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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
(429-347 BC)
Friday, February 26, 2016
Biden Blocked Dozens Of GOP Judicial Nominees From Hearings In Election Year
by Daniel Greenfield: We've being hearing a whole lot of fake outrage claiming that not even scheduling hearings on a judicial nominee is unprecedented. It's not unprecedented. In election years, it's practically the norm, as Marc A. Thiessen at WaPo lists.Biden’s record of election-year judicial obstruction came to light in 1997, when he tried to force then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms to hold a hearing on the nomination of Massachusetts Gov. William Weld to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico (I was on Helms’s committee staff at the time). When Helms declared Weld’s nomination dead on arrival, Biden and other committee members forced Helms to convene a committee meeting, which they hoped would take up Weld’s nomination.
Instead, Helms turned the meeting into a lecture on the “History of Presidential Nominees Not Receiving Confirmation Hearings.” He presented 10 pages of charts prepared by CRS detailing 154 presidential nominations during the previous decade that had been killed without a hearing — including dozens of judicial nominations that Biden had killed.
When challenged by Helms on his record, Biden explained that the nominees in his case were different than Weld’s, because they were nominated in an election year.Not unprecedented at all.According to a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), in 1992 Biden killed the nominations of 32 Bush appointees to the federal bench without giving them so much as a hearing. And that does not count an additional 20 nominations for the federal bench where Biden did not hold hearings that year, which CRS excluded from its count because they reached the Senate “within approximately [four] months before it adjourned.”
So none were cases in which time simply ran out. There was plenty of time to consider the nominations. But Biden refused. Why? According to an article in Texas Lawyer magazine, cited in the CRS report, some of the “nominees reportedly fell victim to presidential election year politics, as Democrats hoped to preserve vacancies in expectation that their presidential candidate would win election.”
That’s not all. In 1988, then-Chairman Biden also killed the nominations of nine candidates for the federal bench appointed by President Ronald Reagan without so much as a hearing. The New York Times reported at the time that “Democrats were determined to bury” some of the nominations because, as one liberal lobbyist told the paper, “the appellate seats were too precious to for us to give up” in a presidential election year.If appellate seats are too precious to give up, what about a Supreme Court seat?Some of the nominees Biden killed that election year had been nominated as early as January 1991 — 17 months before the presidential election. And some of the nominees he killed in 1998 had been nominated as early as February 1987 — 16 months before voters went to the polls to choose a new president.And speaking of the Supreme Court, Biden did his best to block John Roberts from moving upward. This was a typical tactic that Senate Dems used to block potential Supreme Court nominees by preventing them from being in position to be nominated. Think of this as a chess game.Biden refused to even hold a hearing on Roberts’s nomination, much less a vote in committee or on the Senate floor. Roberts’s nomination died in committee and was withdrawn on Oct. 8, 1992. It was only about a decade later that he was re-nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush — and we all know the rest of the story.The precedent is there. If Democrats want to be outraged, they can be outraged by themselves.
------------- Daniel Greenfield is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. David Horowitz is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service Tags:Daniel Greenfield, FrontPage Mag, Joe Biden, blocked dozens, GOP, judicial nominees, from hearings, election yearTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Cropped Image via Americans for Limited Government
by Rick Manning: Can you imagine being forced to train your replacement when the corporation that preached family to you decided they could go cheaper if they just imported a foreign worker?
Well that is exactly what the Disney Corporation forced some of their highly skilled IT employees to endure, in a widening national scandal about H1-B visa abuse.
The H1-B visa program is designed to allow businesses to apply for a limited number of high tech workers to come to America to fill skill gaps in the American workforce. But rather than being an honest means to meet domestic corporate needs that Americans cannot fill, the program has become nothing more than a human resources department scam where workers are laid off in favor of lower cost foreign imports.
Former Disney tech employee Leo Perrero told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, “How do I explain to my young children to follow their dreams and find a job that they love? I followed my dream of having a career in technology to have my very same desk, chair, and computer all taken over by a foreign worker who was just flown in to America weeks before.”
Perrero was given the choice of training foreign workers to take his job, or lose his severance pay, and chose to endure the humiliation of sitting side by side with imported tech workers and spoon feeding them basic processes. And Disney saved tens of thousands of dollars per employee annually by abusing this skilled worker import program, somehow making the Magic Kingdom seem much less magical in the light of day.
But the entertainment, media conglomerate is not alone in abusing the H1-B visa program which the Techsters continually demand that Congress expand. Not content with their billion-dollar stock portfolios fueled by a Federal Reserve created bubble, high tech personalities like Mark Zuckerberg have spent a portion of their newfound wealth trying to expand the H1-B visa program so they can cut their labor costs — dealing Americans out of a piece of the tech pie.
Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) points out that the problem at Disney is not isolated saying, “The sad reality is that — not only is there not a shortage of exceptionally qualified U.S. workers — but across the country thousands of U.S. workers are being replaced by foreign labor. The picture next to me is from Northeast Utilities — a company based in Connecticut and now known as Eversource — that announced that it was going to lay off employees in its IT department and hired outside companies that used H1-B employees to provide its IT services. These U.S. workers were forced to train their foreign replacements and were silenced by Northeast Utilities. According to one of these workers who contacted my staff and requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, 'the only way that we could make a statement was by placing small American flags outside of our cubicles and aisles. Gradually, as we got replaced by the H-1Bs, the flags disappeared as we did.’”
To make matters worse, Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently ended an investigation into whether Southern California Edison unlawfully used the H1-B visa program to replace 500 American IT workers concluding that no charges would be filed because the law had been followed. That, even after Southern California Edison similarly threatened to withhold severance packages from employees that refused to train their foreign H1-B replacements.
If, as Lynch concluded, the H1-B visa program can legally be used to strip away good paying U.S. jobs for lower cost replacement workers, then Congress needs to act to halt all H1-B visas from being issued until the system can be corrected.
If used to fill legitimate needs for skilled workers, the H1-B visa program makes sense, but in today’s iteration, it is little more than a direct corporate handout of low wage labor at the expense of skilled American workers and if that isn’t a crime, it should be.
--------------- Rick Manning (@rmanning957) is President of Americans for Limited Government. Tags:Rick Manning, Americans for Limited Government, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Double Think Continues: Disney Dumps American Workers & Bathroom Battles
Double Think Continues
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Disney Dumps American Workers - Anyone struggling to understand the Trump phenomenon this year (and even to some degree the Sanders surge), needs to watch this video of Leo Perrero testifying before the Senate yesterday.
Mr. Perrero was a highly trained information technology worker at the Walt Disney Company. He had received excellent job reviews. And yet even as Disney reported record profits, Mr. Perrero was told by corporate executives that his job was being given to foreign workers brought into the country on H-1B visas. Adding insult to injury, Perrero was told that HE would have to train his replacement.
These aren't the low-skilled jobs that Americans supposedly won't do. These are good-paying, high-skilled jobs that Americans need in order to support families and pay taxes.
Immigration policy is supposed to benefit America and its citizens. But bringing in foreign workers to pay them less than Americans results in unemployed Americans and less tax revenue to the government.
Across the spectrum -- left, right, Republican, Democrat, Independent -- Americans are sick and tired of a political system that seems rigged against them.
Voters are looking beyond establishment politicians for solutions this year. That's why Jeb Bush is out of the race and why Hillary Clinton is struggling to beat an aging socialist.
Trump and Sanders aren't the solution. But there is no denying that this year is different. Millions of Americans feel betrayed by Washington, so it's not surprising that they are looking to outsiders and radicals for answers.
Bathroom Battles - Speaking of radical, the left is taking its war on common sense to a bathroom near you.
Two weeks ago, a man walked into the women's locker room at a Seattle public pool and proceeded to undress. Women in the locker room complained to the management, who asked the man to leave. He refused, saying, "The law has changed and I have a right to be here."
I don't think he has any right to be there, but he is correct that liberals changed the law, allowing him to be there.
A spokesman for the Seattle Parks office told local media, "We have guidelines that allow transgender individuals to use restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. We want everyone to feel comfortable in our facilities."
Good luck with that. I suspect most women are not going to feel comfortable with a man in their locker room!
This nonsense is not isolated to the left coast. Earlier this week, the city council of Charlotte, North Carolina, approved an ordinance allowing men to use women's bathrooms based on their "gender identity." Conservative state legislators are vowing to reverse it.
In Jacksonville, Florida, the city council recently defeated a similar effort. Councilman Tommy Hazouri withdrew his bill to include "gender identity" in the city's human rights ordinance when he realized it lacked support. But he blasted other council members, saying, "Today, we are stuck in the past, frozen in time, when it comes to human rights."
Are you kidding me? There is no "human right" to invade the privacy of the opposite sex. Where does the left come up with this idiocy?
For all those well-meaning folks who just didn't see how same-sex marriage affected them, let me say this: If we had held the line on the normal meaning of marriage, we would not be having this debate today! But here we are sliding further down the slippery slope.
It's bad enough that adults are having to contend with this nonsense, but the Obama Administration is forcing it on our kids. Thankfully, some states are trying to fight back. Republicans in Congress should be joining them. Nobody voted for this!
While the left is obsessing over a miniscule minority, who is defending the privacy rights of the vast majority?
------------- Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families Tags:Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Disney, dumps, American workers, transgender bathrooms, Bathroom battlesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Newt Gingrich: There was a perfect lack of self-awareness in the question ABC News had for RNC Chairman Reince Priebus on Sunday, and in the Washington Post editorial his answer sparked.
George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s This Week, asked the Republican Party Chair whether he planned to support the Republican nominee if that nominee is Donald Trump. Priebus correctly answered that of course he would. “To me, it’s a no-brainer,” he said.
That obvious response led the Washington Post editorial board to chastise Priebus for “irrational partisanship,” and to urge him to disavow his own party’s frontrunner for the nomination.
The whole episode was reminiscent of the famous (but apocryphal) story of Marie Antoinette: Told that the peasants had no bread, the French queen supposedly replied, “Let them eat cake!”
Today’s news media embarrasses itself with similar decadence. Witnessing the tide of public disgust powering Trump’s candidacy–disgust for a corrupt media elite and a political class that tries to rig the game–the media expects that the GOP find some way to fix it.
It was exemplary of what drives the Trump phenomenon that the “journalist” interrogating Priebus on Sunday was a former Clinton communications director and a Clinton Foundation donor who as recently as 2009 participated in daily calls with partisan Democrat operatives James Carville, Paul Begala, and then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
That’s the profile of the host who now ridiculously asks the Republican Chairman to condemn a potential Republican nominee whose supporters are tired of the partisan Democrat press corps. (It would surely never occur to Stephanopoulos to ask the Democrat Party Chair if she plans to support the compulsively dishonest candidate under FBI investigation who leads the Democrats’ contest.)
The Post editorial was even more absurd than the ABC interview. The Washington political class’s paper of record wants the Republican Party to overrule the will of its voters, who are sick of Washington’s dirty tricks, by orchestrating more dirty tricks.
To Chairman Priebus’s credit and the media’s horror, he is having no part of it. Priebus is the most effective Republican Party Chair in modern times, and recognizes that his job is to run a neutral contest for the nomination and then to do everything possible to support the Republican nominee. He has made it clear from the beginning he will do exactly that.
On Wednesday Priebus described the Post’s hit piece as “the stupidest editorial that I’ve ever seen.” That’s saying a lot, but he might be right. And amazingly, the Washington Post and George Stephanopoulos almost certainly can’t understand why.
---------------------- Newt Gingrich is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. The above commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions. Tags:Newt Gingrich, Case in point, ABC, lack of self-awareness, RNC Chairman, Reince PriebusTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author: One year ago today, my voice and yours and hundreds of thousands of others were ignored when the FCC – on a bare 3-2 party-line vote – adopted President Obama’s plan to reduce the Internet to a regulated public utility under the Communications Act of 1934.Since then billions of dollars of investment and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost. And there are still thousands of complaints pending at the FCC, with action on any of them having the potential to curtail our ability to use the Internet freely.
It’s not all bad news. We helped mobilize millions of letters in to Congress to stop Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet, and had strong language included in both the House and Senate appropriations bills before that process collapsed. Those efforts will be renewed this year. We successfully made the Internet Tax Freedom Act permanent, preventing a 12% tax hike that otherwise would have been triggered by what the FCC did. And litigation is proceeding apace in the DC Circuit, where there is a real possibility the plan will be struck down as illegal. And there are new legislative efforts in Congress we’re excited to support, and we’ll be launching new petition efforts next week so watch for that.
But today I want to reflect. One year ago today, I congratulated Bob McChesney, the Marxist college professor who started the whole net neutrality movement as a way to undermine the capitalist system. And I vowed to fight:
You won this round -- but understand this: you’ve also awakened a sleeping giant. Millions of ordinary Americans who think the free-market Internet has been a wonderful thing. Who understand freedom as the absence of government interference, not the active “designing and managing” by bureaucrats.
We are going to fight. We already won the most recent comment-period, sending your activist ally embedded at the FCC, Gigi Sohn, into an embarrassing “recount.”
Now we are going to fight back in Congress, demanding legislators do their job and overturn this FCC public utility order.
We are going to fight back in the public sphere, battling for every heart and mind.
We are going to fight back in elections, until we have a Congress and president who don’t think their job is to bend to your will.
And we will win. Because you simply cannot be allowed to achieve your ultimate goal.A year later the Internet is more central to our lives than ever and we at American Commitment are no less determined to protect it, even as regulations begin to dim its promise.
Thank you so much for everything you have done already and will do in the future to defend the free-market Internet.
------------------ Phil Kerpen is president ofAmerican Commitment. Follow him at (@kerpen) and on Facebook. He is a contributing author at the ARRA News Service. Tags:Phil Kerpen, American Commitment, Not giving up, Internet FreedomTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Tags:Seattle, Pervert Alert, Transgender Bathrooms, AF Branco, Editorial CartoonTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Government Land - Federal Government Still Working To Confiscate Private Property
by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: Brian Thomas points out that the eastern two-thirds of the country have little federally owned land. By contrast, the federal government owns most of the land in the western states. Henry Lamb asks why the federal government owns 65 percent of the land west of Denver and only 2 percent of the land east of Denver.
These questions are beginning to be asked by various commentators especially as citizens in western areas of America would like to develop property in their states. Originally the government only needed land to fulfill its basic duties. Land was needed for federal buildings, roads, and parks. The rest of the land was available for private ownership.
When the western regions of America became states, government philosophy was changing. Progressive reformers wanted to expand the size and scope of government. And they were also convinced that the government could do a better job of managing the land than individual private landowners.
Brain Thomas writes about the contempt progressives had for what they called “individualism” and their desire for an expansive government based upon the “living and evolving” Constitution. Add to that an ecological mentality that argues that developing land is bad for the environment, and you have the situation we find today.
Henry Lamb reminds us that the Constitution originally delegated certain powers to the federal government. This would include acquiring land for specific governmental needs (e.g., building post offices). The Tenth Amendment declared that powers not granted to the federal government were reserved for the states and the people.
Unfortunately, the states are no longer on an equal footing with the federal government. That is one reason why the federal government owns 98 percent of the land in Alaska and 86 percent of Nevada land. It also illustrates why the federal government is still working to confiscate the private property of ranchers and other private citizens.
----------- Kerby Anderson is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service Tags:Kerby Anderson, Viewpoints, Point of View, Government Land, Federral Government, confiscate private property, Alaska, Nevada, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Democrats, for example, often talk as if the issue were about women doing the same jobs as men but getting paid less. But that’s not what the stats about wage differences by sex (that women earn, in America, 78 percent of what men earn) actually track.
Women en masse tend to earn less because it just so happens that women, in general, work in the paid labor market fewer days and hours (often taking more time off to birth and raise children) — as well as choose lower-paying careers — than men.
It’s about time and productivity. And the choices we make.
Melinda Gates is concerned about something similar to this “wage gap.” She is interested in task dissimilarities between men and women. She’s not a nut about the subject, though. In her contribution to the annual letter of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she notes that America is the most equal regarding a statistical paid/unpaid “gender gap.” Women work more time in unpaid labor elsewhere, globally (including Europe) than do men elsewhere, globally.
Funny, I’ve never heard any “We’re No. 1” chants, congratulating Americans on the tiniest gender gap on the planet.
Certainly, we don’t need a new program to help women catch up with men . . . but for all to be equally free to catch up with their own dreams. Around the world workers need more innovation and, well, free-market capitalism — to free women (and men) from drudgery.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
------------------ Paul Jacobs is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacobs is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service. Tags:Paid, Unpaid, Labor Gap, Paul Jacob, Common SenseTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Intolerance for free speech among student groups reveals their disregard for reason. (Photo: istockphoto)
by Arthur Milikh: Student groups have asserted control of many university campuses across America. Without even resorting to force, they have successfully compelled the resignation of presidents and administrators, the firing and hiring of faculty, and drastic changes to university curricula, among other things.
University after university gives in to these demands, or at least pretends to do so. Only a few university presidents or administrators have spoken in defense of their own institutions or universities in general.
The former rulers of universities cannot defend themselves because they no longer understand the university’s purpose. Rather than ordering young minds, administrators have been ordered to resign. Having become convinced that universities service non-intellectual ends like multiculturalism, social justice, and pre-professionalism, presidents and administrators have little authority outside bookkeeping, job-placing, and safe space-creating.
They have forgotten that among the university’s highest purposes is preserving reason and free inquiry and making this spirit respectable to the public at large in a regime too often disposed to worship the power of public opinion and utility. Where else could this spirit live in our republic? In the mindlessness of popular culture? In fact, presuming that the mind requires protection for free inquiry, the institution of tenure makes sense only in this view. Tenure was not always understood as a sinecure for conference-going and activist data-mining.
Intolerance for free speech among student groups reveals their disregard for reason. Any opposition to or skepticism of their cause is met with anger, threats, and possibly physical harm. This is because free speech honors man’s rational faculty, presuming it is the genuine commonality among human beings. But if one considers oneself as primarily belonging to an aggrieved group, one shares feelings with that group alone, and of course common enemies.
Looking to Europe, one sees how free speech can decline. There, the power of the law is leveraged in favor of the loudest, angriest factions against those speaking freely. In America, for now, free speech is controlled by public opinion only through shame, rather than force.
The Progressive pieties connected to social justice have contributed to the current anarchy. Progressivism has undermined the universities because it doesn’t believe in liberal education. Liberal education’s ends are independence, freedom, and self-rule, while progressivism points toward learning what properly to hate and overcoming it. Most universities do not question the puzzling formulation “social justice”—they teach the methods and the temperament to bring it about.
As such, progressive pieties often foreclose respect for humility, decency, and honest inquiry. Rather than persuading the mind, they command and shame it. Liberal education to the contrary requires a spirit of reverence aiming to liberate the mind from prejudice—the prejudices of birth, public opinion, one’s own distorted and inflated opinions of oneself—in preparation for citizenship.
The societal implications of these doctrines are great, for our regime’s justification is rational. We cannot know about natural rights through feeling. We cannot understand the Constitution through feeling. We cannot understand the necessary habits of character to sustain regime through feeling.
If the standard of reason is denied, how then does one judge justice other than by succumbing to the loudest, angriest voice? Justice judged by intensity of feeling means the angriest have the highest claim to rule, a standard unbecoming of a civilized nation.
Moreover, these doctrines undermine the very thing that created the conditions for their existence. By constantly flirting with the idea that free speech should be silenced, the factions behind these doctrines are prepared to take away rights from others. What therefore happens to individuals if, goaded on by these own doctrines, a new barbarism emerges that cares little about freedom of speech and therefore about protecting universities, which are in effect their safe spaces?
The perspective of anger is incapable of understanding our nation’s needs and its common good. Neither is it capable of creating productivity, decency, self-respect, or political freedom. A public whose passions are its sole animating feature is unsuited for rule by laws.
--------------- Arthur Milikh is assistant director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at The Heritage Foundation. Tags:Universities, overtaken, mob rule, Arthur Milikh, THe Heritage FoundationTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
The debate over Gov. Brown’s $15 billion “WaterFix” Twin Tunnels project is intensifying ahead of the start of hearings before the California State Water Resources Control Board on April 7. The proposal would build two tunnels 150 feet underground to divert water from the northern side of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The plan would continue to divert fresh water away from farms and communities statewide who have suffered through a nearly five-year-old drought. The supposed purpose of the project, as well as the reasoning for the continued diversion, is to address a longstanding issue in California: a three-inch fish known as the delta smelt.
The smelt has been listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act since 1993. California has a cornucopia of state statutes that has expanded these protections and led to the smelt being listed as endangered under the California Endangered Species Act in 2010. WaterFix is designed to prevent the smelt from being sucked into the existing system and, in theory, provide drought relief to some southern California farming communities. WaterFix’s primary hitch is that it must be constructed inside the constraints of years of state policies that favored the smelt over farmers. “The overarching problem creating the water shortages are the layers and layers of laws like these and for the last few years it has been easy for the government to blame the drought,” said Westlands Water’s Johnny Amaral. California Rep. Jerry McNerney (CA-09) echoed those sentiments: “The only thing clear is that the tunnels are a repackaging of old ideas that waste billions of dollars and threaten the way of life for an entire region without creating a single new drop of water.”
Worse yet, a 2015 state study determined that the smelt may have already passed the point of extinction due to the drought. Only six fish were found in the waters last year.
The project’s $15 billion estimate has also come under scrutiny. Even environmental groups such as the California Water Impact Network predict that the tab could reach $67 billion. And as costs spiral, California taxpayers will pay much higher water bills.
CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “We knew waste when we smelt it. Gov. Brown’s ridiculous crusade on behalf of a tiny fish has exacerbated California’s worst drought in a century. His multi-billion dollar proposal doubles down on already flawed and burdensome state policies.”
For his continued efforts to favor the smelt over the needs of California’s drought-stricken populace, CAGW names Gov. Jerry Brown its February Porker of the Month.
----------------- Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers. Tags:Citizens Against Government Waste, CAGW, porker of the month, February, 2016, California, Gov. Jerry Brown, smelt, over the needs, drought-stricken populaceTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Fantasy football can be fun. But when it comes to foreign policy, engaging in fantasies can be dangerous. Case in point: Ibrahim al Qosi.
Secretary of State John Kerry testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday. Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) had a question for Secretary Kerry about the Obama Administration's plans to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
He showed Secretary Kerry a picture of Ibrahim al Qosi, a personal aide to Osama bin Laden. He was taken to Gitmo in 2002, but released in 2012 by the Obama Administration and sent to Sudan, which is ruled by a radical Islamist regime.
Last year, al Qosi reemerged in Al Qaeda recruiting videos and is confirmed to be a key leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. With President Obama vowing to shutdown Guantanamo Bay any way he can, Sen. Kirk asked Secretary Kerry whether al Qosi's example "would end the policy of [sending] terrorists to terrorist nations."
Kerry paused and replied, "Well, uh, senator, he's not supposed to be doing that."
What is Kerry going to do about it? Arrest al Qosi and put him back in Gitmo?
In his response, Kerry summed up the foreign policy mindset of this administration. Obama's foreign policy is built on the fantasy that bad people can be talked into doing good.
Remember when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine? Kerry's response was, "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text." Last time I checked, Putin still controls Crimea.
When China started building artificial islands in the South China Sea to challenge the U.S. Navy, the Obama White House scolded Beijing, essentially saying, "Uh, China, you're not supposed to be doing that." Now China is putting missile batteries on the islands.
After the administration negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran, the ayatollah wasted no time test-firing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Obama responded by sanctioning a handful of Iranian companies, little more than a slap on the wrist and a warning not to do that again.
Guess what? Iran is about to test another missile and it is up to a lot more than that.
Tehran's Terrorism - Far from encouraging Iran to moderate, the nuclear deal has emboldened the Islamic regime to become even more aggressive. Flush with cash from sanctions relief, Tehran is doubling-down on its world-wide campaign of terror. Consider these headlines:"Israel Says Iran Building Terror Network In Europe, U.S."
"Report: Iranian Revolutionary Guards Planning Attack On Saudi Airliner In Southeast Asia"
"Iran Pledges Cash For Killing Jews"------------- Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families Tags:Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Fantasy Foreign Policy editorial cartoon, Gary VarvelTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Trump Addressing Bad Trade Deals & 'That Giant Sucking Sound'
by Robert Romano: It is fair to say that Donald Trump is picking up right where Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan left off in 1992 and 1996.
Running against the twin issues of bad trade deals and illegal immigration, Trump has broken the mold of recent Republican orthodoxy — which has favored new trade agreements and a path to legal status for millions who came here illegally.
Most recently in South Carolina, Trump won among voters who said immigration (51 percent) and the economy and jobs (36 percent) were their most important issues according to a CNN exit poll. And he won among those who said they felt betrayed by Republican politicians (36 percent).
Given that success, including winning the South Carolina Primary handily — where Trump went up and down the state campaigning heavily particularly on trade and proposing tariffs against countries like Mexico and China — it is worth analyzing how the U.S. economy has transformed in the past 30 years, and how that may be impacting Trump’s run for the White House.
The crux of Trump’s argument is that the trade agreements and illegal immigration are taking away the jobs of American workers. Well, in South Carolina alone, more than 111,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since 1994, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a devastating 32 percent decline.
Nationally, that number breaks out to about 4.89 million manufacturing jobs lost, most of which were lost after 2000, about when China was granted permanent normal trade relations.
Consider, the U.S. market share of manufactures exports worldwide — that is, U.S. exported manufactures as a percent of worldwide exported manufactures — peaked in 1999 at 13.48 percent, and has been declining ever since, according to data compiled by the World Bank. In 2014, it was down to 7.45 percent.
Going back 30 years shows that as U.S. market share of manufacturing rose worldwide in the late 1980s and 1990s, so too did labor participation. And that once we were losing market share, labor participation followed closely behind.
Perhaps this is what Ross Perot meant in the 1992 presidential debate when he famously said, “We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It’s pretty simple: If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor… have no health care — that’s the most expensive single element in making a car — have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don’t care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.”
So, whatever the supposed virtues of globalization — lower prices of goods and services or more economic growth — there is a definite cost that must also be considered, and that is the ability to employ American workers.
Adding to the malaise is the higher cost of doing business in the U.S. brought on by greater taxes, more regulations and, more generally, just higher property and labor costs.
Taken together, it is this failure to compete globally that tells the story of the America’s labor force decline.
Globalization — in this case as represented by the declining U.S. global market share in manufacturing — has a direct bearing on whether people in the U.S. will have jobs or not. Or whether they will become dependents of the government or their families.
It is proof positive that making stuff in the U.S. matters. A lot. Not just from the standpoint of employing people in factories, but in terms of keeping capital and investment in the country, which has reciprocal benefits throughout the domestic economy and unquestionably creates jobs. It shows running balance of payments deficits and shifting production overseas necessarily moves those jobs. That is the price.
If nothing else, it may help to explain what in part is propelling Donald Trump’s ascendancy as the Republican presidential frontrunner. The jobs issue — the real jobs issue of bad trade deals and illegal immigration — should be a wake-up call for the GOP, particularly as Congress considers issues this like the impending 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact.
The question Republican members should be asking themselves is, is this really what their constituents want? And will it really create jobs here?
The trade issue cannot be discounted lightly in 2016. Voters who want to know why their jobs are going overseas will likely take offense to politicians who attempt to hand-wave it away as speculative. Agree or disagree with Trump on how to deal with the issue, the problem is real for those who still cannot find work after all these years.
---------------- Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government. His article was first shared on the ALG's NetRight Daily blog. Tags:Robert Romano, Americans For Limited Government, Donald Trump, addressing, bad trade deals, jobs going overseasTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: More and more states are passing voter ID laws, in part because of undercover videos that show how easy it is to compromise the voting process. That was the case four years ago when James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas team showed how easy it was to commit voter fraud in various state elections.
Since then, the New Hampshire legislature passed a bill mandating that voters show some form of identification. Many types of IDs are acceptable. But even if a person does not have the proper ID, he or she can signed an affidavit so that their vote will be counted. The law does not place too heavy a burden on anyone who wished to vote but still provides some level of security so that no citizen’s vote is stolen.
James O’Keefe had a great idea. Why not go back to New Hampshire and see how well the state’s voter ID law is working? The videos are a reminder that as important as voter ID laws are, you still need poll watchers to make sure the law is followed.
The video shows people working at the polls actually encouraging citizens to skirt the rules. A campaign staff worker for Bernie Sanders tells someone to claim a false address in order to vote in the primary election. Another one of the Project Veritas people said she was not living in New Hampshire, but just wanted to vote in New Hampshire. The helpful poll worker suggested she just say she was staying with a friend.
James O’Keefe points out that without proper identification, anyone could vote with a counterfeit name and address. Four years ago, his video showed Project Veritas people obtaining ballots for people who had died but were still on the rolls. Later that year, one of them in Washington, D.C. was able to obtain the ballot for then-attorney general Eric Holder.
Voter ID laws are a positive first step, but these videos illustrate we need poll watchers to make sure they are properly implemented.
----------- Kerby Anderson is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service Tags:Kerby Anderson, Viewpoints, Point of View, voter, ID lawsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Or maybe in Colorado and Oregon they just don’t understand the meaning of words . . . like “safety” and “emergency.” (Heck, there was once a politician unsure of what the meaning of the word “is” is.)
“The state constitution gives Coloradans the power to challenge news laws through citizen initiative,” explains the Independence Institute’s Mike Krause in a recent Freedom Minute video.
In order to force a popular vote, the referendum process requires citizens to submit petitions before the “effective date” of the new law. If a law is deemed truly “vital to public peace, health and safety,” however, the legislature may add what’s known as a “safety clause.” That puts the law into immediate effect . . . thereby blocking the people’s referendum power to petition that new law to the ballot.
Krause discloses that a majority of 2015 bills passed in Colorado contained so-called safety clauses — 68 percent in the Senate and 55 percent in the House.
In Oregon, the tactic is referred to as an “emergency clause.” There, too, most bills are passed as emergencies to block any citizen response.
Tired of legislators using fake emergencies to disenfranchise voters, attorney Eric Winters drafted an initiativemandating a two-thirds vote of both House and Senate for legislation with an emergency clause. Now a grassroots coalition has formed to petition his “No More Fake Emergencies Act” onto the ballot.
Last year, The Oregonian warned that by “abusing the emergency clause” and “attacking the prerogatives of voters,” legislators were inviting “a backlash.”
Taking the initiative, citizens will stop fake emergencies with genuine democracy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
------------------ Paul Jacobs is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacobs is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service. Tags:Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Colorado, legislature, fake emergencies, genuine democracy, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Marshall Lewin, NRA, American's 1st Freedom: Lawmakers in at least four states are pushing bills to force gun owners to register with, and buy liability insurance from, casualty insurers.
So far, politicians have proposed imposing these mandates through state laws in Hawaii, New Hampshire and New York, and through city ordinance in Los Angeles.
The bills are similar to legislation proposed last year in Congress by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., whose “Firearm Risk Protection Act” would require gun owners to provide proof of liability insurance before purchasing a firearm and subject gun owners who fail to maintain insurance to fines up to $10,000, Insurance Business America reports.
The New Hampshire bill, introduced by Democrat state Rep. Katherine Rogers, requires not only firearm purchasers but also sellers and owners of firearms to maintain liability insurance. Violators would face fines of up to $10,000.
The Hawaii bill, proposed by Democrat state Sen. Josh Green, not only requires gun owners to keep insurance, but also requires them to re-register firearms with the state every five years.
The New York bill requires gun owners to maintain a minimum of $250,000 in liability insurance.
In addition to mandatory insurance for gun owners, Los Angeles is also considering imposing new taxes on firearms, ostensibly to offset the costs incurred by crime victims.
And these gun-owner insurance mandates are popping up all around the country. For example, a new Vermont bill, H. 709, introduced by Democrat state Rep. Thomas Stevens, would force insurance companies to require homeowner’s policy holders to report whether they, or anyone in the household, owns a firearm stored on the insured property.
Not only are these insurance mandates predicated on lies—they’re fraught with peril for lawful gun owners. Here are just a few of the ways.
First of all, as George Mocsary of Southern Illinois University School of Law explained to Insurance Business America, these schemes would neither prevent gun crime nor compensate victims adequately.
Why? For one thing, most insurance carriers put language into their policies that specifically exempts intentional criminal acts from being covered. According to Mocsary, that means that about 97 percent of gun-related deaths—suicides and homicides—would not even be covered by the required insurance policies.
Moreover, Mocsary said, nearly one in five so-called “gun violence victims” are actually criminals who were shot while committing a crime themselves. Imagine the fun insurance-industry attorneys would have when challenged in court with that fact.
Add to that the fact that storing a firearm negligently, or entrusting it to someone negligently, are not recognized as “negligence” by many jurisdictions—especially in cases where firearms are stolen and then used to commit crimes—and you see these insurance mandates are really not, nor even intended to be, the solutions their hucksters claim.
Finally, there’s the inconvenient fact that criminals won’t obey liability insurance mandates, and those mandates won’t reduce criminal behavior any more than having auto insurance prevents people from driving drunk.
Rep. Maloney, the author of the federal mandatory gun-insurance bill, claims, “We require insurance to own a car, but no such requirement exists for guns. The results are clear: Car fatalities have declined by 25 percent in the last decade, but gun fatalities continue to rise.”
But Maloney spouts baloney: First of all, there’s no “right to drive a car” in the Constitution, let alone the Bill of Rights. Even if motor vehicles existed when the Constitution was written, there’s not much chance that your life or your country’s freedom would ever depend on your right and ability to go on a Sunday drive.
What’s more, Maloney’s suggestion that auto insurance somehow caused “auto fatalities to decline by 25 percent” is absurd on its face. The reason motor vehicle deaths have declined is almost entirely because of safer roads, safer vehicles and safer drivers—not because of insurance mandates.
So why are politicians pushing these schemes? Well, one of Maloney’s biggest campaign cash cows has been—you guessed it—the insurance industry.
According to OpenSecrets.org data, insurance-industry PACs and individuals rank third on Maloney’s list of donors, and they’ve risen from fourth place in 2012 to third place today. Indeed, those insurance-industry donors gave Maloney’s campaign committee nearly $90,000 in 2013-14.
You know, it’s bad enough that politicians like President Barack Obama and Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton suck up to the financial industry—banking and insurance—and push policies that benefit that industry while collecting millions of dollars from those same moneyed interests.
But when politicians trade financial support from the insurance industry in exchange for policy support for the insurance industry, while claiming to be looking out for “the little guy”—with policies that disproportionately harm those who need protection the most—that goes beyond mercenary to malicious.
Yet that’s exactly what these gun-owner insurance mandates do. Think about it.
If you’re a homeowner, chances are you already have quite a bit of liability coverage as part of your homeowner’s policy. But if you’re living hand-to-mouth, likely in rented housing, possibly in a more dangerous neighborhood, you may not have liability insurance. And you’re probably less able to afford liability insurance.
Which means that requiring gun owners to maintain expensive insurance would harm the urban poor and minorities most of all.
In that sense, these insurance mandates aren’t so much different from the idea that only those who own property can be free. It’s also not much different from the poll taxes that blocked the poor from voting.
Since when do civil rights depend on how much money you make?
As an opinion piece in the congressional newspaper The Hill put it last summer: “If there’s anything anyone has heard from a liberal in the last six years, it’s that insurance costs disproportionately harm the poor. That’s what the never-ending Obamacare debate has been about. Maybe Maloney hasn’t noticed the disparity since she represents the richest congressional district in the entire U.S., where per-capita income is $75,479. But most liberals understand the truth that having to purchase gun liability insurance won’t mean a thing to rich people. For the poor, however, it will effectively end their Second Amendment right.”As NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox said, “The Second Amendment is a God-given right that belongs to every law-abiding American, no matter their tax bracket, their zip code or street address.” Tags:NRA, America's 1st Freedom, Marshall Lewin, Mandatory Insurance, Looms, Over Gun Owners, Gun Insurance, Liability, Carolyn Maloney, Firearm Risk Protection Act, Graft,To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
U.S. Judge Orders Discovery .... Over Clinton’s Private Email System
There are at least three ongoing investigations into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State. Read More at the Washington Post
HILLARY CLINTON AIDES UNDER OATH? --- A federal judge on Tuesday (2/23/2015) ruled that State Department officials and top aides to Hillary Clinton should be questioned under oath about whether they intentionally thwarted federal open records laws…The decision by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington came in a lawsuit over public records brought by Judicial Watch ... READ More
Documented Shame On Hillary Clinton: Federal Court Grants Discovery on Hillary Clinton Email Issue - Judicial Watch announced that District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan today granted Judicial Watch’s motion for discovery ;into whether the State Department and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...READ MORE
Victory: Appeals Court Restores Fast and Furious Document Lawsuit -- Judicial Watch announced that it scored a victory in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit regarding a September 5, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for all records of ... READ MORE
---------------- Tags:Hillary Clinton, U.S. Judge orders, discovery, Clinton's private email system, State Department officials, top aides to Hillary Clinton, should be questioned, under oath, Judicial Watch, documented shameTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Bob McDowell, Contributing Author: It has long been my ‘professional’ opinion that the strong push by extremists in their cause of misguided ‘environmentalism’ has a more sinister motive behind their insatiable lust to change our way of life. That motive being a world-wide organization committed to the drastic reduction of the human race. I will omit my personal experience with one or more individuals professing allegiance to that movement.
In several recent decades, the push to convert our energy system to "renewable energy" has also led to increased numbers of elected officials and government employees who push laws and rules to finance unprofitable energy ventures by underwriting them with grants, tax benefits, and other financial advantages.
This movement was given a massive green light (pun intended) by the Obama Administration for the last seven years and the previous two year when the Congress was solidly control by the Democrats. President Bush, 43, chose not to exercise his veto authority, possibly because of a likely override vote. As a result, we have witnessed numerous examples of gross misuse and the waste of massive amounts of our taxes and borrowed money in support of "alternative energy" sources.
Finally, it seems, there are some attempts at reversing this massive boondoggle by members of Congress who were elected by an awakened electorate demanding more common sense representation of their interests. A recent example is the junior Senator from Oklahoma, James Lankford offering an amendment to the "energy bill" to end the massive tax credits to the ‘wind energy’ operators and developers.
Also, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, R-TX, had the courage in Iowa to propose a phasing out of the subsidies for ethanol which is added to gasoline. His action resulted in a rebuttal by the Governor of Iowa, a republican, who told Iowans to vote “‘anyone but Cruz.” However, from the caucus results, it appears that the Iowa Republicans have more common sense than their governor!
The subsidies (our tax dollars) supporting the blending of ethanol into gasoline has been detrimental for several reasons. Ethanol is detrimental to engines older than 2005 engines and results in reduced fuel mileage. This is even worse in the summer months because the boiling point of any alcohol is much lower than water. The heat from the engine and roads will cause ethanol it to boil away especially in town driving where it is often in the tank much longer.
Further, using corn for ethanol drives up the price of food! Also, waste is increased. The artificial profiting from ethanol subsidies and tax credits tends to make some operators less efficient and potentially crooked in their operations.
As for wind energy, I believe that the massive windmills, called turbines, are most wasteful of space, kill birds, and tend to have a short operation life.
As for individuals who install roof mounted solar panels, the state legislatures are pressured by utilities to levy ownership taxes on these home owners who invested much to install them. In at least one state, it is required that the utility ‘buy back’ excess solar electricity at RETAIL price rather than a more sensible wholesale price thus making matters worse.
As for the former government ‘depletion allowance’ allowed to oil and gas is another matter best addressed in another article. as for the above, t is past time for cuts in "big government" spending on faux renewable energy efforts.
--------------- Robert "Bob" McDowell, Jr. is a retired Professional Engineer and Geologist with over 50 years experience in creating drilling prospects, supervising drilling, well completion, production operation, and pipeline design for oil and gas including repair of problem wells. McDowell is a conservative activist and member of the Oklahoma Republican Assembly. He Contributes opinion and commentary articles to the ARRA News Service. Tags:Bob McDowell, spending cuts, faux renewable energy, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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