LOL: Obama Awarding Medal Of Freedom To His Stoned & Marxist Supporters

by AF Branco:

President Obama decided to trust in the number 13 when awarding Medals of Freedom to a unique composite of people dead and alive, American and foreign, mostly liberals to extremists with a some other very worthy recipients included to provide meaningful cover. Besides the Bob Dylan and Delores Huerta pictured in the cartoon, the names of the other eleven are listed here. 

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Tags: Barack Obama, Medal of Freedom, stoned, Bob Dylan, Marxist, Dolores Huerta, political cartoon, political truth, AF, Branco To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

2012: Good Money And Jobs vs. Easy Money And Stagnation

Ralph Benko

by Ralph Benko, Contributing Author: The 2012 presidential election is shaping up to include an argument over opportunity versus equality. The American economy has been stagnant for a decade. Income for working men has been stagnant (or even contracting) for 40 years. Why?

40 years ago is when America started abdicating its classical high-growth monetary policy, the gold standard. We abandoned good money to chase after a chimerical improvement of easy money — ostensibly to promote job growth. But as 40 years of wage stagnation has shown, easy money has failed.

Now the GOP, which was complicit in the abdication of a good money policy, is beginning to change its tune. Both in Congress and in the presidential race monetary policy is shaping up as a potentially important political battleground. Since a good monetary policy is a crucial element of growth, thus job creation, a fight over good money could decide elections.

With the fizzling out of Occupy Wall Street there has been a dying down of the rhetoric about income inequality. Class warfare doesn’t resonate strongly in America. As Pew’s Andrew Kohut wrote last January in the New York Times,

“…while Americans are hearing more and more about class conflict, there is little indication that they are increasingly divided along these lines. People don’t necessarily want to take money from the wealthy; they just want a better chance to get rich themselves. They care about policies that give everyone a fair shot — a distinction that candidates in both parties should understand as they head into the 2012 campaigns. . . .

“While a December Gallup poll found few respondents wanting the government to attempt to reduce the income gap between rich and poor, 70 percent said it was important for the government to increase opportunities for people to get ahead. What the public wants is not a war on the rich but more policies that promote opportunity.”

Voters are eager for “policies that promote opportunity.” America is very much dedicated both to equality and to the pursuit of happiness. Toqueville observed in Democracy In America Volume I, Part 1, chapter 3:

“There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that incites men to want to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the small to the rank of the great. But in the human heart a depraved taste for equality is also found that leads the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level and that reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in liberty. Not that peoples whose social state is democratic naturally scorn liberty; on the contrary, they have an instinctive taste for it. But liberty is not the principal and constant object of their desire; what they love with undying love is equality; they rush toward liberty by rapid impulses and sudden efforts, and if they miss the goal, they resign themselves; but without equality nothing can satisfy them, and rather than lose it, they would agree to perish.”

There are more sinister social elements. A war brews on the Left on how best to use civic restlessness stemming from stagnation to promote, and direct, civil unrest and direct it against the “rich.” This is unlikely to resonate, because the real issue is one of equity, not equality. Are the rewards proportionate to merit, effort, and just plain luck? Or is the deck stacked against working people?

There are grounds to suspect a stacked deck, and that the subterfuge lies in the subversion of our money itself. Easy money is a sure recipe for stagnation. Good money is based on good rules. (There is a strong argument to be made that defining the dollar as a fixed weight of gold is the best and most time-tested rule.) So if the left tries to “bring the strong down” … the right can make the fight about opportunity by promoting good money, preferably gold money.

Keynes, whose birthday we celebrate this week, foresaw this situation and wrote, in The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919):

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become ‘profiteers,’ who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

Today’s dollar is worth about 15 cents in 1971 dollars from which Richard Nixon removed the last link to gold. Nixon defended his action on national television, “Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation,” and promising the American people that “your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today. The effect of this action, in other words, will be to stabilize the dollar.”

The Republican Party, as noted above, has been complicit in the monetary debauch that began under Johnson and Nixon. The GOP now is showing signs, in both its presidential and Congressional branches, of a genuine determination to bring back good monetary policy and the jobs that come with that.

Romney senior economic advisor R. Glenn Hubbard, and by inference, Romney himself, takes a closely-reasoned and vigorously argued stand against the “discretionary activism” of the Fed that results in the continuing decay. Hubbard, and his co-author (Democrat) Peter Navarro, entitles a chapter of their Seeds of Destruction, “Why an Easy-Money Street is a Dead End.”

On the Hill, Rep. Kevin Brady, vice-chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, and, in the Senate, Utah’s Mike Lee are starting the fight against devaluation with the Sound Dollar Act (and its Senate equivalent). This legislation is drawing a steady stream of new sponsors in the House. It demands that the Federal Reserve undertake a rules-based policy designed to maintain the stability of the value of the dollar. Congressional Democrats, led by Rep. Barney Frank, are in shrill opposition, attempting to defend indefensible policies of easy money and, with that, chronic joblessness.

The empirical data show that good money, such as a dollar defined as a fixed weight of and convertible into gold, is the genuine full employment mandate. The Brady Bill is an important first step in beginning the conversation as to rule-based monetary policy. Our officials properly still are sorting out which would be the best such rule — e.g. Taylor Rule, nominal GDP targeting, or gold convertibility. Yet the superiority of rule-based stability over discretion-based degradation — good money against easy money — certainly presents as good politics as well as good policy.

The issue of good money vs. easy money was absent from politics for 40 or more years. It is emerging from the quiet cloisters of the Federal Reserve into the hot fray of politics. The GOP, arrayed in a golden robe, is setting to do battle with Democrats (to again quote Keynes) “clad in paper rags”. Good money, and the jobs that helps create, promises to prove a vote magnet.
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Ralph Benko is senior advisor, economics, to American Principles in Action’s Gold Standard 2012 Initiative, and a contributor to he ARRA News Service. The article which first appeared in Forbes was submitted for reprint by the author.

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Tags: Ralph Benko, the economy, 2012, Good Money, Jobs, Easy Money, Stagnation To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

“Hating Breitbart” To Be Premiered At RightOnline

Americans For Prosperity To Premier
EXCLUSIVE Sneak Preview Of “Hating Breitbart”
Friday Night, June 15 At 2012 RightOnline In Las Vegas, NV!

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Two and a half years in the making, “Hating Breitbart” documents Andrew Breitbart’s rise in the media world, from the birth of the Tea Party in 2009 to early this year. The film shows behind the scenes footage of many of the explosive media controversies that Breitbart found himself at the center of, including the Congressman Weiner Twitter-scandal and the undercover recording of ACORN tapes. Learn more about the film at HatingBreitbart.com.

Americans For Prosperity: "We're proud that the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and RightOnline will host a Hating Breitbart screening on Friday, June 15th at the annual RightOnline Conference. RightOnline is the must-attend yearly conference for right-leaning media and bloggers to educate on and encourage online activism. To be among the first in the world to get a sneak-peek at the new film, join us and attend RightOnline! Learn more and register at RightOnline.com"

HATING BREITBART TRAILER

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Tags: 2012 RightOnline, conservative bloggers, conference, Las Vegas, NV, film premier, Hating Breitbart, Andrew Breitbart, Americans For Prosperity To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

McConnell & George Will Defend 1st Amdt. And Citizens United Ruling

Click Image for More Info & Video

Today in Washington, D.C. - May 31, 2012
The Senate reconvened at noon today for a pro-forma session and will then be in recess until Monday. When the Senate resumes legislative business next week, it will begin with the nomination of Timothy Hillman to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts.

Yesterday, the House passed the following bills:
H.R. 1299 (voice vote) - Secure Border Act of 2011: "To achieve operational control of and improve security at the international land borders of the United States, and for other purposes."
HR 2764 (voice vote) — WMD Intelligence and Information Sharing Act of 2011
HR 3140 (voice vote) — Mass Transit Intelligence Prioritization Act - "To amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to prioritize the assignment of officers and analysts to certain State and urban area fusion centers to enhance the security of mass transit systems."
HR 3310 (voice Vote) — Federal Communications Commission Consolidated Reporting Act of 2011 - To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to consolidate the reporting obligations of the Federal Communications Commission in order - to improve congressional oversight and reduce reporting burdens.
HR 3670 (voice vote) — A bill to require the Transportation Security Administration to comply with the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.
HR 4041 (voice vote) — Export Promotion Reform Act - to amend the Export Enhancement Act of 1988 to further enhance the promotion of exports of United States goods and services, and for other purposes.
HR 4201 (390-2) — Servicemember Family Protection Act - to amend the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to provide for the protection of child custody arrangements for parents who are members of the Armed Forces.
HR 5512 (voice vote) — Divisional Realignment Act of 2012 - To amend title 28, United States Code, to realign divisions within two judicial districts
HR 5651 (387-5) — Food and Drug Administration Reform Act of 2012 - to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to revise and extend the user-fee programs for prescription drugs and for medical devices, to establish user-fee programs for generic drugs and biosimilars, and for other purposes.
HR 5740 (voice vote) — National Flood Insurance Program Extension Act - House agrees to previously pssed bill with the Senate amendment.
HR 915 (391-2)— Jaime Zapata Border Enforcement Security Task Force Act - to establish a Border Enforcement Security Task Force program to enhance border security by fostering coordinated efforts among Federal, State, and local border and law enforcement officials to protect United States border cities and communities from trans-national crime, including violence associated with drug trafficking, arms smuggling, illegal alien trafficking and smuggling, violence, and kidnapping along and across the international borders of the United States, and for other purposes.

Postponed: HR 3541 — Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011
Also bill to be considered today or this week:
HR 5743 — Fiscal 2013 Intelligence Authorization
HR 5854 — Fiscal 2013 Military Construction-VA Appropriations
HR 5325 — Fiscal 2013 Energy-Water Appropriations

In a must-read column today, George Will discusses a potential challenge to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that the high court will consider taking up in a few weeks.

Roll Call reports on the background of the case: “The high court signaled this week that it would meet in private conference on June 14 to decide how to proceed in the case, which turns on a constitutional challenge to a 100-year-old Montana corporate spending ban. The Citizens United ruling, which ended decades-old limits on direct corporate and union spending, technically nullified the Montana law. But the state refused to take its corporate spending ban off the books. A trio of corporations then challenged the ban as unconstitutional, but in December the state Supreme Court sided with Montana and upheld the law. The Supreme Court stayed that ruling in February. The high court will now decide as early as June 15-18 whether to summarily reject the state Supreme Court’s ruling, as the corporations challenging the law have requested.”

Will explains, “Three Montana corporations sued to bring the state into conformity with Citizens United by overturning a 100-year-old state law, passed when copper and other corporations supposedly held sway, that bans all corporate political spending. The state’s Supreme Court refused to do this, citing Montana’s supposedly unique susceptibility to corporate domination — an idea amusingly discordant with the three corporations’ failure even to persuade the state court to acknowledge the supremacy of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Will writes, “Reasons for the Supreme Court to reconsider Citizens United are nonexistent. The ruling’s primary effect has been to give unions and incorporated nonprofit advocacy groups freedom to spend what they choose on political speech as long as they do not coordinate with candidates or campaigns. Campaign ‘reformers,’ who advocate speech rationing, apparently regard evidence irrelevant to argument, probably because there is no evidence for their assertion that 2012 has been dominated by corporate money unleashed by Citizens United. An amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky),  a staunch defender of the First Amendment, notes:
“Through March 31, the eight leading super PACs supporting Republican presidential candidates received contributions totaling $96,410,614. Of this, $83,220,167 (86.32 percent) came from individuals, only $13,190,447 (13.68 percent) from corporations, and only 0.81 percent from public companies. McConnell says, “Not a single one of the Fortune 100 companies has contributed a cent” to any of the eight super PACS. These facts refute such prophesied nightmares as The Post’s fear that corporate money “may now overwhelm” individuals’ contributions.”

Will also points out, “Before Citizens United removed restrictions on independent expenditures by for-profit corporations, a majority of states already had no such restrictions. Neither did they have records of distinctively bad behavior. Indisputably, this year’s super PACs have, as McConnell’s brief says, ‘led to more political debate over a lengthier period of time during which more voters had the opportunity to participate in the choice of a presidential candidate.’ As McConnell notes, the Montana court’s ruling is ‘disdainful’ and disobedient regarding the Citizens United decision, but this lawlessness is not what bothers many people who think of themselves as defenders of good government.

Instead,” Will argues, “much of the media and most liberals urge Americans to be scandalized about ‘too much money’ in politics. That three-word trope means (because most political money is spent on the dissemination of political advocacy) that there is more political speech by others than is considered proper by much of the media, which are unrestricted advocates.” As Will concludes, “The collapse of liberals’ confidence in their ability to persuade is apparent in their concentration on rigging the rules of political persuasion. Their problem is that the First Amendment is the rule.”

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Tags: House, bills passed, George Will, Mitch McConnell, defend free speech,  Montana, Citizen United, Supreme Court To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Swindling Veterans - The Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs

Veterans - Waiting and Waiting
They may have to wait longer when money
for their assistance has been stolen.

Dr. Bill Smith, 22 Year veteran: I held posting this article until after Memorial Day. The following disgusting situation affects living veterans verses our fallen comrades whom we just honored.

In summary, Arkansans have been shorted $780,000 in mismanaged or vanished money at the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs! Which begs the question, have Veterans been swindled of benefits, hurt, ignored or possibly worse?

The following video by "Americans For Prosperity - Arkansas" reports on the mismanagement which has occurred at Arkansas Dept. of Veteran Affairs. While this type of situation has occurred (or may be occurring) at many levels of Government, it is most outrageous that it happened with funds dedicated to veterans.

Governor Mike Beebe may have aided his cronies in the past thus ignoring his constituents in general. However, in this situation, he has specifically failed veterans - the men and women who served our great Nation and State. Note also that Gov. Beebe is also the Commander in Chief of the Arkansas National Guard. There appears to have been no apparent attempt by the governor to address or punish anyone for the missing $780,000. Unfortunately, Governor Beebe has allowed the Director of the Arkansas Dept. of Veteran Affairs to resign with full retirement. This in military terms is an epic FUBAR!

Our Veterans, their families, and Arkansas Taxpayers deserve better. For now, we can only wonder if and when we may ever get answers and an accounting from Gov. Beebe, our former chief law enforcement official (Attorney General).

I am very concerned with this "culture of mismanagement." Have Arkansas veterans and their families experienced or may they yet experience real physical harm or loss due to a lack of responsible or available services? Has the Governor and therefore the State of Arkansas negated its responsibility of oversight, accountability and protection of Arkansans?

As fellow Arkansas Veterans, we need to join all other Arkansas citizens in demanding an accounting for these lost / misappropriated funds. This is not a political issue, and there is no time-limit on holding elected officials accountable! We must not forget, please share this information, and join me in holding our Governor accountable. We must protect the resources for our veterans.

Note, Retired ANG Colonel Alicia “Cissy” Rucker, age 62, has accepted the appointment as the new director of the Arkansas Department of Veteran Affairs. I wish her the very best. Rucker has rescinded her state retirement status and will not receive retirement benefits while at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Col. Rucker understands her military Oath and I expect she will give top priority to the welfare of Arkansas veterans. However, we should also expect her to do everything possible to aid in the identification and recovery of the missing $780,000. (1/4/2014 Editor Note: Video by AFP was deleted by AFP)

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Tags: Arkansas, Department of Veterans Affairs, mismanagement, vanished money, corruption, misused funds, veterans, veterans families, Bureaucrats, Governor Mike Beebe, Arkansas Legislature, Taxpayer
To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Senate Democrats Don't Recall Obama's "To-Do" List

Today in Washington, D.C. -  May 30, 2012
Correction: The Senate remains in recess.  The house is in session.  In addition to various committee hearings the following bills are identified to be considered by the House:
HR 5651 — Food and Drug Administration Reform Act of 2012
HR 3310 — Federal Communications Commission Consolidated Reporting Act of 2011
HR 5512 — Divisional Realignment Act of 2012
HR 4201 — Servicemember Family Protection Act
HR 1299 — Secure Border Act of 2011
HR 4041 — Export Promotion Reform Act
HR 3541 — Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011
HR 3670 — A bill to require the Transportation Security Administration to comply with the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.
HR 2764 — WMD Intelligence and Information Sharing Act of 2011
HR 915 — Jaime Zapata Border Enforcement Security Task Force Act
HR 3140 — Mass Transit Intelligence Prioritization Act
HR 5740 — National Flood Insurance Program Extension Act

On Thursday and the Balance of the week:
HR 5743 — Fiscal 2013 Intelligence Authorization
HR 5854 — Fiscal 2013 Military Construction-VA Appropriations
HR 5325 — Fiscal 2013 Energy-Water Appropriations

Yesterday, President Obama awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom to the following:
John Glenn - former U.S. Senator and First U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth
Bob Dylan - Singer - songwriter
Madeline Albright - former Secretary of State
Toni Morrison - Novelist - Pulitzer Prize - Nobel Prize-winning writer
Dolores Huerta - co-founder United Farm Workers
John Paul Stevens - Retired Supreme Court Justice - third longest serving justice
William Foege - M.D. - former Director,  Centers for Disease Control - led the effort to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s
John Doar - former DOJ Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division - 1960s
Shimon Peres - former Israeli President  - efforts to find Middle East peace.
Pat Summitt - Tennessee women's basketball coach - won the NCAA college basketball games in history.
Gordon Hirabayashi, who defied the U.S. internment of Japanese-American citizens (posthumously)
Jan Karski of Poland - eyewitness accounts of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews (posthumously)
Juliette Gordon Low - founder of the Girl Scouts in 2012 (posthumously)

Of special interest in the above list is  Dolores Huerta, age 82, co-founder United Farm Workers honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.  Heritage Investigates identified that the DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.”  Huerta has claimed, “Republicans hate Latinos,” and has spoken fondly of Hugo Chavez’s despotic regime in Venezuela. Some of her more radical comments were captured on an audio clip.

Earlier this month, President Obama made a big show about rolling out a “to-do” list he had for Congress. In a speech in Albany, NY, he said, “[T]oday I’m announcing a handy little ‘To-Do’ list that we’ve put together for Congress. You can see it for yourselves at whitehouse.gov. It’s about the size of a Post-It note, so every member of Congress should have time to read it and they can glance at it every so often.  And hopefully we’ll just be checking off the list . . . .”

Roll Call reports that Senate Democrats didn’t seem to get their to-do list from the president. In fact, “several Senators confessed to Roll Call that they don’t know what is on the to-do list anyway, despite several speeches in which Obama has urged his followers to tweet, call, write and email lawmakers urging them to take it up.”

“‘Didn’t we do some things he wanted us to do?’ asked Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) . . . . ‘Do you have a copy of the to-do list?’ Landrieu asked. . . . ‘I don’t have a copy of it; I’m sure my staff does,’ said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), when asked when the Senate might get to it. . . . ‘What time frame did he put on that to-do list?’ When told the president said the to-do list could be done ‘now,’ Casey joked, ‘Now is a very expansive term. It’s not even the summer yet.’ . . . ‘Didn’t we just try to move on student loans. Wasn’t that on his list?’ asked Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). No, that’s a separate priority.”

Not only do Democrats not seem to know what’s on the president’s list, they’re apparently in no rush to find out. “[S]o far, neither chamber has scheduled a vote on any of the five items the president has urged them to tackle ‘right now,’” Roll Call writes. “‘You’d have to ask Harry Reid’ why the list hasn’t moved, Levin said.”

Republicans interviewed for the article made important points as to why President Obama’s agenda is going nowhere, yet again. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told Roll Call, “The fact of life is none of us work for the president.” He noted, “The president’s pretty much irrelevant, because he’s basically given up on governing and is campaigning.” And Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) pointed out, “I think if the president wanted to get some stuff done, he could call up [on] the phone and tell the Majority Leader to move ahead on any number of bills.”

However, Democrats complained that the president simply hasn’t been doing that. Politico reported last week that in the eyes of senior Democrats, Obama “doesn’t call. He doesn’t write. He doesn’t drop by for a visit.” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) “can’t recall the last time he talked to the president” and Senate Energy Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) lamented, “…the president is not as engaged — at least with me.”

As Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said, “We’ve got a President who is more interested in running around to college campuses spreading some poll-tested message of the day than he is in actually accomplishing anything!”

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Tags: Washington, D.C., President Obama, White House, Congressional To Do List, Democrats, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Romney Wins Texas But Senate GOP Race Headed To A Run-Off

Mitt Romney Wins Enough Delegates
To Secure the Republican Nomination
Pix by Bill Smith

Today, Mitt Romney won the "Big Dog" Texas primary and will receive enough delegates to put him over the 1144 total delegates required to secure the GOP nomination for president. Romney will continue winning even more delegates in the remaining Republican primaries on June 5th, New Jersey (50 delegates), New Mexico (23), South Dakota (28), Montana (25), and the last Big Dog California with 172 delegates. Nevada has the clean up spot with the final GOP primary June 26th with 28 delegates.

Updated:  11:55 PM --Texas (155 Delegates - Proportional Primary): With over 90% of the Precincts reporting, Romney has 68.8%; Ron Paul 11.8%; Rick Santorum 8.3%; Newt Gingrich 4.7%; Uncommitted 4.2%; Michele Backmann 0.9%; and Others 1%. Expected delegate distribution: Romney 105 delegates; Paul 18 delegates; Santorum 13 delegates; Gingrich 7 delegates; uncommitted 9 delegates; Michele Backmann 2 delegates and 1 delegate to be distributed.

The Texas Senate Republican primary race is headed to a run-off between Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and TEA Party backed candidate and former solicitor general Ted Cruz. With 5 candidates in the race and over 90% reporting, Dewhurst 45%; Cruz 34%; three other candidates 19%

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Tags: election 2012, Republican, primary, primaries, May 29, Texas, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

War on Capitalism

A.F. "Tony" Branco:

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Tags: Obama's campaign, plan, growing the economy, the economy, attack capitalism, War on Capitalism, Bain, political cartoon, AF Branco To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Democrat Leader Bolts Over Marriage

Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Jo Ann Nardelli became a Republican last week, and made headlines in the process. Nardelli wasn't just any registered voter switching parties. She was a member of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee; president of the Blair County Federation of Democratic Women; vice president of the Pennsylvania State Women's Caucus; and first vice president of the State Federation of Democratic Women.

A committed Catholic, Nardelli was always pro-life and hoped to change her party from the inside. But, according to a report in the National Catholic Register, Nardelli realized she was in the wrong party when Joe Biden and Barack Obama publicly embraced same-sex "marriage."

After consulting with her priest, she made the decision to join the GOP. Like Ronald Reagan decades before her, Nardelli said, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The party left me." Not surprisingly, she has been barraged by phone calls from angry liberals accusing her of betraying her party and being a bigot.

From time to time, I request action items. But I don't think Jo Ann Nardelli needs any more phone calls. That said, I hope she gets three more -- from Mitt Romney, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.

Values voters are a key constituency of the Republican Party, and there are more folks out there like Jo Ann Nardelli. They may not agree with the GOP on marginal tax rates, but they know marriage is between a man and a woman.

Marriage Matters: Our friends at The Weekly Standard observed that last week's debate between Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) was largely uneventful. But Barrett may have doomed his chances in the recall election when he endorsed same-sex "marriage."

In 2006, 59% of Wisconsin voters supported a constitutional amendment preserving the meaning of normal marriage. In a campaign almost entirely focused on economic issues, Barrett just highlighted the Democrat Party's extremism and gave values voters a reason to turn out in droves.

Bishops Prepare For Civil Disobedience: From June 21st to July 4th, Catholic churches across America will take part in the "Fortnight for Freedom," described as "special period of prayer, study … and public action [to] emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty." Church leaders are taking this extraordinary action in order to draw attention to "concerns over threats to religious freedom."

And the bishops are preparing to go beyond prayer and protests. Taking their inspiration from the civil rights movement, Catholic leaders are warning their congregations that civil disobedience may be next. In a bulletin prepared for nationwide distribution next month, church leaders write:"Some unjust laws impose such injustices on individuals and organizations that disobeying the laws may be justified. Every effort must be made to repeal them. When fundamental human goods, such as the right of conscience, are at stake, we may need to witness to the truth by resisting the law and incurring its penalties. …This is a matter of whether religious people and institutions may be forced by the government to provide [certain medical services] even when it violates our consciences."

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Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, marriage, religious freedom, Catholic churches, Bishops Prepare, For Civil Disobedience, Marriage Matters To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Media Notes Obama's Claims On Spending Growth: "Imaginary History," "Contrary To Widespread Belief""

Drunken Sailor's Sobering comment,
"Just a minute, unlike the Obama,
I spend my own - not your - money.
I quit when I run-out of 'money'
 I go back to work and earn more.
Obama is spending like a despot."

Today in Washington, D.C. - May 29, 2012:
Congress is still in recess! The senate prefers the term "State work period" and the House uses "district work period." In other words communicating in their districts and state with their constituents. That appears reasonable for those whom actually live in their states and districts and return to their districts and states except when holding committee hearings in Washington, D.C. The Senate reconvened for a pro-forma session at 11 AM today and is in recess until the next pro forma session on Tuesday. When the Senate resumes legislative business next week, it will begin with the nomination of Timothy Hillman to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Massachusetts.

The House is in recess, but several House Committees will resume hearings tomorrow.

The Obama White House continues to be criticized for its misleading (and dubious) claims on spending based on a commentary column that appeared at MarketWatch last week.

In a Saturday Fact Check, the AP wrote, “The White House is aggressively pushing the idea that, contrary to widespread belief, President Barack Obama is tightfisted with taxpayer dollars. To back it up, the administration cites a media report that claims federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since the Eisenhower years. . . . The MarketWatch study finds spending growth of only 1.4 percent over 2010-2013, or annual increases averaging 0.4 percent over that period. Those are stunningly low figures considering that Obama rammed through Congress an $831 billion stimulus measure in early 2009 and presided over significant increases in annual spending by domestic agencies at the same time the cost of benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare and the Medicaid were ticking steadily higher. A fairer calculation would give Obama much of the responsibility for an almost 10 percent budget boost in 2009, then a 13 percent increase over 2010-2013, or average annual growth of spending of just more than 3 percent over that period.”

The Wall Street Journal editors added, “[White House Press Secretary Jay] Carney the media critic deeply sourced his view to someone named Rex Nutting, who wrote an 856-word column for MarketWatch that argued ‘There has been no huge increase in spending under the current President, despite what you hear.’ Mr. Nutting claims that spending is rising at 1.4% annually, versus 8.1% for George W. Bush's second term. How did he manage to suss out the insights that have eluded every other human being who has spent time with the historical budget tables? His accounting methods are, er, unusual.

“Mr. Nutting claims that Mr. Obama is only responsible for $140 billion worth of spending in his hyperactivist first year in office because . . . the fiscal year technically begins on October 1, 2009. Therefore he says Mr. Obama had no control over the budget, though in February 2009 he did famously manage to pass an $800 billion stimulus that was supposed to be a one-time deal. Mr. Nutting then measures Mr. Obama's spending growth rate against an inflated 2009 baseline that includes the spending Mr. Obama caused but which he attributes to Mr. Bush. This is like an alcoholic claiming that his rate of drinking has slowed because he had only 22 beers today and 25 beers yesterday.”

Further, the WSJ editors pointed out, “The larger conceptual error of the Nutting-Obama-Carney troika is neglecting to compare the budget to the size of the economy. The best perspective on how outlays, tax receipts and deficits change over time is as a share of GDP. Those data reveal historical trends because they account for different inflation rates and include changes over society as a whole like population growth. Prior to Mr. Obama, the U.S. had not spent more than 23.5% of GDP—that was in 1983, amid the Reagan defense buildup—since the end of World War II. Yet Mr. Obama has managed to exceed that four years in a row: 25.2% in 2009, 24.1% in 2010 and 2011, and an estimated 24.3% in 2012, up from a range between 18%-21% from 1994-2008. Democrats try to explain this away by saying that the economy is lousy, so spending's share of GDP looks larger than it would be with faster growth. But that is hardly an endorsement of Mr. Obama's economic policies, and in any case the recession officially ended nearly three years ago, in mid-2009.”

The AP piece concludes, “So how does Obama measure up? If one assumes that TARP and the takeover of Fannie and Freddie by the government as one-time budgetary anomalies and remove them from calculations . . . you get the following picture: — A 9.7 percent increase in 2009, much of which is attributable to Obama. — A 7.8 percent increase in 2010, followed by slower spending growth over 2011-13. Much of the slower growth reflects the influence of Republicans retaking control of the House and their budget and debt deal last summer with Obama. All told, government spending now appears to be growing at an annual rate of roughly 3 percent over the 2010-2013 period, rather than the 0.4 percent claimed by Obama and the MarketWatch analysis.”

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Tags: Barack Obama, Obama administration, spending, debt, news, media,drunken sailor To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Sex-Selective Abortion Thrives in America

On Greater Fitchburg for Life: BREAKING: Planned Parenthood busted in new undercover sting on sex selective abortions

Bill Smith, Editor: Jill Stanek, Live Action, and The Daily Caller broke the following story that "Planned Parenthood and other U.S. abortion providers are willing to assist in the termination of baby girls for pregnant women who choose abortion because they want to have baby boys. And the pro-life abortion watchdog says its video series and a new website will expose it all."

From Live Action:

Chilling Undercover Video Sheds Light on Growing Trend
AUSTIN, May 29 – Today, Live Action released a new undercover video showing a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Austin, TX encouraging a woman to obtain a late-term abortion because she was purportedly carrying a girl and wanted to have a boy. The video is first in a new series titled “Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America,” exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of baby girls in the womb.

“I see that you’re saying that you want to terminate if it’s a girl, so are you just wanting to continue the pregnancy in the meantime?” a counselor named “Rebecca” offers the woman, who is purportedly still in her first trimester and cannot be certain about the gender. “The abortion covers you up until 23 weeks,” explains Rebecca, “and usually at 5 months is usually (sic) when they detect, you know, whether or not it’s a boy or a girl.” Doctors agree that the later in term a doctor performs an abortion, the greater the risk of complications.

The Planned Parenthood staffer suggests that the woman get on Medicaid in order to pay for an ultrasound to determine the gender of her baby, even though she plans to use the knowledge for an elective abortion. She also tells the woman to “just continue and try again” for the desired gender after aborting a girl, and adds, “Good luck, and I hope that you do get your boy.”

“The search-and-destroy targeting of baby girls through prenatal testing and abortion is a pandemic that is spreading across the globe,” notes Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action. “Research proves that sex-selective abortion has now come to America. The abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, is a willing participant.”

Six studies in the past four years indicate that there are thousands of “missing girls” in the U.S., many from sex-selective abortion. The U.K., India, Australia, and other countries ban sex-selective abortion, but the U.S., save for three states, does not. On Wednesday, Congress will debate the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act (PRENDA), which would ban sex-selective abortions nationally.

“Planned Parenthood and their ruthless abortion-first mentality is the real ‘war on women’,” says Rose. “Sex-selective abortion is gender discrimination with lethal consequences for little girls.”

The complete, unedited video and transcript can be viewed at ProtectOurGirls.com, a hub of research and information on sex-selective abortions.

For our readers, The video is presented below. It will may make you sick as you realize that the curse of mankind spoken in Genesis 11:1-9 is true and evil reigns in the form of intellect and choice: "then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."  Planned Parenthood supposedly helping women choose to kill future women (baby girls). This is the real "War on Women." China by fiat has done this and now the liberal actions of choice are doing the same thing. All government funding (federal or state) of planned parenthood and other abortion operators must cease.

Be it the killing boys or girls - Evil even reigns in the Bible belt of America. See for yourself:

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Tags: planned parenthood, war on women, aborting girls, sex selection, killing babies
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Memorial Day 2012

ARRA News Service: Remembering Our
Veterans and Active Duty Military

Bill Smith, Editor: As a veteran and a son of veterans, I have shared personal thoughts and reflections over the years of this publication. Today I am choosing to share some links of others. God Bless those who serve and have served and may America.

Memorial Day Challenge: Ryan's Story
One Old Vet: Memorial Day 2012 — This Says It All for Me
Patriot's Corner: Memorial Day 2012: RIP: Keaton Coffey. Boring, Oregon
Just a Conservative Girl: Remember Our Fallen
An Ol' Broad's Ramblings: Honor The Fallen….Care For The Living!
Real Debate Wisconsin: Thank You For Your Sacrifices
Publius' Forum: Memorial Day 2012: THIS Is What American Troops Are Made Of…
Marathon Pundit: Memorial Day 2012: Mecklenburg County World War I monument
A TowDog: “All this for a flag?” Yes, Michelle, all this…
Black& Right: The B&R Memorial Day Skim
Common Cents: Some Gave All - Memorial Day Tributes
SaberPoint: Better Men Than I: Memorial Day 2012
Sentry Journal: Memorial Day 2012: Never Forget
The Looking Spoon: It's Not National Barbeque Day
The Maritime Sentry: We can never say thank you enough

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Tags: Memorial Day, 2012 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Liberals Plan Propaganda Campaign After Obamacare Ruling

Liberals aren’t the only ones with plans to mark the anniversary
and oral arguments. Americans for Prosperity will hold a
Hands Off My Health Care Rally in Washington, D.C., on
March 27, the second day of arguments at the Supreme Court

Rob Bluey, Heritage Investigates: A month before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of Obamacare, liberal supporters are already planning an aggressive propaganda campaign to sway media coverage and public opinion.

The focus of the liberal public-relations campaign will be on “real people” — individuals who can speak about the impact of the ruling regardless of what the Supreme Court decides. A newly released memo, first published by BuzzFeed, suggests liberals should adapt their message and events to defend government-run health care.

“No matter what the flavor of our response is, we’ll need real people who are impacted bythe decision to anchor our message and create urgency,” according to the memo, which was prepared by Health Care for America Now and circulated to coalition allies by the Herndon Alliance.

Liberal groups are encouraged to have statements prepared by Memorial Day. The memo advises them to host events within 12 to 24 hours after the Supreme Court decision.

The best way to demonstrate public outrage or public celebration about the decision is to stage an event that shows average people actually responding to the news. We can do this by organizing events as quickly after the announcement of the decision as possible while the media window is still open–ideally, within 12-24 hours. To do this, we’ll need to start assembling the elements of these events now, so that they will be lined up and ready to goon decision day (if the ruling comes early in the day) or the following day.

Suggested venues for events include federal courthouses, senior centers, hospital emergency rooms and even Planned Parenthood abortion centers. The memo encourages speakers such as teachers, doctors, nurses and small businessmen.

The ultimate goal, according to the memo, is to highlight the impact on people who benefit from Obamacare and avoid talking about arcane legal and policy implications.

This, of course, isn’t the first time liberals have shared their propaganda plans to sell Obamacare to the media and public. In advance of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in March, Heritage obtained a detailed strategy memo explaining how liberals sought to influence coverage of the case.

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Tags: abortion, emergency room, Health Care, Health Care for America Now, Obamacare, oral arguments, Planned Parenthood, small business, supreme court To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Backwell On Religous Liberty

The following remarks we made by the Honorable Ken Blackwell To the American Religious Freedom Program Conference.

By Ken Blackwell, Contributing Author: Good afternoon. It is good to be with so many like-minded men and women, people who are committed to defending our most essential freedom -- religious liberty.

We tend naturally to focus on religious freedom issues that rise to the national level. Those cases that come before the Supreme Court rank high in public interest and command the attention of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other giants of the main-stream media.

One of the most unprecedented and ominous assaults on religious freedom is the proposed Health and Human Services contraception mandate. As I have written in a variety of opinion pieces, there has been nothing comparable to this in 225 years in this country. There is truly no precedent for the threat embodied in the HHS Mandate.

If the federal government can force not only Catholic institutions, but those of many other faith communities, and small businesses, and family-owned firms to provide drugs that can cause abortions or chemical contraceptives that violate their beliefs, then the First Amendment to the Constitution has effectively been repealed.

Late in the 19th Century, Germany's Chancellor Bismarck waged an assault against Catholics. The Prime Minister intended to close down Catholic schools and hospitals, convents and monasteries throughout the country. We're not there yet; but we must be vigilant.

Approximately one in six hospital patients in America is cared for in Catholic hospitals. These hospitals employ more than 550,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-timers.

One thing needs to be emphasized here: Many of those employees and many of the millions of patients seen in those hospitals choose Catholic health care because it is grounded in a set of moral convictions. This is true even, and perhaps especially, for non-Catholics who seek care or who work in these Catholic institutions.

My Family Research Council colleague, Bob Morrison, a Lutheran, has twin granddaughters who were delivered at a Catholic hospital last December. When these newborns came down with the life-threatening RSV virus over Christmas, Bob was relieved that the twins were cared for in a Catholic institution. There, he could trust the care-givers and the administrators to share his family's pro-life convictions and practice them in the way they treated his grandchildren.

Even when it is a specifically Catholic institution being threatened, the religious liberties of all Americans are in jeopardy. If Catholic hospitals are forced to choose between God and Caesar, bureaucrats will eventually compel other religious organizations and faith-based ministries to make an identical choice.

And ironically, even though Obamacare is intended to help the uninsured, it's those of lower income who will suffer most as Catholic hospitals and religious colleges suspend health insurance altogether.

This present danger notwithstanding, our experience suggests that most threats to religious freedom have come at the state and local levels. One of the most blatant examples was the case of Oregon in the 1920s. There, a popular referendum‚ strongly backed by the Ku Klux Klan‚ outlawed private education. Only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this unconstitutional in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) was this threat blocked. It was in this case that the Court memorably said: "The child is not the mere creature of the state."

Then there were the Blaine Amendments, named for James Gillespie Blaine‚ the powerful Republican who sought to ban any public funds from aiding -- even indirectly -- what were then called "sectarian" institutions.

Though the Blaine Amendment, a vestige of the Know-Nothing movement of the 1800's, was never passed at the federal level, similar legislation was enacted and is even today still on the books in many state constitutions. They were put in state constitutions to stop families from educating their children in Catholic schools (instead of public schools). Now, they have become a wall between private faith and the public square.

The Blaine Amendments, on record in 40 jurisdictions, constitute a serious barrier to education reform and parental choice.

The Becket Fund, a non-profit that protects the free expression of all faiths, is litigating a case in Oklahoma. There a family seeks to use a state scholarship to send their autistic son to a religious school for special needs children.

In Indiana, the state teachers union, predictably, is leading the charge to prevent parents from using vouchers at religious schools. The union claims these parents are violating the Indiana Blaine Amendment.

In Florida, voters will have the chance this November to repeal that state's Blaine Amendment. Local family policy councils, state and national public interest law firms, and citizen-activists have worked tirelessly to bring this policy change to the ballot.

The government not only threatens religious liberty in our education, it also threatens through supposed discrimination laws. We have the case of a Michigan public university grad student, Julea Ward. Because of her religious convictions, she asked to refer a homosexual client to another counselor. She was then ordered to go through "remediation." Ms. Ward refused and was expelled. A host of religious liberty defenders, most notably the Alliance Defense Fund, are standing with her.

We have seen Catholic Charities forced out of adoptions in Massachusetts and Illinois because they will not place children in same-sex or unmarried households. In Washington, D.C., this so-called "non-discrimination policy" was used by the City Council to achieve the ends of anti-Catholicism. Told by the Archdiocese that they might be forcing Catholic Charities out of adoptions in the nation' capital, one councilman said, and I quote:

"Good. We've been trying to get you out of it forever. And, besides, we are paying you to do it. So, get out!" (Interview by James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, 31 March 2012)

Conscience Protection Laws are vitally needed. Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas recently signed a strong one. But many state laws are weak or unenforced. In Washington State, for example, Gov. Christine Gregoire pressured a pharmacy owned and operated by two sisters who refused to dispense the so-called morning after pill. This drug can cause abortions. The Governor personally joined in a boycott of this family-owned pharmacy. So much for the war on women.

It is amazing how quickly this storm has arisen. In 2008, at the end of the Bush administration, our colleague then-Secretary Mike Leavitt issued conscience regulations on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services. These were good conscience regulations -- protecting doctors and hospitals from being forced to practice medicine that they found morally objectionable. Immediately upon coming into office, the Obama administration revoked the regulations.

With the HHS Mandate, the gloves have come off. The carve-out for religious institutions is so narrow, so restricted, that it is hard to imagine even cloistered nuns qualifying for a religious exemption.

Knights of Columbus Grand Knight Carl Anderson questions whether Jesus' own ministry would qualify for an exemption from the HHS Mandate. Was His work wholly religious? Or was He engaged in the food service industry with those loaves and fishes?

There's a scene in a famous movie I recommend watching over again. In A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More is facing execution for standing by his conscience in a time of agitation.

More tells his prosecutors: "I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live."

Thank God, we have not gotten to that point.

But our task is to make sure we never get to that point. We cannot allow these salami tactics -- this divide-and-conquer strategy -- to succeed. If the HHS can that we subsidize abortion-causing drugs now, what is to stop them from mandating our support for surgical abortions next year?

So we are not being alarmist when we take alarm. James Madison knew something of liberty: "The people are right," Madison said, "to take alarm at the first advance on their liberties."

The battle is raging in Washington, without question. But the key battle-front of this fight is in your state -- at your local hospital, or adoption agency. Are you up for the challenge?
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J. Ken Blackwell is a conservative family values advocate. Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. He is the co-author of the new bestseller: The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency. He is a National Federation of Republican Assemblies board member and a contributing author to the ARRA News Service.

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Tags: Ken Blackwell, religious freedom, religious liberty, First Amendment, U.S. Constitution, Conscience Protection Laws, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Memorial Day Challenge: Ryan's Story

Bill Smith, Editor: As a 22 year veteran, I would appreciate it if you would take a moment this weekend to say thanks to all those who fought for our freedom in World War II by blogging, tweeting, facebooking, or even forwarding the post and the below video. Every 90 seconds another WWII veteran dies. Ryan Jazak took time to say thank you as part of Honor Flight. Will you please take a moment this weekend to say thanks.   Thank you!

Honor Flight Stories:

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Tags: Memorial Day, Honor Flight, veterans, World War II, vets, Honor Flight Stories, military To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama's Memorial Day Shout Out

A.F. "Tony" Branco:

A.F. "Tony" Branco is a contributing cartoonist to the ARRA News Service. Anyone looking to hire an excellent conservative political cartoonist may contact Anthony F. Branco via his facebook page.

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Tags: Brarck Obama, I killed Osama, shout out, veterans, memorial day, cartoon, A.F. Branco To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama Should Blame Himself, Not The Supreme Court

Toon by William Warren (2010)

Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author:  Sometime in the next month, the United States Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of Obama’s individual mandate, the provision forcing everyone in the United States to buy health insurance. Based on how badly this provision was defeated in the oral arguments, it will likely be struck down as unconstitutional. If the law’s most popular provision, the ban on excluding pre-existing conditions, is also struck down, Obama has nobody to blame but himself.

Obama campaigned against the individual mandate. In fact, it’s the issue he won the nomination on. Obama said four years ago: “The main difference between my plan and Senator Clinton’s plan is that she’d require the government to force you to buy health insurance.” He even ran attack ads bashing Clinton on the issue.

Once Obama was in the White House, though, his tune changed. The mandate became the centerpiece of a corrupt deal that Obama cut with the insurance industry – in brief, the insurance industry agreed to accept the ban on excluding pre-existing conditions and several other expensive, onerous regulations in exchange for a mandate forcing everyone to buy their product, and hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies to further sweeten the pot.

Ron Suskind, who was granted insider access to the White House, explained that Obama made the deal even though “Obama, never much for the mandate, was concerned about legal challenges.”

He should have been more than concerned. He should have upheld his sworn oath to the Constitution and said no to any deal that relied on an unconstitutional mandate.

The oral arguments before the Supreme Court showed this wasn’t a close call. Even liberal commentators acknowledged it was a blowout. Jeffrey Toobin of CNN said it “was a train wreck for the Obama administration,” and Andy Serwer of far-left Mother Jones magazine added “Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. should be grateful to the Supreme Court for refusing to allow cameras in the courtroom, because his defense of Obamacare on Tuesday may go down as one of the most spectacular flameouts in the history of the court.”

It wasn’t Verrilli’s fault. Obama was making him defend the indefensible. A federal government with the power to order citizens to purchase politically-favored goods and services is a government of unlimited, unchecked powers—a government the Constitution exists to prevent.

If the ban on pre-existing condition exclusions falls with the mandate, as is likely, that will also be Obama’s fault. The administration’s brief to the Supreme Court argued that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta “was incorrect” to let the pre-existing ban stay in effect. Without the mandate, the Obama administration argued, the pre-existing ban has to go.

Unfortunately, they are right. There is no way to solve the pre-existing condition problem through economically destructive regulations – even if you try to pay-off the insurance companies with an unconstitutional mandate. Without the mandate, as Obama acknowledged, the pre-existing ban would put most insurance companies out of business.

If the Court, as expected, rejects Obama’s unconstitutional mandate and the pre-existing condition ban he tied to it, he’ll have nobody to blame but himself. His whole corrupt approach was a dead-end, and he knew it.
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Phil Kerpen is the president of American Commitment where he first shared this article; a columnist on Fox News Opinion, and the author of Democracy Denied: How Obama is Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – and How to Stop Him. He is a contributing author for the ARRA News Service.

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Tags: Phil Kerpen, Barack Obama, Supreme Court, Obamacare, healthcare mandate, pre-existing condition ban SCOTUS, decision, William Warren, editorial cartoon To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Green Energy Waste on the Taxpayer Dime

AFP - Arkansas: $550,000 in Federal stimulus funds was used to furnish a new State government office building in Little Rock, Arkansas with solar panels in 2010. It's been two years and the panels still haven't been turned on.

The government spent over half a million dollars on what has turned out to be no more than expensive decoration. Even the Dept. of Energy Inspector General has cited problems leading to "less than optimal performance" from stimulus funded programs.

Think of what that money could have been used for if we had been able to stimulate the economy ourselves. Hardworking taxpayers have sacrificed enough. It's time to end wasteful spending. [ArkansasFuture.com]

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Tags: Spending, Taxpayer, Stimulus, Economy, Government Waste, Arkansas Future, federal funds, Arkansas State Government, Little Rock, Arkansas, Americans For Prosperity - Arkansas To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama's Spotless Record

by William Warren:

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Tags: spotless record, no good record, Barack Obama, solid record, Mitt Romney, political satire, William Warren To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Crawford: “All Of The Above” Energy Approach Needed

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR-01): At home in Arkansas this week I met with hundreds of people to talk about the need for developing a national energy policy to lower fuel and utility costs. Every person I visited with told me the price of gas and high utility bills are putting a burden on their family budgets.

KAIT news story features Congressman Crawford discussing high gas prices. At gas stations across our district I visited with people about the high cost of fuel. Even though prices have gone down recently, many people told me they still spend about 20% of their monthly income on gas. Just three years ago, the national average for a gallon of gas was $1.89. Today, the national average is $3.71. That’s a 97% increase in just three years.

At Welspun Tubular in Little Rock, Congressman Crawford talks about the need to start construction on the Keystone XL Pipeline. Yesterday, I was in Little Rock to meet with leaders at Welspun Tubular about the pipes they have built for the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Keystone Project would provide a tremendous new source of oil right here in North America. The project enjoys bipartisan support, even President Clinton has spoken favorably of its construction. We must build Keystone.

Congressman Crawford visited with Clay County Electric Coop members in Pocahontas. Many Arkansas homes and businesses are powered by rural electric coops. This week I met with Coop members throughout our district about new regulations the EPA is trying to impose on coal-fired power plants. Arkansans and other rural Americans stand to lose when Washington tries to regulate rural energy production instead of creating a responsible national energy policy that works for all Americans.

We cannot hope to generate enough power for 300 million Americans without recognizing the importance of clean-coal technology, natural gas and oil. For Arkansas, an “all of the above” energy policy must include oil, coal and natural gas. My column this week makes the case for a national energy policy and gives some ideas for generating new sources of energy in North America.

Even though gas prices have gone down
recently, many people are still spending
20% of their income each month on gas.

All of the Above Energy Strategy Needed: Arkansas’s energy prices are high. The gasoline we put in our cars and trucks and our monthly utility bill eats up a large part of family budgets. Even though gas prices have gone down in recent weeks, families are still feeling financial pressure. A few weeks ago I talked to a factory worker in Mountain Home who spends 20 percent of his income each month on gas. Higher gas and energy costs are forcing Arkansas families to make tough decisions around the kitchen table each month.

In rural communities we drive many miles to work, to the grocery store and to take our children to school. In cities, people walk or take public transit. High gas prices hit rural communities hard simply because we must travel great distances on a regular basis. Additionally, rural communities rely heavily on coal-fired energy to power their homes, businesses and farms. Arkansans and other rural Americans stand to lose when Washington tries to regulate rural energy production instead of creating a responsible national energy policy that works for all American.

Recently, leaders at the Environmental Protection Agency have proposed new rules for power plants that could dramatically increase energy costs for Arkansas families. The EPA is attempting to label coal ash, a byproduct of coal-fired powers plants, as a “special waste.” The new label would impose handling and disposal restraints on coal plant operators. Most of Arkansas’ power is generated by coal, and the new coal ash regulations would have a huge financial and operational impact on these plants. It would cost up to $42 million in capital improvements to meet the EPA’s new standards and would raise utility bills for families in our state who are already struggling.

Unfortunately, the EPA is also rejecting clean coal technology and issuing strict standards for new coal-fired electric generating plants. The new standards essentially guarantee no new coal-fired plants will be built.  The Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas estimate it would cost $730 million to meet the EPA’s proposed standards. That’s $730 million dollars to be passed on to consumers through their monthly utility bill. At a time when America’s energy needs are increasing, the EPA should not stand in the way of building new power plants.

New energy sources for an “all of the above” energy policy are abundant. The American West is rich with oil shale reserves that can be used to power homes and businesses. Off-shore oil reserves provide a vast domestic energy source. The Keystone XL Pipeline can create thousands of jobs and generate a new source of oil right here in North America.

After months of high gas prices and rising utility bills, Arkansas families need a national energy policy to address our energy needs and protect rural communities from the EPA. Many in Washington have said all options need to be on the table to develop a national energy policy. But their actions are not matching their words. We cannot hope to generate enough power for over 300 million Americans without recognizing the importance of clean-coal technology, natural gas and oil. For Arkansas, an “all of the above” approach must include oil, coal and natural gas.

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Tags: Rick Crawford, energy approach, All of the above To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!