Monthly Archives: February 2014

I Might Be A Member Of The Flat Earth Society

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I might be a member of the flat earth society. I don”t believe the earth is flat, but I don’t believe that global warming is caused by man either. So Secretary of State John Kerry compares me to a member of the flat earth society. Well, let’s see how John Kerry’s data on man-made global warming stacks up with reality.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about what the scientific models have predicted about global warming and what has actually happened.

This is the chart:

wsj-temps-lg2

As you can see, the truth has simply not kept up with the scientific predictions.

The Wall Street Journal posted an article yesterday that stated:

“Consensus” science that ignores reality can have tragic consequences if cures are ignored or promising research is abandoned. The climate-change consensus is not endangering lives, but the way it imperils economic growth and warps government policy making has made the future considerably bleaker. The recent Obama administration announcement that it would not provide aid for fossil-fuel energy in developing countries, thereby consigning millions of people to energy poverty, is all too reminiscent of the Sick and Health Board denying fresh fruit to dying British sailors.

Before we take actions that negatively impact the economy of the entire world, we really do need to make sure that the science we are using to justify the actions is valid.

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Big Brother Has Plans To Get Bigger

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On February 10, The Wall Street Journal posted an article by Ajit Pai about a proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) initiative.

The article reports:

Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

The FCC has a list of questions for station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters. Those questions deal with the ‘news philosophy’ of the station and how the station ensures that the community gets crucial information. Answering the questions is supposedly voluntary, but the FCC is in charge of renewing the station’s license every eight years, so it is in the station’s best interest to answer the questions.

The article also reports:

The FCC says the study is merely an objective fact-finding mission. The results will inform a report that the FCC must submit to Congress every three years on eliminating barriers to entry for entrepreneurs and small businesses in the communications industry.

This claim is peculiar. How can the news judgments made by editors and station managers impede small businesses from entering the broadcast industry? And why does the CIN study include newspapers when the FCC has no authority to regulate print media?

The bottom line here is that this is a really bad idea. It is an interference with the free press, which used to be considered unconstitutional.

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Just Because It’s Legal Doesn’t Mean That It Is Safe

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I will admit I really don’t know much about marijuana. I never smoked it, and the only contact I have ever had with a heavy marijuana user was a high school student who probably changed his life for the worse because of his marijuana use. It didn’t kill him, and he didn’t move on to other drugs, but it definitely impacted his life in a negative way. He was a very smart and gifted person who I don’t believe ever even approached his potential. Eventually he became a Christian and put the drugs behind him, but I am convinced that they took a heavy toll.

There are debatable risks of marijuana, and there are some risks that are not debatable. Newsbusters posted an article yesterday about the fact that less than 10 percent of legal marijuana is tested for substances that may be harmful. Some of the things that have been found when marijuana has been tested are molds, mildew, e-coli.

The article reports:

Reporter Barry Petersen talked to a biologist who tests pot. After asking her what could be in the newly legalized drug, Gennifer Murray responded, “We have found molds, mildew, e-coli.” She informed, “…What you can die from is contaminated cannabis.”According to Murray, less than ten percent of legalized marijuana in the state is tested.

Why are state legislators so anxious to put the people of their states at risk by legalizing marijuana? It really doesn’t make sense.

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I Guess It Depends On Your Definition Of Alternative Lifestyle

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Breitbart.com posted an article today about NBC’s profile of young Olympian gold medal skier David Wise. David Wise is 23 years old. After stating that what led Wise to Olympic gold was his “alternative lifestyle,” NBC describes him as follows:

At such a young age, Wise has the lifestyle of an adult. He wears a Baby Bjorn baby carrier around the house. He also attends church regularly and says he could see himself becoming a pastor a little later down the road.

Not exactly the picture you had in mind while watching him nail two double corks wearing baggy pants. Wise is, well, wise. He knows where his head should be at all time, focused on being the best father and husband he can be.

This man has chosen to be a grown-up at an age when many of his peers are still acting as if they are in junior high. It is amazing to me that NBC considers a 23-year old assuming the responsibilities of adulthood as an ‘alternative lifestyle.” Maybe that says something about the maturity level at NBC.

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The Quest To Turn Texas Blue

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Texas is a red state. It votes Republican. It also has one of the fastest growing economies in the country because of the policies Republicans have put in place. However, the Democrats have decided to focus on making Texas a blue state. That is fine–America is about competition–but they are not entitled to break the law to do it.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about laws being broken in the quest to turn Texas blue.

The article reports:

Battleground Texas has a mission — to turn the deep-red state of Texas as blue as Austin, a monumental if not quixotic task. Like other activist groups, the progressive organization conducts voter-registration drives, attempting to get like-minded citizens to turn out in force in the next election cycle. Project Veritas did an undercover operation of Battleground Texas and found out that registering voters is just the start of those efforts. According to the video, the group’s leaders cull information from those registration forms and build their database of personal information — which is a direct violation of Texas law:

This is the video:

Project Veritas also discovered that Enroll America was also making illegal use of date obtained in registering voters.

Voting is a very important part of being an American. If we don’t protect the ballot box, we will lose our say in our government. Thank God that Project Veritas is exposing the cheating going on in preparation for the 2014 elections.

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I Think Someone Moved The Goalposts

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Yesterday’s Washington Post reported that as the latest talks with Iran began yesterday Iran pledged to never dismantle any equipment or facilities other countries believe could be used for the manufacture of atomic weapons. I may have missed something, but I thought the sanctions were lifted because Iran said it would discontinue its nuclear program.

On February 14th, the Washington Times reported that Iran was going to receive more than $20 billion in sanctions relief under the agreement reached. What in the world did Iran agree to do in return? Has Iran still agreed to it? It really doesn’t sound as if we got anything in return for lifting the sanctions.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted a story today about the negotiations. He comments:

The latest round of negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program began yesterday. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated what has always been clear: “Dismantling [the] nuclear program is not on the agenda.”

What, then, is? As the Washington Post reports, the West seeks only “to prevent Iran from quickly converting its nuclear program to weapons production or from hiding a parallel program.” (emphasis added) This probably means “a demand that advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium be destroyed or mothballed, and that Iran make changes to a nuclear facility under construction so it cannot produce plutonium.”

Will Iran agree to this limited package? Not likely. As the Washington Post puts it, “Iran has signaled that it would oppose any such curbs.” And a senior U.S. official acknowledged that “we have a very long way to go.”

At some point, the Obama Administration is going to have to realize that the only way Iran will ever give up its nuclear ambitions is if the west imposes crippling sanctions. Even if that were to happen, I doubt that Russia and China would honor those sanctions, so we would be right back where we started. However, the sanctions that were just lifted in the first round of negotiations were what brought Iran to the bargaining table. We need to put them back in place until the negotiations are done.

Negotiating with Iran does not make the world safer–it makes the world more dangerous. The Iranians are simply stalling for time as their nuclear program progresses. It will be necessary at some point before Iran goes nuclear for someone to take out its nuclear facilities. America will probably not do that–Israel will probably do it without asking America. That will result in mass destruction in the Middle East. Iran needs to be stopped before it goes nuclear–that will help preserve peace in the Middle East if peace is at all possible.

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About Those Unemployment Numbers

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John Crudele at the New York Post has done a number of stories about fraud in the reporting of the unemployment numbers. He posted a story yesterday about the Congressional investigations into this fraud, including an investigation by the House Oversight Committee and Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. He adds that he is also investigating. He is currently waiting for the Commerce Department to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request he has filed for e-mails and text messages between people in the Philadelphia Census office.

The article reports:

At the core of all these investigations is solid evidence that at least one surveyor — a guy named Julius Buckmon, working out of the Philadelphia Census office but polling in Washington, DC — submitted fake household surveys that were used in compiling the Labor Department’s unemployment rate.

Because of the scientific nature of the Labor Department survey, Buckmon’s actions alone would have affected the responses of some 500,000 households.

But as I’ve been reporting, the scam was allegedly much larger than that and included other surveyors (or enumerators as they are called) over many years. And supervisors at least two levels up are said to have known about — and covered up — the scandal.

What the investigators are looking for is that the unemployment numbers were falsified so that they would drop just before the 2012 election. In fact, the unemployment rate did drop before the election.

This is a chart from trading economics.com:

United States Unemployment Rate

Before you get too excited over the fact that unemployment may be dropping, you need to take a look at the labor force participation rate. When people stop looking for jobs, they are no longer counted as unemployed. Therefore, as the number of people who are working drops, the unemployment rate drops. That is not the way it should be, but it is the way it is. The chart below from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows what has happened to our labor force participation rate since 2009:

laborparticipationrate2014Regardless of whether or not there is fraud involved, our current unemployment numbers are very misleading. Please follow the link above to the New York Post to hear the rest of the story. There is a smoking gun. Unfortunately, the person in charge at the time is claiming that he never saw it.

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Where The Money Went

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The Washington Free Beacon posted an article yesterday about the ten most outrageous projects supported by the government stimulus. These projects represent your tax dollars at work.

Here is the list:

10) $1.3 Million for Stimulus Highway Signs

9) $152K to Get Lesbians Ready for ‘Adoptive Parenthood’

8) $600,000 to Plant Trees in Wealthy Neighborhoods

7) $384,949 Study of Duck Penises

6) $1.2 Million Study of Erectile Dysfunction in Overweight Men

5) $100,000 Anti-Capitalist Puppet Shows

4) $389,357 for College Students to Keep a Diary of Their Marijuana and Malt Liquor Use

3) $3.4 Million Turtle Tunnel

2) $8,408 Study to See if Mice Get Drunk

1) $535 Million on Solyndra

Please follow the link to the article to see the details of these expenditures. Is this really where you want your tax money to go?

 

 

 

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Unfortunately This Is Probably Coming Our Way

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At one point in my childhood I lived in an apartment building not in the richest part of town. Part of the experience was the smells that came from the surrounding apartments. It was a place where people from various nationalities lived, and sometimes the smells seemed very odd. Sometimes the smells seemed unpleasant. It was part of the experience. Unfortunately, some people in other countries seem to have lost their ‘tolerance’ gene.

The story I am about to report goes back to 2010. I was not able to find an update to the story, but I thought the original story was worth noting.

On October 22, 2010, the U.K. Telegraph posted a story about a small restaurant in Cale Green, Stockport.

The article reports:

The couple took over the take-away on Adswood Road in Cale Green, Stockport, in 2007 from the previous owner and replaced the exisiting extractor fan, which had been there for six years, with a new modern one.

They claim they received no complaints about the cafe which is open from 7.30am-2.30pm six days a week, until around eighteen months ago when they received a letter from environmental services to say Mr Webb-Lee had complained about the smell.

“We’ve never had a problem about the smell because everything is pre-cooked,” said Mrs Akciecek.

Mr. Webb-Lee complained that his Muslim friends had felt ”physically sick” due to the ”foul odour.” That odor of course was the smell of cooking bacon.

I couldn’t find an update on this story. It would be interesting to know how it all turned out. Unfortunately, the fact that I could not find a follow-up story leads me to believe that the complaint stood. Western countries eat (and cook) bacon. If a Muslim moves to a Western country, he needs to adapt–he is the alien. He doesn’t have to eat bacon, but he needs to be more tolerant of those who do.

UPDATE:  COMMON SENSE WON OUT!!!

On March 30, 2011, the U.K. Mail online posted a follow-up story.

The article reports:

The Lib Dem-run council originally ruled the smell from the fan, which has been in Bev’s Snack Shack for more than three years, was ‘unacceptable on the grounds of residential amenity’ and told her to take it down.

But Beverley and her husband appealed the decision.

After a six-month legal battle, the Planning Inspectorate finally announced they had won their case.

She said today: ‘The council have got to pay our legal fees which is a great relief because we were beginning to struggle.

Unfortunately, the neighbor who originally filed the complaint is continuing to complain.

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What Is Appropriate To Discuss In A Campaign?

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Byron York posted an article at the Washington Examiner today discussing what is appropriate to bring up in a political campaign. There has been some recent discussion as to whether or not it would be appropriate if Hillary Clinton runs for President to bring up the Clinton scandals prior to and during President Clinton’s presidential term.

The article points out:

…Of course Clinton’s recent experiences are relevant to a presidential run. But so are her actions in the 90s, the 80s and even the 70s. It’s not ancient history; it reveals something about who Clinton was and still is. And re-examining her past is entirely consistent with practices in recent campaigns.

In the 2012 presidential race, for example, many in the press were very interested in business deals Mitt Romney made in the 1980s. In the 2004 race, many journalists were even more interested in what George W. Bush did with the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, as well as what John Kerry did in Vietnam that same year. And in 2000, a lot of journalists invested a lot of time trying to find proof that Bush had used cocaine three decades earlier.

So by the standards set in coverage of other candidates, Clinton’s past is not too far past.

Turn-about is, after all, fair play. The article points out a few other reasons why past events might be relevant to the discussion. Younger voters know Hillary Clinton as President Obama’s Secretary of State. They might be aware of some of the problems surrounding Benghazi, but generally they have no idea of the Clinton’s history. Other than the Lewinsky scandal, there is the problem of firing the White House travel office personnel in order to give the job to some friends. There is also Hillary’s rather successful attempt to divert attention away from the Lewinsky scandal by claiming a ‘vast right-sing conspiracy.’ The truth might have never come out without the blue dress and Matt Drudge.

Mrs. Clinton does not have a wonderful track record when it comes to telling the truth. Even if the scandals of the Clintons are in the past, Mrs. Clinton’s pattern of behavior has continued. That is what voters need to know.

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A Really Dumb Law That Is Putting Americans At Risk

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Today’s Washington Free Beacon posted an article today about problems New Jersey is having getting road salt. The supply of road salt in a few New Jersey communities is very low because of the recent snow storms. The problem in getting the road salt has nothing to do with its availability or proximity–the problem has to do with union workers.

The article reports:

Townsquare Media reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied the state’s request for a waiver of the Jones Act, a 1920 law requiring that all cargo and passengers moving between points in the United States be transported on American vessels.

A waiver would have allowed New Jersey to get the salt within days from a foreign transport in Searsport, Maine.

New Jersey Department of Transportation Spokesman Joe Dee told the Washington Free Beacon that a waiver from the Jones Act appears “unlikely.”

“We were pursuing a waiver, but we’ve been advised we wouldn’t get one,” Dee said. “It seems unlikely we will get it.”

Jersey City, New Jersey, is expecting snow tonight and tomorrow morning, and then possibly more snow on Wednesday. This has been a very harsh winter in the northeast, and it is really silly to put people’s lives at risk because the salt needed does not happen to be on an American ship. There at least needs to be a waiver of the Jones Act granted. It would also be a good idea to pass a law making sure that when public safety is at stake, the law would be quickly waived.

 

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This Sort Of Thing Might Be Part Of The Problem With America’s Image Around The World

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Steven Hayward at Power Line posted an article today about recent remarks by Secretary of State John Kerry on the subject of climate change. Secretary Kerry was speaking to an audience in Indonesia.

The article reminds us of a few basic facts:

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: Secretary of State John Kerry, owner of five multi-million dollar mansions along with a luxury yacht, has seen fit to lecture Indonesians (average income in 2012: $3,420) about why global warming climate change is “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”

…Incidentally, according to World Bank figures, Indonesian per capita greenhouse gas emissions are 1.8 metric tons. The United States: 17.6. Like Al Gore, John Kerry’s per capita emissions are surely a multiple of this, which suggests an obvious first step.  What Indonesia is most vulnerable to is following the policy prescriptions of mountebanks like Kerry.  The good news it that they know that.  India, China, Indonesia, and other developing nations have consistently told our diplomats a version of the following: “We don’t understand you Americans; you expect us to remain poor forever?”  Or: “You Americans got rich on fossil fuels.  When we’re as rich as you, then maybe we’ll talk about emissions reductions.”

Secretary Kerry’s comments are simply offensive. Aside from the poverty Indonesia is dealing with, the country also has a problem with Muslim terrorists. I really don’t think shrinking their carbon footprint is a very high priority in Indonesia. It is a shame that the Secretary of State was not more aware of or more sensitive to the needs of the country he was addressing.

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Blaming Others For A Crisis You Caused Yourself

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I have written about the Central Valley in California before. In September 2010, I posted the following vacation picture (rightwinggranny.com):

IMG_2957.JPG

This picture was taken driving through the Central Valley of California. In case you can’t read the sign, it says, “Stop the Congress Created Dust Bowl.”

This is what is really going on in the Central Valley of California:

A letter to the editor at the Herald and News in July 2009 stated:

“Thousands of people have also become unemployed or lost the ability to farm, which adversely affects both local and national economies.

“In addition to the California drought, there has been court-ordered protection of a 2-inch smelt fish that has stopped the pumping of water from the delta that is necessary for agriculture in central California. If it is listed as an endangered species, it’s likely that California agriculture, which supplies a third of the nation’s food supply, will be permanently changed.”

The water was cut off to protect the delta smelt, a small fish that was getting caught in the pumps. California is currently having a drought, but the drought has been exacerbated by the water shutoff.

Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air yesterday stating that President Obama during his visit to the Central Valley blamed the drought on global warming.

This is a YouTube video of the President’s statement:

The article at Hot Air quotes Investor’s Business Daily on the history of the Central Valley drought:

The one thing that will mitigate droughts in California — a permanent feature of the state — is to restore the water flow from California’s water-heavy north to farmers in the central and south. That’s just what House Bill 3964, which passed by a 229-191 vote last week, does.

But Obama’s plan is not to get that worthy bill through the Senate (where Democrats are holding it up) but to shovel pork to environmental activists and their victims, insultingly offering out-of-work farmers a “summer meal plan” in his package.

“We are not interested in welfare; we want water,” Nunes told IBD this week. He and his fellow legislator Valadao are both farmers who represent the worst-hit regions of the Central Valley in Congress and can only look at the president’s approach with disbelief.

“He’s not addressing the situation,” Valadao told us.

“They want to blame the drought for the lack of water, but they wasted water for the past five years,” said Nunes.

The two explain that California’s system of aqueducts and storage tanks was designed long ago to take advantage of rain and mountain runoff from wet years and store it for use in dry years. But it’s now inactive — by design. “California’s forefathers built a system (of aqueducts and storage facilities) designed to withstand five years of drought,” said Nunes.

“We have infrastructure dating from the 1960s for transporting water, but by the 1990s the policies had changed,” said Valadao.

Environmental special interests managed to dismantle the system by diverting water meant for farms to pet projects, such as saving delta smelt, a baitfish. That move forced the flushing of 3 million acre-feet of water originally slated for the Central Valley into the ocean over the past five years.

If California would stop flushing millions of gallons of water into the ocean and give it to the farmers, the Central Valley would not be a dustbowl. It is truly a shame that President Obama chooses to use the hardship of the farmers as a political platform rather than solving the problem. This drought is not caused by global warming or climate change–it is caused by Washington politicians!

 

 

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Ignoring The Value Of Life

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CBN News is reporting today that Belgium’s parliament has passed a law to legalize euthanasia for children of any age. This is frightening. I know how traumatic it has been in the past for my husband and I to euthanize a pet–I can’t imaging putting a parent in a position where euthanizing a child is an option. I am sure that there will be pressure exerted on parents with extremely sick or disabled children to opt for euthanasia rather than use extensive medical resources to treat the child.

The article reports:

Under the new law, if both parents agree their child should be killed, three doctors and a psychologist would then have to certify that the child was aware of the consequences of his or her decision. The child would have to be under medical care.

“We are talking about children that are really at the end of their life, and it’s not that they have months or years to go. They will, their life will end anyway,” Dr. Gerlant Van Berlaer, chief of clinic for pediatric critical care at the University Hospital of Brussels, explained.

“And the question they ask us is, ‘Well, don’t make me go in a terrible, horrifying way. Let me go now while I’m still a human being and while I’m still, while I still have my dignity,'” he said.

But critics asked how anyone could gauge a child’s capacity for discernment in such a situation.

How long will it be before children with minor disabilities will be candidates for euthanasia?

 

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Civil Disobedience In Connecticut

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On Monday the Hartford Courant posted an article about the progress in Connecticut’s attempt to register all military-style rifles with state police by December 31. The effort has not gone well.

The article reports:

By the end of 2013, state police had received 47,916 applications for assault weapons certificates, Lt. Paul Vance said. An additional 2,100 that were incomplete could still come in.

That 50,000 figure could be as little as 15 percent of the rifles classified as assault weapons owned by Connecticut residents, according to estimates by people in the industry, including the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation. No one has anything close to definitive figures, but the most conservative estimates place the number of unregistered assault weapons well above 50,000, and perhaps as high as 350,000.

This law instantly created between 20,000 and 100,000 new criminals–people who did not register their rifles. The article reminds us, “By owning unregistered guns defined as assault weapons, all of them are committing Class D felonies.”

The article reports:

The law was adopted after the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Its main provision was a dramatic expansion of guns classified as assault weapons banned for sale in the state. The ban now includes any semiautomatic firearm — that is, one that reloads a round after each pull of the trigger — if it has even a single military-style characteristic, such as a pistol grip.

Any semiautomatic firearm banned for sale could remain legal if its owner registered it by Dec. 31. Those that were made before the state’s first assault rifle law in 1993, and were not deemed to be assault weapons in that law, do not have to be registered.

The AR-15, a type of rifle, not a brand, is among those that must be registered and represents 50 percent to 60 percent of all rifle sales in the United States in recent years, federal figures show.

Sorting out the number of potential new felons is a guessing game. State police have not added up the total number of people who registered the 50,000 firearms, Vance said. So even if we knew the number of illegal guns in the state, we’d have a hard time knowing how many owners they had.

As logical as gun registration may seem to lawmakers, its history is not a positive one. Historically gun registration has been the prelude to a seizure of guns by a tyrannical government. An unarmed population is much more easily controlled than an armed population. There is also the small matter of the Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. It will be interesting to see of Connecticut attempts to enforce its new gun registration law.

I really don’t understand a lot about the concept of assault rifles, but I do wonder about a statement in the Hartford Courant article. The article states that this law was passed in response to what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I totally agree that what happened at Sandy Hook was a terrible tragedy, but is there anything in this law that is actually related to that event or that would have prevented that event?

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Volkswagen Employees Have Rejected The United Auto Workers Union

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The Detroit Free Press posted an article today about the vote by workers at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee. The workers voted against the United Auto Workers Union (UAW).

The article reports:

Volkswagen has said it favors the creation of a German-style “works council,” which gives workers a voice on a variety of product and other decisions. Under U.S. law, a union must represent employees for a company to form a works council.

But Snyder voted against the UAW because, he said, Volkswagen is the best employer he’s ever worked for.

“How is somebody here really supposed to know what a works council is going to be like?” Snyder said. “You can have somebody tell you one thing and somebody tell you another thing. Nobody really knows.”

I think that is a really smart statement. The UAW has played something of a role in the bankruptcy of Detroit. They are not totally responsible, but they are not totally innocent either.  I think this vote represents a realization by the workers that they have been treated fairly by the management of Volkswagen and they do not want to risk their current benefits. Unions have traditionally had a role to play in American industry, but many of the benefits of unionization have been taken over by the government. The government now monitors working conditions, waste disposal, and benefits–all things the unions were originally involved in. Unfortunately the unions have become political organizations with overpaid leadership that lives far above the living standard of union members. They have become no different than the corporations and corporate fat cats they continually criticize.

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This List May Be A Surprise To Some People

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Open Secrets has posted a list of the top donors to Republicans and Democrats from 1989 to 2014. It is not really a surprise to me that you have to go down to number 17 to find a donor who donated more to the Republicans than Democrats. Koch Industries, the organization liberals love to cite as the buyer of elections, is number 59 on the list.

There is too much money in American politics, but it is ironic that most of the people who have traditionally complained about that fact do not realize that it’s not the rich Republicans contributing the money–it’s unions who support Democrats. Keep in mind that the union membership does not always have a say in how their dues are spent. At least in industry, a CEO is accountable to either stockholders or executive board members. Of the top fifteen organizations giving the most money, 12 are unions. Of the top fifteen organizations giving the most money, there are four organizations that gave to both parties fairly equally, and none that gave a majority of their money to Republicans.

Yes, there probably is too much money in politics, but it isn’t coming from rich Republicans.

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Congress Isn’t The Only Branch Of Government That Has Mastered The Art Of Kicking The Can Down The Road

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As of February 10, 2014, there have been 35 changes to ObamaCare according to the Galen Institute. Those changes include 18 by executive action, 15 by Congress, signed by President Obama, and 2 changes made by the Supreme Court.

The most recent change to ObamaCare is a delay of the employer mandate requiring companies to provide insurance for full-time employees. The Galen Institute reports that the latest change postpones enforcement of the requirement for medium-size employers until 2016 and relaxes some requirements for larger employers. Businesses with 100 or more employees must offer coverage to 70% of their full-time employees in 2015 and 95% in 2016 and beyond.

On Tuesday, The Heritage Foundation posted an article explaining why these changes are important.

The Heritage Foundation explains the problem in one sentence:

Congress included a mandate when it passed the law. Obama signed that law. So (unless lawmakers repeal it, and of course they should) the mandate should take effect, even if that causes the entire law to collapse like a burning firework factory.

Yesterday Michael Barone posted an article at the Washington Examiner which asked two questions about the changes made to ObamaCare.

The two questions are:

The first question is: Are employers’ legal counsel advising that those provisions might be enforced, retroactively, at some later date? After all, the provisions remain on the books. If this administration or a later one decides that, say, the employer mandate should be enforced as written, does the employer have to pay up?

My second question is: What would stop a future administration from following Obama’s precedent and declaring that it would not enforce other provisions in tax laws?

Those members of Congress who are not speaking out against the executive overreach that is currently happening might want to consider how they would react if it were being done by an administration they did not agree with.

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More IRS Abuses Are Coming To Light

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On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article about the IRS targeting conservative groups for audits. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp has stated that the committee’s continuing investigation has found that the IRS also singled out established conservative tax-exempt groups for audits. That is not a surprise when you consider the harassment that donors to conservative causes underwent during the run-up to the 2012 election. As I have previously mentioned, my husband and I were audited for the first time in 45 years. The auditors found nothing, but it took them almost a year to find nothing.

The Democrats in Congress are currently attempting to pass laws that would severely limit the free speech of conservative organizations. Under the new guidelines the Democrats are seeking, the voter guides showing the voting records of candidates would be considered unlawful political activity by organizations that have traditionally distributed them.

The article includes the current spin the Democrats are using to attempt to hide what they are doing and what they have done:

“Instead of this prestigious committee using its broad jurisdiction to address critical issues that confront us, it has been consumed by a tireless effort by Republicans to find political scandal, regardless of what the truth holds, as they look toward the November election,” said Rep. Sander Levin (D., Mich.).

He also chided Republicans for seeking to delay the regulations, noting that “what really remains hidden are donors to groups pouring millions of dollars into campaign advertising.”

The new IRS regulations proposed by the Democrats are a threat to free speech. If they are enacted, most Americans will only hear one side of any political issue.

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I Don’t Think We Have Learned The Truth Yet

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Yesterday The Blaze posted an article which featured an unclassified map of American military forces in the area of Benghazi. Libya, on September 11, 2012. The map was obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request. I am in no way a military strategist, but after looking at the map, I wonder if more could have been done to defend the embassy annex at Benghazi. Here is the map:

Screengrab via Townhall

The American military does not usually leave men behind. I wonder why they chose to close their ears to the cries for help that were coming from Benghazi that night.  We need to have an honest investigation into what happened. So far that investigation has been blocked. The American people (and the families of those killed that night) have a right to know why the military did not show up.

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Following The Money On The Keystone Pipeline

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In February of last year, I posted an article explaining how the delay of the Keystone Pipeline is making money for Warren Buffett (rightwinggranny.com). The article included the following quote from John Hinderaker at Power Line:

If the Obama administration holds firm on blocking Keystone, the big loser will be TransCanada Corporation. But who will the big winners be? American railroads:

And of them, the biggest winner might just be the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Obama supporter and Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett. In December, the CEO of BNSF, Matthew Rose, said that his railroad was shipping about 500,000 barrels of oil per day out of the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and that it was seeking a permit to send “crude by rail to the Pacific Northwest.” He also said the railroad expects to “eventually” be shipping 1 million barrels of oil per day.

However, it seems as if Warren Buffett is not the only one benefiting from the delay of the Keystone Pipeline. The Washington Free Beacon posted an article today highlighting some other people who have a financial interest in making sure the Keystone Pipeline is not built.

Senator Tim Kaine (D., Va.) is one of the people opposed to the construction  of the Keystone Pipeline.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

The freshman Democrat (Senator Kaine) has between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, according to his most recent financial disclosure. Kinder Morgan is looking to build a pipeline that would directly compete with Keystone.

Kinder Morgan is considering expanding its Canadian pipeline infrastructure with an expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which carries oil sands crude from Alberta to refineries and export terminals on Canada’s west coast.

The expansion would boost Trans Mountain’s capacity to 890,000 barrels per day. Keystone, a project of energy company TransCanada, is expected to carry about 830,000 barrels per day if fully constructed.

Observers have said a rejection of Keystone would be a boon for Kinder Morgan, since the Trans Mountain pipeline presents a viable alternative for exporting crude from Canadian oil sands.

The article reminds us:

The availability of alternatives to Keystone—from Kinder Morgan and Enbridge, another TransCanada competitor and Canada’s largest crude oil transporter—is integral to the State Department’s assessment that approving the pipeline will have little impact on carbon emissions, President Barack Obama’s stated standard for approval.

Another Congressman has investments in Enbridge:

Another anti-Keystone Democrat, California Rep. Alan Lowenthal, has between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in Enbridge Energy Management, $1,000 to $15,000 in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, and $15,000 to $50,000 in Kinder Morgan Management, which is a limited partner in and handles everyday management for the company’s Energy Partners subsidiary.

Lowenthal has been less outspoken then Kaine on Keystone, but he voted against legislation last year that would have approved the pipeline without sign-off from the administration, which has repeatedly put off a decision on the project.

He was also one of 22 Democrats to sign a December letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman insisting that the Keystone Pipeline would be detrimental to the environment.

Shouldn’t Congressmen who have a vested financial interest in a vote taken by Congress be forced to abstain from that vote? This seems to be an example of Congressmen padding their own pockets while blocking a project that would provide jobs for many unemployed Americans.

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We Have A New Crime

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Yesterday the Washington Post posted an article about President Obama’s latest “I have a pen and a phone” moment. The President changed the provisions of ObamaCare so that employers with between 50 to 99 employees who don’t already offer health insurance to their employees have until 2016 to comply with the shifting Obamacare requirements. (Notice that this is after the 2014 mid-term elections.) However, there is a caveat on this exemption for businesses with less than 100 employees.

The article reports:

And the fine print of the latest announcement from the Administration is worse than the terrible headlines. This rule includes a provision that says you have to have the right motives for having a certain number of employees to be in compliance with Obamacare. Bear with me, that’s right: You must certify to the IRS – under the threat of perjury – that the reasons for your employee head count have nothing to do with your opposition to or avoidance of Obamacare. This president doesn’t just selectively enforce the law as he sees fit; now he is actually inventing new crimes.  It’s jaw-dropping that if you fall below 100 employees, the burden will be on you to prove that you meant no disrespect to Obamacare.  I can’t wait to see the video of the first Democrat who tries to defend this new threat of prosecution within Obamacare.  In fact, look for the White House to fix this and somehow drop this provision altogether.  It’s completely indefensible.

I disagree with the idea that this provision will be dropped. President Obama has done so much that is indefensible at this point, his making up a new crime as he goes along will probably not get a lot of attention. I suspect most companies who had slightly over 100 employees have already cut their workforce below 100 to avoid the worst of ObamaCare.

Until someone has the gumption (there are a number of other words I could have used, but this blog is rated G) to stand up to President Obama and say that what he is doing is unconstitutional, we will probably continue down this road.

The article concludes:

On the one hand, Republicans are blasted for wanting to repeal Obamacare, and the Democrats and their allies routinely remind us it’s the so-called “law of the land.”  But the president can amend the law, ignore the law and now even create new ways to prosecute you if you try to avoid its burdens, and the Democrats all fall in line.

In politics, one of the worst things you can do is to deny the obvious and defend the indefensible.  Well, the president is putting the Democratic party in the unenviable position of trying to do exactly that.  If it were nine days instead of nine months before the next election, maybe they could pull it off.  But Obamacare is failing in its original purpose of providing insurance for the uninsured, it unnecessarily burdens American families and businesses, and now the White House has opened the door to prosecuting those they deem to be insufficiently committed to Obamacare. When will the nightmare end?

Because I am on Medicare, I don’t have to deal directly with ObamaCare (other than the money it has taken away from Medicare and the Death Panels, which are real), but I pity anyone who runs a business or needs health insurance. ObamaCare is probably the worst mess I have ever seen the government come up with, and there have been a few.

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Seems As If Everyone In The Executive Department Has A Pen And A Phone

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CNS News reported today that Attorney General Eric Holder is about to take aim at laws that do not allow convicted felons to vote. Wonderful. Three days ago Eric Holder announced that the U.S. Justice Department will recognize same-sex marriages in all legal matters, even in states that forbid it. What he is saying is that the Justice Department will overrule the votes of the people in the states that do not allow same-sex marriage.

The article reports:

Holder said state laws that bar felons from voting are “not only unnecessary and unjust, they are also counterproductive” because they perpetuate the “stigma and isolation imposed on formerly incarcerated individuals,” increasing the likelihood that they will commit future crimes.

Such “outdated” laws have a “disparate impact on minority communities,” he said, suggesting that this is, at heart, a civil rights issue.

Of the 5.8 million Americans who cannot vote because of current or previous felony convictions, 2.2 million are black, Holder noted.

These people are not allowed to vote because they are convicted felons. They are not guilty of misdemeanors–they are convicted felons. They are not being denied the right to vote because of anything but their conviction. They could be pink with purple stripes, and if they had not committed a felony, they would be allowed to vote. This is about committing a crime–this is not about race. Hopefully the Attorney General will not try to make it about race, although the last sentence quoted might be an indication that he plans to.

I would not be opposed to allowing a convicted felon vote after he had been out of prison for twenty years or so and if he had stayed out of trouble during that time. However, I am opposed to simply allowing all convicted felons to vote after they have been released from prison. I would also see this decision made by Congress rather than just done by the Justice Department with the stroke of a pen.

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With A Stoke Of A Pen And Without Congress

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This is not a new story–it’s from last week, but I finally heard someone explain its importance to me in a way that I could understand. On February 5, the Daily Caller posted a story about a recent change in our immigration laws made by the Obama Administration. First of all, these changes did not go through Congress, they were made through the Executive Branch.

The article reports:

The Obama administration has issued new exemptions to a law that bars certain asylum-seekers and refugees who provided “limited material support” to terrorists who are believed to pose no threat from the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department published the new exemptions Wednesday in the Federal Register to narrow a ban in the Immigration and Nationality Act excluding refugees and asylum seekers who had provided limited material support, no matter how minor, to terrorists.

I listened to a terrorism expert today explain why this matters. Please endure a short history lesson to explain. The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development that provided millions of dollars of material and logistical support to Hamas was designated as a charity by President Clinton in 1995 (Executive Order 12947). On July 27, 2004, a federal grand jury in Dallas, Texas, returned a 42-count indictment against the Holy Land Foundation. Included in the exhibits filed by the government in that trial was the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan for changing America from a republic to a caliphate under Sharia Law.  You can google the document and read it. Those plans are well underway. Charges included: conspiracy, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, tax evasion, and money laundering. Included in that indictment was a list of unindicted co-conspirators including CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). CAIR is still recognized by many people as the legal spokesperson for Muslims in America. So what is my point? Muslim organizations that support terrorism seek legitimacy in the United States. They assume the profile of civil or charity organizations. We need to remember that the Muslim Brotherhood has the same goal as Al Qaeda–a world-wide caliphate under Sharia law. The difference in the two organizations is the method. The Muslim Brotherhood showed its method in its short-lived takeover of Egypt. That story is probably not over yet. Ideally, the Muslim Brotherhood likes to take over a country politically and then create a state ruled by Sharia Law. Like the Mafia, the Muslim Brotherhood is a ‘family’ organization that operates under its own set of rules.

Now back to the original point. We have deported Mafia members; we have not opened our gates to their family members. That is the appropriate reaction to members, family members, or contributors to that sort of organization. I suspect there will be some organizations that were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial whose members will be allowed to enter America who would have been barred from doing so before the law was changed.

The bottom line here is simple. We are not being smart about protecting our country.

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