By John Ransom
....“For 2013 as a whole,” says ABCNews,
“the economy grew a tepid 1.9 percent, weaker than the 2.8 percent
increase in 2012, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Growth was held
back last year by higher taxes and federal spending cuts.”
And Obamacare.
And Dodd-Frank.
And the War on Energy, the EPA, the IRS, the Fed and the general
problems that Democrats have with adding, subtracting, multiplying and
dividing conspired to keep growth slow. You'd have to be a communist not
to admit of theses facts.
But, if you like your abacus, you can keep your abacus.
“For some reason, today pundits are appalled by the loss of Fed credibility…. Perhaps instead of that,” writes ZeroHedge,
our favorite finance crime fighter, “the sophisticated financial
community should focus on the core of the problem: the Fed's chronic
inability to look even more than a couple of years into the future
without being dead wrong about what transpires, even in the absence of a
great financial crisis (which the Fed never could predict in the first
place of course).”
By Jamie Weinstein
Judging from her interview on “The Daily Show” Thursday, you wouldn’t
be able to tell that Nancy Pelosi is one of the most powerful figures
in Washington.
Throughout her discussion with Jon Stewart, the House
minority leader passed the buck for the government’s failures and acted
as if she is completely removed from any position of responsibility.
“I don’t know,” Pelosi said when asked by Stewart why it was so hard for the government to “get a company to execute” something like building HealthCare.Gov “competently?”
“Well, let me get the House minority leader here, I can ask her, hold
on,” Stewart said through laughter, mocking her answer. “Wait. What do
you mean you don’t know? How do you not know?”
“It’s not my responsibility,” Pelosi said.
Pressed on bureaucratic problems at the Veterans Administration, Pelosi said the failures were “horrible.”
“Seems insane,” Stewart retorted.
“It’s stunning but do something about it,” Pelosi said, as if she was powerless in the matter.
“I was going to say that to you. I was actually going to say that to
you,” Stewart responded, seemingly suggesting that the House minority
leader might have some power to “do something about it” herself.
When Stewart raised the possibility that the revolving door between
government and the world of corporate lobbying might partly be to blame
for government’s inability to implement its programs competently, Pelosi
said Congress really didn’t have that problem.
“The revolving door is not so much Congress as the executive branch,” she said to a disbelieving host
By Tim Graham
Leftist actor-director Robert Redford laid into Republicans in a Sunday
interview on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” Try not to notice this
journalism show began with a Justin Bieber segment and included a
Redford interview. Host Brian Stelter first asked how Redford felt about
Obama. "I think he's a good human being. That's, I think, clear,"
Redford replied. "He's a humanitarian at heart, and that's good. He's
trying to manage an extremely difficult situation. I mean, it's -- it's
almost too much for one person."
He wouldn't say the same for the GOP: “When you have one half whose
only motive is to destroy the motives of the president of the United
States, then you have a diseased system. And I don't think that's his
fault. I think it just makes his job tougher.” Redford lamely claimed
there was bipartisanship in getting to “truth” in Watergate:
REDFORD: We spoke a while back on "All the President's Men Revisited."
There's a moment in that film I'd like to point out that illustrates my
point, which is remember the hearings, the Watergate hearings? And we
have some archival footage in there where you had the panel, Sam Ervin,
Sam Dash -- you had all these guys, and you have the senator from
Tennessee [Howard Baker], and he was conservative. He was a Republican.
You had Republicans and Democrats on this panel. And what you got out
of it was how hard all of them were working together to get to the truth
of something. And I thought, I'm seeing something we don't see today,
bipartisanship, working together to get to the truth for the public
good.
Earth to Redford: In Watergate, can’t it look quite obviously like the
Democrats and their media collaborators had the motive to “destroy the
motives of the President of the United States”? The Republicans were
cooperative in exposing what happened then. Do the Democrats look
cooperative today on Obama scandals like the Benghazi fiasco or Fast
& Furious? Are they interested in the “truth” when the Attorney
General lies before Congress about his knowledge of Fast & Furious?
By Mark Krikorian...We must ensure now that when immigration reform is enacted, there
will be a zero tolerance policy for those who cross the border
illegally or overstay their visas in the future. Why “in the
future”? The long, sorry history of gutting immigration enforcement —
not to mention this particular administration’s brazen contempt for law —
means we need zero tolerance now, not “when immigration reform is enacted.” All new border-crossers should be criminally prosecuted now,
and Congress should pass a measure criminalizing new visa overstayers,
and then the feds should prosecute the violators. Packing this into an
amnesty grand bargain ensures that, as in the past, it won’t happen.
We must enact reform that ensures that a President cannot unilaterally stop immigration enforcement.
How’s that going to happen? The House of Representatives waited an
entire year before expressing a mild squeak of disapproval at Obama’s
unilateral DREAM Act amnesty. If the legislature isn’t going to use its
considerable power now to ensure faithful execution of the laws, what
are a few more paper provisions going to do?
It is past time for this country to fully implement a workable electronic employment verification system.
True, but we have one already, called E-Verify. Why not mention it by
name? Is it because, like Chuck Schumer, they want to scrap it and start
over, all after the illegals get legal status?
Visa and green card allocations need to reflect the needs of employers. Actually they need to reflect the needs of the American people, including the 20 million–plus looking for full-time work.
...One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents. Well, the Constitution does ban bills of attainder,
but I don’t think you could describe it as “one of the great founding
principles.” In any case, we’re not talking about “corruption of blood” —
children suffer for their parents’ mistakes all the time. If you can’t
pay your mortgage, your kids don’t get to keep the house. Being sent
back to your country of citizenship isn’t a punishment.
Individuals Living Outside the Rule of Law . . . people who are living and working here illegally. So even Republicans can’t bring themselves to say “illegal aliens” or even “illegal immigrants”?
There
will be no special path to citizenship for individuals who broke our
nation’s immigration laws — that would be unfair to those immigrants who
have played by the rules and harmful to promoting the rule of law.
What’s unfair to legal immigrants and harmful to the rule of law is
letting the illegal aliens stay legally, not whether they have a
“special path” to citizenship or not. And “no special path” means that
illegals would receive a non-citizenship amnesty, resulting in a large,
permanent helot class. And leaving aside the repugnant principle,
Democrats will demagogue that until Republicans cave and give them all
citizenship anyway.
Amnestied illegals must pass rigorous
background checks, pay significant fines and back taxes, develop
proficiency in English and American civics, and be able to support
themselves and their families (without access to public benefits).
These conditions sound good but have mainly been used to lull skeptics.
The smallish (and illegal) DREAM Act amnesty has legalized some
half-million people, and the crush was so overwhelming for the
bureaucracy that it had to resort to “lean and lite” background checks. Illegals are, almost by definition, poor and won’t be able to pay large fines — they’d all be waived. “Back taxes”
is totally fake; there’s no way to reconstruct a history of tax
obligations. It’s just boob bait to make a measure sound tougher than it
is. Proficiency in English and civics is the same: Making illegals take
a class might help a little, but there’s no way we’re going to revoke
the amnesty given to someone because he fails a test in English and
civics. And avoiding public benefits is a farce. A very large share of
households headed by illegal aliens can make ends meet only because of
welfare they already collect nominally on behalf of their U.S.-born
children.
Finally, none of this can happen before specific
enforcement triggers have been implemented to fulfill our promise to the
American people that from here on, our immigration laws will indeed be
enforced. The use of “triggers” suggests that amnesty would be
written into law but delayed until the benchmarks are met. “Enforcement
first,” which is preferable, means not even a prospective amnesty is
voted on until satisfactory enforcement systems are up and running.
Furthermore, what are the triggers, inputs (like hiring of a certain
number of Border Patrol agents) or results (like three consecutive years
of shrinkage in the illegal population)? And what does “none of this”
refer to? Paul Ryan has suggested that all illegals receive probationary work visas, and thereby be amnestied, before we move forward on enforcement.
The ultimate question: Why is this document being released at all?
Republicans
in Congress should reject any legislative activity on immigration while
the Democrats hold the Senate and the White House. There is no
possibility that a bill even minimally acceptable to conservatives could
win approval from Reid and Obama. As Bill Kristol, no restrictionist
he, wrote on Thursday: “No immigration votes in 2014. Kill the bills.”
By Pat Buchanan
....To understand why and how the Republican Party lost Middle America, and faces demographic death, we need to go back to Bush I.
At the Cold War's end, the GOP reached a fork in the road. The
determination of Middle Americans to preserve the country they grew up
in, suddenly collided with the profit motive of Corporate America.
The Fortune 500 wanted to close factories in the USA and ship
production abroad -- where unions did not exist, regulations were light,
taxes were low, and wages were a fraction of what they were here in
America.
Corporate America was going global and wanted to be rid of its American
work force, the best paid on earth, and replace it with cheap foreign
labor.
While manufacturing sought to move production abroad, hotels, motels,
bars, restaurants, farms and construction companies that could not move
abroad also wanted to replace their expensive American workers.
Thanks to the Republican Party, Corporate America got it all.
U.S. factories in the scores of thousands were shut down, shedding
their American workers. Foreign-made goods poured in, filling U.S.
stores and killing the manufacturers who had stayed behind, loyal to
their U.S. workers.
The Reagan prosperity was exported to Asia and China by the Bush
Republicans. And the Reagan Democrats reciprocated by deserting the Bush
Republican Party and going home. But this was not the end of what this
writer described in his 1998 book, "The Great Betrayal."
As those hotels, motels, restaurants, bars, fast-food shops, car
washes, groceries and other service industries also relished the rewards
of cheap foreign labor, they got government assistance in replacing
their American workers.
Since 1990, some 30 to 40 million immigrants, legal and illegal, have
entered the country. This huge increase in the labor force, at the same
time the U.S. was shipping factories abroad, brought massive downward
pressure on wages. The real wages of Middle Americans have stagnated for
decades.
What was wildly wonderful for Corporate America was hell on Middle
America. But the Republican Party had made its choice. It had sold its
soul to the multinationals. And as it went along with NAFTA, GATT, fast
track and mass immigration, to appease Corporate America, it lost Middle
America.
The party went with the folks who paid for their campaigns, only to lose the folks who had given them their landslides.
When Republicans accede to the demand for amnesty, and immigration
without end, it does not take a political genius to see what is going to
happen. For it is happening now.
By Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
...What Obamacare kicked into gear, Amnesty will finish.
Ann Coulter echoes what I have said in the past:
It’s terrific for ethnic lobbyists whose political clout will skyrocket the more foreign-born Americans we have.
And it’s fantastic for the Democrats, who are well on their way to a
permanent majority, so they can completely destroy the last remnants of
what was once known as “the land of the free.”
The only ones opposed to our current immigration policies are the people.
...Welcome to the worst of all possible worlds, where you have crony
capitalists, corrupt big business, Marxists and elitists all spooning in
public and doing whatever they please – America be damned.
There will also be other ugly consequences such as overloading the immigration system.
Why, how very Cloward and Piven. The overload will not only break us
financially, but will ensure that known hardcore criminals will not be
deported and will be allowed to run free, preying on Americans and
causing the much desired chaos that communists love. A third world hell
will envelop the US and our Ghost of Caesar will reign while fire, poverty, evil and death engulfs the land of the free.
While Republican leaders simply insist
that ‘something big’ has to happen concerning immigration, America sees
this for what it is. It is a maneuver to destroy the Constitution, our
rights and freedoms. A move that does away with our borders and America
as an entity and as a bastion of freedom for all. It is a move into
dictatorship and chains that our Founding Fathers warned us against.
This is how a Republic dies – with thunderous applause by the Marxist
elite and their idiot sycophants.
...Pat Buchanan says that Boehner will lose the Speakership
if he pushes Amnesty. I wouldn’t count on it. There are so many
Progressives now on the Right, that you really only have one party left.
Buchanan is right though, this is a trap and the Republicans are
walking right into it and they have full knowledge of it and embrace it.
Buchanan is also right on the passage of Amnesty being the end of the
Republican Party. If this happens, there will be a war inside the
Republican Party and there will either be a coup and the TEA Party will
ascend or the Party of Lincoln will be no more and a third party will
awaken. In my opinion, it will be too late at that point to avoid a
violent collision between political viewpoints. There will be two sides –
Constitutional Conservatives and Progressive Marxists. It will not end
well.
Here it comes… Amnesty and 30 million or so people who will invade
our country and enable a permanent Marxist coup. Our enemies from within
and without are descending and our leaders are holding the door for
them.
By Deroy Murdock
Imagine
an energy source that reduces production of greenhouse gases, conserves
water, and preserves natural habitats. It also creates manufacturing
jobs, reduces income equality, and defunds sexists and homophobes. Liberals would scream for this fuel, right?
Wrong!
Natural-gas
fracking satisfies these liberal demands, in spades. Yet leftists won’t
take “yes” for an answer. Instead they fight fracking, as if it were
concocted by Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin at Dick Cheney’s ranch.
“I don’t see any place for fracking,” New York’s Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio,
declared last week. New York State environmental commissioner Joe
Martens says he has “absolutely no plans” to lift a five-year fracking moratorium. Activist Yoko Ono claims: “Fracking kills.”
These and other liberals are either grossly ignorant of or willfully blind toward the environmental and socio-economic benefits of fracking, technically known as hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.
Leftists hyperventilate over so-called greenhouse gases, the alleged
cause of their biggest bête noir, so-called global warming (which,
parenthetically, much of the country would welcome right about now).
Luckily, fracking reduces greenhouse gas emissions. As the EPA reports:
“Compared to the average air emissions from coal-fired generation,
natural gas produces half as much carbon dioxide, less than a third as
much nitrogen oxides, and 1 percent as much sulfur oxides at the power
plant.”
...Fracking conserves water.
It takes just three gallons, on average, to yield 1 million British
Thermal Units (BTUs) of energy from fracked natural gas, according to
the Groundwater Protection Council and the U.S. Energy Department. One
needs 23 gallons to generate 1 million BTUs from coal, 15,800 gallons
from corn ethanol, and a staggering 44,500 gallons from soy biodiesel.
Fracking foes should decry federal biofuel mandates and subsidies.
Fracking preserves habitat. To fuel 1,000 households for one year, SAIC/RW Beck researchers concluded,
natural-gas companies use 0.4 acres of land. Coal needs 0.75 acres.
Windmills consume six acres, while solar cells cover 8.4 acres for the
same output. If they voted, plants and animals would pick fracking over
wind or solar power.
Fracking creates jobs. In a May 2013 Manhattan Institute study,
Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Andrew Gray explain that in frack-rich
Pennsylvania, between 2007 and 2011, “Counties with more than 200 wells
added jobs at a 7 percent annual rate.” However, “where there was no
drilling, or only a few wells, the number of county jobs shrank by 3 percent.”
Fracking
curbs income inequality. According to the same paper, “between 2007 and
2011, per-capita income rose by 19 percent in Pennsylvania counties
with more than 200 wells, by 14 percent in counties with between 20 and
200 wells, and by 12 percent in counties with fewer than 20 wells. In
counties without any hydrofracking wells, income went up by only 8
percent. It is important to note, too, that counties with the lowest
per-capita incomes experienced the most rapid growth.”
...Despite these liberal dreams come true, Lefties fret over fracking’s
supposed danger to tap water. In fact, pipes extract gas from shale
deposits some 5,000 feet beneath the water table. Multiple layers of
steel and concrete isolate fracking fluids
(99.5 percent water and sand, 0.5 percent chemicals) from the
drinking-water supply at the birth of a typical well’s 20- to 40-year
productive life. After only about five days, fracking stops for good.
By John Sexton
One in five Obamacare "enrollees" could have their plans cancelled
for failure to pay their first month's premium. That figure is based on
reports from health insurers themselves, some of whom have made 10
attempts to collect the first payment.
The exact percentage of those who pay (the actual definition of
enrollment) varies among insurers according to a report Thursday by CNN Money.
Medical Mutual of Ohio put the figure at 88 percent while CoOportunity
Health put it lower at 82 percent. CoOportunity CEO Cliff Gold tells CNN "We figure either those people had a change of heart or thought it was too expensive." WellPoint would only say
a majority but not a "vast majority" had paid their first premium. CNN
estimates the overall percentage of insurers it polled at one in five.
Earlier this month health insurance expert Bob Laszewski estimated,
based on his contacts in the industry, that 10-20 percent of Obamacare
enrollments would be dropped for failure to pay. CNN's report suggests
the actual figure will be closer to the upper end of Laszewski's
estimate.
....The high rate of cancellations will certainly have a political impact
in not an immediate policy impact. If the 20 percent figure highlighted
by CNN is accurate, roughly 400,000 people the administration has
already counted as enrolled under Obamacare will receive cancellation
letters. That's considerably more than the total number
who enrolled in October and November combined. It would also mean the
total number of people enrolled did not pass 3 million as HHS claimed last week.
Those individuals who are canceled for non-payment will need to start
over in order to get insurance before the enrollment period ends in
March. Presumably, those who do so will be counted as enrolled a second
time unless HHS is careful to exclude duplicates or simply revises its
earlier numbers downward to account for cancellations. It's just one
more asterisk to add to the list of already dubious numbers coming from the administration.
Earmarked tower constructed for tests that were canceled in 2010
By Phillip Swars
....But that is exactly what is happening this year as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
completes the $350 million rocket-engine testing A-3 tower at its
research facility in Mississippi. There is just one problem: The space
exploration agency doesn’t want it.
Instead, NASA is forced to complete the project — which now won’t be put to use — because of legislation handed down from Congress in what critics say is a classic example of earmarking.
“Because
the Constellation Program was cancelled in 2010 the A-3’s unique
testing capabilities will not be needed and the stand will be mothballed
upon completion,” NASA’s internal watchdog, the inspector general, said this month.
Bloomberg
News, which first reported the issue this week, called the structure
“an example of how U.S. lawmakers thwart efforts to cut costs and
eliminate government waste, even as they criticize agencies for failing
to do so.”
NASA does not expect to use the tower after construction but is compelled by legislation from Sen. Roger F. Wicker, Mississippi Republican, who wants to ensure the project is completed.
By Jay Cost
...What matters more at this point in the cycle is
access to money. Are the movers and shakers falling foursquare behind
Clinton? Importantly, they did not in 2008, even as she enjoyed nice
leads in the polls. This is one of the real reasons she lost last time.
Clinton had substantial financial support, but she did not monopolize
the big money donors. This is what enabled Obama to emerge from
virtually nowhere to win Iowa in early 2008, then battle her for the
nomination. The mythology of Obama 2008 is that the campaign was "people
powered," which was the second part of the story. It was people-powered
only after Obama raised the scratch to communicate with
people. And by the way, the kind of money you need to run that sort of
campaign does not come from small donors, at least not at first. It
comes from a party's movers-and-shakers, those who can max out their
contributions and then get a dozen friends and another dozen colleagues
to do the same.
Public opinion, at this point, is essentially
irrelevant in the race for the Democratic nomination. What matters above
all else is access to cash. Will another Democratic gain
access, as Obama did? If yes, then we will probably again have an
interesting race. If no, then we probably will not.
By Joel Gehrke
Saudi Arabian
diplomats and military officials refused to meet with a bipartisan
delegation of senior congressional staffers who visited the Middle
Eastern country last week, an unusual snub that suggests increased
tension between the U.S. and a key ally.
"Everyone on the trip definitely took it as a snub," one of the
staffers who went on the trip, speaking on condition of anonymity, told
the Washington Examiner. The delegation was comprised of "high
level" staff from three House committees: Intelligence, Homeland
Security, and Armed Services.
The staffer said that the delegation asked to meet with
representatives of Saudi Arabia's Foreign Affairs Ministry and Defense
Ministry during the weeklong trip, but the Saudis denied both requests.
The rejection is especially unusual because the Saudis paid for the
delegation's visit, but did not allow them to talk to their most natural
counterparts in the Saudi Arabian government. The aide, who has visited
the country multiple times on such delegations, said every previous
trip featured a meeting with at least one of the two ministries.
The snub stems from Saudi anger over what they see as President Obama's weak response to the Syrian civil war and U.S. attempts to get a nuclear deal with Iran,
according to the staffer. The Iranian negotiations are most troubling
to the Saudis, according to the aide, saying they think Obama is being
"shortsighted" in his strategy for preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
Gulf Arab states have been watching with grave concern Obama's hopes
to negotiate an end to Iran's nuclear program, even as the regime gets
closer to obtaining a weapon. Many, especially Saudi Arabia, see Iran's
ambitions as an existential threat.
