Continue reading »]]>

Join the NOCCC for a Physician’s Panel on “The Truth Behind ObamaCare”. Concerned Medical Professionals shed light on how these new laws will affect America’s future and yours.

• Tuesday, September 27, 2011
• 7:00 – 8:30 pm
• The Foxfire Restaurant Conference Room
• 5717 E. Santa Ana Canyon Road, Anaheim
• 91 Freeway @ Imperial Highway

Dessert & Coffee provided. $5 suggested donation to help cover costs. Limited seating available. Please RSVP to Desaré deseric@sbcglobal.net or Nadia nadia.white@roadrunner.com

Hope to see you there!

Continue reading »]]> The world isn’t ending due to global warming. Eric Holder will not pursue a criminal prosecution against those scientists responsible for the crack pot theory. I’m sure it’s because he doesn’t want to make those liberals who made it their own personal cross to bear seem like idiots.

To read original article click here.

Global Warming Link to Drowned Polar Bears Melts Under Searing Fed Probe

Polar bears drowning in an Alaskan sea because the ice packs are melting—it’s the iconic image of the global warming debate.

But the validity of the science behind the image—presented as an ignoble testament to our environment in peril by Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth—is now part of a federal investigation that has the environmental community on edge.

Special agents from the Interior Department’s inspector general’s office are questioning the two government scientists about the paper they wrote on drowned polar bears, suggesting mistakes were made in the math and as to how the bears actually died, and the department is eyeing another study currently underway on bear populations.

Biologist Charles Monnett, the lead scientist on the paper, was placed on administrative leave July 18. Fellow biologist Jeffrey Gleason, who also contributed to the study, is being questioned, but has not been suspended.

The disputed paper was published by the journal Polar Biology in 2006, and suggests that the “drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open-water periods continues.”

It galvanized the environmental movement that led to the bear’s controversial listing in 2008 as threatened, and it is now protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Although the four dead bears cited in the paper were observed from 1,500 feet during flights over the Beaufort Sea, and the carcasses were never recovered or examined, Gleason told investigators it is likely the creatures drowned in a sudden windstorm that produced 30-knot winds, not for lack of an ice pack.

“We never mentioned global warming in the paper,” Gleason told the investigators, according to the transcript.

“But it’s inferred,” responded investigator Eric May. “That’s why the world took it up as a global warming tangent.”

Gleason told investigators that reaction to his and Monnett’s paper was overblown and spun out of context.

“I think these sorts of things tend to mushroom, and the interpretation gets popularized,” Gleason said. “Something very small turns into this big snowball coming down the mountain, and that’s, I think, what happened with this paper.”

Gleason concedes that the study had a major impact on the controversial listing of the bear as an endangered species because of global warming.

“As a side note, talking about my former supervisor, he actually sent me an e-mail at one point saying, ‘You’re the reason polar bears got listed,’” Gleason said.

Monnett now manages $50 million in studies as part of his duties as a wildlife biologist with the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

Investigators are also examining Monnet’s procurement of one of those research studies on polar bears conducted by Canada’s University of Alberta, as well as the “disclosure of personal relationships and preparation of the scope of work,” according to a July 29 memo from the Interior Department’s inspector general’s office.

In particular, investigators are asking questions about the peer review work on Monnett’s drowned polar bear paper, which was done by his wife, Lisa Rotterman, as well as Andrew Derocher, the lead researcher on the Canadian study under review by the inspector general’s office.

Monnett is being legally defended by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which posted the interviews the inspector general’s office conducted with both scientists on its website.

PEER calls Monnett’s work “groundbreaking research,” and says the investigation is a political attempt to “impugn his observations on polar bears’ vulnerability to retreating sea ice.”

“With each interview, it becomes more outrageous that government funds are being spent on this crackpot probe while paying Dr. Monnett’s salary to sit at home,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER.

“This seven-page paper, which had undergone internal peer review, management review and outside peer review coordinated by journal editors, galvanized scientific and public appreciation for the profound effects that climate change may already be having in the Arctic,” PEER said in another statement in support of Monnett.

Eric Holder’s Justice Department has already declined to pursue any criminal prosecution in the probe, but the scientists still face possible administrative action for any wrongdoing, the inspector general said in the memo.

With investigators suggesting his research is collapsing, Monnett was defensive in the interview, and asked for the inspectors’ credentials to question his work or second-guess his calculations.

For example, there was some confusion as to whether it was three or four dead bears used in the calculation to determine the ratio of survival, and whether Monnett assumed that four swimming bears seen the week earlier were the same polar bears recorded as dead in the next survey. The statistic in question was the percentage of bears likely to survive when swimming in a storm—Monnett estimated it to be around 25%, whereas investigators put the number at more than 57%.

“Is there a potential we made a mistake, and the peer reviewers didn’t catch it? Possibly,” Gleason said.

If the scientists had reported the 57% figure, investigator May said, “how people were taking this and exaggerating the results, probably may not have happened in terms of the world taking your study as attributing [the drownings to] global warming.”

After nearly two hours of Monnett defending his work to investigators, Ruch from PEER asked the officials to explain what allegations are being made against Monnett.

May said they are examining the “wrong numbers,” “miscalculations” and “scientific misconduct.”

“Well, that’s not scientific misconduct anyway,” Monnett said. “If anything, it’s sloppy.”

“I mean, that’s not—I mean, I mean, the level of criticism that they seem to have leveled here, scientific misconduct suggests that we did something deliberately to deceive or to change it,” Monnett said.

“I sure don’t see any indication of that in what you’re asking me about,” Monnett said.

The actual survey Monnett was conducting when he observed the dead bears in 2004 was the migration of bowhead whales. Investigators questioned how he later obtained data for a table listing live and dead polar bear sightings from 1987 to 2004.

“So how could you make the statement that no dead polar bears were observed” during that time period? May asked.

“Because we talked to the people that had flown the flights, and they would remember whether they had seen any dead polar bears,” Monnett said.

Asked whether he had any documentation to back that up, Monnett said that he did not.

“Science is about making the best case you can to test your hypothesis,” Monnett said. “You assemble your arguments and your data, you put it out there, and you see who’s going to knock it down.”

“And surprisingly, nobody, you know, knocked this down in any way. Everybody was just kind of like, ‘Oh, yeah, four dead polar bears. Okay, that’s kind of cool,’ ” Monnett said.

Dr. Rob Roy Ramey, a biologist who specializes in endangered species scientific issues for Wildlife Science International, Inc., reviewed Monnett’s paper as well as the inspector general’s interviews for HUMAN EVENTS and said that the authors made unwarranted assumptions and large extrapolations based on a single event.

“They did not know if the polar bears actually drowned, they assumed that they had drowned. There were no statistical tests, just extrapolations made with no accounting for measurement error,” Ramey said.

“The paper gives the appearance that rigorous surveying was done for polar bears, when it was not,” Ramey said.

“They were flying at 1,500 feet with the purpose of looking for bowhead whales, which are much larger and easier to spot.”

Ramey also says he sees a conflict of interest for Monnett’s wife to be part of the internal peer review, and questioned the awarding of a contract to Derocher, who also participated in the peer review.

“That’s not impartial,” Ramey said. “It’s really important that peer review be truly independent. If they can’t be, then everyone has to state their conflict right up front.”

“I think it’s very illustrative of the problems with government research on endangered species, and raises the question as to whether government should be in the business of science,” Ramey said.

Numerous studies contributed to the bear’s listing as a protected species, including the paper on polar bear drowning, which was cited in the Federal Register’s proposed rule.

In making the announcement May 14, 2008, to protect the bear under the Endangered Species Act, the Interior Department said the listing “is based on the best available science, which shows the loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat.”

The Interior Department said it would modify regulatory language “to prevent abuse of this listing to erect a backdoor climate policy outside our normal system of political accountability.”

As part of the Endangered Species Act listing, the department said work would continue with scientists to monitor polar bear populations and trends, as well as the effects of oil and gas operations in the Beaufort Sea region.

“Power, money, authority and recognition come with listings on the endangered species list,” Ramey said.

Investigators conducted a second interview with Monnett on Tuesday. PEER said in a statement afterward that his “2006 peer-reviewed journal article on drowned polar bears remains the focus of the inquiry.”

Myron Ebell​, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said that the government is expected to “spend trillions of dollars to save the world from global warming on the basis of what a few scientists say.”

“There needs to be due diligence, and we need to challenge and investigate every single claim. The public expects that,” Ebell said. “But we find over and over that shoddy science has been put forward, and in some cases, dishonest and manipulated science, and they say, ‘Trust us,’ ” Ebell said.

“It’s extremely irresponsible.”

Contributed by Audrey Hudson.

Continue reading »]]> As Chuck DeVore says in this article from Big Government, Californians are starting to vote with their feet and leave their home states in favor of a more hospitable business environment. Over regulating business has become a California tradition. Let’s just hope the rest of the nation stops following in our footsteps. There is still time to reduce and reverse the effects of our bad habit.

To read the original article click here.

Taxes, Regulations, Business Births & California Pizza Kitchen: Why the Golden State Is in Trouble

Sunday evening I was mulling over data from the 2010 Census when my wife suggested we take our extended family out to California Pizza Kitchen. Walking into CPK, I was still mentally processing the implications of the census data that showed what appeared to be a strong link between college educated Americans moving out of high tax states to low tax states (go ahead and laugh, yes, I’m really like that).  When the menus came, my deepening melancholy for California’s self-inflicted tax wounds shifted to sadness due to the Golden State’s penchant for regulating all aspects of life.  Why?  I immediately saw that CPK’s shiny new menus were in violation of the California Health and Safety Code Section 114094, the law that requires restaurant chains to list “…the calorie content information for a standard menu item next to the item on the menu in a size and typeface that is clear and conspicuous.”   Nary a speck of calorie data was next to any item on the menu (not that I cared about it, I don’t go to restaurants to count my calories – the information was available on request, nice, but not legal in California).

A full-blown case of Over Regulation Realization Depression hit me.  California Pizza Kitchen, the quintessential California business, would be forced to reprint thousands of menus for their 67 California restaurants, or risk fines of up to $500 for each location: a $33,500 exposure for each local health inspector visit while out of compliance.

While waiting for my California Club Pizza (it was delicious enough to temporarily lift me out of my bad case of ORRD) my thoughts drifted back to the floor vote on SB 1420, the 2008 bill by Senator Alex Padilla (D-Van Nuys) that sought to impose the calorie counting mandate on business.  I recall arguing against the bill which passed on a largely party line vote, Democrats for it, and Republicans mostly against it (then Senator Abel Maldonado was the sole Republican “aye” vote while some of the more moderate Assembly Republicans, Bonnie Garcia and Todd Spitzer, abstained).

Democrats justified calorie listing mandate by saying that big restaurant chains could afford it (the bill exempted chains with less than 20 locations), that some restaurant meals contained enough calories to feed an entire family for a week (or something along those lines) and that the bill was made less odious than it was initially so as to remove the opposition of the California Restaurant Association.

California’s thirst to proscribe as much as can be written into law is a major driver as to why Forbesmagazine has consistently ranked the Golden State as having one of the worst regulatory environment ranks in the nation (in 2010, California was 43^rd, just below Alaska and just above Hawaii).

By the time I got back home, my stomach filled with non-calorie disclosed black market pizza, I was ready to tackle the census data.  As I poured over the information on state growth, I began to see a pattern between state tax policy and population growth.

According to the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan tax policy analysis organization founded in 1937, the states with the best business tax climates are South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming, Nevada, and Florida.  Texas, the second-biggest state, ranks 13.  All five of the top states for business and Texas have one thing in common: no individual income tax, a tax which hits small businesses the hardest and small business is America’s employment engine.

The five worst states for business, beginning with the bottom, are: New York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Ohio (although the governors of New York, New Jersey and Ohio, a Democrat and two Republicans, respectively, appear to be trying hard to reverse their states’ hostile business climates).  These states are characterized by high and progressive state income taxes.

The 2010 Census showed that the average population growth in the five best states for business was 17.6%.  Texas clocked in at 20.6% growth.  Meanwhile, the five worst states for business from a business tax standpoint showed an anemic growth of 4.6%.   America’s population grew at 9.7% from 2000 to 2010, meaning that the high-tax states grew at less than half of the national average while the low-tax states grew at about double the national average.

People really do vote with their feet (or moving vans).

Additionally, the U.S. Census Bureau tracks business creation.  The worst five states for business saw a net loss of 86,587 in 2007 and 2008, the most recent period for which data is available.  The pace of reported losses will certainly deepen with 2009’s numbers.

Business “Births,” as the Census appropriately names business creation, an act that measures entrepreneurially-minded people’s faith in the future, were strongest in the states with no income tax, with a net gain of 12,672 businesses in 2007 and 2008.

Texas saw the net creation of 19,702 businesses in 2007 and 2008.  This, while California saw a net loss of California saw a net loss of 76,504 businesses in the same period.

These statistics show a strong linkage between the behavior of job creators and state tax policy – while a common sense linkage to most; you can be assured that California’s ruling liberal elite continue to scoff at such a notion.
Adding anecdotal flavor to the narrative, the Sacramento Bee ran a story last Sunday featuring the premise that California faces a brain drain if college graduates can’t find jobs.  This suggests that policy makers who only focus on making college more affordable by boosting taxpayer support for higher education may inadvertently be spending money to educate other state’s future high income earners.  It does little good for California to churn out college graduates who have to find work in Texas because California’s tax and regulatory policies discourage business creation.

California will not solve its current tax revenue challenges by levying even higher taxes on its most-productive residents – nothing is more mobile than a wealthy person and his money.  But Democrats control all levers of California’s government and show little interest in reducing taxes or rolling back regulations.

California must enact tax and regulatory relief.  If it fails to do so, its system of high taxes and even higher spending will drive a stake through the heart of the California dream.

This article was contributed by Chuck DeVore.

Continue reading »]]> The UK riots have prompted this writer to ponder the social causes of such an event. America’s liberal social policies are very similar, and if we aren’t careful we could end up with the same problem.

Read the original article here.

Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters

A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black  reporter named Joe Strickland.

He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” ’

I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today.

It was fun. It made life interesting. It got people to notice them. As a girl looter told a BBC reporter, it showed ‘the rich’ and the police that ‘we can do what we like’.

If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame.

Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped.

They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries.

They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong.

They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.

Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.

A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the ‘feral children’ on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.

The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist.

Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community. They do not watch royal weddings or notice Test matches or take pride in being Londoners or Scousers or Brummies.

Not only do they know nothing of Britain’s past, they care nothing for its present.

They have their being only in video games and street-fights, casual drug use and crime, sometimes petty, sometimes serious.

The notions of doing a nine-to-five job, marrying and sticking with a wife and kids, taking up DIY or learning to read properly, are beyond their imaginations.

Last week, I met a charity worker who is trying to help a teenage girl in East London to get a life for herself. There is a difficulty, however: ‘Her mother wants her to go on the game.’ My friend explained: ‘It’s the money, you know.’

An underclass has existed throughout history, which once endured appalling privation. Its spasmodic outbreaks of violence, especially in the early 19th century, frightened the ruling classes.

Its frustrations and passions were kept at bay by force and draconian legal sanctions, foremost among them capital punishment and transportation to the colonies.

Today, those at the bottom of society behave no better than their forebears, but the welfare state has relieved them from hunger and real want.

When social surveys speak of ‘deprivation’ and ‘poverty’, this is entirely relative. Meanwhile, sanctions for wrongdoing have largely vanished.

When Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith recently urged employers to take on more British workers and fewer migrants, he was greeted with a hoarse laugh.

Every firm in the land knows that an East European — for instance — will, first, bother to turn up; second, work harder; and third, be better-educated than his or her British counterpart.Who do we blame for this state of affairs?

Ken Livingstone, contemptible as ever, declares the riots to be a result of the Government’s spending cuts. This recalls the remarks of the then leader of Lambeth Council, ‘Red Ted’ Knight, who said after the 1981 Brixton riots that the police in his borough ‘amounted to an army of occupation’.

But it will not do for a moment to claim the rioters’ behaviour reflects deprived circumstances or police persecution.

Of course it is true that few have jobs, learn anything useful at school, live in decent homes, eat meals at regular hours or feel loyalty to anything beyond their local gang.

This is not, however, because they are victims of mistreatment or neglect.

It is because it is fantastically hard to help such people, young or old, without imposing a measure of compulsion  which modern society finds  unacceptable. These kids are what they are because nobody makes them be anything  different or better.

A key factor in delinquency is lack of effective sanctions to deter it. From an early stage, feral children discover that they can bully fellow pupils at school, shout abuse at people in the streets, urinate outside pubs, hurl litter from car windows, play car radios at deafening volumes, and, indeed, commit casual assaults with only a negligible prospect of facing rebuke, far less retribution.

John Stuart Mill wrote in his great 1859 essay On Liberty: ‘The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.’

Yet every day up and down the land, this vital principle of civilised societies is breached with impunity.

Anyone who reproaches a child, far less an adult, for discarding rubbish, making a racket, committing vandalism or driving unsociably will receive in return a torrent of obscenities, if not violence.

So who is to blame? The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass.

The social engineering industry unites to claim that the conventional template of family life is no longer valid.

And what of the schools? I  do not think they can be blamed for the creation of a grotesquely self-indulgent, non-judgmental culture.

This has ultimately been sanctioned by Parliament, which refuses to accept, for instance, that children are more likely to prosper with two parents than with one, and that the dependency culture is a tragedy for those who receive something for nothing.

The judiciary colludes with social services and infinitely ingenious lawyers to assert the primacy of the rights of the criminal and aggressor over those of law-abiding citizens, especially if a young offender is involved.

The police, in recent years, have developed a reputation for ignoring yobbery and bullying, or even for taking the yobs’ side against complainants.

‘The problem,’ said Bill Pitt, the former head of Manchester’s Nuisance Strategy Unit, ‘is that the law appears to be there to protect the rights of the perpetrator, and does not support the victim.’

Police regularly arrest householders who are deemed to have taken ‘disproportionate’ action to protect themselves and their property from burglars or intruders. The message goes out that criminals have little to fear from ‘the feds’.

Figures published earlier this month show that a majority of ‘lesser’ crimes — which include burglary and car theft, and which cause acute distress to their victims — are never investigated, because forces think it so unlikely they will catch the perpetrators.

How do you inculcate values in a child whose only role model is footballer Wayne Rooney — a man who is bereft of the most meagre human graces?

How do you persuade children to renounce bad language when they hear little else from stars on the BBC?

A teacher, Francis Gilbert, wrote five years ago in his book Yob Nation: ‘The public feels it no longer has the right to interfere.’

Discussing the difficulties of imposing sanctions for misbehaviour or idleness at school, he described the case of a girl pupil he scolded for missing all her homework deadlines.

The youngster’s mother, a social worker, telephoned him and said: ‘Threatening to throw my daughter off the A-level course because she hasn’t done some work is tantamount to psychological abuse, and there is legislation which prevents these sorts of threats.

‘I believe you are trying to harm my child’s mental well-being, and may well take steps . . . if you are not careful.’

That story rings horribly true. It reflects a society in which teachers have been deprived of their traditional right to arbitrate pupils’ behaviour. Denied power, most find it hard to sustain respect, never mind control.

I never enjoyed school, but, like most children until very recent times, did the work because I knew I would be punished if I did not. It would never have occurred to my parents not to uphold my  teachers’ authority. This might have been unfair to some pupils, but it was the way schools functioned for centuries, until the advent of crazy ‘pupil rights’.

I recently received a letter from a teacher who worked in a county’s pupil referral unit, describing appalling difficulties in enforcing discipline. Her only weapon, she said, was the right to mark a disciplinary cross against a child’s name for misbehaviour.

Having repeatedly and vainly asked a 15-year-old to stop using obscene language, she said: ‘Fred, if you use language like that again, I’ll give you a cross.’

He replied: ‘Give me an effing cross, then!’ Eventually, she said: ‘Fred, you have three crosses now. You must miss your next break.’

He answered: ‘I’m not missing my break, I’m going for an effing fag!’ When she appealed to her manager, he said: ‘Well, the boy’s got a lot going on at home at  the moment. Don’t be too hard  on him.’

This is a story repeated daily in schools up and down the land.

A century ago, no child would have dared to use obscene language in class. Today, some use little else. It symbolises their contempt for manners and decency, and is often a foretaste of delinquency.

If a child lacks sufficient respect to address authority figures politely, and faces no penalty for failing to do so, then other forms of abuse — of property and person — come naturally.

So there we have it: a large, amoral, brutalised sub-culture of young British people who lack education because they have no will to learn, and skills which might make them employable. They are too idle to accept work waitressing or doing domestic labour, which is why almost all such jobs are filled by immigrants.

They have no code of values to dissuade them from behaving anti-socially or, indeed, criminally, and small chance of being punished if they do so.

They have no sense of responsibility for themselves, far less towards others, and look to no future beyond the next meal, sexual encounter or TV football game.

They are an absolute deadweight upon society, because they contribute nothing yet cost the taxpayer billions. Liberal opinion holds they are victims, because society has failed to provide them with opportunities to develop their potential.

Most of us would say this is nonsense. Rather, they are victims of a perverted social ethos, which elevates personal freedom to an absolute, and denies the underclass the discipline — tough love — which alone might enable some of its members to escape from the swamp of dependency in which they live.

Only education — together with politicians, judges, policemen and teachers with the courage to force feral humans to obey rules the rest of us have accepted all our lives — can provide a way forward and a way out for these people.

They are products of a culture which gives them so much unconditionally that they are let off learning how to become human beings. My dogs are better behaved and subscribe to a higher code of values than the young rioters of Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham and Birmingham.

Unless or until those who run Britain introduce incentives for decency and impose penalties for bestiality which are today entirely lacking, there will never be a shortage of young rioters and looters such as those of the past four nights, for whom their monstrous excesses were ‘a great fire, man’

This article was contributed by Max Hastings of the Daily Mail.

Continue reading »]]> This first post was written by Senator Jim DeMint expressing his grievances over Boehner’s plan and comparing them to Harry Reid’s. Click here to read the original.

Boehner-Reid Debt Plan

I have troubling news. I’m very careful about criticizing my party’s leaders, but what is happening in Washington right now cannot be ignored.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has abandoned the Cut-Cap-Balance Act and is now pushing a new plan that is nearly identical to the one proposed by Senate Majority LeaderHarry Reid (D-NV).

The Boehner-Reid plan gives the President an immediate increase in the debt limit and only promises to cut spending in the future. It violates all three principles of the Cut-Cap-Balance Pledge because it does not substantially cut current spending, it does not truly cap future spending, and it does not require the passage of a strong Balanced Budget Amendment before raising the debt limit.

In short, I oppose the Boehner-Reid plan because it won’t balance the budget and stop the debt that is destroying our country.

The Boehner-Reid Plan

You will hear many claims about this plan over the next few days as it is pushed through the House and Senate. Some of these claims will be true, but many will be false. Here are the facts. The Boehner-Reid plan:

• Provides two increases in the debt limit – $900 billion and $1.6 trillion — totaling $2.5 trillion. It gives the President an immediate $900 billion increase given that Congress does not vote to disapprove it. It gives the President another $1.6 trillion increase next year if a bill written by a new Super Committee passes both houses and becomes law.
• Reduces spending by only $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. This amount won’t even come close to balancing the budget, as the debt is expected to grow by as much as $10 trillion over the next decade. The plan also reduces spending by only $6 billion in 2012. Considering that our government currently spends $10 billion a day, $6 billion is far too little to cut over the first year of the plan.
• Calls for a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment but does not require its passage. Without passage of a strong Balanced Budget Amendment, Congress will never break its addiction to spending.
• Makes it virtually impossible to stop the debt limit from going up. The debt ceiling increases can only be stopped if Congress passes a resolution of disapproval and then votes to override the President’s veto with two-thirds support in the House and Senate.
• Creates a new, 12-member Super Committee to write another “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit by at least $1.6 trillion. It does not, however, prohibit the Super Committee from writing a bill to raise taxes and destroy jobs. The bill can then be fast-tracked through the House and Senate with no amendments.

Why It Should Be Rejected

After reviewing the details of Boehner-Reid plan, I cannot support it.

• It won’t balance the budget and stop the debt. Even if the cuts called for in the plan were real, the debt will still increase by $7 trillion over the next ten years.
• It won’t protect our AAA bond rating. According to financial reports, this plan will not reduce long-term spending by enough to prevent a downgrade. If we lose our AAA rating, it will create higher interest rates and cause our debt to grow even faster.
• It will likely result in higher taxes that will destroy even more jobs. The unemployment rate is over 9 percent. We cannot afford to lose more jobs when so many Americans are struggling to find work.

The Way Forward

Fortunately, there is a much better solution.

The Cut-Cap-Balance Act would balance the budget, stop the debt, and protect our AAA bond rating. This legislation passed the House with bipartisan support but was blocked by Democrats in the Senate.

The votes in the Senate for Cut-Cap-Balance are there if Republicans stand firm. 23 Democrats in the Senate have expressed support for the Balanced Budget Amendment at some point in their careers. They’re blocking it now because they believe Republicans will blink and agree to something much less.

And that’s exactly what will happen if the Boehner-Reid plan is passed. It gives the big spenders in Washington everything they wanted — an increase in the debt limit, phony spending cuts, and a mechanism to pass tax increases.

Contributed by Sen. Jim DeMint

This next post, written by Erick Erickson on Red State, also explains that this sort of compromise is unacceptable. Read the original article here.

In Defense of Holding the Line

I’m getting beat to hell and back by conservatives for insisting the GOP hold the line on Cut, Cap, and Balance. Even here at RedState, I’m getting accused of “ideological intransigence.” Yeah, here at RedState. There’s a first time for everything.

People want a deal. People want John Boehner’s deal. People are upset with me for not liking John Boehner’s deal. People are telling me, “They only have one house, Erick. You can’t expect them to not compromise. They control nothing.”

I’ve said all along I expect a deal and a compromise. Here’s the problem and I need you to understand this from perspective, whether you agree with me or not.

See, I worked to send people to Washington, DC to solve problems, to make things right, to fix the things that were broken, and to send power back to the states. They are not doing that.

We all saw Democrats go to Washington in 2008 and take the whole thing. They controlled everything and they made everything worse. They passed a stimulus bill that killed or ruined hundreds of thousands of jobs in the private sector while growing the government. They increased dependency on the federal government. And then they passed Obamacare and socialized American healthcare. But it doesn’t fully take effect until 2014. We saw Democrats willing to lose their positions to lurch the nation left.

So we sent to Washington an army of conservatives to Washington to defund Obamacare and stop the White House. And now they’ve gotten there and have refused to fight. They promised and put in writing that they’d cut $100 billion from the federal government budget in 2011 and they ultimately cut only $38 billion. The Congressional Budget Office, when it was done scoring it, said they really were only cutting about $500 million and it would cost more money that it was worth it to actually cut those dollars.

So they said, “But we”ll stand firm on the debt ceiling. We’ll hold the line.” Everybody gave them a pass and said, “Okay, hold the line on the debt ceiling.”

Now here we are the week before the deadline. John Boehner laments they should have done it sooner, but he refused to do it sooner. The Speaker has prevented the Republicans from submitting legislation to ensure we would not default so that he would have leverage over his own members to force them to take a deal. And now they are dealing.What is their deal?

Their deal creates another committee to look at spending — the 18th in the past 30 years. These 18 committees have never done anything except raise taxes. Their spending cuts are put off a decade and future congresses ignore them.

Boehner’s spending caps are easily waived as they’ll be rules, not laws. And they punt.

A lot of you are emailing and getting on twitter saying to take the deal. Take the compromise. Why should we compromise? That’s what we always do. Even when in the majority we compromise. The Democrats didn’t compromise on healthcare. But you people want to compromise. Republicans, whether in the majority or minority, are always compromising in favor of bigger government and imaginary spending cuts.

To make matters worse, why the hell are the Republicans the ones coming up with the plans if they only control one house of one branch of the federal government? Why are they doing it? We’re on the third damn plan. They aren’t even compromising with the Democrats. They are compromising with themselves.

The Democrats are holding their line. The GOP is splitting conservatives. The Democrats are saying “Raise the debt ceiling. Don’t cut anything.” And Boehner is saying okay and putting in cuts that take affect in year eight of ten so none of them will be around to be held accountable. Why?

The GOP came up with Paul Ryan’s plan. They passed it. They took bullets. The GOP put him in a witness protection program and dropped it like a hot potato.

So then the GOP passed Cut, Cap, and Balance and the Democrats beat them up and again accused the GOP of killing grandma. The leadership was lukewarm to it and never fought for it. And immediately after voting for it, the leadership said, “Now, let’s move on to the third plan.”

Are these all just symbolic votes? If so, I’d rather some substance. This symbolism is getting the GOP killed with nothing to show for it.

Why the hell are we on our third plan when the Democrats haven’t even come up with one plan? They haven’t even passed a budget in over 800 days. We’re in this mess because Harry Reid, in December of 2010, refused the raise the debt ceiling so the GOP could own the problem. The GOP fell into the trap with eyes wide open.

And the Republicans are falling for it yet again.

And now I’m being accused of thinking this is all a game even by long time RedState readers. I do not think this is all a game.

I know the credit rating is going to be downgraded and I don’t want it to happen. You people who want the deal are so worked up in emotion that you are ignoring all the facts. Here are the facts:

1. S&P says we need a deal of at least $4 trillion in cuts to avoid a credit rating drop.

2. Neither Boehner nor Reid get us there.

3. The only plan that gets us there is Cut, Cap, and Balance and the GOP is running away from it as fast as they can. The GOP already passed it and it just four votes shy of a majority in the Senate.

No one wants to fight. “No, we’ve already had that vote. It can’t pass the Senate,” they say.

There will be no default on August 2nd. We know it will not happen. How do we know? Because we have more money coming in each month than is needed to pay principle and interest on our national debt. And we have had multiple prior occasions where we have gone passed the deadline and the world did not suddenly end. It is all political rhetoric. Shame on you for succumbing to fear.

Barack Obama does not want to be remembered as the President on whose watch the nation defaulted. His leverage goes away on August 3rd and the GOP holds all the cards. We won’t default. We can improve our negotiating position.

The GOP could hold the line. And because they won’t hold the line, they are tanking our credit behind a bunch of smoke and mirrors. If the Democrats blame the GOP when the credit rating drops, the GOP will damn well deserve the blame if they stick with Boehner’s plan.

They could at least fight to turn the tide. They could at least hold the line.

Contributed by Erick Erickson

Continue reading »]]> Allen West is speaking the truth and his mind. Read this article about Allen West’s essay and then click the link under Red County to read the original piece.

Allen West Is All Out Of Bubble Gum

Congressman Allen West (R-FL) came to Congress to do two things: kick ass and chew bubble gum.  This week, he ran out of bubble gum.

On Monday, he wrote an essay for Red County delicately entitled, “At This Point, Anyone with an Obama 2012 Bumper Sticker is a Threat to the Gene Pool.”  In this essay, he expresses his disgust with the President’s debt ceiling scare tactics:

It was appalling to hear the President of the United States truly threaten our nation’s senior citizens and Military Veterans/Retirees. Furthermore, the blatant lie that 80% of Americans want their taxes raised is beyond unconscionable.

After outlining his plans for dealing with our unsustainable national debt, he goes on to explain why those Obama 2012 bumper stickers cause him to fear for the genetic destiny of the human race:

As for President Barack Obama, he has no such plan. He has never had a plan, just words, just speeches. His Budget for Fiscal Year 2012 failed 0-97 in the United States Senate. Speaking of the Senate, it has been over 800 days since the Senate, under Democrat control, has passed a budget.

President Obama has added some $4.5 trillion to our national debt in less than three years. President Obama has produced record deficits, the negative difference between revenues and spending, of $1.42 trillion, $1.29 trillion, and an estimated $1.65 trillion for each year since taking office.

The unemployment rate under President Obama is a problem of epic proportions, national (9.2%), black community (16.2%), and among veterans (approx 12%). This comes from someone who told us his almost trillion-dollar stimulus would keep unemployment in America under 8%. As well, the almost $2 trillion Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been a disaster, and the worst is yet to come.

Along the way, West expresses particular disgust with Obama’s “blatant lie that 80% of Americans want their taxes raised,” and House Democrat Sheila Jackson-Lee’s allegation that all opposition to Obama’s demands for more debt is grounded in racism.  (Rep. West himself is black, although judging by her rhetoric, Jackson-Lee would probably put scare quotes around “black” in his case.)

The next day, West found himself on the receiving end of some cobwebbed Medi-Scare nonsense from Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), the Democrat National Committee chair who has previously advanced the deep political insight that Republican politics are motivated by a desire to kill old people and women.  To date, she has never apologized for this.  No one is holding their breath waiting for her to do so.

“The gentleman from Florida ,” intoned Wasserman-Schultz, “who represents thousands of Medicare beneficiaries, as do I, is supportive of this plan that would increase costs for Medicare beneficiaries, unbelievable for a Member from South Florida .”  By “this plan,” she meant the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” bill that passed the House yesterday.

This “Medi-Scare” rhetoric is so old and tired that it should leave clouds of tomb dust in the air when Democrats speak.  Wipe out that $1.6 trillion deficit Obama has built up, and you’re pulling life support tubes out of old people.  Americans cannot survive without indenturing themselves!

On the other hand, it’s refreshing to her Wasserman-Schultz speak in the highest traditions of the Founding Fathers.  Everyone knows they envisioned an America where certain regions, such as South Florida , fought bitter political battles to forcibly extract funding for their benefits from other regions.

Rep. West responded to Wasserman-Schultz’s attack with an email:

I understand that after I departed the House floor you directed your floor speech comments directly towards me. Let me make myself perfectly clear, you want a personal fight, I am happy to oblige. You are the most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up.

You have proven repeatedly that you are not a Lady, therefore, shall not be afforded due respect from me!

Note that, although I have no doubt that Allen West is a master of the Man Laws, I’m not sure he’s empowered to strip Wasserman-Schultz of her ladyship.  I’ve got an email out to Burt Reynolds to check.

You know, I’d like to have a more sober and decorous Congress, but Allen West isn’t the one who made it ridiculous.  They did that to themselves – by, among other things, running up a $14 trillion national debt, and then announcing they need even more funny money.  Very few members of Congress appear to take their duties seriously, in the sense that private-sector managers who face possible jail time for accounting fraud take their fiduciary duties seriously.

It should also be noted that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz delivered her offensive and ridiculous broadside on the House floor, while Allen West’s trenchant response came by email.  Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee delivered her disgusting racial broadside from the floor of the House as well.  Allen West did not pitch the tents for this circus, nor is he the ringmaster.

Contributed by John Hayward

Continue reading »]]>

Phone tag and wrong numbers: The collapse of the debt talks

Okay, Politico, so, President Obama can show up late to press conferences, but a Republican is not allowed to return a phone call two hours later while he is simultaneously attempting to be firm on his position about the debt ceiling debate– which is what his followers want? Here’s the epitome of President Obama’s presidency– carrying on a double standard while playing the blame game– “we have run out of time,” Obama said. “And they are going to have to explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid default.” 2012, 2012, 2012!

To read more, please click here.

By Carrie Budoff Brown

As he had done often during their weeks of budget talks, President Barack Obama tried to get House Speaker John Boehner on the phone late Thursday, but never heard back.

The silence continued into Friday, and White House aides began to wonder. It never took this long for the president to get his phone calls returned, particularly from Boehner. After all, the two chatted regularly, forging a working relationship over the many weeks of debt-ceiling negotiations — two men who were each trying to lead their parties someplace they didn’t really want to go.

Obama finally heard from Boehner’s office at 3:30 p.m. Friday: Expect a call in two hours.

No, the president responded, how about right now?

Not possible, Obama was told, the speaker isn’t available.

It was then that the White House knew the president wouldn’t be announcing a grand bargain on the debt and deficit anytime soon. Maybe never.

The speed with which the the latest round of negotiations collapsed — from signs Thursday morning that Obama and Boehner were nearing a deal to a complete breakdown late Friday — was a stunning reversal in the long effort to reach a compromise between the Democratic president and congressional Republicans. It left the country’s credit rating in jeopardy and the president more than a little peeved.

“I couldn’t get a phone call returned,” Obama said Friday, as if still not quite believing it himself. “I’ve been left at the altar now a couple of times.”

Boehner’s aides say the reason he didn’t call back was simple: They didn’t have anything more to discuss. Obama had pressed for more revenue in the package, and Republicans just weren’t going to go for it, Boehner said Friday.

“Sometimes it’s good to back away from the tree and take a look at the forest,” Boehner said. “And yesterday afternoon, after the president demanded more revenue in this package, I came back … away from the tree to take a look at the forest.”

If there’s any short-term political gain, it might go to Obama, who sounded fed up Friday night recounting his half of the story, painting Republicans as ideological purists bent on cutting popular entitlement programs to protect the wealthy. And Obama made clear who was boss — summoning Boehner and other congressional leaders to the White House Saturday morning.

“We have run out of time,” Obama said. “And they are going to have to explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid default.”

His hasty appearance Friday night in the White House briefing room capped a 24-hour period in which Obama went from believing he was on the cusp of an agreement to literally waiting by the phone and ultimately losing the opportunity to seal an historic deficit-reduction deal worth more than $3 trillion.

“I think that one of the questions that the Republican Party is going to have to ask itself is can they say yes to anything? Can they say yes to anything?” Obama said. “I mean, keep in mind it’s the Republican Party that has said that the single most important thing facing our country is deficits and debts. We’ve now put forward a package that would significantly cut deficits and debt. It would be the biggest debt reduction package that we’ve seen in a very long time.”

The negotiations broke down over the same issue that has stalled bipartisan cooperation for months, and tied American politics in knots for the last three decades: taxes.

From the White House’s perspective, Obama and Boehner were on track for a deal Thursday morning. And even though they were furious at the prospect, Democratic congressional leaders thought the same. They were put on notice late Thursday night to expect an announcement as early as Friday morning that Obama and Boehner had agreed to a framework, with plans to release details Monday and hold a House vote by Wednesday.

By that point, Obama had made nearly-unthinkable concessions for a Democratic president.

He agreed to $1.2 trillion cuts in discretionary spending, and almost $250 billion in cuts to Medicare, including changing the eligibility age, eliminating certain supplemental insurance policies and cutting back on some health provider payments. He agreed to a new inflation calculator that would affect Social Security recipients. And he committed to changes to Social Security in order to make the program solvent.

There were just a few outstanding issues, senior administration officials said.

Republicans had proposed rolling back portions of Obama’s prized health care law if Congress failed next year to enact the entitlement and tax changes. Obama, however, wasn’t going for it.

They needed to come to terms on depth of the cuts to Medicaid.

And Obama had wanted an additional $400 billion raised through tax reform, arguing that Boehner was bleeding Republican support and would need to bring more House Democrats on board.

The president spoke with Boehner by phone from the White House Thursday afternoon about the increased revenues, saying if the speaker objected, there were probably other options.

Just get back to me, Obama told Boehner before they hung up.

“He was very open with the speaker, (saying) ‘I understand you may not be able to come up on the revenue and if you can’t, I’m open to doing something else,’” a senior White House official said Friday.

The White House always viewed the details as in flux: as the amount of cuts rose, Obama sought to balance that politically with more revenues. White House aides say the push for $400 billion in additional revenues was never intended to be a make-or-break demand, but more along the lines of hoping for some give on Boehner’s part.

Boehner, however, considered the pitch as an attempt to move the goalposts late in the game.

Boehner was willing to accept a revenue baseline of about $800 billion above what taxes would be if all the current Bush-era tax breaks were extended, a real concession on his part. At a White House meeting last Sunday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner signed off, Republicans said, on the Boehner proposal — which was a concession in turn by the administration since it had shot for a higher target.

With that potential compromise in place, Boehner felt encouraged to proceed with the talks. But circumstances changed, Republicans said, after the bipartisan Senate “Gang of Six” announced its proposal Tuesday which assumes substantially more new revenue for deficit reduction than the president had sought.

Boehner and Cantor already told the president when he first raised it that they wouldn’t move the revenue target, Republican officials said.

“I do trust him as a negotiator, but you have to understand, every step of this process was difficult,” Boehner said after he ended negotiations. “Dealing with the White House is like dealing with a bowl of Jell-O.”

The speaker spent Thursday night and Friday talking with staff, other Republican leaders and the rank-and-file about the next steps, which is why the president didn’t hear from him, aides said.

Back at the White House, senior administration aides, unaware that the negotiations were in their final hours, spent much of Friday working through technical details with top House Republican staff.

“We expected they were going to work through it,” a senior administration official said. “They were meeting on the Hill all morning.”

But by the time Obama and Boehner connected at 5:30 p.m., House Republican aides were already briefing Hill reporters on why the talks had collapsed.

David Rogers contributed to this story.