Disturbing Words From An Influential Governor

Andrew Cuomo is the Governor of New York. He is also one of the Democrat party’s upcoming stars. I have no doubt we will be hearing more from him in the future. Hot Air quoted one of his recent statements that needs to be considered as he rises to higher positions in government.

In a radio interview on Thursday with Albany’s WGDJ-AM, New York governor Andrew Cuomo said that he plans to work with state legislators next month to submit a proposal for new gun-control laws; in particular, Cuomo said, “our focus is assault weapons,” because current state laws regulating the weapons “have more holes that Swiss cheese.”

“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, ‘I need an assault weapon to go hunting,’” he said.

Cuomo continued, “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it.”

Confiscation is not an option. Confiscation is against the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is part of the Constitution, which forms the foundation of American law. If you destroy the foundation, you destroy the country.

Just a note about the effectiveness of gun bans. The Sandy Hook Elementary School was a gun-free zone. Connecticut has an assault weapons ban. Does anyone honestly believe that laws stop a mentally disturbed person from causing harm to innocent people? The theater in Colorado was particularly chosen by the shooter because it was gun-free. Criminals and mentally unstable people desiring to do harm to innocent people do not go where people are armed–they go where people are defenseless. Laws are not the answer. Dealing with the mentally ill is part of the answer, and teaching everyone to value life is part of the answer. I am not sure we will ever have the entire answer.

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About Those Fiscal Cliff Negotiations…

Friday’s Wall Street Journal posted some of the details of the negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker Boehner.

The article reports:

Mr. Obama repeatedly lost patience with the speaker as negotiations faltered. In an Oval Office meeting last week, he told Mr. Boehner that if the sides didn’t reach agreement, he would use his inaugural address and his State of the Union speech to tell the country the Republicans were at fault.

Blaming may work politically up to a point, but I honestly don’t see it as a way to move the discussion forward.

The article cites some of the actual negotiations:

At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, “I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?”

“You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”

Good grief!

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article on Friday about the negotiations on the fiscal cliff. In the article he quoted Senator Jeff Sessions:

President Obama today gave yet another speech about the fiscal cliff. No plan, nothing that can be scored or analyzed, just another speech. If President Obama wishes to avoid the fiscal cliff then he, with all the power and influence he holds as the leader of this nation, must submit to Congress – in legislative form – a plan that he believes can pass both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support. No more secret meetings and pointless press conferences. Certainly this is not too much to ask. So we await his action: will he move from an unscorable speech to scorable legislation? If he is unwilling to submit such a plan then we may be left with only one persuasive conclusion: that he has used two years of secret meetings with Republican leaders not as an opportunity to achieve fiscal reform, but as a political exercise to defeat his opposition and preserve the expansion of federal spending.

There are a number of ideas as to what President Obama is doing. Two of them are very interesting. Rush Limbaugh believes that this exercise is an attempt to divide and destroy the Republican Party by getting them to admit that tax hikes on the rich are necessary. Dick Morris believes that the current negotiations are an effort to change to discussion from excessive spending to the idea that we need more revenue. Each is plausible. Meanwhile, the American economy sits in limbo waiting to see what happens next. We need some grown-ups in Washington. Let’s elect some in 2014.

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Something To Think About As The Temperature Drops

I am not a cold weather person. I think New England is a beautiful place, but I really am not a cold weather person. I’m not real fond of intense heat either–I enjoy my creature comforts. Thus, I love the following story.

Yesterday’s Washington Post posted a story about a study by Tulane University, Carnegie Mellon University, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showing that air conditioning has played a major role in reducing deaths of Americans on extremely hot days by keeping them cool. That makes perfect sense.

The article reports:

The likelihood of a premature death on an extremely hot day between 1929 and 1959 was 2.5 percent, the academics found, dropping to less than 0.5 percent after 1960. The paper, which is under review at an academic journal, compared days on which temperatures exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit with days when they ranged between 60 and 69 degrees Fahrenheit.

Because the article is in the Washington Post, the article goes on to explain how air conditioning will help all of us survive global warming. Putting that aside, isn’t it ironic that the thing the global warming camp criticizes as being one of the causes of global warming also saves lives.

The article reports:

The study’s results could be particularly important for nations such as India, where only a small portion of the population has residential air conditioning. The typical person in India experiences 33 days per year where the temperature rises above 90 degrees Fahrenheit; that could increase by as much as 100 days by the end of the century, according to some climate projections.

Anand Patwardhan, a visiting professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland in College Park, said he expects home air conditioning to become more common in India, but not as a conscious response to global warming.

“While it is certainly the case that residential air-conditioning helps in reducing mortality due to temperature extremes, the rapid growth of air-conditioning in the past is perhaps more due to rising incomes and increasing affordability of air-conditioning,” he wrote in an e-mail.

First of all, global warming is a political hoax designed to take money from economically successful countries and give it to third world dictators who will spend it on themselves while their people starve (remember food for oil–it worked the same way). The best scientific source of information on global warming is a website called wattsupwiththat. I strongly recommend it.

Anyway, the fact is that as countries become more wealthy, they consume more energy. The only real way to lower energy consumption is to lower standards of living. Americans who buy into unproven global warming theories might want to consider whether it is worth lowering their standard of living based on an unproven theory.

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The Disturbing Path That John Kerry Took To Become The Secretary Of State

I am not happy about John Kerry becoming Secretary of State. As the wife of a Vietnam-era veteran, his nomination is disturbing to me. Front Page Magazine posted an article today that clearly states many of my concerns.

After being discharged from the Navy in early 1970, Kerry joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and became a major figure in the so-called “peace” movement, whose hallmarks were a deep wellspring of hatred for the United States coupled with sympathy for America’s Communist enemy. In May 1970, Kerry, without government authorization, met personally with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations in Paris to discuss a list of “peace” proposals enumerated by Nguyen Thi Madame Binh, the top Viet Cong delegate to the Paris Peace talks. In the aftermath of that illegal meeting, Kerry strongly advised the U.S. Senate to accept Binh’s proposals.

At that time, Kerry himself acknowledged that his visit to Paris was “on the borderline” of legality. Actually, it extended far beyond that “borderline.” A federal law known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice prescribed severe punishment (including, in some cases, the death penalty) for any person who “without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly.”

…Army reports that were unearthed decades later resoundingly discredited the claims of Kerry and his fellow VVAW members, proving those claims to be essentially a pack of lies. When Kerry was running for U.S. President in 2004, the publication U.S. Veteran Dispatch noted that Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony had “occurred while some of his fellow Vietnam veterans were known by the world to be enduring terrible suffering as prisoners of war in North Vietnamese prisons.” Similarly, retired General George S. Patton III charged that Kerry’s actions had given “aid and comfort to the enemy.” And the organization Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry stated:

“As a national leader of VVAW, Kerry campaigned against the effort of the United States to contain the spread of Communism. He used the blood of servicemen still in the field for his own political advancement by claiming that their blood was being shed unnecessarily or in vain…. Under Kerry’s leadership, VVAW members mocked the uniform of United States soldiers by wearing tattered fatigues marked with pro-communist graffiti. They dishonored America by marching in demonstrations under the flag of the Viet Cong enemy.”

There was a time in America when John Kerry’s actions would have landed him in jail–not in Congress.

I know that was a long time ago, and that people change. But I don’t remember ever hearing Senator Kerry apologize or express regret about his actions. I live in Massachusetts, and knowing what I know about Massachusetts politics, I can understand John Kerry’s being elected to Congress. I just don’t understand why he would even be considered for Secretary of State.

My heart goes out to all of the Vietnam veterans and Vietnam-era veterans who are watching Senator Kerry become Secretary of State. It is a shame that your country has spit on you again.

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Does This Make Sense ?

A website called 24/7 Wall St posted an article yesterday stating that hourly workers for General Motors will receive bonuses this year of between $5,500 and $7,000 each.

The article reports:

The payments are based on a formula that gives workers a $1 bonus for every $1 million in North American operating profit at the two companies.

On Wednesday (as reported at rightwinggranny.com) the Detroit News reported:

Still, taxpayers will almost certainly lose billions of dollars in the $49.5 billion GM bailout. If the government sold the rest of its stock at current prices, taxpayers would lose more than $13 billion.

It just seems odd to me that the taxpayers are out $13 billion and the workers are getting bonuses of up to $7,000. Why isn’t some of the bonus money being used to pay back the taxpayers for what they were forced to invest?

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Changing The Subject To Win The Debate

America is safe now–all the politicians have gone home for Christmas. They can do no further damage.

We are headed for the fiscal cliff. That will be at least a short-term problem, but let’s back up a bit and look at what has happened to the discussion. Two years ago we were talking about cutting spending. Government spending is running close to 25 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Traditionally, it runs about 18 or 19 percent. That is a major reason for the rapid growth of the federal deficit. Plan B, as submitted by the Speaker of the House, was about taxes. The debate has been almost entirely about taxes–raising them–not cutting spending. Somehow, when taxes are raised, spending increases–it very rarely goes down.

Dick Morris points out the change in the debate in an article he posted at DickMorris.com yesterday. The thing that we need to remember here is that President Obama is a very gifted politician. He knows how to play the game without taking any responsibility for the results. I have the feeling that about twenty years from now the generation that will have to pay for all this foolishness is going to look around and say, “How did our parents let this happen? How did this man get re-elected?” Unfortunately, the current voters are not there yet.

Dick Morris’ article concludes:

Take the tax issue off the table and Americans will see the real game going on here: Obama’s commitment to deficit spending which is driving the economy into ruin. No longer will he be able to avoid the blame for the coming economic collapse because he will have had his way on taxes.

Politically, if the Republicans agree on a tax increase but demand spending cuts in return — and Obama refuses to come across with spending reductions (which he will) — then the blame will fall squarely on the president for the ensuing economic breakdown.

Call Obama’s bluff! Make him face up to the need to cut spending and show Americans how he won’t do it.

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Where Are We A Week After The Newtown Killings ?

It’s been a week since the horrible tragedy in Connecticut. There are screams for gun control, assault weapons bans, police at the schools, and all sorts of things. But an article in yesterday’s Washington Post sheds some light and common sense on the subject.

Charles Krauthammer was a psychiatrist in Massachusetts during the 1970’s. He has an interesting perspective on what happened last week.

Mr. Krauthammer states that there are three parts to every mass shooting–the killer, the weapon, and the cultural climate.

The article points out:

Random mass killings were three times more common in the 2000s than in the 1980s, when gun laws were actually weaker. Yet a 2011 University of California at Berkeley study found that states with strong civil commitment laws have about a one-third lower homicide rate.

Regarding the weapon, Mr. Krauthammer states:

I have no problem in principle with gun control. Congress enacted (and I supported) an assault weapons ban in 1994. The problem was: It didn’t work. (So concluded a University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the Justice Department.) The reason is simple. Unless you are prepared to confiscate all existing firearms, disarm the citizenry and repeal the Second Amendment, it’s almost impossible to craft a law that will be effective.

The article points out that over the past 30 years, the homicide rate in the United States has dropped 50 percent.

The article reminds us that gun violence is on the decline:

Except for these unfathomable mass murders. But these are infinitely more difficult to prevent. While law deters the rational, it has far less effect on the psychotic. The best we can do is to try to detain them, disarm them and discourage “entertainment” that can intensify already murderous impulses.

But there’s a cost. Gun control impinges upon the Second Amendment; involuntary commitment impinges upon the liberty clause of the Fifth Amendment; curbing “entertainment” violence impinges upon First Amendment free speech.

I tend to think that the fact that the murder rates are lower in states with strong civil commitment laws is significant. An article posted at The Blue Review on December 15th provides insight into what it is like to get appropriate treatment and possible restraint for a troubled child.

It’s time to look at all the elements of the tragedy at Newtown–not just the ones that are politically expedient.

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Why Are We Sending Fighter Jets To Egypt ?

On December 11, the Debka File reported that on December 11th, President Obama announced that four F-16 fighter planes – of the 20 approved in a $1 billion US foreign aid package to Egypt – would be delivered Jan. 22.

The article reports:

The opposition has clipped President Morsi’s wings once by making him annul the near-dictatorial powers he gave himself. Forcing him to forego the referendum would further undermine his authority.

So the president (President Obama) fought back by authorizing the military to secure state buildings and arrest civilians in the incendiary days leading up to Saturday’s referendum. Debkafile’s military sources report that Monday, six Egyptian Air Force F-16 fighters flew symbolically over Cairo.

With this shipment of planes, President Obama is sending a message to Middle Eastern countries that he supports the Muslim Brotherhood in the region and its takeover of Egypt.

The article reports:

At all events, President Obama has made his choice, opting for Egypt’s Islamists against the pro-democracy and liberal opposition – a choice that he might have found embarrassing when he campaigned for his second term.
Israel had a dark premonition of what was coming.  Obama began laying the background for his strong alignment with Islamist Egypt last month with the dramatic announcement of a ceasefire in Cairo on Nov. 20, that was delivered jointly by Morsi and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

…Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was ready to fit into the role cast Israel by the US president. He therefore chose to hold back from a ground incursion in the Gaza Strip and then agreed to the radical Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal visiting Gaza last week.
His reward came at the same time as Washington’s announcement of the 20 F-16 fighters for Egypt: The US has appropriated $650 million worth of ordnance to refill the Israeli arsenals depleted by the massive Pillar of Defense air offensive in Gaza.
Under this deal, the US will supply the Israeli Air Force with 6,900 satellite-guided “smart bombs;” 10,000 mixed bombs – including 3,450 one-tonners and 1,725 bombs weighing 250 kilograms – as well as two kinds of buster-bunkers – 1,725, GBU-39 bombs and 3,450 BLU-109s.

In essence we are arming both sides of the conflict, a move that will eventually bring war–not peace. Instead of letting Israel deal with the problem of rockets coming from Gaza, we promised them more defensive weapons if they would not take the necessary steps to end the flow of rockets into Israel.

President Obama has turned his back on the pro-democracy in Egypt, and he has also put Israel in danger. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East where women have equal rights and people are free to practice the religion of their choice. Why are we not supporting Israel and other pro-democracy forces instead of the Muslim Brotherhood?

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The Buck Stops Somewhere Down There

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article today about the resignations at the State Department after the Benghazi report was released. Four people have resigned. The names of three of them have been released–Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, and Raymond Maxwell, a deputy assistant secretary who had responsibility for North Africa.

The article reports:

Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary for management, apparently will keep his job, even though he has vigorously defended the State Department’s decision-making on Benghazi to Congress. A blogger who monitors goings on at Foggy Bottom suggests that the State Department is erecting a firewall to protect officials at the Undersecretary level and higher.

The ARB report did not criticize Kennedy or other officials at that level. However, it did find that there was a culture of “husbanding resources” at senior levels of the State Department, and that this culture contributed to the security deficiencies in Benghazi. According to the report, the culture at State “had the effect of conditioning a few State Department managers to favor restricting the use of resources as a general orientation.”

There are some real questions as to how much responsibility for the death of Ambassador Stevens these people actually bear. Were their superiors aware of the previous attacks? Were their superiors aware of the increase in terrorist activity in the area? Were their superiors aware of the attack after it began?

The article reports:

Congress apparently intends to pursue the question of whether, and to what extent, blame should be assigned higher up the chain. Rep. Ed Royce, the incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that “the degree that others bear responsibility warrants Congressional review, given the report’s rather sweeping indictment.” And, he added, “the Foreign Affairs Committee must hear from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton concerning her role, which this report didn’t address.”

Secretary Clinton needs to appear before Congress and testify about this matter. She is the Secretary of State, and this occurred on her watch. Her appearance will not necessarily make things any clearer–I doubt she would answer any questions directly if she were to appear. My feeling is that her schedule will not allow her to testify in front of the committee before she steps down as Secretary of State, and after she steps down, she will simply say that since she is not longer Secretary of State, there is no reason for her to appear. The Clinton playbook really hasn’t changed much.

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The Washington Post Opinion On Chuck Hagel For Defense Secretary

Yesterday the Washington Post posted an editorial about the expected nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. The Washington Post editorial board opposes the nomination.

The editorial states:

…Mr. Hagel’s stated positions on critical issues, ranging from defense spending to Iran, fall well to the left of those pursued by Mr. Obama during his first term — and place him near the fringe of the Senate that would be asked to confirm him.

The article explains that Mr. Hagel does not seem to be as concerned about the Defense Department sequester as current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. When interviewed by the Financial Times, Mr. Hagel stated, “The Defense Department, I think in many ways, has been bloated, so I think the Pentagon needs to be pared down.” There is a difference between cutting waste and undermining the country’s defense.

The editorial reminds us:

Mr. Hagel was similarly isolated in his views about Iran during his time in the Senate. He repeatedly voted against sanctions, opposing even those aimed at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which at the time was orchestrating devastating bomb attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. Mr. Hagel argued that direct negotiations, rather than sanctions, were the best means to alter Iran’s behavior. The Obama administration offered diplomacy but has turned to tough sanctions as the only way to compel Iran to negotiate seriously.

At some point, even President Obama began to realize that negotiations were a tool that Iran was using to buy time to complete their nuclear program.

The article concludes:

What’s certain is that Mr. Obama has available other possible nominees who are considerably closer to the mainstream and to the president’s first-term policies. Former undersecretary of defense Michèle Flournoy, for example, is a seasoned policymaker who understands how to manage the Pentagon bureaucracy and where responsible cuts can be made. She would bring welcome diversity as the nation’s first female defense secretary.

Mr. Hagel is an honorable man who served the country with distinction as a soldier in Vietnam and who was respected by his fellow senators. But Mr. Obama could make a better choice for defense secretary.

For once I agree with the editorial board of the Washington Post.

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How Much Are The Taxpayers Actually Going To Lose In The General Motors Bailout ?

Today the Detroit News posted a story about the General Motors exit strategy announced today by the Treasure Department.

The article reports:

The Detroit automaker said it will purchase 200 million shares of GM stock held by Treasury for $5.5 billion — or $27.50 per share — nearly $2 above the stock’s closing price on Tuesday. GM shares jumped sharply on the news and were up 6.7 percent to $27.10, or $1.59.

The U.S. Treasury — after more than a year of refusing to say when it might start selling its remaining stake in GM — said it will announce a written plan in January to shed its remaining 300 million shares over the next 12 to 15 months — likely in a series of small stock sales.

The Treasury’s move is intended to minimize the impact of the stock sale on the share price.

The article states that there will be serious government losses in the General Motors bailout:

The exit plan may prove to be a boost to GM’s lagging stock price and to some car buyers, who have avoided GM because of the “Government Motors” label.

Still, taxpayers will almost certainly lose billions of dollars in the $49.5 billion GM bailout. If the government sold the rest of its stock at current prices, taxpayers would lose more than $13 billion.

Bailing out General Motors was not a good idea. A controlled bankruptcy would have been a better idea. What the bailout did, other than cost the taxpayers serious money, was to protect the unions and ignore what was good for the company in the long run. Even after the amount of taxpayer money spent and the losses taken, there are no guarantees that General Motors will exist in five years.

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Breakfast With Santa

This past weekend my husband and I were visiting one of our daughters on Long Island. We had the pleasure of attending a Breakfast with Santa sponsored by the Long Island Chapter of US Veterans MC (USVMCLI), a fraternity of motorcycle riders who have all served honorably in one of the branches of the United States military. The USVMCLI was serving breakfast and collecting care packages and food for veterans in the Long Island area. They were also collecting toys and clothes for children of hospitalized veterans.

As the wife of a Vietnam-era veteran, the event was almost overwhelming. The USVMCLI included veterans from Vietnam, the more recent wars, and I suspect that one of the veterans I saw may have served in Korea. It is incredibly encouraging to me that the Vietnam veterans, who were treated so badly when they returned home, have worked hard to make sure that today’s veterans are cared for and helped with some of their basic needs.

The food was great and Santa arrived, but the inspiring part of the breakfast was the sea of motorcycle jackets dedicated to helping their fellow veterans.

Thank you, USVMCLI, for the work that you do.

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Some Perspective You May Not Have Heard

On Sunday John Fund posted an article at the National Review that provides a slightly different perspective on the murders in Connecticut on Friday. The first thing Mr. Fund points out is that mass murders are not becoming more frequent–their frequency has actually declined.

The article reports:

In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

Obviously the statistics do not mask the horror of what happened, but we do need to put this in perspective. I don’t think it helps that every newscast has at least three stories about the shooting or that a lot of the information being put out is false.

Mr. Fund mentions the two aspects of this tragedy that are not being widely discussed–how we treat the mentally ill and the fallacy of creating gun-free zones.

Mental illness has played a major role in many of these shootings. The article reports:

First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobson. “I doubt it.”

There will always be a danger of someone being wrongly committed to a mental institution, and there will always be an issue about how institutions treat the mentally ill and how much room is available at these institutions. A blog called “The Anarchist Soccer Mom” posted an article on Friday entitled, “Thinking the Unthinkable.” The writer states her challenges and fears in dealing with her own teenage son who has threatened to take her life and his own. She states that she is unable to have him committed until he actually follows through on his threat.

The article also reports on the failure of gun-free zones:

Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

Please read the entire National Review article by John Fund. The article cites many of the facts that the media seems to have ignored.

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Does The President Really Want To Negotiate ?

Today’s Daily Caller is reporting that President Obama has turned down Speaker of the House John Boehner‘s offer to raise tax rates for Americans earning more than $1 million per year. The offer also included raising the government’s debt limit by roughly $1 trillion over its current level of $16.3 trillion.

The article reports:

Obama’s rapid spending — he has raised the national debt by $5.7 trillion since 2008 — means that he must persuade Congress to raise the debt ceiling again in the next few months.

Boehner’s Friday proposal would have transferred another $460 billion from roughly 400,000 investors and entrepreneurs to the federal government by raising their top marginal income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.

Other federal, state and local taxes lift the effective tax rate on top earners to well over 50 percent.

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, the White House has demanded that the GOP “acknowledge” that higher tax rates are needed.

This demand for the GOP to abandon its ideological principle against higher tax rates is itself a ideological demand from Obama, and spotlights his gamble that November’s election results can help him win a long-lasting ideological victory over his Republican adversaries.

I am not a big fan of John Boehner, but it does seem that he has done everything he can to try to reach an agreement with President Obama. It appears that it is the President who is not willing to negotiate.

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One Of The Problems In Reforming The Tax Code

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal posted a story which might explain some of the difficulties Congress and the President are having in reaching a budget agreement before going over the fiscal cliff. The current American tax code is currently approximately 6,000 pages and 500 words. To say that it is difficult to navigate is a serious understatement.

One of Speaker of the House John Boehner‘s suggestions has been a limit on annual deductions. During the election campaign, Mitt Romney suggested a deduction cap somewhere between $17,000 and $50,000 a year.  Many liberal pundits supported the idea as representing equity. However, now that the election is over and the idea is examined more closely, there are serious consequences to this change–many of those consequences are political.

The article reports:

…For example, 44% of Connecticut filers itemize their deductions, but only some 21% of North and South Dakota residents do.

One tax writeoff in particular illustrates the point: the deduction for state and local income taxes. This allows a high-income tax filer who pays, say, $20,000 in state and local income taxes to deduct those payments from his federal taxable income.

Because the highest federal tax rate is 35%, the value of the state and local deduction is enormous for high-tax states. If President Obama succeeds in raising the federal tax rate to 39.6%, the value of those deductions rises to nearly 40 cents on the dollar. This deduction certainly eases the pain of New Jersey‘s 8.97% top tax rate, or Hawaii’s 11%.

The article explains that five states accounted for nearly half the tax revenue lost because of the state and local tax deduction–California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Massachusetts. California accounted for $51 billion of the writeoff due to state and local tax deductions. All of those five states can be found in the Democrat column during national elections.

The article explains:

To put it another way, when Californians voted to raise their top rate to 13.3% last month, they were voting to reduce revenue for the federal Treasury and thus increase the political pressure to raise tax rates on all Americans. The state and local tax loophole helps disperse and disguise the real cost of big government. As Mr. Obama likes to say, this is reverse Robin Hood.

The article concludes:

Mr. Obama wants to raise tax rates, rather than eliminate deductions, so his fellow Democrats can keep raising state and local taxes without bearing the full economic and political cost. Tax equity and economic growth are the big losers.

Because the current tax code is so politically loaded, I really don’t see Congress and the President agreeing to change it significantly. Unfortunately, it needs to be changed significantly.

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Don’t Let The Facts Of A Tragedy Get In The Way Of Making A Political Point

What in the world happened to fact checking in the media reporting of the tragedy in Connecticut? It seems as if almost everything reported as the tragedy unfolded on Friday was wrong. It would be very nice if the media would check the facts before reporting them. Silence would be better than misinformation. Some of the erroneous reporting has been that the shooter‘s mother was a teacher at the school–that has been proven false, that the shooter entered the school by being buzzed in because he was known–it is now known that he entered by breaking a window, and I am sure there is other misinformation that I am unaware of.

The most egregious misreporting has been related to the weapons used in the shooting. Breitbart.com reported today that the shooter did not use automatic weapons–one of the weapons used was an assault rifle, but it was not an automatic weapon.

The article reports:

Although only semi-automatic, it is important to note that Lanza broke Connecticut laws by possessing the handguns, because you have to have a permit to own and carry a handgun in Connecticut. The paperwork on both handguns was in his mother’s name, which means the guns weren’t even his to possess and he had no permit carry (he was not legally eligible for a permit to carry because he was only 20 — you have to be 21 to get that permit).

Regarding the AR-15 it is what politicians commonly call an “assault rifle” (although the “AR” does not stand for that). It has a completely different set of Connecticut laws by which its owner must abide, many of which Lanza broke just by taking the gun into his possession, transporting it to a school, and transporting it in a way other than is legally stipulated for the transport of an assault rifle in Connecticut.

It was not legal for the shooter to have these weapons. I question the wisdom of his mother in having these weapons when she knew that her son had mental issues, but they were legally her weapons. Her son had no right to them, and she should have taken extra precautions to limit his access to these weapons. There are many combination lock weapons storage safes available. The problem was not the guns–it was the fact that a mentally unstable person was able to get his hands on them.

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Something To Make This Weekend A Little Better

This is not a new story, but it is something that I just came across. It gives me hope for the future.

On October 5, 2012, the Columbus Dispatch (Ohio) reported on the crowning of the Homecoming Queen at Bishop Hartley High School, a Roman Catholic school on the East Side of town. Megan Ryan was elected Homecoming Queen by her classmates. Megan has Down syndrome.

The article reports:

Her fellow seniors chose their outgoing, ever-smiling classmate from among 10 nominees (with Jacob Smith selected king ).

“I’m so thrilled for her,” said senior Sam Burgess, a member of the court. “She just has a great personality. She’s like a sister to me.”

Aside from the fact that this is a heartwarming story, there is another aspect to this that encourages me. In November 2009 ABC News reported:

“An estimated 92 percent of all women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose to terminate their pregnancies, according to research reviewed by Dr. Brian Skotko, a pediatric geneticist at Children’s Hospital Boston.

The students at Bishop Hartley High School saw Megan as a person having value. Although I understand that raising a child with Down syndrome is extremely challenging, that does not negate the fact that the child is a human being and has value because he or she is a human being. It gives me hope that these students were able to see Megan as a person who was worthy of the honor of Homecoming Queen.

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Twisting The Numbers To Change The Story

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted a story about Bloomberg News and its reporting of a poll it conducted last week. The poll was taken by an Iowa-based firm and asked Americans how they felt about the coming ‘fiscal cliff.’

The article states:

A poll conducted last week by an Iowa-based firm showed Americans are conflicted about whether or not to support raising tax rates on wealthy Americans to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff.” But that’s not how Bloomberg News, which commissioned the poll, reported the results Thursday.

Somehow, when the story was reported, the headline read, “Americans Back Obama Tax-Rate Boost Tied to Entitlements.” So what did the poll actually show? The article reported that fifty-eight percent of the people polled thought President Obama was right to insist on raising taxes on the wealthy as a precondition for talks about the fiscal cliff. However, when you take a closer look at the numbers, you find that fifty-two percent responded that they preferred limited tax breaks to a tax-rate hike. Thirty nine percent said that they wanted to see tax rates on the wealthy increase, and nine percent said they were not sure.

Please follow the link above to read the entire story. There is also an attempt in the story to convince the reader that raising taxes to increase government spending is a solution to our current economic problems.

Bloomberg news is a respected financial news source. They do a disservice to themselves and the American people when they do not accurately report the news..

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Why We Can’t Trust Congress With Taxpayer Money

Today’s New York Post posted an article about the bill for Hurricane Sandy relief now before Congress. President Obama has requested $60.4 billion in relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

The article reports:

The pork-barrel feast includes more than $8 million to buy cars and equipment for the Homeland Security and Justice departments. It also includes a whopping $150 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to dole out to fisheries in Alaska and $2 million for the Smithsonian Institution to repair museum roofs in DC.

An eye-popping $13 billion would go to “mitigation” projects to prepare for future storms.

Other big-ticket items in the bill include $207 million for the VA Manhattan Medical Center; $41 million to fix up eight military bases along the storm’s path, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; $4 million for repairs at Kennedy Space Center in Florida; $3.3 million for the Plum Island Animal Disease Center and $1.1 million to repair national cemeteries.

We truly need to take away the credit card away from Congress. The problem is that the money that the victims of Hurricane Sandy need will be held up if the bill is carefully scrutinized, but the taxpayers will be fleeced if the bill is not examined carefully and the pork spending removed. What we really need is a few grown-ups in Washington.

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There are no words to describe the horror of what happened in Connecticut yesterday. I don’t plan to write about it other than to report some of the stories of heroism that took place. Meanwhile, we can all pray for the families and children impacted by the events.

Some Interesting News From The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted a story yesterday about the current draft of the report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The draft has been leaked and contains one very interesting paragraph.

This is the paragraph:

Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link. We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and aerosol and cloud properties.

I am not a scientist, and to me that paragraph is a foreign language, but Mr. Hinderaker is kind enough to explain what it means.

He explains:

It shouldn’t be a surprise that variations in the Sun’s output are responsible, at least in part, for variations in Earth’s temperatures. The problem is that if you simply do the math on radiant heat, the known increase in solar activity during the second half of the 20th century accounts for only a small portion of the assumed increase in temperature over that period. So the alarmists have denied that the Sun plays a significant role. More recent work has strongly suggested that solar radiation plays a role above and beyond radiant heat, by influencing cloud cover, which is a key factor in temperature. Given the strong correlation between solar activity and temperature, this work has been persuasive.

The bottom line here is simple–we didn’t do it! The progress of civilization is not the major cause of global warming–the sun and the sun’s impact on cloud cover play a major role in global climate.

So what is really going on in the IPCC? The United Nations is no longer controlled by freedom-loving countries. It has been taken over by a block of third-world nations who feel that the developed nations of the world should finance the dictators and thugs running their countries. There is no concern here for science, truth, or preserving the planet. The concern is, “How can I get money to build a bigger house for myself while my people starve?” We saw that in the UN-run food-for-oil program in Iraq. Now we are seeing the same corruption in the blackmail attempts under the guise of combating ‘global warming.’

The entire leaked report (and more scientific analysis) can be found at wattsupwiththat.com. Please take the time to look at the leaked draft before it is changed!

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Where Was This Reported In The News ?

Breitbart.com reported today that the a federal judge has ruled that the supposed “safe harbor” in the mandate was not adequate to protect religious organizations, including the New York Archdiocese, from suffering imminent harm from the mandate. Because of this judge’s ruling, the archdiocese’s lawsuit against the HHS mandate in ObamaCare can move forward.

In his weekly column at the archdiocese’s website, Cardinal Timothy Dolan pointed out that none of the local media had reported the archdiocese’s victory.

The article reports the judge’s comments on allowing the case to move forward:

“There is no, ‘Trust us, changes are coming’ clause in the Constitution,” Judge Cogan remarked. “To the contrary, the Bill of Rights itself, and the First Amendment in particular, reflect a degree of skepticism towards governmental self-restraint and self-correction.”

The judge noted that the archdiocese could be saddled with millions of dollars in fines should the HHS mandate take effect. “Ignoring the speeding train that is coming towards plaintiffs in the hope that it will stop might well be inconsistent with the fiduciary duties that plaintiffs’ directors or officers owe to their members,” Judge Cogan said.

The HHS mandate is an attack on the freedom of conscience afforded to those employers who provide health insurance coverage for their employees. The Obama Administration has also restricted the right of conscience of those who currently work in the medical field.(rightwinggranny.com). As government grows, our individual rights shrink. It’s time Americans began to push back against the small, subtle taking of our individual freedoms.

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Where Has Our Privacy Gone ?

Yesterday CNS News reported:

Bypassing Congress, the Obama administration has issued a proposed administrative rule, which if adopted, would mandate the installation of “black boxes” in all automobiles and light trucks beginning in 2014.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed the regulation on Dec. 7, which it said “would capture valuable safety-related data in the seconds before and during a motor vehicle crash.”

I can understand the value of the event data recorders (EDRs) in case of an accident, but what about the other things they record? According to Horace Cooper of the National Center for Public Policy Analysis,  “EDRs not only provide details necessary for accident investigation, they can also track travel records, passenger usage, cell phone use and other private data — who you visit, what you weigh, how often you call your mother and more is captured by these devices.” Logically, with an EDR, you could determine which people are associating with each other, where they are meeting, and begin to control personal and political activity among Americans. I think this is a really bad idea.

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