by the District Court or the Court of Appeals—was what power, if any, devolves upon state governments when the federal government fails to carry out its obligations. The District Court had candidly noted that the Arizona law was passed “against a backdrop of rampant illegal immigration, escalating drug and human trafficking crimes, and serious public safety concerns.” In the face of federal inaction or manifest indifference, does Arizona have the reserved power—indeed the obligation—to secure the safety of its citizens? The President’s recent remarks that the border has been secured and that it is now time to think of providing a path to citizenship for illegal aliens is, in reality, a statement of declared indifference to the people of the State of Arizona and to all the border states similarly situated. Surely those states have the constitutional right, sustained by their police powers, to protect themselves through laws that are as unobtrusive as the Arizona law. But in the District Court’s judgment, the Arizona law invoked “an inference of preemption” because it placed an “impermissible burden” on federal “resources and priorities” and inevitably “will result in the harassment of aliens.” The burden on federal resources stems from the fact that there will be an increased number of requests to verify immigration status. This increased burden will in turn force the immigration services to reallocate resources away from other priorities. Such is the logic of the District Court.

These reasons seem trivial when compared to the real and pressing dangers that Arizona faces as a result of federal inaction and indifference. Surely this is not what the Framers had in mind when they crafted the supremacy clause, while at the same time reserving to the states the essential responsibility of protecting the safety and welfare of their citizens. Madison wrote in The Federalist that “the powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” This extensive power reserved to the states should weigh heavily on preemption decisions. In this light, the Arizona law seems to have been a clear exercise of the state’s police powers, and any burden imposed on the federal government to have been incidental and insignificant.

Obamacare is another issue that tests our understanding of the Constitution and the role of limited government. In federal courts, the Obama administration has defended the bill as a legitimate exercise of Congress’ power to regulate commerce. At issue here is the individual mandate that forces individuals to purchase health care insurance and carries a penalty for failure to do so. Congress has the power to regulate commerce; but does it, as here, have the power to create commerce—i.e., to force individuals to engage in interstate commerce by purchasing health care insurance from private providers? Another way to look at the issue would be to ask whether, under the commerce clause, Congress has the power to regulate inactivity, i.e., the refusal to buy insurance. This would indeed be a novel extension of commerce clause jurisprudence and utterly impossible to square with any notion of commerce that was held by the framers of the Constitution.

In addition to the commerce clause argument, the Obama administration maintains that the individual mandate is authorized by Congress’ power to tax and spend for the general welfare. Congress’ power here is extensive. Over the years, the Court has generally deferred to Congress in determining what constitutes the general welfare. This is proper, since Congress represents the nation and what promotes the general welfare is essentially a political question. If Congress determines that a universal health care system serves the general welfare, then the courts will not interfere. The power to “lay and collect Taxes,” however, has been subject to judicial scrutiny. While Congress may tax for the purpose of raising revenue, it may not use the power of taxation for the express purpose of regulation. A tax that is merely a subterfuge for regulating activities will not be allowed, although a tax that only incidentally regulates behavior will pass constitutional muster as long as the principal purpose is raising revenues.

Madison argued that the general welfare clause was actually a limitation on the federal government. Taxes could be imposed and money spent only for the general welfare—meaning the welfare of the whole of the American people. It is true that Alexander Hamilton had a more extensive view of the general welfare clause, but throughout much of our history Madison’s view prevailed. Today, however, the idea that the general welfare clause was ever intended as a limit on the reach of government has been destroyed by the progressive architects of the welfare state.

In any case, if the individual mandate is to be defended under the general welfare clause, what the plain language of the bill calls a penalty must be regarded as a tax for the express purpose of raising revenue. If the penalty can be sold as a tax, the Obama administration argues, then Obamacare is authorized by the general welfare clause. In the Florida District Court case, the Justice Department made the wholly tendentious—not to say absurd—argument that since the IRS was charged with administering the individual mandate and collecting the penalties, this was sufficient to convert a penalty into a tax. But as Florida District Court Judge Roger Vinson remarked: “Besides the fact that President Obama confidently assured the American people that there would be no new taxes to support the medical insurance scheme, no amount of administrative indirection should be allowed to convert a penalty into a tax for raising revenue. This is not a revenue raising measure and therefore cannot be justified under the general welfare clause.”

But here is a somber thought: If, instead of using the individual mandate, Congress had relied on its general revenue-raising powers, under current Supreme Court doctrine, it is almost certain that Obamacare would be constitutional. It would be an example of Congress spending money for the general welfare.

In conclusion, the only certain method of defeating universal health care and other cases of federal overreach—as it appears that the American public desires to do—is political opposition. A political party dedicated to genuinely limited government—not small government—is an urgent political task. Whether the Tea Party is up to this task remains to be seen—but it is probably our best hope. The Tea Party will have to learn, however, that the task today is not to weaken the power of government—it is to confine the government to the exercise of its delegated powers and to restore to its full vigor the partly national, partly federal form of government that was the legacy of the Founders.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on May 24, 2011, in Dallas, Texas.

Copyright © 2011 Hillsdale College. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.”

6 Steps Congress Can Take to Create Millions of Jobs - Starting Now

2011-09-10T02:17:00.000-07:00

U.S. Chamber of Commerce - Six Steps

Expand Trade and Global Commerce.
Produce more American Energy.
Speed Up Infrastructure Projects.
Welcome Tourists and Business Visitors.
Speed Up Permits and Provide Regulatory Certainty and Relief.
Pass Tax Incentives that Create Jobs while Increasing Revenues.

Read the Chambers' Open Letter to Congress and the President of the United States and the number of estimated jobs each of these six points will create HERE.

WaPo: Breaking down Obama’s jobs plan

2011-09-09T23:48:00.000-07:00

President Obama urged Congress Thursday night to pass a $447 billion plan that he said will get the economy moving and create jobs. The proposal would cost a little more than half of the 2009 stimulus package and, according to Obama, be paid for by additional deficit reduction that he will outline Sept. 19.

See breakdown.

Longshoremen storm Wash. state port, damage RR

2011-09-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

LONGVIEW, Wash. (AP) — Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a labor dispute, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha. ✧ Six guards were held hostage for a couple of hours after 500 or more Longshoremen broke down gates about 4:30 a.m. and smashed windows in the guard shack, he said. Read more at Yahoo News...

EPA Declares Hay a Pollutant

2011-09-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

(NaturalNews) The assault against American industry and individual livelihood continues -- and no, it is not coming from Al-Qaeda or other foreign terrorists. A recent report from R-CALF USA, an advocacy group for American cattle producers, says the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared harmless cattle hay a "pollutant," which is part of the agency's agenda to squelch family-scale cattle ranches in favor of corporately-owned, mega-sized feedlot operations. Read more at Natural News...

WSJ: Why the Stimulus Failed

2011-09-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

New research on what actually happened to a trillion dollars - For readers who want to know, an important account is offered in a pair of new Mercatus Center working papers by the George Mason economists Garett Jones and Daniel Rothschild, who did field research on what they call the supply side of the stimulus.

The Keynesian theory was that a burst of new government spending would take up some of the slack in aggregate consumer demand. This was justified in 2008, again in 2009, and is still defended now based not on real-world observation but on abstract macroeconomic models that depend on the assumptions of the authors. The Congressional Budget Office's quarterly studies—often cited to claim the stimulus created tens of thousands of new jobs—are based on such a model. By informative contrast, Messrs. Jones and Rothschild interviewed actual people who received stimulus dollars and asked how they spent the money. Read more at the Wall Street Journal...

FNC: Obama Urges Congress to Pass $450B Jobs Plan 'Right Away'

2011-09-08T19:56:00.000-07:00

President Obama used prime-time address to lay out $450 billion jobs plan that would provide tax relief for workers and small businesses, saying Congress should pass it right away as it's 'nothing controversial.' Read more at Fox News...

Message to Congress: Read the Bill!

AEI: Can the Middle Class Be Rebuilt?

2011-09-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

What Should Government Do? Less
By Andrew G. Briggs - As a foundation for the middle class, good jobs, stable families and individual creativity are hard to beat. America didn't generate the strongest middle class in history by having lots of bureaucrats and rules but by having few of them, creating a chaotic economy in which college dropouts become C.E.O.'s and seemingly only political offices are handed down father-to-son. Read more at American Enterprise Institute

Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at AEI.

WND: Obama slips DREAM Act amnesty past Congress

2011-09-08T01:44:00.000-07:00

A new enforcement memo handed down by the director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week has some accusing the White House of running around Congress to implement the DREAM Act – and consequent amnesty for some illegal immigrants – by executive fiat. Read more at World Net Daily...