Employee Free Choice Act sounds really good, doesn’t it?  Well, it’s all about the spin–even when you name a bill.  According to HotAir.com, President Obama told top union officials at their winter meeting in Miami that he would pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Employee Free Choice Act (contrary to its name) takes the secret ballot away in union elections.  If a company is about to be unionized, the employees are handed a card and asked to vote openly in the presence of a union official–there is no secret ballot.  It opens the door for all sorts of abuses of the voting process.

The Weekly Standard Blog posted an article in October of last year, when this bill was being discussed, which included a video of George McGovern (also posted on You Tube) explaining why the Employee Free Choice Act (also known as ‘card check’) is a bad idea.  This is legislation that will truly kill the economy.  It will be the end of the non-union shop and of the automobile industry outside of Detroit.

Politico has an three-page article detailing the Obama administrations plan to marginalize Rush Limbaugh.  If you don’t happen to like Rush Limbaugh, that’s no big deal, but there are a few aspects of this that need to be investigated.  I’m posting this even though I feel Rush Limbaugh is more than capable of taking care of himself (as Benjamin Franklin once said, “Never argue with a man who buys his ink by the barrel …”).  Rush does not buy ink by the barrel (although he may–he publishes a magazine), but is well-respected by a large number of Americans who vote. 

First, Rush Limbaugh is a private citizen.  What kind of administration is in the business of silencing the voices of private citizens?  A democracy should be open to all voices.

Second, how many months will it be before some form of the fairness doctrine is put in force?

Third, why is this administration so afraid of opposing voices?   Do you remember what they did to ‘Joe the Plumber’?

This is not just a clash of prominent personalities–one in government and one in the private sector–the is an administration using the power and force of government against a private citizen.

This information is taken directly from the website ChrisBanescu.com.  

Comparing US Corporate Tax Rates to the World’s Largest Economies (2008)
The United States is the world’s largest economy. When compared to the next 14 countries that represent the world’s largest economies (number 2 through 15) by gross domestic product (GDP) as of 2008, here’s how the US stacks up. (Wikipedia & CIA World Factbook)

I don’t claim to understand cap and trade, but according to the American Thinker, if I want to see the results of it, I should look at the California economy over the past three years.  According to the article, California passed a measure in 2006 to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, which Washington is looking to as a model.  The consequences of that law have not been pretty.  One example from the article:

“For more than 100 years the Calportland cement company has manufactured cement from its limestone quarry in Colton, California, outside of Los Angeles.  Already under pressure from plunging prices and profits, the company is facing large new expenses from the cost of meeting California’s CO2 control regulations.    

State regulators have projected that retrofitting the state’s 11 cement plants would cost $220 million and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 12 percent per ton of cement. But CalPortland’s executives say it would cost more than that to retrofit the Colton plant alone.  “We don’t have enough limestone left to invest $200 million,” said James A. Repman, the company’s president.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has an article about two classmates of President Obama’s daughters who will be directly effected by a spending bill to be voted on in the Senate this week.  The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia approves it.  This provision was put in the bill by Dick Durbin.  It allows opponents to kill the program simply by doing nothing.  Because you are ending the program without actually doing anything, the inner-city moms and dads don’t realize that you are cutting one of their lifelines.

Sarah and James Parker currently receive $7,500 voucher from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship.  According to the article:

“Deborah Parker says such a move would be devastating for her kids. “I once took Sarah to Roosevelt High School to see its metal detectors and security guards,” she says. “I wanted to scare her into appreciation for what she has at Sidwell.” It’s not just safety, either. According to the latest test scores, fewer than half of Roosevelt’s students are proficient in reading or math.

That’s the reality that the Parkers and 1,700 other low-income students face if Sen. Durbin and his allies get their way. And it points to perhaps the most odious of double standards in American life today: the way some of our loudest champions of public education vote to keep other people’s children — mostly inner-city blacks and Latinos — trapped in schools where they’d never let their own kids set foot.”

Voters in the inner cities that have poor school systems need to realize who is preventing their children from getting a good education.  Unfortunately one of the trademarks of this administration is that they are in the pocket of big labor–the Teachers Union is included in that.  It would not surprise me to see the education of these two and many other children thrown under the bus in order to appease the Teachers Union.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Citigroup, Inc., has announced a program that will temporarily lower mortgage payments to an average of $500 a month for certain borrowers who have recently lost their jobs and are at least 60 days behind on their mortgage payments. Borrowers will be allowed to make the lower payments for three months. Citigroup will waive interest and penalties during this period. The program applies only to loans of $417,500 or lower.  To qualify for the program, borrowers have to provide proof of unemployment. They must also sign a form promising that they will look for a job and let Citigroup know if they’ve found one.

This makes so much more sense than letting judges rewrite mortgages.  Since Citigroup, Inc., holds the mortgages, they have a vested interest in getting things done right.  I hope other mortgage lenders will follow suit if they are able.

According to the Russian News Agency, President Obama has told Moscow that Russian help in resolving Iran’s nuclear program would make its missile shield plans for Europe unnecessary.

This is beyond insane.  Russia has been supplying, supporting, and upholding Iran’s nuclear program.  No agreement is going to make them stop.  The theory in dropping the missle shield is that if Iran does not have nuclear capability, the shield is not necessary.  Remember that rather odd missle strike in Syria by Israel a year or so ago that the Arab states were very quiet about–no real protesting or condemnation of Israel.  When the UN investigated they found that the site was radioactive.  Evidently Syria was working on its own bomb.  Iran has been much more open about their ‘right’ to nuclear ‘energy’.  Russia has been fairly open about helping them–why do we think an agreement would be worth the paper it is written on?  By the time we realize that Iran has nukes (which it is probably very close to), we won’t have time to get a missle shield up in Europe and we will play the game of nuclear blackmail.   A missle sheild is defensive–not offensive, so why is Russia so concerned?  This is definitely one of the dumber moves on the part of the new administration.

Dr. Mary Davenport writes an article for the American Thinker showing the dangers of nationalizing health care.  The article is a scenario of where we may be headed.  The opening paragraphs:

“The largest generational cohort in American history, the Baby Boomers, will be the first Americans to be denied available effective life-saving treatments for reasons of cost. The seeds for this mass liquidation have already been planted.

Imagine that it is 2016, and you are a 65 year old boomer. You have been admitted to your local community hospital with malaise, fatigue, vomiting and cloudy mental status. You have had blood pressure problems and diabetes for a few years, and have just been diagnosed with renal failure. As you drift in and out of consciousness, you are vaguely aware your old family practice physician, who had taken care of you for 20 years, is not around. A religious man, he quietly retired from medical practice in 2014, after the full force of the Obama administration’s removal of conscience protection for physicians in February, 2009, came into effect.”

This is what a dust storm looks like in Iraq.  That’s not fog!

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It’s March, and Minnesota is still only represented by one Senator.  According to Michael Barone at U. S. News & World Report, that might be the situation for a while.  It’s no secret that Harry Reid is not even-handed in how he deals with Democrats and Republicans, and Michael Barone feels that if Al Franken is declared the winner, Harry Reid will seat him; and if Norm Coleman is declared the winner Harry Reid will not seat him.  The problem is not the election–it’s the recount.

According to Michael Barone:

“My understanding is that the legal case currently before a three-judge panel is hopelessly compromised. Previous rulings in different counties have been inconsistent, with ballots with one kind of alleged defect counted in some counties and ballots with the same kind of alleged defect not counted in others. Most of the inconsistent rulings have tended to favor Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate Al Franken, which is why he has overcome the lead Coleman had when the votes were being tabulated in November. Some allegedly defective ballots have been counted and then commingled with others, so that the decision to count them cannot as a practical matter be reversed. This would seem to me to raise equal-treatment problems as described in Bush v. Gore , even if the Supreme Court tries to say that Bush v. Gore was a one-of-a-kind case and not really precedent.”

The concept of one man, one vote and all votes treated equally has not prevailed in this election (actually it may have prevailed in the election, but not in the recount).  Governor Tim Pawlenty has stated that a second election is unlikely, but I’m not sure there is any other fair way to settle this.  

I can’t confirm this, so please check it for yourself, but I am hearing that despite the changes in withholding in President Obama’s tax proposals, there will be no changes in the tax tables.

If the above is true, that means that you will have $13 a week more to spend during the year, but there will be no change in the amount of tax you owe at the end of the year.  If the increased amount in your paycheck starts in June (I’m not sure when it is supposed to start), that means that approximately $350 of withholding won’t happen, and you will owe that money in April 2010, depending on how closely you calculate your withholding.  That is not a tax cut–that is a sleight of hand designed to make you feel better.  Since the consequences will not be felt until 2010, you might not make the connection.  As I said, I can’t confirm this, so I will be looking into it further as the budget is discussed.

According to Boston.com, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is asking for a $2 ‘carbon fee’ for parking at Logan Airport.  The fee is part of his bill to overhaul transportation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Carbon Fee?  Why not just call it the parking cost increase that it is (your basic stealth tax increase that will only effect a small percentage of people and therefore will not cause too much resistence)? 

The misplaced war on carbon will see many such stealth tax increases.  The cap and trade proposals in the new budget proposed by President Obama will have the same kind of stealth tax increases on people and businesses.  The stealth tax increases on businesses will be passed on to the consumer, and despite promises to the contrary, we will all be paying more taxes in the future.

Today’s Wall Street Journal‘s op-ed piece deals with President Obama’s proposed bailout of people in danger of losing their homes due to foreclosure.  According to the article:

“Just listen to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair. In Congressional testimony last week, Mr. Bernanke compared many troubled borrowers to people who accidentally start fires by smoking in bed. For her part, Ms. Bair told public radio that it would be “simply impractical” to review old mortgage applications and try to distinguish between honest and dishonest borrowers. All of this moved the Associated Press to report that the President’s “assurance Tuesday night that only the deserving will get help rang hollow.””

One of the reasons for the increase in foreclosures is mortgage application fraud.  In December the Mortgage Asset Research Institute reported that mortgage fraud increased 45% in the second quarter of 2008, compared to a year earlier. The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network reports a similar rise for the full year ended in June of last year. Without some sort of mechanism to separate people who lied on their mortgage applications from people who did not, the mortgage bailout makes no sense.  You are not only rewarding bad behavior, you are encouraging more of it in the future.

The plan to institute mortgage ‘cramdowns’ (letting a judge change the terms of the mortgage) will only make things worse–it will make investors less likely to lend money in the future.  The problem of a judge intervening in a previous contract is troubling.  President Obams’s solution to the mortgage crisis definitely needs a rewrite.

According to an article in the American Thinker, the budget proposed by President Obama has hidden taxes in it for you and me.  According to the article:

“The proposed “Spectrum user license fee” on p132 of President Obama’s budget would see cellular phone operators paying an annual levy for using certain bands of radio wavelength; despite operators already spending billions at FCC auctions for access to these frequencies. The fees will start at $50million for 2009, rising progressively to $550million per annum in 2013.”

Obviously, the license fee will be passed on to the consumer.  Anyone with a cellular phone will be effected.

In an op-ed column in the New York Times yesterday, William Poole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis from 1998 to 2008, wieghs in on the subject of bailouts.  He points out that this recession is unique in that it was caused almost entirely by mortgage defaults and the consequent insolvency of major financial firms. These insolvencies, and especially fear of them, damaged normal credit mechanisms.

He points out that the amount of money being circulated has increased greatly starting in September, and that will help the country pull out of the recession by the end of this year.  He points out in the article:

“Federal policy is damaging the economy’s prospects. It fails to provide the needed tax incentives for investment in factories and equipment, incentives that were central to efforts to revive the economy during the Kennedy-Johnson era and under Ronald Reagan. But government spending can’t lead the way to sustained recovery, because its stimulating effect will be offset by anticipated higher taxes and the need to finance the deficit.”

Bailouts are not constructive, and they add uncertainty to our financial situation because there seem to be no consistent rules on who is bailed out and who is not.  Bailouts also open the door for government intervention into corporate matters that they have no business intervening in.  The degree of uncertainty that this creates is not good for economic growth.