Forward or Downward? And Forward to the Unemployment Line

Obama's new campaign slogan recalls that of another socialist

The following two items are related to Obama 2012 Election campaign slogan "Forward" and they are both from the  Patriot Post Weekly Digest.

Forward or Downward?
The Obama campaign has announced its new slogan -- "Forward." Despite the fact that his change has nearly crushed hope, he arrogantly decided to double down and press forward, bitterly clinging to failed policies. Sadly, too many voters remain under the delusion that Obama is "winning the future."

The campaign's latest ad recounts numerous "achievements" of Obama's first term, but only after thoroughly blaming George W. Bush for the nation's troubles. Obama stood up to the challenges, even though, as images of the Tea Party flash across the screen, "some said America's best days were behind us." Obama proceeds to brag about how he "saved" millions of jobs with the so-called stimulus, took on the credit and health insurance industries with regulations and "reform," grew green energy with taxpayer cash (though he neglected to mention Solyndra), took over the student loan industry, and socially engineered the military by repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Hilariously, he even boasted of $1 trillion in spending cuts, though we're not sure how that's possible while racking up $5 trillion in debt. Obama is aghast that, instead of going along happily with every desire of his heart, Republicans actually oppose his leftist ideology.

One could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps he chose "Forward" as in "Forward to the next campaign fundraiser!" To date, Obama has held 132 such events, far surpassing his predecessor. In fact, he has already held more re-election fundraisers than the last five presidents combined. For our part, we anticipate seeing his mail forwarded back to Chicago.

In all seriousness, "Forward" seems to be optimistic and to exude progress, but the history of the word lies in the socialist and communist movements, which as Ronald Reagan contended lead nowhere but downward. We certainly don't think this choice was by accident or coincidence, either. Leftists have always fancied themselves "progressives," as if only their policies will move the world "forward." In 1905, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Soviet revolution in Russia, founded a publication called "Vpered," the Russian word for "Forward." Before that, Friedrich Engels and Leon Trotsky wrote for one called "Vorwaerts," the German word for "Forward." The Communist League featured a biweekly reader by the same name, with which Karl Marx and Engels were involved.

Obama will begin his campaign (officially) on May 5, which just happens to be Marx's birthday.
Obama's policies of taking over industry via regulation and redistribution of wealth are absolutely inspired by and differ only in degree (so far) from those of his socialist, fascist and communist predecessors in Europe. Small wonder, then, that his campaign now features such a prominent mantra of his ideological kindred.

In related campaign news, Obama has devoted much time and energy "celebrating" women, and indeed he should -- because, by a wide margin, they elected him in 2008. More than 56 percent of women voted for Obama versus only 49 percent of men, and women may well be the deciding demographic again in 2012. Check out this 2012 Obama campaign socialist appeal designed to lure female voters with cradle-to-grave Hope 'n' Change. To be fair, Obama should also let each woman know her share of the federal debt. You can calculate yours here.

The fictional "Julia" in the Obama appeal can look "forward" to a life lived at the expense of others, from taxpayer funded school programs to subsidized birth control and single motherhood to retirement drawing from bankrupt Social Security and Medicare. Such a "forward" vision doesn't empower women; it enslaves them to the tyranny of the socialist state. By contrast, the American ideal of Essential Liberty would lead to a Better Life for Julia.

Forward to the Unemployment Line
The Department of Labor released the April jobs report this morning, and it's more of the same -- a dismal "recovery" as Obama moves us "forward." The economy added just 115,000 jobs, once again shy of "expectations," and the headline unemployment rate ticked down to 8.1 percent. The media are working hard on behalf of Obama's re-election campaign by conveying that things are getting better. The truth is, however, the reason the rate is going down is because people are simply leaving the workforce. Some 522,000 people gave up, and labor participation is now at its lowest since 1981. Forward!

---

Tags: Forward, Forward or Downward, Forward to Unemployment, Obama administration, Barack Obama, 2012 election, campaign To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Israel’s Gathering Storm

Bob Morrison and Ken Blackwell

Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison, Contributing Authors: Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, briefed Christian supporters of the Jewish state this morning. He told a hushed audience crowded into his Embassy’s Jerusalem Auditorium of a recent visit by U.S. intelligence specialists. They had asked Dr. Oren the historian to compare Israel’s situation today with other critical periods in the nation’s past. Without hesitation, he answered: In the best case scenario, it’s May, 1967. In the worst case, it’s May, 1948.

May Day! May Day! That’s the international distress signal. In May, 1967, Israel had to prepare to attack Egypt, Jordan, and Syria before these neighboring states could “drive the Jews into the sea,” as Egypt’s left-leaning dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser was then exhorting Arabs to do. Nasser kicked out UN truce supervisors from the Sinai desert and he closed off the Gulf of Aqaba to sea traffic, thus blockading Israel’s southern port of Eilat. Israel responded to these acts of war with a lightning strike against all her enemies. Israel’s spectacular victory in the Six-Day War unified Jerusalem, captured the Golan Heights from Syria, and brought the West Bank regions of Judea and Samaria under Israeli rule for the first time since the days of the Bible.

That’s the best case for Israel. Still pretty scary. The worst case, as the Ambassador described, it would be May, 1948. That’s when the UN-ordered partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states occurred. And seven Arab states—Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia sent troops to exterminate the Jews. They all immediately declared their intention of wiping out the infant Jewish state. That’s when President Harry S. Truman defied his Sec. of State, George C. Marshall, and recognized Israel just 11 minutes after she declared her independence. It was that Independence Day that the Christians had come to the Israeli Embassy to celebrate. The Jews fought with the fierce determination not to allow Arabs to effect a final solution to Jewish settlement in the Mideast. Arabs were exhorted by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj-Amin al-Husseini. This militant Muslim had spent most of World War II in Berlin, urging his fellow Muslims to support Hitler’s genocidal plans for the Jews of Europe.

So much for history. The Ambassador then provided a brisk tour d‘horizon of Israel’s borders right now. Suffice it to say, this is not Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. For thirty years, Israel has relied on peace on her southern border with Egypt. No more. Whoever wins Egypt’s presidential election—and there have already been dozens killed in the run-up to the vote—he is unlikely to reaffirm the Camp David accords from 1978. Israel’s military recently disrupted a sophisticated terror incursion from Egypt. There are 10,000 rockets in Gaza, now controlled by the avowedly terrorist Hamas group. In Southern Lebanon, controlled by Hezbollah, there are an estimated 50,000 rockets. Syria is unraveling before our eyes. No one will miss the Assad regime in Damascus, but we do worry about the largest stash of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the world—which Assad controls. Might Assad’s WMD fall into the hands of Hamas? Hezbollah? Who does the opposition to Assad link to? They are employing suicide bombings, which suggests they may not hanker for Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. And then we have Iran. Which supplies Hezbollah. Which supplies Hamas. Which is now the Number One terror apparatus active throughout the region and the world.

Despite this truly terrifying listing of lethal threats from bloodthirsty enemies, Ambassador Oren’s presentation was brisk, unemotional, business-like. He feared not. He paid tribute to the resilience, strength, and faith of the Jewish people. And he lauded “the greatest alliance in history—that between the American people and the people of Israel. It’s little wonder that U.S. Secretary of State Al Haig referred to Israel as “the largest U.S. aircraft carrier in the world.” If the United States had to use Israel’s territory to launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, we know what the answer would be.

It does not seem that this administration will strike Iran. It prefers “talks,” as if endless efforts at talks with the militant mullahs of Tehran have not brought Israel, Western Europe and the U.S. itself to the current perilous point! Why don’t we limit our talks to this one question: Will you or will you not stop your nuclear projects today?

Of course, the Iranians won’t stop. Why should they? Day by day, the storm clouds gather. Day by day, this administration and the pacifists of the European Union dither. It is most unfortunate that the only American President to win the Nobel Peace Prize whose policies actually brought peace through strength was Theodore Roosevelt. It was TR who said: Walk softly but carry a Big Stick. If the United States won’t use its Big Stick, then Israel should.
-------------------------
J. Ken Blackwell is a conservative family values advocate. Blackwell is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a visiting professor at Liberty University School of Law. Bob Morrison is a Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council. He has served at the U.S. Department of Education with Gary Bauer under then-Secretary William Bennett. Both are contributing authors to the ARRA News Service.

---

Tags: Ken Blackwell, Bob Morrison, Israel, gathering storm, Iran, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

No Hablo Cinco de Mayo

Pix Via Corona

We are not celebrate Cinco de Mayo in our household today. Reason - we are Americans, first, last and forever and my Oath was to the United States of America and not to either Mexico or the sales at the local U.S. shopping malls.

Cinco de Mayo wasn't even related Mexico's Independence Day which is celebrated by Mexico on September 16. Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. So, what is the big deal in the USA. We liked the French support in our Revolutionary War, we liked buying the Louisiana Purchase from them, and American forces bled and died twice helping France in WWI and WWII. In fact, we like them up and until Gen. Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle kicked American bases out of France in 1966.

The Mexican – American War, also known as the Mexican War, or the U.S.– Mexican War, was an armed conflict (war) between the USA and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. American forces quickly occupied New Mexico and California, then invaded parts of Northeastern Mexico and Northwest Mexico; meanwhile, the Pacific Squadron conducted a blockade, and took control of several garrisons on the Pacific coast further south in Baja California. After Mexico would still not agree to the cession of its northern territories, another American army waltzed into and captured Mexico City, and the war ended in victory of the U.S. Although in our victory, we more than generous and paid Mexico $18 million dollars and forgave their debt. A big mistake was not keeping Baja.

So, again! Why are American stores and even schools (a day early) celebrating Cinco de Mayo? If we are going to celebrate another day, maybe it should on March 2, when Texas celebrates its Texas Independence Day. On March 2, 1836, The Republic of Texas defeated Mexico!

And since we are NOT going to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, I am going to celebrate not celebrating with one of my favorite American beers - a Corona. Just a minute - Yes - I know, I know, but the beer was made in "North" America :)

---

Tags: Cinco de Mayo, Corona, USA, Mexico, France To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama’s Lil’ Pet

. . . No it is not another dog. Although if I was little Bo, I would sure appreciate if my owner stopped talking about his prior experience in eating dogs.

The NBC symbol is the peacock not a parrot. But Tony Branco in his cartoon rightly shows Obama new pet friend as the NBC parrot. While peacocks may not be so enamored with Mr. Obama, the NBC and  the  MSNBC anchors and news-prompter readers seem to "wet their pants" in their excitement over the opportunity to "parrot" Obama's positions and to promote Barack Obama.

by AF "Tony" Branco :

---

Tags: Barack Obama, NBC, parrots Obama, new pet, parrot, AF Branco, political cartoon. To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Bad News: Hiring Slowed; Workers Leave "Labor Force In Droves"

Toon by A.F. Branco

CNN Money sums up today’s Labor Department report for April: “Hiring slowed in April and workers dropped out of the labor force in droves -- not a good sign for the job market going forward.”

According to The New York Times, “The United States had another month of disappointing job growth in April. The nation’s employers produced a net gain of 115,000 positions, after adding 154,000 in March, the Labor Department said Friday. April’s job growth was less than economists had been predicting. . . . The unemployment rate ticked down to 8.1 percent in April, from 8.2 percent, but that was not because more unemployed workers found jobs; it was because workers dropped out of the labor force. The share of working-age Americans who are in the labor force, meaning they are either working or actively looking for a job, is now at its lowest level since 1981 — when far fewer women were doing paid work. The share of men taking part in the labor force fell to 70 percent, the lowest number since the Labor Department began collecting these data in 1948.”

And The Huffington Post even admits, “Unemployment Rate Falls To 8.1 Percent As People Give Up On Looking For Work,” adds, “Unemployment fell to 8.1 percent in April, the lowest since January 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning. But the decline was mainly due to 342,000 people leaving the labor force, meaning the BLS had stopped counting them as unemployed. The number of employed people in the nation actually fell by 169,000. . . . About 12.5 million people are still unemployed, and a record 88.4 million people are considered ‘not in the labor force,’ according to the BLS. The labor-force participation rate -- the percentage of the work-age population either working or looking for work -- dropped to 63.6 percent, the lowest since December 1981. ‘It's hard to see the good news here,’ David Semmens, senior U.S. economist at Standard Chartered, wrote in a research note.”

Recall that when President Obama and Democrats in Congress passed the nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill over three years ago, their economic advisors claimed that unemployment wouldn’t exceed 8%. And Vice President Joe Biden famously boasted that the stimulus would “create 3.5 million jobs … literally drop-kicks us out of this recession,” in only 18 months.

Politico’s Mike Allen reports that President Obama will be speaking to high school students in Arlington, Virginia today. There’s not a lot of good economic news for them, though. As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said last week, “So today, the President will bring his latest poll-tested message to . . . students . . . . And I’m sure he’ll give a very rousing speech, full of straw men and villains who stand in the way of their dreams.  I’m sure he’ll also express his strong support for things that all of us agree on. But what he won’t talk about is the extent to which the decisions he’s made are limiting their opportunities in the years ahead.”

---

Tags: economy, labor, employment unemployment, no jobs, jobs, Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

National Day of Prayer & Chen Guangcheng

Tony Perkins, Family Research Council: Halfway around the world, Chen Guangcheng is giving Americans someone else to remember on this National Day of Prayer. The blind activist, who made a daring escape to the U.S. Embassy last Sunday, is in the hospital, deciding whether he should take his family and flee the only home he's ever known. After Chinese authorities tied his wife to a chair for two days and threatened to beat her to death, Chen's "view of what the best thing is [for his family] may be changing."

For days, the man who crusaded to end the government's forced abortions and sterilizations wanted to stay in China and keep up the fight. Now, concerns for his safety and the safety of his family may force him to reconsider. "I would like to say to President Obama, please do everything you can to get our family out," Chen told CNN. His plea came on the heels of some conflicting reports about how U.S. officials had handled the situation--including Chen's criticism that he had been pressured out of the Embassy and abandoned at the hospital, where he was recovering from injuries from his late night getaway. "The Embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital, but this afternoon, as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone."

Chen also tried reaching out to Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), one of Congress's staunchest human rights advocates, but the Embassy never scheduled a call. Now, Rep. Smith, who has tracked Chen's case for years as co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, is leading the effort to protect his family. Before this afternoon's emergency hearing on the Hill, Congressman Smith made it clear that "[This] is a test of America's resolve to safeguard human rights whenever and wherever those rights are violated."

America's lost its leverage in these situations when we put our country in the awkward position of indebtedness to China (which owns at least $1.6 trillion of the U.S. debt). We traded away our ability to act as the "city upon a hill" because the government refused to live within its means. America, once a muffled voice of support for China's persecuted under President Bush, has fallen silent under this administration--for fear of the economic repercussions. Now, pro-life advocates like Chen and his family are being beaten and tortured while the leaders of liberty fumble through negotiations for their release. Although China's culture of oppression didn't happen overnight, it's another example of where this "economic first" mentality will lead us as a nation. The United States has been a beacon for spiritually and financially repressed people around the globe--but the flame of that light is flickering as America becomes servant to the lender (Proverbs 22:7). Let's pray tha t America finds her voice again in proclaiming hope to those yearning to be free.

Kneeling for Healing: Could there be a starker contrast to China's oppression than what's happening in America today: 24 hours of national prayer? While others can only dream of freedom, May 3 should be a meaningful reminder that America 's Christian inheritance is ours to celebrate--and ours to preserve. Today, we recognize that n o piece of legislation or ruling from the courts is more capable of changing this nation than millions of people on their knees before God. As part of the National Day of Prayer, join us in asking the Lord's blessing on our President, Congress, the courts, and the entire country. And while you're exercising the freedom that so many Christians around the world long to enjoy, lift up a prayer for them. The persecuted church is not as far away as we think.

FRC's staff was privileged to honor the National Day of Prayer with a U.S. Navy Chaplain, who reminded us during our chapel service that pouring out our pain to God can allow the Holy Spirit to do a mighty work. May He do a mighty work in and through Americans today. When it comes to Christians influencing the nation, "...Legislation cannot do it, if legislation would. Resolves of majorities, in caucus or in Congress, in towns or by states, or even unanimous votes, is not the way to affect it. The simple and sole process is for each person privately to resolve... [to] legislate over their own hearts... these can add a stone, as truly as the mightiest statesman or the loudest demagogue, to build up the national temple to the Lord. O what it is ye may achieve!"--M.I. Motte

---

Tags: Chen Guangcheng, blind, anti-abortionist, forced abortions, China, no freedom, National Day of Prayer, America, Family Research Council, Tony Perkins To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama moving U.S. Backward Not Forward

American Crossroads: Four years of Obama moving America backward is enough.

---

Tags: Obama, Barack Obama, President, Election 2012, News, forward, backward, economy, unemployment, debt, health care, Obamacare, American Crossroads, ad To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

McConnell Files Brief Defending 1st Amendment Free Speech

Samuel Adams

by Sam Adams MMIV: On its Editorial Page Editor’s Blog, The New York Times complains, “Long before he became the Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell had built a career out of opposing limits to political fundraising and spending, supposedly in the name of free speech. . . . But Mr. McConnell has outdone himself with a legal brief submitted to the Supreme Court a few days ago that’s blind to the ways in which unlimited contributions damage the political system. Not only is there no reason for the court to reconsider or overturn its 2010 Citizens United ruling, he wrote, but the events of the last two years actually support the correctness of the decision. . . . He submitted the brief as part of a Montana case that the Supreme Court may add to its calendar. Since 1912, Montana has barred corporate expenditures in political campaigns. The state’s highest court decided that Citizens United did not supersede the ban . . . . In his brief, urging the court to strike down the Montana law, he says the money has allowed ‘far more political speech in 2012 than would otherwise have been the case,’ making the campaign less predictable and more interesting.”

The liberal editors at The New York Times apparently cannot conceive of a reason that anyone would defend the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 decision in Citizens United, which ruled a number of restrictions on political speech championed by liberals, like those at the NYT editorial board, as violations of the First Amendment. President Obama even inaccurately attacked the Court for this ruling during his 2010 State of the Union address as several justices sat in front of him.

Leader McConnell has always maintained that “Our democracy depends upon free speech, not just for some but for all,” as he said in 2010.< Like he did in Citizens United, Leader McConnell worked with renowned First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams to file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in this Montana case. This new brief points out that “Senator McConnell was the lead plaintiff in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, litigation challenging . . . the constitutionality of Section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Senator McConnell filed a brief, amicus curiae, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and his counsel participated in oral argument on his behalf in that case. For many years, Senator McConnell has been a leader in the United States Senate in opposing Congressional efforts to restrict speech about elections in the name of campaign finance reform.”

In the brief in this Montana case, Abrams and McConnell state, “The ruling of the Montana Supreme Court is in direct contravention of this Court’s ruling in Citizens United. Nothing that has occurred since that ruling warrants its reconsideration. In fact, the central concerns expressed by those members of this Court who dissented in Citizens United or joined earlier opinions sustaining campaign finance laws that limited speech have not been borne out by events of the past two years. . . . The Citizens United ruling was rooted in long established First Amendment principles. There is no basis for reconsidering them or the Citizens United ruling itself.”

The brief argues, “Over two years have passed since the Citizens United ruling. One national election has been held and a vigorously fought primary campaign has been waged in a large number of states around the nation to choose a Republican candidate to run against President Obama this year. In that time period, nothing has occurred to warrant reconsideration of Citizens United. The First Amendment barrier to such legislation has not diminished. And there is no basis for concluding that any quid pro quo corruption, the only kind that this Court has found relevant, has occurred as a result of the ruling.”

In sum, “What should ultimately guide the Court, [Abrams and McConnell] suggest, is not what has supposedly changed in the past two years but what has remained unchanged since the founding of this nation. The First Amendment has not changed. Indeed, it is so well-established that the First Amendment is especially protective of political speech and so rare that such speech is the subject of attempted regulation or censorship that most First Amendment battles have been fought over other questions such as how far beyond political speech the First Amendment provides protection, how closely the protections afforded to less protected speech track those afforded to political speech, and how to characterize the particular speech at issue.”

“What cannot be subject to serious debate,” they write, “is that the speech at issue here . . . is what the First Amendment protects with the greatest level of vigilance. It remains the case, as Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Citizens United reiterates, that the First Amendment ‘“has its fullest and most urgent application” to speech uttered during a campaign for political office,’ and that ‘political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence.’ And it remains true, as set forth in Buckley and repeated with approval in Citizens United, that ‘[d]iscussion of public issues and debate on the qualifications of candidates are integral to the operation of the system of government established by our Constitution.’ That is what Citizens United was about and what this case is about.”
----------
Sam Adams MMIV is the pen name for an un-named beltway source. While receiving information from many sources, this Sam's words sometimes need to be credited. Thanks to all the Adams patriots who speak up for America.

---

Tags: Senator, Mitch McConnell, Files Amicus Brief, Defends, 1st Amendment, Free Speech, Citizens United, Montana Supreme Court, Citizens United To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Gingrich Suspends Campaign

"Gingrich Exits"
The Washington Times

Bill Smith, Editor:  We all knew the this decision would occur but now it's official.   
Newt Gingrich bowed out yesterday as a Republican presidential candidate and has suspended his campaign.  However, Newt acted as he always does with Newt pointing the finger at Newt.  

Evidently, he must not have gotten the deal he had hoped for in negotiating with the Romney campaign.  This is evidenced by the fact that Newt did not come right out and endorse the present presumptive* Republican nominee.  Instead,  according to The Washington Times ,Gingrich said "I’m asked sometimes, is Mitt Romney conservative, and my answer is simple: compared with Barack Obama?" Mr. Gingrich said. "This is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan. This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical leftist president in American history."

One thing is certain, Newt Gingrich also could not have completed with the likes of Ronald Reagan.  Newt's historical reflective comment did create an interesting comparison.  If Mitt Romney is taking on the "most radical leftest president in American History," then that would mean that Newt was saying that Ronald Reagan had a much easier race taking on a lesser "worst president" in American History - namely Jimmy Carter. 

We don't know where Newt Gingrich is headed except back home and then most likely he will be seeking bookings with organizations willing to pay so he can begin to pay off "millions in campaign debt" which apparently the Romney campaign must not have been willing to help cover.  Let's hope Fox News will alsolimit  Newt Gingrich's continual appearances.  But then again, Newt can always try for a laugh on MSNBC as the "moon man."  By the way, another guy Newt has tended to slight slight on occasions has a  lot of surplus cash.  Previously, Ron Paul suspended his 2008 campaign with $4 million in surplus which he then used to launch Campaign for Liberty.  I am sure he surrently has lots of cash on hand in his 2012 campaign coffers.

*As a closing note  Mitt Rommey is most likely the presumptive Republican nominee and is expected to be the official Republican nominee when the final state primary elections are over.  However, I find it very disrespectful for the media to continually declare him to be the "presumptive winner" when several states (with lots of delegates) have yet to vote.  The voters are being basically dismissed, not by Mr. Romney, but by the media and even the National Republican Committee.

This situation is expected to be  far worse on Nov. 2nd when the media (both news services and  network and cable TV channels seek to be the first to declare the winner immediately on the closing of the polls based on their limited exit sampling.  Their actions  influence the voters in states which are still voting hours later.  The lame street media has become rabid about being the first to report conclusions even when those claims are not based on the actual final voting results.  Their actions on election night have become a  issue of  predetermining winners and losers ahead of the final results and then creating bias and by influencing voters who have yet to vote.  Here is a novel idea, why not permit  the American people to vote on election day and then report on the results after the polls close at least in the continental USA.

---

Tags: Newt Gingrich, suspends, republican campign, election 2012, editorial comments To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Wasteful Spending Ad Shakes Up The Left

Americans For Prosperity (AFP) has a new "Wasteful Spending" ad which you can view below. The ad holds President Obama accountable for sending billions of taxpayer dollars to "green energy" companies overseas, even while Americans suffer with rising energy prices and a lack of jobs.

AFP is ramping up the fight, and continuing to expose the dangerous truths that the Left wants to keep hidden: there are 13 million unemployed Americans, but the Obama administration is spending our tax dollars to create so-called “green jobs” in China, Mexico, and Finland.

The Left has already brought out their old playbook of tired smear tactics, to try to discredit our ad and change the conversation topic, because they know they can’t win on the facts alone.

The liberal fringe group, Center for American Progress, piled up the attacks on their ThinkProgress blog—calling AFP an “oil industry front group” and, ridiculously, calling the hard facts in our ad “bogus.”

President Obama’s latest TV ad goes back to his favorite topic—attacking AFP once again as “Big Oil,” and demonizing our new ad “over the top, erroneous, out of context”—without responding to the facts.

And even the Democratic National Committee didn’t waste a minute in attacking AFP—sending out a fundraising pitch to their biggest donors just two hours after our ad launched. The DNC even admits AFP’s new ad is causing “serious damage” to the Left—and asks for their members to give money for the sole purpose of discrediting this ad, and keeping AFP off the airwaves.

---

Tags: Americans for Prosperity, AFP, Wasteful Spending, Obama administration, ad To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

How a bureaucratic dictate becomes a law

Phil Keren

Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author: High school civics students and aficionados of “Schoolhouse Rock!” can be forgiven if they are bewildered by what took place in the U.S. Senate last week. It was Barack “We Can’t Wait” Obama’s new process of turning a bill into a law — not by duly passing it in both houses of Congress, but by issuing bureaucratic dictates and counting on Senate Democrats to block any effort to stop them.

The particulars this time were especially egregious. The Senate, before the 2010 landslide when it still had a 60-vote Democratic majority, rejected the ridiculously named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) — both its first version that eliminated private ballot union elections entirely, and its revised version that retained private ballots but allowed union organizers to catch businesses off-guard with surprise “ambush elections.”

Obama, intent on rewriting the labor laws with or without Congress, nominated a radical union lawyer, Craig Becker, to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Becker had written extensively on how the NLRB could rewrite the labor laws to favor union bosses, making it entirely foreseeable that he would use a seat on the NLRB to sidestep Congress and push forward with the provisions of the failed EFCA bill. The Senate therefore rejected his nomination on a bipartisan vote.

Sidestepping Congress, Obama recess-appointed Becker and he led a string of extreme anti-business actions last year that went well beyond the NLRB’s legitimate authority. One such action, a rule requiring businesses to put up posters touting the benefits of unionization, was struck down in court. Another, set to take effect next week, will implement the “ambush elections” feature of EFCA even though that legislation is not the law.

Last week the Senate had a chance to stop this NLRB power grab, but it came up well short. Not a single Senate Democrat had a problem with bureaucrats writing laws, a duty entrusted exclusively to Congress under Article I, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

This is the third time this Congress that Senate Democrats voted to allow the Obama administration to empower unelected bureaucrats to act as super-legislators.

Last April, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) forced a vote to stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from implementing the energy tax agenda that Congress rejected in President Obama’s cap-and-trade bill. The bill failed on a 50-50 vote, with just four Democrats standing up to Obama.

In November, the Senate considered a resolution, offered by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), to overturn an order by which the Federal Communications Commission gave itself the power to regulate broadband Internet service. It failed on a straight party-line vote; every Democrat refused to overturn an order that will almost certainly be found illegal in court.

The Senate will have an opportunity to do better next month when Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) forces a vote on a resolution to overturn the EPA’s Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology (UMACT) rule. The leading edge of the Obama EPA’s War on Coal, this rule is designed to force coal plants to adopt expensive retrofits or be retired early, driving up electricity prices as much as 20 percent and destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs.

If Senate Democrats again vote to allow the EPA’s bureaucratic rewrite of our laws, it will be even more clear that they are complicit in a constitutional inversion that makes Congress all but irrelevant and allows unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to, in effect, write the country’s laws.

The UMACT vote may be the last chance before the election for the Senate to stop an Obama regulatory power grab. Economically, it is the highest-stakes vote yet. The senators who rubber-stamp Obama’s bureaucratic dictate will do so at their own political peril.
--------------
Phil Kerpen is the president of American Commitment,  a columnist on Fox News Opinion, chairman of the Internet Freedom Coalition, 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. This opinion article was also shared on the Daily Caller

---

Tags: Phil Kerpen, bureaucratic dictate, becomes law, EPA, Senate Democrats, National Labor Relations Board, NLRB To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

WAPO: Obama’s Refusal To Authorize Keystone XL Has Little Rational

by AF Branco

The Washington Post editors write today, “The case for ultimately approving the Keystone XL pipeline — always strong — has grown stronger.

“A key environmentalist argument against Keystone XL has been that the project would encourage the extraction of bitumen, a particularly dirty oil-like substance, from the “oil sands” in Alberta. If activists could “shut in” Canadian bitumen, limiting the ability of oil companies to sell the product, they argued, perhaps petroleum firms wouldn’t be able to fully develop the oil sands. That hope always was unrealistic, and a recent announcement from Kinder Morgan, another pipeline company, illustrates why. The firm wants to nearly triple the capacity of its existing Trans Mountain pipeline between Alberta and Vancouver — a route from the oil sands to the world market — enabling it to carry even more product than the Keystone XL would. From there, much of it would probably head to Asia. . . . [I]t demonstrates a critical point: Even if environmentalists manage to stop one pipeline or another, given high world oil prices, the enthusiastic support of the Canadian government, the many transport options and the years available to develop infrastructure, it’s beyond quixotic to believe that enough of the affordable paths out will be blocked. Environmentalists might succeed, however, in relocating some construction jobs outside the United States.”

They conclude, “So President Obama’s refusal so far to authorize Keystone XL has little rational basis.” The majority of Americans citizens realize both jobs and oil are needed and have seen President Obama's refusal as either narcissistic, self-centered or even un-American. The Senate led by democrats and in particularly Obama's Puppet, Harry Reid, will not move forward without Obama's approval.

Of course, conservatives, primarily Republicans in Congress, have been arguing this for months now. It’s well-known that the Keystone XL pipeline would create tens of thousands of jobs. The president’s own jobs council says “timely development of pipeline, transmission and distribution projects are necessary” and labor unions strongly support the project. More and more rank-and-file Democrats “are joining Republicans in backing the project,” as The New York Times points out.

And yet President Obama and Senate leader Harry Reid (D-NV) continue to block the pipeline from being built. As Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said recently in the Weekly Republican Address, “[T]he Administration continues to block the Keystone XL Pipeline—that’s the nation's largest shovel-ready project, no taxpayer money involved, it would create thousands of American jobs and deliver more than 800,000 barrels of oil a day to our refineries from our best trading partner and our closest neighbor, Canada—all without costing taxpayers. The Keystone Pipeline is one common-sense step in the right direction to help put more people back to work, reduce prices at the pump, and position our nation for greater energy security now and in the future. . . . The shortest path to more American jobs is more American energy.”

---

Tags: Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Keystone pipeline, US Senate, White House, blocking keystone To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Forward to Socialism!

Obama removed from the Oval Office
the Bust Of Winston Churchill and
returned it to UK Ambassador

By Ken Blackwell, Contributing Author: Someone in the Obama campaign should find a new line of work. They’ve adopted as a slogan the single word: Forward! You’ve heard those complaints from conservatives that Obama is a socialist? Well, Forward! is one sure way to validate those concerns. Forward! has been the slogan of Marxists for more than a century. Vorwärts is not a soccer rival to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts school, that home of witchcraft and wizardry. Vorwärts was the German language name of the Socialist newspaper for generations of European leftists.

In Russia, Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks used the word Vperyod! Now, if you had been accused day in and day out of being a Marxist, would you run for re-election with such a freighted word? It’s a comment on American education that a candidate for president can use a Communist word and expect no one will notice or object.

Maybe the Obama team is just taking cues from MSNBC. They try to deny their far-left orientation with the disarming slogan: Lean Forward. Try to imagine that we’re on the rim of the Grand Canyon, staring down at the chasm of debt that this administration has dug for. This president has dug a hole of debt in three years deeper than all previous forty-three presidents. And while we’re hanging out over that canyon rim, MSNBC tells us to lean forward.

It’s surprising that President Obama didn’t pick up on the unsavory associations with the word Forward! It’s like David Duke not getting the problem with white sheets.

In his book, Radical-in-Chief, Stanley Kurtz takes great care to document Mr. Obama’s ties to American socialists. Obama admits in his memoir that he attended the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York City in April 1983. The way Obama tells it, going to that conference was part of the delightful intellectual smorgasbord of activity that a Columbia student samples in Manhattan. You know, Lincoln Center, the Bronx Zoo, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grant’s Tomb—all that cultural stuff in the Big Apple.

The only problem with this scenario is that the agenda of the Socialist Scholars Conference in 1983 was pretty clear: How to bring Socialism to America without importing all that nasty, brutish KGB and GuLAG apparatus from what President Reagan was calling the evil empire.

Those democratic Socialists may well have hit on the formula: work against the family, abolish marriage, crush small businesses, take over big ones. Nationalize student loans and home mortgages, the two biggest items in the American family budget. You don’t have to nationalize everything. As former Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsby said, just the “commanding heights” of the economy. Nice Marxian phrase there, Austan.

Stanley Kurtz is quite careful to distinguish President Obama’s radicalism from that of the Continental Marxists. Kurtz will not go where the evidence does not lead. He finally concludes that Barack Obama is a Socialist, but he’s a Socialist like the left wing of the Swedish Social Democratic Party.

Now, it was hard enough to get Americans to muster on the village green when Paul Revere rode through “every Middlesex village and farm” crying out “The British are coming! The British are coming!” But stand they did and fired the shot heard `round the world.

During the Cold War, Hollywood’s Alan Arkin made fun of anti-Communists here with a spoof called “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!”

So it’s not hard to figure out why Stanley Kurtz’s book did not raise greater alarms. How do you get folks stirred up yelling “The Swedes are coming! The Swedes are coming”?

The serious question we need to ask ourselves: Does the Swedish Socialist model work, even for Sweden? Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia will find it increasingly impossible to meet the demands of their social welfare systems with an ever-shrinking native-born population. That’s why Sweden has taken to importing folks from the Third World. And that, tragically is why the ancient city of Malmő has become dangerous for Jews. The children and grandchildren of people who fled there with the rise of Hitler are being forced out by the rise of jihadist anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is the inevitable result of the politics of re-distribution. We should not forget that in Germany, it was National Socialism that blamed the Jews as that nation’s one percent. Socialism didn’t work in the USSR, but anti-Semitism was rife. That’s why millions of Soviet Jews fled when they had the chance.

The reason Socialists always proclaim Forward! as their slogan is that they never want you to look at their record. Don’t look back at the wreckage of the economy and the dangers to liberty. Just keep marching together, Forward! indeed.
---------------
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 contributing author to the ARRA News Service.

---

Tags: Barack Obama, Socialism, Forward, Ken Blackwell To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Launching a New Slogan

A.F. "Tony" Branco:

---

Tags: Obama campaign, new slogan, 2012, launching new slogan, A.F. Branco, political cartoon To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama's "Sleazy" Campaign

Gary Bauer

Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Today marks the one year anniversary of the successful SEAL team raid that brought justice to Osama bin Laden. Predictably, Obama's campaign is going all out to exploit the mission. It's understandable that Obama would want to highlight this successful mission. After all, his list of accomplishments is rather thin. (More on that below.) But Obama's bragging has raised a lot of eyebrows on both sides of the aisle.

In their most recent video, the Obama campaign and the president himself suggest that Mitt Romney would not have ordered the assault on bin Laden's compound. The suggestion that Romney would allow the world's most-wanted terrorist, who orchestrated the mass murder of thousands of America citizens, to escape justice is a disgusting and false charge. But it is a preview of the depths to which the Obama campaign is prepared to sink in order to win. It is a preview of the smears yet to come.

How much credit does Obama think he deserves for doing the right thing? Yes, it was a daring move. But ANY president would have ordered that raid.

Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the SEAL team raid, told NBC News: "I do worry a great deal … that somehow this gets spun into election politics. I can assure you that those individuals who risked their lives, the last thing in the world they want is to be spun into that. So I'm hoping that that doesn't happen."

The Romney campaign is in no position to spin the raid, so it's crystal clear who Admiral Mullen is referring to.

In today's Washington Post, Jose Rodriguez, Jr., a 31-year veteran of the CIA and one of America's top spies, wrote that the hunt for bin Laden started long before Obama took office. He also noted how Obama has changed our intelligence gathering capabilities: "With some trying to turn bin Laden's death into a campaign talking point for Obama's reelection, it is useful to remember that the trail to bin Laden started in a CIA black site -- all of which Obama ordered closed, forever, on the second full day of his administration -- and stemmed from information obtained from hardened terrorists who agreed to tell us some (but not all) of what they knew after undergoing harsh but legal interrogation methods. Obama banned those methods on Jan. 22, 2009."Current and former SEALs are speaking out too, saying "The decision was a no brainer," and that Obama should not pat himself on the back too much for making the right call.

Even Obama's usual cheerleaders on the left are condemning this obnoxious attack on Mitt Romney's patriotism. Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of the left-wing Huffington Post, said yesterday, "To turn [the bin Laden raid] into a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do." And the Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote that Obama is "making me queasy because his nonstop campaigning is looking, well, sleazy -- and his ad suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have killed Osama bin Laden is just the beginning of it."

---

Tags: Barack Obama, "Sleazy" Campaign, bin Laden, campaigning, Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama Caught Again Misleading About Ohio River Bridges And His Stimulus Proposals

Today in Washington, D.C. - May 1, 2012:
Congress is not in session; return to full sessions on Monday. May 7th.

Occupy May Day:
Today is also called May Day in much of the world especially in communist countries where the socialist workers are called upon to march in the street and sometimes even more bazaar and dangerous actions occur.  In the U.S., today the Occupy movement has called for "May Day' Protest From Coast to Coast" as detailed by ABC News. They are the direct opposite of the TEA Party movement which peacefully protested high taxes, overreach of government and even Obamacare. And unlike the hundreds of thousands at a TEA Party event in Washington, D.C. or even the 3000 people who showed up at a Teaa Party event in the rural Arkansas Ozark mountains, the occupy movement numbers are minuscule. The Occupy movement attempts to garner attention through abuse, intimidation and violating the law.

As ABC News reported there were "An estimated 200 protesters are in Madison Square Park in New York City, while another 500 people are in Bryant Park. In Chicago, an estimated 1,000 people have gathered in a section of Union Park despite occasional rain, the Chicago Tribune reported." Where was the ABC reporting when larger numbers rallied at TEA Parties across the nation?

Gary Bauer noted today, "After hibernating for most of the winter, the Occupy Wall Street movement has chosen May Day to stage its comeback. OWS has joined with other left-wing socialist movements here and around the world in calling for "a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping.

"Yesterday, several banks in Manhattan received envelopes with white powder and warning: 'This is a reminder that you are not in control. Just in case you needed some incentive to stop working we have a little surprise for you. Think fast you have seconds.' The powder was non-toxic, but it had the desired effect: The banks were temporarily shut down thanks to this terrorist prank. There was rioting in San Francisco last night, and yesterday the FBI arrested five self-described 'anarchists' who were plotting to blow up a bridge in Ohio.

"The left-wing media desperately want to portray Occupy Wall Street as a legitimate political movement. But for whatever reason it is attracting some very unsavory characters. Liberal pollsters have warned Democrats to steer clear of OWS because so many of its supporters are willing to resort to violence to achieve their desired change. Rather than romanticizing the movement, serious journalists should be asking why the left is so intolerant and prone to violence."

Today, the FBI thankfully foiled a plot to use explosives to blow up a bridge near Cleavland, Ohio. They claimed they arrested this group of anarchist who also planned to attack the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida this summer.

President Gets Pinocchios For Prevarications Concerning Stimulus and Bridges:
In a speech to the AFL-CIO which Dana Milbank called “a campaign rally in everything but name” yesterday, President Obama again tried to accuse Republicans of opposing the repair of bridges and repeated a widely debunked claim he made last fall that a stimulus bill he was promoting would have funded repairs to certain bridges over the Ohio River.

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog catches Obama trying this again and writes today, “Back in September, when President Obama first unveiled his jobs bill, we gave him Three Pinocchios for remarks he made regarding the aging Brent Spence Bridge on the Ohio River. The bridge connects Kentucky and Ohio, the home states of House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and it was irresistible symbolism for the White House. . . . The administration could never explain what, if anything, the jobs bill would do to improve the Brent Spence Bridge, especially since construction was not slated to start until 2015 — and Obama’s jobs bill would spend most of its money in its first year. . . . Once again [President Obama on Monday] framed it as GOP opposition to fixing the Brent Spence Bridge. But then he upped the ante by mentioning other bridges ‘between Kentucky and Ohio’ that ‘don’t work.’  So what’s he talking about?”

According to the Fact Checker, “An administration official said the president was referring to the Sherman Minton Bridge, which actually connects Indiana and Kentucky, near Louisville. Back in September, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) had to shut down the bridge because a 2 ½ inch crack had been discovered. . . . Shortly after the shutdown, a Transportation Department blog declared that this bridge was ‘another example of why this [the president’s jobs bill] is so crucial.’ But here’s the rub: While Obama claimed ‘these bridges don’t work,’ the Sherman Minton Bridge has already been repaired, ahead of schedule, and motorists are driving over it again. It turned out that, rather than being an example of an aging bridge, the crack that had been discovered actually had been there ever since the bridge was constructed in 1962, because of the type of steel used at the time. Other repairs were ordered, and the bridge reopened nearly three months ago — without needing any of Obama’s jobs-bill funds. Another nearby bridge, the Kennedy Bridge, will soon undergo redecking, but officials said the work will not lead to a shutdown. Again, the work is being done without Obama’s jobs-bill money.”

It’s worth recalling that when President Obama first brought up these bridges last September, he went to Ohio and gave a speech in front of one, the Brent Spence, to argue for his new stimulus spending. In an article titled, “Experts Say Obama's Visit Won't Help Bridge,” the Cincinnati Enquirer explained, “The bill itself contains no mention of the Brent Spence bridge, or any other specific projects.” And the Los Angeles Times noted, “Oops, Obama touts his jobs plan today at an Ohio bridge that won't qualify.”

Of course, the whole event was political from the start, with Politico writing that “the president's staff acknowledged the political nature of his own trip — and their hope that he will benefit from it.” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said the day of the speech, “The campaign has begun.”

Another important fact to remember is that the new stimulus bill Obama was selling at the time had bipartisan opposition and wound up failing to get cloture in the Senate.

Slapping the president with “Four Pinocchios,” for his new reference to these bridges, The Washington Post Fact Checker concludes, “Calling out the Republicans at the Brent Spence bridge was bad enough, given the bipartisan support for its reconstruction. But pointing to the Sherman Minton Bridge, which already has been repaired without funding from the president’s jobs bill, is ridiculous. Perhaps the president was using outdated talking points, but that’s little excuse. Given that the president earned Three Pinocchios before, we have little choice but to up the ante this time.”

---

Tags: Washington, D.C. Occupy movement, May Day, President Obama, bridges, stimulus, caught by media, Pinocchios To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Spiking the Osama Football

AF "Tony Branco:

---

Tags: Barack Obama, spikinhg the ball, Osama Bin Laden, Mitt Romney, the economy, AF Branco, political cartoon To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Region 6 EPA administrator Al Armednariz resigned

EPA Region 6 Director Al Armendariz
on video advocating abusing
businesses and people using the
Roman crucifixion approach

Today, Region 6 EPA administrator Al Armednariz resigned today, days after his comments comparing his enforcement philosophy to crucifixions surfaced in a since-deleted YouTube video.

Armednariz apologized last week, calling his comments “an offensive and inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential violations of our nation’s environmental laws.”

In a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson sent Sunday, Al Armendariz says he regrets his words and stresses that they do not reflect his work as administrator of the five-state region including Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

For prior comments with link to video visit: Obama administration official apologizing

---

Tags: EPA, Region 6, Al Armendariz, resigns, video, abusing businesses, people, Roman crucifixion To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Entitlement Spending Will Nearly Double by 2050

by Alison Meyer, Harrison Investigates: President Obama has called Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” but as this week’s chart illustrates, if something radical doesn’t happen, entitlement spending will nearly double by 2050. The amount of spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Obamacare subsidies will soar over the next 38 years, leaving future generations with an alarming debt burden.

Congressional Budget Office predictions show that in 2010 entitlement spending attributes 10.3 percent of GDP, then jumps to 19 percent of GDP by 2050. David John, Heritage’s senior research fellow in retirement Security and financial institutions, explains why in the context of last week’s Social Security trustees report:

The April 23 report shows that all people who receive Social Security benefits face about a 25 percent benefit cut as soon as 2033—three years earlier than predicted in last year’s report. The program’s long-term deficit is now larger than it was before the 1983 reforms. In order to pay all of its promised benefits, Social Security would require massive annual injections of general revenue tax money in addition to what the program receives from payroll taxes.

Starting in 2010, Social Security began to permanently spend more than it takes in. From now on, Social Security will require large and growing amounts of general revenue money in order to pay all of its promised benefits. Even though this money will come technically from cashing in the special-issue bonds in the trust fund, the money to repay those bonds will come from other tax collections or borrowing. The billions that go to Social Security each year will make it harder to find money for other government programs or will require large and growing tax increases.

The expansion of these entitlement programs translates to higher taxes. “Unless Congress acts soon,” John writes, “younger workers can look forward to paying full Social Security taxes throughout their careers but receiving only about 75 percent or less of the benefits that have been promised to them.”

The problem extends to Medicare as well. Like other entitlement programs, it’s also on an unsustainable path, a situation made even more dire by Obamacare. That’s why Heritage has offered a plan that would reduce the debt and fix the entitlement crisis. It’s called Saving the American Dream, and like Ryan’s budget proposal, it actually solves problems rather than punting them to a future generation.

---

Tags: Chart of the Week, congressional budget office, entitlement spending, medicaid, medicare, Obamacare, Paul Ryan, Saving the American Dream, social security, Heritage Investigates To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Enough Talk, Grow up, Do Your Job!

Bankrupting America: In our latest video for Bankrupting America, we urge you to get involved. Contact your senator at 1-888-760-7997 and let them know that you are tired of the finger pointing and want them to do their job. Urge the Senate to pass a budget after nearly 3 years! Make sure to tell your family, friends and contacts to call in as we kick off our online advocacy campaign!


When you are finished with viewing our web video, take a look at the 30 second version that ran on TV this week! Click here to view.

---

Tags: Budget, Budget pass, Debt, Deficit, fiscal, fiscal policy, economics, economy, jobs, unemployment, Washington, wasteful spending, no budget, no pay To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Remarks on CyberSecurity and More Bad News From Solyndra . . .

. . . Is It Fair For Americans To Pay More For Obama's Failed Energy Policies?

Today in Washington, D.C. - April 30, 2012:
The Senate and House are both in recess until Monday May 7th.

On May 7, the Senate will take up 3 district court nominees. On May 8, the Senate is scheduled to vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 2343, a bill dealing with federal student loan interest rates.

Before leaving for recess last week, the House passed the following bills on April 27:
H.R.4849 by unanimous consent - Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Backcountry Access Act - directs the Secretary of the Interior to issue commercial use authorizations to commercial stock operators for operations in designated wilderness within the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, and for other purposes.
H.R.3834  by unanimous consent - Advancing America's Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Act of 2012
H.R. 4628  (215 - 195) "To extend student loan interest rates for undergraduate Federal Direct Stafford Loans."

Cybersecurity Bills:
Also, H.R. 2096 was passed 395 - 10) -- Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2011 (really 2012). The bill was to "advance cybersecurity research, development, and technical standards, and for other purposes." The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act would mandate the creation of security automation standards and checklists by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which would be guidelines for agencies rather than requirements. NIST also would cooperate on the development of international security standards, as well as the standards for cloud computing. There is no companion bill in the Senate which is considering its own series of cybersecurity bills. This bill may well die in the Senate if the Senate does not take up the bill.

Obviously the passage of this bill was not as controversial as the bill passed the day before and detailed next.

On Thursday, April 26, the House also passed (248 - 168) H.R. 3523: Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) - To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes. Most of the Republicans voting in favor and most of the Democrats voting against. Regardless of how people voted; the arguments surround who gets what and who can do what to whom. The goal of the bill was to make it easier for corporations and the government to share information about potential cybersecurity issues. However, it appears the bill will also allow web companies to share virtually any information about their users with the government, without a court order. Ouch - privacy laws appear not to apply.

The sponsor of the bill Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) said, “We can’t stand by and do nothing as U.S. companies are hemorrhaging from the cyber looting coming from nation states like China and Russia.” Bloomberk BusinessWeek reported that "Hackers and illicit programmers in China and Russia are aggressively pursuing American technology and industrial secrets, jeopardizing an estimated $398 billion in U.S. research spending, the National Counterintelligence Executive, the agency responsible for countering foreign spying on the U.S. government, said in a November report."

Bloomberg also identified the opposition from the White House who is threatening a veto if the bill makes it through the Senate. “As we’ve seen repeatedly, once the government gets expansive national security authorities, there’s no going back,” Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an e-mailed statement after the House vote. “We encourage the Senate to let this horrible bill fade into obscurity.”

It does appears there is a problem which needs to be addressed! But it is strange to find the Republicans on the opposite side of protecting individual's privacy. I expect we will see the death of this bill and a "do over" in the new Congress next year.

More on Solyndra:
Politico reports today, “Republicans are hoping to keep Solyndra alive this summer with a series of hearings and legislation to reform the Energy Department loan guarantee program. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), an Energy and Commerce subcommittee chairman, said a bill is being drafted, and he expects it could be on the House floor in July. ‘We’ve got an outline,’ Stearns told POLITICO. The intent is to ‘make sure the Department of Energy can’t give money out to companies where the marketing information is clear that it’s going to go bankrupt,’ he said. This includes ‘better tools of management and accountability.’ Stearns wants to add punitive measures to the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which Republicans say the Obama administration violated when it restructured the $535 million Solyndra loan guarantee. ‘Right now, it’s not clear. So a lot of people say, “Well, even if we broke the law, the administration will say, ‘So what, there’s no punishment.’” So we want to tighten that up.’

“To that end, Stearns is planning three additional hearings. The first hearing could come in late May or early June and involve administration officials from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Energy and Treasury departments, he said. A second hearing would follow shortly and would include the committee’s final report on Solyndra. A third hearing, he said, would probably be held on the legislation being drafted. Stearns said the Republicans are taking a skeptical look at the administration’s job creation numbers. ‘We’re also looking at the impact of all these loan guarantees and what jobs they created,’ Stearns said. ‘We found that a number of jobs created by these have been negligible for the amount of money, and we want to make the point that this green energy has not produced the jobs that the president has continued to talk about.’”

Meanwhile, according to CBS San Francisco, “Three months ago, CBS 5 caught Solyndra tossing millions of dollars worth of brand new glass tubes used to make solar panels. Now the bankrupt solar firm, once touted as a symbol of green technology, may be trying to abandon toxic waste. . . . Solyndra leased a building on California Circle for the final assembly of its solar panels. But the cleanup at the leased building in Milpitas is in limbo, because Solyndra doesn’t want to pay. CBS 5 found the building locked up, with no one around. At the back, a hazardous storage area was found. There were discarded buckets half filled with liquids and barrels labeled ‘hazardous waste.’ . . . “Essentially it looks like they left a pretty big mess behind,” San Jose State Assistant Professor Dustin Mulvaney told CBS 5. Mulvaney has written a white paper on solar industry waste for the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Looking at CBS 5’s video, Mulvaney said it’s hard to tell how much hazardous waste is at the Milpitas facility. But he said one thing is for sure. ‘Materials labeled hazardous waste require a lot more protocol, so it’s actually a lot more expensive to clean,’ Mulvaney said. ‘It’s very sad looking at this facility taken apart like this, because a lot of money went into building this.’”

And despite the Solyndra mess President Obama is still going around the country touting his administration’s spending on the type of programs that led to this $500 million debacle. He’s been demanding “fairness,” embodied in tax hikes like the Buffett Tax and a new tax on American energy producers, so he and fellow Democrats can spend ever more taxpayer money on “investments” like Solyndra and other bankrupt “green energy” companies. Yet he still refuses to approve the Keystone XL pipeline or other commonsense energy policies that could lower energy prices.

As Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said, “That’s this President’s notion of fairness: that struggling Americans pay more at the pump while their tax dollars go to prop up solar companies like Solyndra and the executives who run them into the ground. Well, I don’t think it’s particularly fair for people who are out there trying to scrape a living together to subsidize bonuses for folks who wouldn’t even have a business card without a taxpayer hand-out. But that’s the economy this President wants. That’s what his policies lead to. That’s his vision.”

---

Tags: Washington, D.C., Congress, CyberSecurity, More Bad News, Solyndra, Obama Administration, Failed Energy Policies To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!