Current Events - February 28, 2013

A Pattern of Abuse Emerges, From Top Down

 This morning, I noted that -- taken in context -- what Gene Sperling wrote to Bob Woodward didn't qualify as an outright "threat," at least to me.

It's worth wondering why The White House so quickly released the Sperling email, though.  Was it to prevent other members of the MSM from coming forward with their own stories of abuse at the hands of Obama's people? If so, it may be too late.

Ron Fournier, late of the AP and now of the National Journal, tells of hectoring and abuse from "a senior White House official" so severe that he finally told that person to buzz off -- a first for him in his career.  Lanny Davis -- a former Clinton aide -- likewise revealed this morning on WMAL that he, too, was threatened. And don't forget the administration bullying of CBS reporter Sheryl Attkisson, when she was reporting on Fast and Furious; Attkisson says "they literally screamed at me and cussed at me."

A New York Times report on Valerie Jarrett also details attacks on allies like the ACLU's director and Cornel West.

These are stories that ought to be told.  One wonders whether the abuse would even have occurred in the first place had there not been a media atmosphere so worshipful that it led administration members to believe they could act this way with impunity.

After all, the administration paid no price for its systematic attempt to discredit Fox News back in 2009.  And remember this gem from the San Francisco Chronicle back in 2011, when The White House threatened to remove one of its reporters (and possibly other Hearst reporters) from the press pool and then lied about it? Chronicle editor Ward Bushee released a statement at the time:

Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.

The White House has been acting this way for quite some time.  Note the observations of White House Dossier's Keith Koffler, back on March 14 of 2011:

The White House bullies reporters to try to ensure favorable coverage. When White House officials, particularly members of the press office, see a story they don’t like, they often call and verbally abuse the reporter who wrote the piece.

In diatribes often peppered with obscenities, they complain of profound injustice, bias, lack of relevance – anything they can think of to get reporters to back off their story.

It’s not just a series of uncontrolled outbursts. It is a planned, methodical, and highly artificial effort to either squash a story or get inside a reporter’s head so they think twice about doing a piece next time that negatively impacts Obama.

That this is an actual policy is evident from the consistency of the practice and its implementation by nearly every member of the White House press office staff. They are all nice, affable people who suddenly switch into an unmarked gear and begin running you over at full speed.

I have been told by one Obama flack that a story was “horseshit” and by another that “you’re really going to win a fucking Nobel Prize for that one.” A third, while he was working on the campaign in 2008, told me he “almost fell out of my chair” when he heard I was working on a certain piece and proceeded with a profanity-laced analysis of its weaknesses.

A fourth, who I’d thought was the good cop among the bunch, had a sudden change of personality in his office one day when he tore into a rather routine article of mine that barely grazed the president.

And I’d never even heard from former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Even President Obama has acknowledged Gibbs could give reporters a hard time.

All this while I was a member of the mainstream press with Roll Call, before I launched this blog.

Despite Woodward's weak protestations that's he's sure the President knows nothing about any of the threats, what the facts suggest is that the tactic comes from the top.  Obama's bullied a wide variety of targets -- from the Supreme Court (actually, twice), to (pre-campaign) Paul Ryan, and of course, Mitt Romney, running a campaign that reached a new low in ugly distortion. 

The real problem is that a meek, compliant and largely-supportive press has declined to report about The White House behavior in the kind of systematic way that would bring it to public attention.  If the Woodward kerfuffle succeeds finally in precipitating this kind of coverage, then perhaps it's worth something, after all. 

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/carolplattliebau/2013/02/28/a-pattern-of-abuse-emerges-n1522732

Indoctrination? Houston Public School Assembly Slams Bush and Heaps Praise on Obama

 The Katherine Smith Elementary School in Houston held an assembly on Tuesday. The program — which was forwarded to Houston radio host Joe Pags — was innocently titled, “A Dream Come True – Living in the present by remembering the past and looking forward to the future.”

Image: Facebook

According to the program, the show featured three cast members — one student acting as a speaker and two as Michelle and Barack Obama, and students singing seven songs. As you might expect from the title of the show, and the image below (also from the cover page), most of the songs are a salute to civil rights heroes like Rosa Parks and Dr. Matin Luther King, Jr. But there is also considerable adoration heaped upon President Obama.

Image: Facebook

While the majority of the program might be considered to be an over-the-top tribute to President Obama, the very first song, “Feels Like Change” actually takes a shot at President Bush.

Caption: Facebook

The rest of the songs, as they were performed:

I Have A Dream – Dr. King is the complete focus of this song.

It’s A New Day – This song sounds more like something that was sung the morning after Obama’s first win in 2008.

I Believe – Another song with lyrics that seem to come from 2008 and the days leading up to and just after the election.

This One’s For You – This song is a complete tribute or salute to President Obama.

Image: Facebook

Following that Obama tribute was another song that tied the president to Rosa Parks and Dr. King.

“Rosa Sat” is quoted on the front page of the program and includes an oft-repeated refrain:

Rosa sat so Martin could walk

Martin walked so Barack could Run

Barack ran, he ran and he won

So that all our children could fly.

Those words are repeated six times during the song. But there are some other verses that have raised eyebrows from parents:

Thousands of people that November night.

All of us here were for the long fight.

Now we’re as one,

Creating a new nation.

Join together in celebration.

By having students sing “all of us here were for the long fight” assumes that 100% of the children were supporters of the president. Were they? Additionally, some parents have asked about the line saying, “Now we’re as one, creating a new nation.”

TheBlaze has contacted the Katherine Smith Elementary School several times, requesting an interview with Principal Salazar.  As of this writing, Ms. Salazar has not responded to this request. We have also asked Terry Greer, the Superintendent of the Houston Independent School District to comment on the topic.

As this story was going to press, we received the following response from Superintendent Greer’s spokesperson.

The song lyrics you received were used as part of an after-school PTO program celebrating Black History Month at the school.  Students who participated had signed permission slips from their parents to participate in this after-school event.  They danced to the music, but did not sing or otherwise recite the lyrics.  Copies of the lyrics were given to the parents, but not the students.   This program was organized by three first-year teachers, who mistakenly failed to get the principal’s approval to distribute the song lyrics.  After reviewing the lyrics, the principal agrees that some of the songs were overly political and should not have been included in the program.  The teachers who coordinated the program have been reminded that materials such as this must receive prior approval by the principal in the future.  The principal apologizes to those who may have been offended by some of the lyrics that were included in the PTO program.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/28/indoctrination-houston-public-school-assembly-slams-bush-and-heaps-praise-on-obama/

President Obama’s Legacy: Government Greed

Americans know that at least 3 percent of federal spending is wasteful.

 By Governor Bobby Jindal
It seems as if President Obama sends out another cabinet secretary every hour to tell the public about the dire consequences we will face if the sequestration cuts are not averted.

You’ve heard them — no vaccinations for children, teachers losing their jobs, less security from terrorist attacks, longer wait times at airports, and fewer food inspections. Now there are even reports that government officials are releasing hundreds of immigrants from deportation centers. What’s next? Is the president going to threaten to open the doors of federal prisons? This is silly.

Sequestration cuts account for less than 3 percent of the federal budget, but the president would have you believe that the world is going to end if they happen. Americans know that at least 3 percent of federal-government spending is wasteful — and they would tell you there’s room to cut the waste without jeopardizing critical services. The president is asking the American people to believe that there is no waste or fat in government. It’s just a ridiculous notion.

It gets better: Even after the sequestration reductions, the federal budget will actually be larger than it was last year. Let that one sink in. Only in Washington, D.C., would this be called a cut.

One idea I had was to delay Obamacare by not implementing the health-insurance exchanges and the Medicaid expansions. This would save tens of billions of dollars, and it wouldn’t cut a program that has already started.

Of course, the president has rejected this idea and every other rational proposal to make these cuts in a way that doesn’t jeopardize services. Instead, he’s using scare tactics and political theater to promote the solution he prefers for every problem — more taxes and more spending.

This week he even rejected an idea that would have given the administration more flexibility to make these reductions in a way that wouldn’t affect critical services. Why, you ask? This administration has an insatiable appetite for higher taxes and government growth. There has been over $600 billion in new spending and nearly $6 trillion in new debt under this president. Last month, he approved over $600 billion in new taxes that will affect nearly every American. Now he wants more money out of our paychecks.

It’s the latest example of why the Obama years will be remembered as the Era of Government Greed. There isn’t a problem President Obama thinks can’t be solved by more taxes and more spending. His solution is always to take more money out of the American economy and put it into the government.

You can’t grow the economy by taking money out of the economy. Yet that’s the president’s plan, and it’s leading us down a dangerous path. First, the greed of Wall Street crippled our economy, and now, President Obama’s Government Greed is threatening to drown our economy.

It’s time for the president to show leadership. It’s time for him to send to Congress a list of reductions that preserves critical services. Every governor has had to balance budgets during tough economic times. Every family has to balance budgets, too. Every business has had to become more efficient and tighten its belt. It’s time for the president to stop campaigning, stop deploying scare tactics, and do his job.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/341834/president-obama-s-legacy-government-greed-gov-bobby-jindal

Frankenquester unraveling: DHS official 'retires' over release of illegals

It didn't a lot of brains to call out the administration for releasing illegal aliens from prison and then blame budget cuts that hadn't even occurred yet. The author of this edition of Obama scaremongering over the sequester - DHS's Gary Mead, executive associate director over enforcement and removal operations at ICE, "retired" immediately after the story broke.
Associated Press:

The senior Homeland Security Department official in charge of arresting and deporting illegal immigrants announced his retirement the same day the agency said that hundreds of people facing deportation had been released from immigration jails due to looming budget cuts, according to a letter obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press. The government said he had told his bosses weeks ago that he planned to retire.

Gary Mead, executive associate director over enforcement and removal operations at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, disclosed his departure in an email to his staff Tuesday afternoon. The announcement of the release of the illegal immigrants had come earlier in the day.

President Barack Obama's spokesman, Jay Carney, said Wednesday that the decision to release the immigrants was made without any input from the White House. He described the immigrants as "low-risk, non-criminal detainees."

The announcement that a few hundred illegal immigrants were being released was among the most significant and direct implications described so far by the Obama administration about the pending, automatic budget cuts that will take effect later this week under what is known as sequestration.

Republicans in Congress quickly criticized the decision and pressed the Homeland Security Department for details.

In an email to his staff obtained by the AP, Mead said he was leaving the agency at the end of April "with mixed emotions." He did not say what prompted his departure. Mead did not immediately respond to an email and a telephone call.

Don't ya love Carney? "Low risk, non criminal" detainees. They wouldn't be in jail if they didn't break the law, Jay, so stop spinning what DHS was really trying to accomplish; scare people with visions of waves of brown people descending on their towns after being released due to budget cuts.

Again, DHS has yet to explain why they had to be relased before the sequester took effect on Friday. If not to put political pressure on Republicans, then what?

Finally, the press is starting to ask some questions about Obama's claims. How far they'll go is another question, but poking holes in Obama's sequester nonsense can only help.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/02/frankenquester_unraveling_dhs_official_retires_over_release_of_illegals.html#ixzz2MDCob1lt

Frankenquester fail #2: Education Secretary Duncan lies about teachers getting 'pink slips' already

Maybe the administration is just too anxious to inflict pain in the American people. First the release of illegal immigrant criminals, before the cuts have even happened. This follows on the heels of Education Secretary Duncan's statement on Face the Nation where he tried to scare parents by saying that "There are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can't come back this fall..."
But when challenged yesterday by the press, Duncan backtracked:

When he was pressed in a White House briefing Wednesday to come up with an example, Duncan named a single county in West Virginia and acknowledged, "whether it's all sequester-related, I don't know."

And, as it turns out, it isn't.

Officials in Kanawha County, West Virginia say that the "transfer notices" sent to at least 104 educators had more to do with a separate matter that involves a change in the way West Virginia allocates federal dollars designated for poor children.

The transfer notices are required by state law and give teachers a warning that they may be moved to a different position next school year. They don't necessarily mean a teacher has been laid off, said Pam Padon, director of federal programs and Title 1 for the Kanawha County public schools. "It's not like we're cutting people's jobs at this point."

She said those 104 notices will ultimately result in the elimination of about five to six teaching jobs, which were likely to be cut regardless of the sequester.

"The major impact is not so much sequestration," she said. "Those five or six jobs would already be gone regardless of sequestration."

This is getting silly. And it is turning into a political disaster for Obama.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/02/frankenquester_fail_2_education_secretary_duncan_lies_about_teachers_getting_pink_slips_already.html#ixzz2MDDDUjM7

Medicaid Expansion -- the New Wealth Killer

It is clear that the Democrats win by creating constituents. They use the ObamaPhones, Food Stamps, and other freebies to accomplish exactly this. The American people are all the while screaming "stop!" But they also scream, "just don't stop mine."

The evidence that public money poured out indiscriminately fosters continued government dependence is undisputed. Although not all government entitlements should be considered welfare, all entitlement programs are from the government. Most individuals drawing social security checks and Medicare benefits are justifiably recovering the dollars they paid in to support the system. That distinction is important.

With the future growth of government services available to the public, it is imperative that we know what is actually happening to Medicaid. Let me explain.

Currently to receive Medicaid coverage in most states the individual has to qualify under many different eligibility factors. This is done because most Medicaid programs are limited in funding and cannot afford to cover all the population. Many individuals do fall in the cracks, and often these individuals are the sickest. But this expansion will still not cure all these ills.

Under present eligibility guidelines and individual must fit in one of the following categories.

• Be the age of 65 or older.

● Be deemed disabled by the Social Security Administration.

● Be under the age of 21.

● Be Pregnant.

● Or be the caretaker of a child under the age of 19.

Income is an eligibility factor on all of the above programs. Available resources are considered as well on many but not all programs and U.S. Citizenship and alien status is also a factor. As an aside, an individual does not have to be a U.S. Citizen to qualify for Medicaid coverage.

The new Medicaid expansion is expected to start January 1, 2014. This massively enhances the eligibility roles by eliminating the disability and caretaker requirements for individuals between the ages of 21 to 65. It also uses a much higher income limit than that previously used and does not consider resources. 

For example, the income limit for an individual that is 20 years old with no children is currently $362.00 net income per month. This amount may vary slightly by state. At age 21 this individual would no longer qualify for any coverage with the exception of pregnancy or family-planning services. These limits are grossly small and are decades old. Primarily this program only fills the gap with hospitalization and emergent care. No one believes the system did not need to be improved.

Now the upcoming Medicaid Expansion will increase the income limit for that same 20 year old to slightly more than $1239.00 net income per month. This individual will potentially remain eligible at the age of 21 and older. Many states will see growth in their programs by as much as 800,000 individuals. 

This program's growth will authorize so many new recipients for Medicaid that it will likely become the new ObamaPhone. Because the income limit is not at the bottom as it is now, many will choose to live within the income limits and not jeopardize that important Medicaid coverage.

The dream of being self-sufficient will most likely be traded for just making sure they don't make too much. We all know growth often comes from wanting better for yourself and your family.

I heard an old story once about an old blue tick hound that sat on the porch and would occasionally make a grievous howl. When the owner was asked why, he explained that the hound was lying on a nail. The owner was then asked why the dog didn't just get up and move, he replied... It don't hurt that much.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/02/medicaid_expansion_--_the_new_wealth_killer.html#ixzz2MDC7g2gu

Low Information Voters? How about a Low Information President?

There is a real possibility, a strong likelihood, that President Obama knows nothing of the nuts and bolts, the details and realities of the positions he promotes.  He rides the Starship Air Force One, thrills adolescent crowds and frames himself with federal employees while orating vapid clichés dowsed in demagoguery.

He drives the fancy car but needs help filling it with gas and couldn't point to the air filter if you popped the hood. Imagery sans leadership.  Celebrity is the accomplishment here, and adoration is the metric.  Polls demonstrate people approve more of him and less of his execution of the responsibilities of office. This Presidency is therefore wrapped in a managed personal imagery that supersedes the measure of ability.

He speaks yet says nothing. He exists before the camera scripted to generalities and clichés. Once this is understood, we can sense there is no more. True leadership and real understanding of the issues just aren't there.  Recall a few instances.

There was the Paul Ryan Obamacare summit in which Ryan began to peel back the skin on the Affordable Care Act.  Ryan began reading from the bill itself, and as he did Obama's eyes glazed over.  When Ryan was finished, Obama had nothing of substance to say.  Dismissive and aloof, he pushed out a short narrative of banalities and bromides.

Did Obama know enough to defend his own program?

There was also the Univision interview in which Obama declared that George W. Bush began Fast and Furious back in 2007.  This is inherently false.  There was a similar program, granted.  But, the program had ended and, by the way, the program attempted to capture gun runners. Two glaring differences.  But did Obama know these facts? At first one thinks there is a twisting of the truth by the President.  But, there is a strong possibility that indeed he believed what he said based on what he had been told.

Dr. Benjamin Carson revealed his version of the world and the shortfalls of Obamacare standing a few feet from the President himself.  Obama's body language, as he was forced to bear witness, spoke volumes. This was the closest to an exchange between Obama and a critic of his beloved health insurance initiative to date.  But there was no exchange.  There was no defense. There was no telepromptered pre-authored clichéd speech to deliver.

Regarding the Benghazi incident, Obama suggested that for him to dig in and learn the details and facts of that 9/11 day would be to somehow interfere with an FBI investigation, an investigation that to date has provided nil. Wouldn't, shouldn't a President's attitude be more in the vein of "I will find out what happened and I will report back to the nation."?

He declares that he has cut over a trillion dollars, somewhere.  He has been told this and it seems he believes it.

He will not engage a critic and nor defend his positions in detail.  He can not apparently even engage a questioning reporter nor engage his congressional opposition. In my opinion, he couldn't last 5 minutes in a fact-driven analysis of that which he promotes. The President doesn't meet with the political opposition to initiate compromise because he simply couldn't keep up his end of the argument. His game is to broadcast insipid generalities wrapped in demagoguery and reliant on an arrangement that disallows honest questioning.  

Can we recall anytime that Mr. Obama had control and knowledge of the facts of an issue?

I maintain that Obama really believes that George Bush started Fast and Furious.

I maintain that Paul Ryan has read more of the Obama Care bill than the President.

I think he actually believes he has trimmed over 1 Trillion dollars from the budget and that the sequestration is a "real" cut rather than merely a trimming of the rate of increase in federal spending.

The president operates only on the information he is given. That is understandable.  But does he sense that perhaps his information is flawed?  Does he care? Not likely.

Obama's non-engagement and aversion to compromise is actually seated in his complete lack of knowledge, and therefore inability to defend his agenda or even forge a compromise.  He is inactive in leadership and compromise because he simply lacks the ability and issue knowledge to lead and compromise.

It is becoming apparent that the President is purposely kept in a bubble by his handlers, protected by the aegis of screened questioning. He is merely a one trick pony with the trick being nothing but media-enabled and unrebutted declarative demagoguery delivered to fawning audiences and broadcast to the clinically under informed.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/low_information_voters_how_about_a_low_information_president.html#ixzz2MDGcKvhu

'Forward!' They Cried

 Benito Mussolini is one of history's most reviled men. He was also a socialist. Mussolini began as a socialist;. Alessandro Mussolini, his father, preached a revolutionary socialism of Italian nationalism, anarchism, socialism, and communism. Alessandro had a great influence on Benito, and shaped his early political views.

But in later years Benito determined that socialism was a failure because it did not recognize nationalism and natural inferiority. These revelations led to his expulsion from the socialist party and his rebirth as a fascist.

In an effort to evade military service, Mussolini fled to Switzerland in 1902, but returned to Italy in 1904. He worked as a journalist for the next ten years, eventually becoming editor of Avanti! (the Italian word for 'forward'), the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party. But WWI changed everything. Italy was initially neutral, and Avanti! supported that position. Mussolini's views concerning neutrality changed, and in September 1914, he wrote several articles supporting Italy's entry into the war. The articles caused strife among his fellow socialists and in November 1914 he was expelled from Italy's socialist party. 

Mussolini joined the Italian army and was sent to fight at Isonzo, on the eastern end of the Italian Front near the Isonzo River. A mortar bomb exploded during a training exercise, killing four of Mussolini's fellow soldiers. He escaped alive, but spent six months in the hospital, where 44 mortar shell fragments were removed from his body.

Upon army discharge and return to Milan, Mussolini started his own paper, Il Popolo d'Italia (The People of Italy), with dissidents from Italy's Socialist Party. The paper became the foundation of the Fascist movement in Italy after WWI, advocating nationalism, militarism, and Italian irredentism. Fascism was a form of socialism that was very nationalistic, anti-democratic, relied on military conquest, and allowed for private businesses only under close government supervision and regulation. [emphasis mine] 

Mussolini, by the way, maintained a correspondence with Vladimir Lenin, one of the founders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Mussolini became head of the Italian Socialist Party at the Congress of Reggio Emilia, preaching Marxist socialism that prompted Vladimir Lenin to write in a Russian publication that the party of the Italian socialist proletariat has taken the right path. Ironically, Lenin wanted a voluntary union of nations for the construction of socialism. 

Italy was governed by Mussolini's fascist regime starting in 1925, fully eight years before Hitler came to power in Germany. Italian fascism was the older brother of Nazism, a fact Hitler himself acknowledged. Hitler was a great admirer of Mussolini, but the admiration was not reciprocated. Mussolini did not like Hitler -- at first. However, Hitler supported Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, which eventually led Mussolini into an alliance with Hitler. 

Adolf Hitler, also one of the most reviled men in history, was, by his own admission, a socialist. Hitler, leader of Germany's NAZI (National Socialist German Workers' Party) party told Otto Strasser in 1930, "I am a Socialist, and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend, Count Reventlow." 

Hitler practiced "state socialism," a dictatorship with a goal of near absolute economic control for economic development and national power, all supposedly to benefit the people. Hitler said, "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak." And, "Fascists were convinced that, as Hitler told an enthusiastic Mussolini, 'capitalism has run its course'."

Bottom line: "Socialism and fascism are both forms of statism, forms of government in which the government is given complete or extensive control over the lives of its citizens." Though they do have some technical differences, fascism and socialism are basically the same. Both socialism and fascism are vehemently opposed to capitalism. (By the way, this article provides a very good examination of socialism and fascism.) 

So? Why this history lesson, you ask? What about socialism? Simply this: it's amazing the similarities between Hitler's and Mussolini's socialism, and that of Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., along with their views on capitalism. This history lesson, then, illustrates what may lie ahead for this country if Obama continues with his "reforms", his wealth reallocation, and his view of social justice. 

First, some indisputable facts about socialism from Campaign Life Coalition. 

"... socialists eventually seek to extinguish religion from society." "History proves that whenever a nation has embraced this philosophy, it was followed by ruthless totalitarianism, unhinged from moral standards." "Socialist/communist leaders comprise a who's who of the world's worst mass murders including Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, General Mao, Pol Pot and Ceusescu." 

We know by Obama's actions, both past and present, that he is a self-proclaimed socialist. As Stanley Kurtz wrote in June 2012, Obama was, in 1996, a member of the far-left radical New Party that sought to transform America into the sort of socialist democracy common in Europe. As Kurtz wrote, "... Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism." Kurtz continues, "... I wrote here at National Review Online that Obama had been a member of the New Party, his campaign sharply denied it, calling my claim a 'crackpot smear'." But Kurtz had the last say: the Chicago chapter of the New Party listed Obama as a party member beginning in early 1997. 

As Paul Roderick Gregory wrote: "By 'socialist,' I do not mean a Lenin, Castro, or Mao, but whether Obama falls within the mainstream of contemporary socialism as represented, for example, by Germany's Social Democrats, French Socialists, or Spain's socialist-workers party? By this criterion, yes, Obama is a socialist." 

Gregory continues, "The European welfare state takes one half of national output to provide state health care, pensions, extended unemployment benefits, income grants, and free higher education. Failed nationalizations taught European socialists to leave enterprise in private hands and coerce it through taxation and regulation to contribute to what the state deems the 'social welfare'." Sound familiar? By looking at Europe, you would think that Obama is doing all he can to remake the U.S. into a European welfare state.

Saul Alinsky, a socialist and a founder of social activism, wrote the book Rules for Radicals, which outlined many of the tactics used today in community organizing campaigns. Alinsky taught that true revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism. Rather, they cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky created many organizations, including the Industrial Areas Foundation, which trained Obama in organizing tactics. Any doubt that Alinsky's socialist views and tactics were imparted to Obama are laid to rest by the fact that Alinsky's son, Lee David Alinsky, praised Obama on his ability to perform Saul's tactics, saying that Barack "learned his lesson well." 

Obama, while at Occidental College, said that "...there would be a revolution of the working class, led by revolutionaries, who would overthrow the capitalist system and institute a new socialist government that would redistribute the wealth." 

In the "Acorn doesn't fall far from the tree" (pun intended) department, consider that Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was an African socialist. Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, sums up the father/son relationship. The word "From" is quite telling. The word is not "Of." Sarah Obama, Obama Jr.'s grandmother, said that the son was getting his ideas from his father. Understanding the dreams of the father is integral to understanding Obama, Jr., our current president. Obama, Sr. supported socialism in Africa as a way to redistribute all that the colonizers had taken (stolen and pillaged in Obama, Sr's mind) from Africa. This certainly explains Obama's redistribution fetish. 

How dare you, leftists will shout, compare Obama to Hitler. Well, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. It seems that MoveOn.org, in 2004, had two potential campaign ads that compared George W. Bush to Hitler. "The two 30-second ads were submitted as part of a contest MoveOn.org sponsored." One ad said that Hitler's war crimes are Bush's 2003 foreign policy. The other ad used computer effects to morph a picture of Hitler into a picture of Bush. Wes Boyd, president of MoveOn.org's Voter Fund, said, "We do not support the sentiment expressed in the two Hitler submissions." I guess Boyd's statement lets the left off the hook, completely exonerates them. 

Consider what Obama is doing to the U.S. today, and how his actions are quite similar to what Hitler did to Germany. Dr. Walter E. Williams wrote: 

"It was decent but misguided earlier generations of Germans -- who would have cringed at the thought of genocide -- who created the Trojan horse for Hitler's ascendancy. Today's Americans are similarly accepting the massive consolidation of power in Washington in the name of social justice. If you don't believe it, just ask yourself: Which way are we headed tiny steps at a time -- toward greater liberty or toward more government control over our lives?" [emphases mine] 

There can be very little, if any, doubt that the left's hero, Obama, is a socialist who is trying to crush capitalism and enact his version of socialism (social justice) through redistribution. And, irony of ironies, his 2012 campaign slogan was the same as the paper Mussolini edited: "Avanti!", or "Forward." 

Is there a lesson in all of this? Hopefully, yes! We can all take solace in what Lady Margaret Thatcher said: "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." How true. I just hope we, as a society, can weather the violent storm that will come when the producers, the taxpayers, say "enough," and cease to support socialism! 

But that's just my opinion.

 
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/forward_they_cried.html#ixzz2MDKOw27u

 It Gets Better

• 

  Former Dem Senator Under Scrutiny

• 

  Al Qaeda on the Warpath

• 

  Bob Menendez 101

It Gets Better

Philadelphia-area businesses fight union bullies

- See more at: http://freebeacon.com/it-gets-better/#sthash.pz2qaoDF.dpuf

Several Philadelphia labor groups allegedly used feces, urine, spit, and fire to persuade businesses to hire union labor and area businesses are fighting back.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Monday ordered members of the International Board of Teamsters Local 107, Pennsylvania’s self-described “most powerful labor organization,” to stop assaulting and spitting on employees, vandalizing vehicles, and obstructing business operations at the Eureka Stone Quarry, Inc.

Jim Morrissey III, whose grandfather started the cement mixing and construction service company, launched the suit after striking drivers dragged a company mechanic from his truck after obstructing the road with nails—an incident captured on surveillance tape.

“He was scared to death, surrounded by six to eight guys he thought were his friends,” Morrissey said.
Local 107 secretary-treasurer Shawn Dougherty downplayed the NLRB ruling.

“This fella’s so litigious that anything that’s said or done with this particular labor dispute is exaggerated,” Dougherty said. “We normally don’t comment on the NLRB decisions.”

Morrissey says he is not anti-labor. He decided to appeal to federal authorities after concluding that local officials would turn a blind eye to the issues plaguing his business.

“I had no choice but the NLRB: They said they were going to put me out of business and they’ve put a tremendous amount of pressure on other groups to not hire us,” he said. “The unions in Philly run the show; it’s a big joke with the police and the politicians—they just look the other way.”

Leo Knepper, executive director at the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, said the legacy of union dominance in the “Keystone State” has created an aura of invincibility among labor groups.

“When anything threatens [union] interests, they react violently,” he said. “Unions have such a strong influence in local politics that it gives them carte blanche to do whatever they want because no one is willing to enforce the law against these guys.”

Morrissey says union intimidation tactics are no longer effective with the availability and affordability of surveillance.

“When you have them on tape, they can’t deny it,” he said. “Technology changes everything and the unions aren’t savvy enough to get that.”

No company has employed technology as devastatingly as Post Brothers Apartments, a real estate firm engaged in a drawn out and oftentimes violent campaign by the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council over a $38 million apartment development at the abandoned Goldtex shoe factory.

Post Brothers awarded half of its construction contracts to union shops. The council demanded 100 percent of the contracts and began picketing and vandalizing the site when construction began in 2012.

The company launched a public campaign of its own after workers discovered feces and urine scattered at the site, oil dumped on its parking lot, and asbestos installed in walls, according to Post Brothers CEO Michael Pestronk.

The company has posted YouTube videos of union leaders assaulting security guards, shared photos of smashed windshields on a public Google Docs account, and argued its case against the unions through its website, PhillyBully.com.

“Our employees feared for their lives, so we got the equipment for personal protection,” Pestronk said. “It wasn’t some masterful calculation: changing political institutions [or] buying politicians costs millions, posting videos to YouTube is cheap and it gets you public attention.”

The Trades Council did not return calls for comment.

The website is already paying dividends. A union member allegedly assaulted Post Brothers employees Chris Gardner and Matt Hunt in December with a crowbar after they attempted to park their car near the work site. Gardner was arrested for assault when he subdued his attacker, who was not charged in the incident.

The police dropped the charges on Tuesday thanks in part to the company’s photo and video evidence, “but mostly because our attorney threatened to sue the city, the police, and the [district attorney],” Pestronk said.
The young real estate executive said he hopes PhillyBully.com “sets an example” on how to combat union intimidation.

“They’re getting desperate so it appears [violence] has been ramping up,” he said. “The mainstream media is not calling attention to it, so it really helps to use YouTube to subvert them and make them pay attention.”

New media is not the only tactic businesses are using to curb union violence. The eastern Pennsylvania chapter of the Association of Builders and Contractors, which represents open shop construction companies, is now offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the union members suspected of burning down a Quaker meetinghouse construction site a few days before Christmas.

“We’ve seen a steady pattern of violence on open shop projects in Philadelphia—anytime open house contractors come in there’s retaliation,” said chapter president Mary Tebeau. “We’re afraid that business owners and developers will bypass this area, so to combat that we came up with a reward to punish those responsible for the bombing.”

A Philadelphia Police Department spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon that there have been no arrests in connection to the incident.

Robert Reeves, president of E. Allen Reeves, Inc., the firm building the Quaker meetinghouse, echoed Tebeau’s concerns, adding that bounties will not do much to deter future violence without institutional change.

“I think there’s a resurgence in violence because unions are contemplating their loss of market share,” he said. “I wish that leaders in the Philadelphia region would speak up against violence. They don’t tolerate it in schools, but they look the other way when it’s their supporters.”

Some politicians at the state level are looking to diminish the amount of influence wielded by unions at the state and local level through labor reforms, including right-to-work legislation introduced earlier this year.

“There are a lot of unfair policies enacted on behalf of Big Labor back when it had clout, but the demographics spell trouble for unions,” central Pennsylvania state Rep. Stephen Bloom said. “The Philadelphia area is still a bastion for union influence, but it’s waning there as it is across the state and the balance of power is shifting and inevitably we’ll get to the point where we’ll adopt labor reforms necessary for economic survival.”

http://freebeacon.com/it-gets-better/#sthash.pz2qaoDF.dpuf  

But the ball is broken

 

Steve has shooting tonight so I'm going to keep reading the Robb book after the boys' run and dinner.

That's about it.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster 

Current Events - February 27, 2013

An Existential Threat to Liberal Ideology

All of the hysteria and panic from left-leaning politicians and media commentators over the last month or so regarding the dire consequences of sequestration have left me somewhat baffled. How could anyone possibly believe that growing the federal government's budget by something less than the ridiculous automatic scheduled annual growth rate of 7% could be catastrophic? In effect, the sequester would return the federal government to 2012 expenditure levels in 2013. Has inflation been so severe in the last twelve months that such a decrease in the increase would bring upon us wildfires, tainted meat, airport lines, and loss of all medical care? ....

This is a disaster, according to liberal politicians and commentators.

Or is it? Perhaps the real danger is that sequestration will occur, and people's lives will go on as normal. The liberal myth that all government spending is critically important will fade away. People might actually realize that we can survive and thrive with smaller government. In actuality, liberals are very concerned that their fundamental philosophy -- that prosperity is driven by government spending and government growth -- might be discredited. How can government justify confiscating and wasting trillions of dollars more than we take in every year if nobody believes these expenditures matter? Maybe those dollars will finally be recognized as pork, waste, union handouts, and paybacks to donors and friends. Maybe we really could cut the size of government by even more than the woefully inadequate 2% and we'd all be just fine.

This is the existential threat to liberalism. It's about the lie being exposed, not the paltry decrease in the increase. Hence the sound and the fury.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/02/an_existential_threat_to_liberal_ideology.html#ixzz2M7KDWYox

The White House Court Jesters of Sequester

Traffic alert: There's a massive clown car pileup in the Beltway. And with the White House court jesters of sequester behind the wheel, no one is safe. Fiscal sanity, of course, is the ultimate victim.

President Obama has been warning America that if Congress allows mandatory spending "cuts" of a piddly-widdly 2 percent to go into effect this week, the sky will fall. The manufactured crisis of "sequestration" was Obama's idea in the first place.

But that hasn't stopped the Chicken Little in Chief from surrounding himself with every last teacher, senior citizen and emergency responder who will be catastrophically victimized by hardhearted Republicans. Curses on those meanie Republicans! How dare they acquiesce to the very plan for "cuts" -- or rather, negligible reductions in the explosive rate of federal spending growth -- that Obama himself hatched?

How low will the kick-the-can Democrats go? Among the ridiculous claims the administration is making: The National Drug Intelligence Center will lose $2 million from its $20 million budget. That scary factoid appears in an ominous Office of Management and Budget report purporting to calculate the Sequester Disaster. So lock the doors and hide the children, right?

Wrong. As Reason magazine's Mike Riggs points out, the NDIC shut down in June 2012, and some of its responsibilities were absorbed by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Ready for more reckless, feckless farce? Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano played Henny Penny during a panicked speech at the Brookings Institution Tuesday. She warned that her agency's "core critical mission areas" would be undermined by the sequester. To cynically underscore the point, "waves" of illegal aliens were released this week from at least three detention centers in Texas, Florida and Louisiana, according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed the release of some illegal immigrants Monday night, but would not say how many or from which detention centers.

The real punch line, as I've reported relentlessly, is that the catch and release of criminal illegal aliens has been bipartisan standard operating procedure for decades. The persistent deportation and removal abyss allows hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens -- many of them known repeat criminal offenders -- to pass through the immigration court system and then disappear into the ether because we have no determined will to track them down and kick them all out of the country.

While Napolitano shrieks about decimation of the DHS workforce, DHS workers tell me that the double-dipping of retired ICE brass -- who get back on the payroll as "rehired annuitants" -- is rampant.

While this open-borders White House phonily gnashes its teeth over the sequester's effect on national security, its top officials are lobbying for a massive nationwide amnesty that would foster a tsunami of increased illegal immigration for generations to come. The shamnesty beneficiaries will be welcomed with open arms, discounted college tuition, home loans and Obamacare. And as every outraged rank-and-file border agent will tell you, DHS top officials have instituted systemic non-enforcement and sabotage of detention, deportation and removal functions.

In another emetic performance, Obama parachuted into a Virginia naval shipyard this week to decry Pentagon cuts that would gut our military. But I repeat: The reductions in spending are CINO: Cuts In Name Only. If the sequester goes into effect, Pentagon spending will increase by $121 billion between 2014 and 2023. Fiscal watchdog GOP Sen. Tom Coburn adds that $70 billion is spent by the Defense Department on "nondefense" expenditures each year.

Send in the clowns. Wait. Don't bother. They're here. 

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/02/27/the-white-house-court-jesters-of-sequester-n1521244/page/full/

The Sequester Revelation

Obama has the legal power to avoid spending-cut damage.

And when the Republicans opened the seventh seal of the sequester, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black and the stars fell unto the Earth; and our nation's ability to forecast severe weather, such as drought events, hurricanes and tornados, was seriously undermined. Lo, and the children were not vaccinated, and all the beasts starved in the zoos, and the planes were grounded.
 
Or so President Obama and his Cabinet prophets have been preaching ahead of the automatic budget cuts due to begin Friday. The bit about the weather is a real quote from the White House budget director.

But if any of these cataclysms do come to pass, then they will be mostly Mr. Obama's own creation. The truth is that the sequester already gives the White House the legal flexibility to avoid doom, if a 5% cut to programs that have increased more than 17% on average over the Obama Presidency counts as doom. 

According to Mr. Obama and his budget office, the sequester cuts are indiscriminate and spell out specific percentages that will be subtracted from federal "projects, programs and activities," or PPAs. Except for the exemptions in the 2011 budget deal, the White House says it must now cut across the board regardless of how important a given PPA is. Food inspectors, say, will be treated the same as subsidies for millionaire farmers.

Not so fast. Programs, projects and activities are a technical category of the federal budget, but the sequester actually occurs at the roughly 1,200 broader units known as budget accounts. Some accounts are small, but others contain hundreds of PPAs and the larger accounts run to billions of dollars. For the Pentagon in particular, the distinction between PPAs and accounts is huge. This means in most cases the President has the room to protect his "investments" while managing the fiscal transition over time. 

Congress might have intended for the sequester to apply to PPAs, but they also wrote a sloppy law at the 11th hour. The Budget Control Act of 2011 disinterred the lapsed sequester rules of the Gramm-Rudman Deficit Control Act of 1985, though without anyone looking at the details.

Gramm-Rudman said the sequester applies to accounts, not PPAs, under a temporary "part-year" budget. As it happens the government is operating under just such a continuing resolution now, not a normal appropriations bill. If Congress returned to regular order in 2014 or later, the sequester would indeed trickle down to PPAs.

The White House has even more discretion than this. When Gramm-Rudman led to a 4.3% sequester in 1986, Congress passed a special bill that created the category of PPAs and spent 1,119 pages defining what they were for 1986. Congress has never done anything of the sort since, and thus as the government has grown PPA definitions now vary among Cabinet departments and sometimes even account to account in the same department.

Lacking legislation, the White House assigns these amorphous units in its annual budget. Even if the lawyers insisted the sequester must apply to "PPAs" per se, the budgeteers could formally construe PPAs in ways that preserve a work-around.

This White House has never been fussy when a statutory text or even the Constitution interferes with its political ambitions. (See ObamaCare, immigration executive orders, recess appointments and much else.) Could it be that Mr. Obama is exaggerating the legal stringency of the sequester in a gambit to force Congress to shut it off?

In any case, Republicans in Congress are prepared to give Mr. Obama still more spending flexibility than he already has to mitigate any damage, real or imagined. One option is to lock in spending at post-sequester levels and grant department heads so-called transfer authority to shift cash between accounts, after consultation with the committees on the Hill.

Mr. Obama ought to love that, since it is precisely the administrative state he says he wants—the rule of technocrats who evaluate budget priorities without political interference. But liberals are now howling about more liberal executive power because this plan would also very modestly reduce the size of government.
It would also negate Mr. Obama's days-of-wrath sequester campaign. To wit:

If air traffic control and airport security really are the models of government efficiency that anyone who has ever traveled knows they are not, perhaps Homeland Security could begin by targeting some of the programs identified by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn this week. These include necessities such as grants for a security conference in San Diego that featured "zombie apocalypse training" or funds for towns like Keene, New Hampshire (pop. 23,000) to purchase armored tank-like vehicles called Bearcats. Seriously. 

Before furloughing park rangers, maybe start with the 10% of the 75,000 Department of the Interior employees who are conserving the wilderness of Washington, D.C. Before slashing cancer research, stop funding the $130-million-a-year National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine that studies herbs and yoga. Cut after-school funding only after consolidating the 105 federal programs meant to encourage kids to take math and science classes.

Neither the legal details of the sequester nor the practical work of reforming government are as interesting to the media as Mr. Obama's invocations of plagues and pestilence. The real revelation is that if the world does end, it will be Mr. Obama's choice.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323884304578328211144987052.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

PK'S NOTE: And was seen for about two minutes.

One Percent Perks: First Lady's $9K Oscar Dress

First Lady Michelle Obama certainly looked lovely during her surprise appearance to announce the Best Picture Oscar winner Sunday night.

That stunning silver dress must have cost a fortune, an odd choice for a woman whose husband is constantly seeking ways to punish the rich and once declared, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."

In fact, the dress in question had a price tag that would keep families currently looking for work in Age of Obama afloat for months.

The Washington Free Beacon reports the "silver sparkler was a custom design by Naeem Khan with an estimated price tag of $8,990."

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/02/26/one-percent-first-lady-dress-price-tag

Barack Obama Pulls a Move Almost Worthy of Saddam Hussein

Shortly before U.S. troops stormed Iraq to oust its dictator, Saddam Hussein released thousands of prisoners from Iraqi jails. Some were petty criminals, some were hardcore, some were terrorists. Hussein unleashed them to build his own popularity and to sow chaos.

Today, Barack H. Obama’s Department of Homeland Security is doing this:

The sequester is officially still three days away, but the Obama administration already is making the first cuts, with officials confirming that the Homeland Security Department has begun to release what it deems low-priority illegal immigrants from detention.

The move is proving controversial. Immigrant-rights groups say it shows the administration was detaining folks it never should have gone after in the first place, while Republicans questioned the decision-making.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that runs the detention facilities, said in a statement that the “current fiscal climate” has forced it to do a review of spending, and part of that is taking a look at who is being detained.

“As a result of this review, a number of detained aliens have been released around the country and placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release,” ICE said in a statement.

The cynicism of the move is breathtaking, even for this cynical administration. The “current fiscal climate” is one in which we are spending more than a trillion dollars per year than we take in. The 2009 stimulus spending is locked in. The sequestration threatens just $22 billion this year — and the president gets to choose where to cut. If the sky falls, it’s being brought down on our heads by this unethical rogue president.
So these releases are his choice. And he’s choosing them for pure racial politics and demagoguery. He’ll blame it all on Republicans, while shoring himself up with the amnesty chorus.

More: The president is also threatening to drop our border guard. In a rational age, these acts would be impeachable. Not too many years ago Californians recalled a governor for offering drivers licences to illegal aliens, and here we have a president flagrantly violating his oath to defend the nation.

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/02/26/barack-obama-pulls-a-move-almost-worthy-of-saddam-hussein/

It's the Vanishing Ink, Stupid

We have all tried labeling the things that make the Obama administration troubling. This president was never sufficiently vetted and many questions remain unanswered. Everything about him is suspect. If he were any other president, especially a Republican he would not be in office.

The truth about his birth certificate, college records, selective service documents, and radical associations are well hidden. To even raise these legitimate questions, is to be vilified. 

Not only are their questions about President Obama's past, we wonder about his integrity in the present. He has voided or modified almost every confidence he has given the legislature and the American people. He dishonored his signed agreement on abortion in ObamaCare. He has changed his stance on gay marriage and his claims that he will not take our guns ring hollow. How can he be trusted?

The Republicans never seem to win the argument or the battle. Maybe it is because they are tempered to take the president (any president) at his word. From this point forward they need to heed the words of a Democrat insider and act accordingly.

Evan Bayh said it best with his response to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday when asked about the president "moving the goal post" in the upcoming sequester:

EVAN BAYH, FORMER U.S. SENATOR, D-IND.: Well, he may be, Chris, but, as you know, in Washington some agreements are written in blood and others are written in vanishing ink. It is pretty clear this is one of the latter and, there was an intervening election and the president won and his popularity is very high right now. So it's not unexpected that he'd revisit the agreement and ask for something more to his liking.

We would do well to remember these words when we challenge this president. The question should always be asked. Is this one of those deals signed in vanishing ink?

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/02/its_the_vanishing_ink_stupid.html#ixzz2M7Jbj7K3

The Growing Tyranny of the Political Elite

Recently, the White House released a photo of the president shooting skeet.  But where's the snap of him fishing for bass?  Apparently the White House felt compelled to portray Obama as a marksman in light of the widespread pushback over the administration's gun control agenda but felt no urgency to defend the prospect of the EPA's potential regulation of lead in fishing weights.  Yet the agency seriously entertained just such a ban last year.  What's next?  The lead in barbells?

For hundreds of years, human beings have used lead for many purposes, and life on earth has not exactly come to an end.  Now we are told that the lead used in hunting and fishing is harming animals and fish, and it may just have to stop.  The scary thing is that one individual, an appointed bureaucrat directing the Environmental Protection Agency, has the power to impose such a ban.

The pattern is familiar with this administration.  A small cadre of elite administrators, czars, judges, or politicians -- often just one person -- thinks it (or he or she) has the right to decide what's best for 320 million Americans. Without adequate information, debate, or cost analysis, regulations are written and imposed, and no one, not even the people's representatives in the House of Representatives, has the right to influence them.

Political elites have always existed in America, and during the past 100 years they have gravitated toward the Democratic Party.  FDR's "brain trust," which included Guy Tugwell and Hugh Johnson, was just one example.  But perhaps no administration in our history has been controlled by elites to the extent that the Obama presidency has.  With academics like Cass Sunstein and crony capitalists like those backing green energy projects calling the shots, the elite have stepped in, determined to rule in place of the public will.

What is now happening was predicted -- and celebrated -- over forty years ago by Robert L. Heilbroner, one of the darlings of the New Left.  In The Limits of American Capitalism, Heilbroner laid out a plan by which the innately conservative leanings of the American people could be quashed and replaced by the centralized control of a political elite.  Heilbroner's book concludes with a chilling vision of the way forward.  What he advocates is, in effect, a socialist totalitarian state, where the government controls every aspect of human life.  In the name of reform, this statist system would regulate if not nationalize all major industries -- but it would also go farther than that.

What Heilbroner envisaged was the rise of a ruling elite centralized in government, media, and the universities.  This group of decision-makers would operate "on behalf of" the public and on the basis of "scientific principles" of social control.  As Heilbroner writes, "[n]ot alone economic affairs ... but the numbers and location of the population, its genetic quality, the manner of social domestication of children, the choice of lifework -- even the duration of life itself -- are all apt to become subjects for scientific investigation and control" (The Limits of American Capitalism, New York, 1966, pp. 129-130).

Heilbroner's books were bestsellers in the 1960s, widely read and admired by liberals everywhere.  They were, in effect, neo-Keynesian, pro-statist instruction manuals studied by the likes of Bill Ayers and Cass Sunstein, President Obama's tutors in state control and regulation.

Heibroner's books popularized the liberal premise that the political elite has the right and obligation to make fundamental decisions on behalf of the mass of citizens.  In doing so, Heilbroner understood, the elite must find ways to subvert the naturally conservative inclinations of the people -- especially those lumpen-headed businessmen whom Heilbroner so despised.  Decision-making must be shifted from individuals and elected representatives to bureaucrats and judges appointed by leftist politicians.  Public opinion must be shaped and molded by elitist academics and journalists.  The will of the state must be imposed, by violence if necessary. 

This was the future of America, according to Robert L. Heilbroner, and it is the vision of America adopted by those young activists in the 1960s and 1970s who now constitute the leadership of the Democratic Party.
Heilbroner believed that it would take hundreds of years to overturn democracy in America, in part because of the nation's widespread support of capitalism and the country's pesky tradition of individual rights.  He noted, however, that the process could be speeded up in the event of a severe economic crisis.  Another great national depression or prolonged recession would make it possible for government to enact a series of "reforms" that would shift control from the private sector to government.  Government would then control not just major sectors of the economy, but the personal lives of all citizens.  Their incomes, their health care, their educations, their home mortgages, their communications and entertainment, their access to news and information would all fall under the control of the political elite.  At that point, Heilbroner believed, utopia would be at hand.

Everything that Heilbroner predicted is now coming to pass.  Attorney General Holder has waged a virtual war against Arizona's attempt to defend itself against unchecked immigration.  Congress has created an office of consumer affairs with broad powers to regulate financial transactions. A European-style bureaucrat has been appointed to direct the rationing of medical services.  And the EPA believes that it has the authority not just to police hunting and fishing supplies, but to regulate carbon dioxide, a natural product of the act of breathing.

The preferred modus operandi, in fact, is to appoint a single individual with the power to control some large part of American life.  So much power has now been concentrated in the hands of a handful of appointees, most of them reporting directly to the president, that it is now doubtful whether America can still be considered a democratic nation.  Government has become the enemy of the people, because it is now in the hands of left-wing elitists who are opposed to traditional American values and who have only contempt for the democratic process.

Fortunately, Americans are becoming more aware of the concentration of power within the new political elite and more skeptical of the elite's ability to govern.  While the president's job approval rating has for the moment risen following his election victory, a growing number of Americans "strongly disapprove" of his performance.  An even larger percentage finds that Congress, with leaders like Democrat Harry Reid in charge of the Senate, is incapable of governing.

What's needed is to make 2014 another 2010 and throw the rascals out -- all of them who support Obama's unconstitutional "recess" appointments and agency power grabs.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/the_growing_tyranny_of_the_political_elite.html#ixzz2M7LlidXE

Voting Rights at the Supreme Court Today

To understand what’s going on in the Supreme Court today, we have to go back in time.

The year was 1965. Hundreds of people gathered in Selma, Alabama, to march for black Americans’ right to vote. Some states, especially in the South, had set up obstacles to voting, such as charging would-be voters money or making them take a test.

The marchers were beaten back by police with billy clubs and tear gas in what would become a historic outrage. But just a few months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, making it illegal for towns to discriminate in any way in their voting practices.

Johnson said that day:

Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American, in his heart, can justify. The right is one which no American, true to our principles, can deny.

Congress ensured that states could not get around the new law by coming up with more changes to local voting rules. For those areas that had historically discriminated against people, the law required that they check with the feds before making changes to their voting practices. This part of the law is called Section 5.

Section 5 was supposed to be temporary. It was supposed to transition the states into the new law and ensure that they were all implementing it correctly. As President Johnson said at the time, “if any county anywhere in this nation does not want federal intervention, it need only open its polling places to all of its people.”

The problem is, that federal intervention continues to this day. And that is what the Supreme Court is considering today—the outdated Section 5, not the whole Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act provides “broad and powerful protection against discrimination,” explains Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky, a former Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Regardless of the Supreme Court’s take on Section 5, the Voting Rights Act remains in effect to protect all Americans from voter discrimination.

But Section 5 outlived its purpose decades ago—and the federal government is still forcing some voting jurisdictions to justify all of their local rule changes. Von Spakovsky points out:

[Section 5] effectively presumes that all voting-related actions by certain states and jurisdictions are discriminatory and therefore requires that they obtain pre-approval from the federal government for otherwise ordinary and routine actions, such as moving a polling station from a school that is under renovation to another one down the street or drawing new redistricting plans. This is a major and unusual imposition on state sovereignty.

What was originally intended to safeguard individual liberty has become a way for the feds to attack state liberty. For the Department of Justice and many activists, Section 5 merely exists to bully local authorities.

Von Spakovsky says that if Section 5 were struck down, “The only change would be to curb the abuses of federal bureaucrats and check the power and influence of the liberal activist groups that rely on Section 5 to enforce their agendas.”

Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Shelby County (AL) v. Holder, the case raising the question of Section 5’s constitutionality. The case doesn’t threaten anyone’s right to vote; it deals with an outdated provision that is no longer necessary—and in fact has become an unwarranted federal intrusion into local practices.

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/02/27/morning-bell-voting-rights-at-the-supreme-court-today/?roi=echo3-14704930135-11602490-f57dddea048c81b6aa5f92c19de3774c&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Krauthammer’s Take: Failure to Act on Sequester is ‘Forfeiting by Congress of its Constitutional Duties’

According to Charles Krauthammer, Democrats have “refused to lift a finger” to avert the sequester, the disastrous results of which they’ve been broadcasting all week. “This is sort of a forfeiting by the Congress of its constitutional duties to actually allocate the money, to decide where it goes, by giving authority to the president.”

He emphasized that this is a failure by the Senate, which is controlled by the Democrats, rather than the House, where Republicans have proposed legislation that would replace the sequester with alternative spending cuts. 

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/341656/krauthammers-take-failure-act-sequester-forfeiting-congress-its-constitutional-duties-

PK'S NOTE: And include that Obama completely walking away from the Benghazi situation....

Who the heck is running this country?!

I don’t mean that in the rhetorical sense. I mean it literally.

First the Obama White House denied knowing anything about the ATF’s Fast & Furious gunwalking program. Now they are claiming they weren’t at all involved in Immigration & Customs Enforcement’s sudden release of detained illegal immigrants:

The Obama administration had no advance knowledge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s decision to release several hundred illegal immigrants from jail due to looming federal budget cuts, White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

“This was a decision made by career officials at ICE without any input from the White House, as a result of fiscal uncertainty over the continuing resolution, as well as possible sequestration,” Carney told reporters Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, was also unaware of the decision until it was announced, a department official told Politico.

Hm… convenient.

Apparently the buck stops with bureaucrats.

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/02/27/who-the-heck-is-running-this-country/

Also Reads:

Liberals Should Have Known

"But liberals should have known.  They should have known that their vote-winning entitlements were a fraud that discouraged generations of Americans from saving for their old age and creating jobs for their children.  They should have known that a time would come when people would react in outrage to the idea of killing little babies in the womb, for what are we here on this Earth if not for babies?  They should have known that their welfare politics would lead to a cultural implosion, with lower-income women abandoning marriage and lower-income men abandoning work, and both abandoning their children to inner-city chaos.  They should have known that the global warming conspiracy was a con from the beginning, and that its exposure as a cesspool of crony capitalism would touch just about every Democrat in high politics.  They should have known that a century of compulsory government education would lead inevitably to a generation of whining whipped puppies."

Senate GOP ponders ceding power to President Obama

"Days before the March 1 deadline, Senate Republicans are circulating a draft bill that would cancel $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts and instead turn over authority to President Barack Obama to achieve the same level of savings under a plan to be filed by March 8."