Monthly Archives: December 2014

There Are A Few Good Men Still In Washington

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The more I watch what goes on in Washington, the more I am convinced that we have two political parties–the first consists of Democrats and establishment Republicans, the second consists of conservative Republicans attempting to force Congress to represent the people who voted them into office. The recent budget debates have done nothing to change my view.

The Hill posted an article on Saturday about recent budget negotiations.

The article states:

Appropriators are expected to roll out the legislation early next week, giving critics scant time to figure out what’s inside before they cast their votes by the end of the week. The government would shut down on Dec. 12 without a new funding bill.

“Here we are doing the appropriations bill the last couple days” before a government shutdown, conservative Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) said in an interview this week. “That’s not to squeeze Harry Reid. That’s to squeeze us.”

Boehner critics say there’s no reason the Speaker couldn’t have brought the spending package to the floor this past week, giving the House more time to consider it.

But doing so would also give more time for the right to build a case against it.

“They don’t want you to read it, that’s why! You think they want you to analyze all the mischievous items in there?” Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.)  told The Hill.

Representative Jones has been always been a budget hawk. He has unsuccessfully fought the establishment Republicans to cut spending. It is time for Americans who are concerned about the growth of government and the growth of government debt to take a close look at their voting habits. It is time to stop sending people to Washington simply because they have an “R” or a “D” after their name and to choose people for office who will actually represent us. We are running out of time to avoid American bankruptcy.

Distraction Or Scorched Earth Policy?

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Today is the day that Jonathan Gruber is expected to testify at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee (The Hill), today is the day that Senate Intelligence Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein is scheduled to release a report on CIA interrogations of terrorists after the events of September 11, 2001 (The Washington Post), and to top it off, it has now been reported that President Obama has not actually issued an executive order to grant amnesty to up to five million immigrants (World Net Daily).

Which story is supposed to have the attention of the American people and which stories are we supposed to ignore? I am definitely feeling manipulated.

The Hill reports on the scheduled hearings:

After the videos went viral last month, President Obama dismissed Gruber as “some adviser who was never on our staff,” while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she didn’t even know who he was.

Opponents of ObamaCare say Democrats are changing their story.

They note that Gruber has been to the White House 21 times and met with multiple members of the administration, including Obama, according to visitor logs. Pelosi’s office also cited his work in a 2009 policy analysis.

“Why was Mr. Gruber called an ‘architect’ of ObamaCare by The Washington Post, someone who was lauded by President Obama and cited by then-Speaker Pelosi, and is now just ‘some advisor’? ” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in a statement.

As Gruber steps into the line of fire on Tuesday, he might find little protection from Democrats who once paid him nearly as much as the presidential salary for his consulting work.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, said he would use the hearing to mount a defense of the healthcare law, not Gruber.

Regardless of what Mr. Gruber says about the stupidity of the American voter, we need to get rid of ObamaCare. It may take a circus to wake up the American voter (however, when you consider that half of the Democrats who voted for ObamaCare lost their seats in the last election, Americans may already be awake).

The Washington Post reports on the release of the CIA interrogation report:

With the apparently imminent release of the Feinstein report on CIA interrogations of high-value terrorists a decade ago, let’s consider the situation of intelligence personnel who have been involved, not in that program but in drone strikes against terrorists, conducted in a variety of countries around the world.

They have four sources of direction and protection: Their strikes are authorized by the president, briefed to Congress, deemed lawful by the attorney general and determined useful by the CIA director.

Yet people in the drone program know that co-workers involved in enhanced interrogation had these assurances as well. And the drone program has some distinctive characteristics. Instead of employing waterboarding, stress positions and sleep deprivation, the targets are killed (sometimes with collateral damage to the innocent). President Obama dramatically expanded the use of drones, increasing the proportion of attacks that are “signature strikes” — meaning those authorizing attacks don’t know the identities of the targets, just their likely value.

Some may argue a subtle moral distinction between harshly interrogating a terrorist and blowing his limbs apart. But international human rights groups and legal authorities generally look down on both. The main difference? One is Obama’s favorite program. A few years from now, a new president and new congressional leaders may take a different view.

That is a very good point. Congress had been briefed on these interrogations when they happened. There is no reason to release this report. The report endangers Americans overseas and will cripple the CIA in dealing with future terrorism threats. I wonder how the restrictions put on the CIA today would compare to any restrictions put on the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II.

Meanwhile, about amnesty, World Net Daily quotes Senator Jeff Sessions:

In remarks made at the Washington office of the government-watchdog group Judicial Watch, Sessions said: “I guess they just whispered in the ear of (DHS Director) Jeh Johnson over at Homeland Security, ‘Just put out a memo. That way we don’t have to enforce the law.’”

The news that Obama had not signed an executive order to carry out the policy he announced to the nation in a televised address Nov. 20 was broken by WND Senior Staff Writer Jerome Corsi last week.

As a result of the president’s use of a memo instead of an official order, the senator observed: “We don’t even have a really significant, direct, legal direction that we can ascertain, precisely what the president is doing. It’s a stunning event in my view.”

…The senator dropped a bombshell last week when he revealed he had learned the Obama administration is opening a facility in Crystal City, Virginia, to implement the president’s amnesty plan.

Sessions discovered the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, is hiring 1,000 full-time and permanent staff members to quickly approve illegal immigrants’ applications for amnesty.

Sessions also learned the administration will provide work permits, photo IDs, Social Security and Medicare to illegal immigrants.

He noted that all of those benefits for illegal immigrants had been rejected by Congress.

The Obama administration had initially indicated illegal immigrants would not be eligible for Social Security benefits, but officials were forced to admit the plans after Sessions revealed them.

Welcome to Monday morning under the Obama Administration.

Common Sense Is Obviously Becoming More Rare

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On Thursday, MSN News reported that the European Union human rights court has ordered France to pay thousands of euros to Somali pirates for violating their rights.

The article reports:

The Somali pirates were apprehended on the high seas by the French army on two separate occasions in 2008 and taken back to France for trial.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said that French authorities should have brought the pirates before a judge “without delay” when they arrived on French territory after being held at sea. The EU’s top human rights court said French authorities were wrong to keep the pirates in custody for an additional 48 hours before bringing them before a judge.

“Nothing justifies such an additional delay,” the court said in its verdict, adding that it constituted a “violation of their rights to freedom and security”.

France was ordered to pay between €5,000 and €2,000 ($6,100 and $2,500) to each pirate for “moral damages”, plus amounts varying from €3,000 to €9,000 ($3,700 and $11,200) to cover legal costs.

They are pirates. They earn a living by attacking ships, stealing and kidnapping and killing innocent people. They gave up their rights to freedom and security when they chose piracy as a profession. Would the court have ruled this way if any of its members had any personal knowledge or experience with Somali pirates?

Extending Nuclear Talks With Iran Was A Mistake

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Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of the award winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

He posted an article at the Daily Caller yesterday about the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran that have been taking place in Geneva since 2006. The talks reached an interim agreement when the sanctions placed on Iran began to take a toll on the Iranian economy. Many of those sanctions have been loosened, and Iran has been allowed to continue on its merry way of developing nuclear weapons capable of reaching all of the Middle East, Europe, and America.

The article reports:

Instead, the regime has adopted a policy of “elongation” with the 5+1 nations in which it strings along the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany as it develops nuclear weapons, wrote Alireza Forghani.

Forghani is a senior analyst and strategy specialist in the supreme leader’s camp and closely aligned with Mehdi Taeb, who heads the regime’s Ammar Strategic Base, a radical think thank, and thus speaks with the blessing of the Islamic regime.

“Elongation” is Iran’s sole doctrine, Forghani wrote, in which the Geneva negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran were “never supposed to be brought to a successful conclusion … whether positive or negative.” Those talks began in 2006 and have been extended several times as one deadline after another failed to produce a comprehensive agreement. The two sides agreed on Nov. 24 to yet another deadline extension, this time to June 30, 2015.

Forghani warned that soon he will promote the slogan “Nuclear weapon is our definite right,” and that there will be people in the streets demanding a nuclear-armed Iran. He also promised the destruction of Israel, which he claimed “is exactly what Almighty God wants.”

So far, Iran has gotten all of the concessions it has wanted from the western powers. It is following the path that North Korea followed in order to become a nuclear power. Frankly, I don’t think the fact that either of those two countries have nuclear weapons makes anyone safer.

I believe that one of the reasons Iran has been so bold about keeping its centrifuges is that it does not fear an attack by Israel. The conventional wisdom is that American pressure is preventing that attack. However, I also believe that if America turns its back on Israel in any way, Israel will deal with Iran’s nuclear program. I also believe that America is already in the process of turning its back on Israel.

The nuclear talks have been extended until June 2015. It is a reasonably safe assumption that Iran agreed to that deadline because they expect their nuclear program to be up and running before that deadline. At that point, Iran will be a nuclear nation and the talks will be moot.

The article further reports:

As reported in April 2012, an analysis by Mohammad Mohammadi, an Iranian international affairs and nuclear program analyst, concluded that the country no longer needs to compromise with the U.S.

“It is quite clear that when we watch the current arguments between America and Israel over Iran, the Obama administration is quite confused,” Mohammadi said in the Keyhan newspaper, an outlet under Khamenei’s direct supervision.

In his article, titled “The Lessons from the Past for the Negotiations in April,” Mohammadi wrote: “Looking back at the past decade, all the red lines by America and the West over Iran’s nuclear issue have now been transformed into acceptance. America has always adopted radical actions at first that have changed to symbolic measures later. Iran has always known that America and the West needed a way to solve the nuclear issue with some honor, and today it is quite visible that with the defeat of America’s policies toward Iran, the talk about a need to solve the Iranian nuclear issue diplomatically is a way to obtain that honor.”

Another diplomatic victory for the Obama Administration.

There Are Some Things Money Can Buy

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The Weekly Standard posted an article yesterday about a New York Times article about the University of Virginia’s Miller Center‘s newly released oral history project about the Clinton presidency.

The article reports:

In a five year span, the William J Clinton Foundation gave five grants totaling $851,250 to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. One year in particular, 2007, the Clinton gift was specifically marked: “Oral history project of Clinton presidency.” 

Well, today the New York Times has a front page feature on the newly released oral history project about the Clinton presidency. The one the Clintons helped pay for. But nowhere in the 2,600 word piece do Times writers Amy Chozick (who is on the Clinton beat) and Peter Baker (longtime White House reporter) disclose the obvious conflict of interest.

On the Miller Center project, the authors only write, “Her triumphs and setbacks are laid bare in the oral histories of Mr. Clinton’s presidency, released last month by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The center has conducted oral histories of every presidency going back to Jimmy Carter’s, interviewing key players and then sealing them for years to come. But more than any other, this set of interviews bears on the future as much as the past.”

No other presidential foundation has given money to the Miller Center, according to a search of the database Foundation Search. 

The article lists the grants given from the William J. Clinton Foundation to the Miller Center. It has become obvious in recent years that the William J. Clinton Foundation serves William J. and Hillary R. Clinton and little else. On August 13, 2013, The New York Times posted an article detailing concerns about the Clinton Foundation.

The Times article stated:

Soon after the 10th anniversary of the foundation bearing his name, Bill Clinton met with a small group of aides and two lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Two weeks of interviews with Clinton Foundation executives and former employees had led the lawyers to some unsettling conclusions.

The review echoed criticism of Mr. Clinton’s early years in the White House: For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.

I am hoping that Hillary Clinton will not run for President. The Clintons have a history of playing right at the edges of the law, and there have been questions as to whether or not they have on more than one occasion stepped over the edge. We need honest, transparent people in Washington. I don’t believe that Hillary Clinton fits that description.

With Total Disregard For Small Businesses

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One of the lead articles in today’s New Bern Sun Journal was entitled, “Online marketers called on to collect sales taxes.”

The article states:

The National Association of Counties joined collective groups of cities, mayors, and state governments last week in a Capitol Hill briefing that called on Congress to pass legislation forcing online marketers to collect sales tax.

Craven County Commissioner Scott Dacey, vice chairman of the Craven board and its delegate to NACo, spoke for counties and was one of these speaking for NACo on the importance of this issue and its impact on counties.

What about the impact of the businesses involved? An internet business usually does business in many areas of the country. Different areas of the country have different tax laws–different tax rates, different items taxable, different tax rates on different items. Has Commissioner Dacey or any of the other county executives considered the burden they would be placing on small business owners with this tax? How many clerical workers will the average internet business have to hire to track taxes and input information into the computer? How many programmers will have to rewrite the computer codes of these businesses to comply with the law? What will be the administrative cost to the average internet business? Very large internet businesses like EBay and Amazon may be able to cope with the additional expense, but the impact of this law will be to drive the small businessman off the internet. Commissioner Dacey and other country executives, is your intention to take away small businessmen from the internet? If you are not intent of driving small companies off of the internet, you need to rethink your proposal.

Where Are We Now?

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Today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We need to remember the families who were impacted by that attack and look at what we can learn from that attack.

Between 1940 and 1941, the American military had increased from 458,365 Army, Navy, and Marines to 1,801,101 (these figures are from the National WWII Museum Website). What was going on in the world? The Japanese seized Manchuria in 1931. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in March 1933. In October 1933, Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations. In March 1935, he denounced the armament limits placed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles and began rebuilding the German armed forces. The world was clearly becoming a very dangerous place, and America sought to remain uninvolved (although it was beginning to rearm). In researching this article I came across a few articles that stated that President Roosevelt knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor ahead of time and chose to remain silent in order to bring America into the war. I have no opinion on that.

PearlHarbor

Today, America is still striving for peace. We are currently a war-weary nation, but unfortunately, the world around us is not a peaceful place. The lesson we need to learn from Pearl Harbor is that aggression in other parts of the world can easily spill over to America. This is not the time to be considering cutting the defense budget–it is a time to increase our military strength in order to keep America safe.

That Mud Puddle On Your Front Lawn Is Now Under Federal Control

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The Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) posted the following press release yesterday:

WASHINGTON, DC, Dec 5 – “Government has grown more aggressive as it seeks to trample on our rights with regulations that are so intrusive they are positively inane, including a new one that would give the EPA the right to regulate rain water,” according to Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens.

Weber said that he was not amused when the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would extend its authority under the Clean Water Act to include puddles.

“The Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972 to prevent the pollution of the nation’s navigable waters.  It was not intended to allow the government to tell us how to deal with naturally occurring ditches on our property just because they might collect rainwater during a storm.  But that’s exactly what the EPA proposes to do.  It would be a joke if it wasn’t for the fact that such pervasive authority is bound to cause hardships for America’s farmers and for the country as a whole,” Weber explained.

Mark Pflugmacher operates a family farm in Champaign County, IL.  He is also a member of the Champaign County Farm Bureau.  As he put it in an OpEd article published in his local paper, The News-Gazette: “If the expanded definition is allowed, permits and other regulatory roadblocks — having to hire environmental consultants, for example — would stand in the way of conducting routine business activities like building fences, removing debris from ditches, spraying for weeds and insects, and removing unwanted vegetation on my own farm.

Pflugmacher cautioned that farmers are not the only businesses that will be impacted if the EPA is given the far-reaching authority it seeks.  “Home builders, real estate agents, aggregate producers, manufacturers and contractors all would be affected. For these small, local businesses, the proposed rule would increase federal regulatory power over private property. The definitions would create confusion and, because they were intentionally created to be overly broad, could be interpreted in whatever way the federal agencies see fit, costing business owners money and the local economy jobs.’

Weber described it as “yet another example of big government, or big brother, if you will, gaining control of our lives, including the cost of living.  The proposed EPA restrictions on the use of plentiful, inexpensive coal to produce affordable electricity will have a profound impact on the price we pay to heat and cool our homes.  The new standing water proposals will undoubtedly increase the cost of the food we eat and the homes in which we live.”

The AMAC chief noted that the nation’s elderly will be the ones who suffer most and called on the new Republican Congress to rein in the regulators “who are usurping the power of our Representatives and Senators to make laws.”

The Creeping Bureaucracy Of Washington

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Andrew McCarthy posted an article today at National Review Online about the recent events involving police that have gotten so much publicity. Mr. McCarthy’s theory is that Eric Holder has inserted himself into these events not because they are civil rights issues, but because he can use these events to exert federal power over local law enforcement.

The article reports:

Civil-rights investigations in Ferguson and Staten Island? No, what denizens of St. Louis and New York City ought to be worried about right now is . . . the crime wave overtaking Seattle.

If you don’t understand why, then you probably thought Obamacare was about covering the uninsured. Like its health-care “reform” campaign, the Obama Left’s civil-rights crusade is about control — central control of state law enforcement by Washington.

The deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York are each tragic in their own way. But in neither is there a federal civil-rights case to be had. To think otherwise, you have to be getting your advice from Al Sharpton — the huckster confidant of President Obama and Attorney General Holder.

So what has happened in Seattle that should have us all concerned?

The article reports:

Seattle is another of the big cities that has been targeted by the DOJ. It has been under a consent decree since the Justice Department targeted it in 2012 for a “pattern or practice” of violations, allegedly including “subjecting individuals to excessive force” — in particular, “using excessive force against persons of color,” and “escalating situations and using excessive force when arresting individuals for minor offenses.”

…Meanwhile, Seattle has been making announcements, too. It seems crime in the Emerald City has been skyrocketing since the Justice Department came in to, er, help. Homicides up 21 percent, car theft up 44 percent, aggravated assaults up 14 percent, and so on.

Welcome to Change: produced and directed by the Obama Justice Department and coming soon to a town near you.

Although I agree with Andrew McCarthy that what is happening in Ferguson and Staten Island is about control, I also think there is another purpose. One of the characteristics of the Obama Administration has been to create division between different groups of people. The ‘war on women’ was an attempt to create division among the sexes, the so-called ‘problem of income inequality’ was to create class warfare, and the focus on the two unfortunate deaths in law-enforcement situations undermines the authority of the police and can also be used to create racial division and tension. Unless Americans wake up and realize that they are being manipulated by a Chicago thug, we are in for a really ugly next two years.

What Are We Teaching Our Children?

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This was posted on Facebook by a friend. She states that an eastern North Carolina middle school was recently given an assignment through the Jr Scholastic Magazine.

kidinstructionsJrScholastic

Look at the cartoon carefully. It illustrates instructions given to children going outside to play. The instructions given to the white child are basic ‘kid-type’ instructions. The instructions given to the black child are simply wrong. To put this cartoon in front of Middle School children is to tell them that Americans are racists and policemen are not friendly to black children. Neither of these things is true.

I am sure that this cartoon and the accompanying questions were in response to the death of Michael Brown. I would like to point out that even though it is very unfortunate that Michael Brown is dead, he would still be alive had he not attacked a police officer and tried to steal his gun. It would be more instructive to teach all of the children in the school to respect the police and listen when the police speak to them. If Michael Brown had been white and attacked a police officer, I suspect he would still be dead. If Michael Brown had not been killed, I suspect the police officer would be dead. There is no way that story has a happy ending, and it is a shame that Junior Scholastic magazine chose to teach racism rather than teach respect for the law.

Padding the National Defense Authorization Bill

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Yesterday Breitbart.com reported that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes some provisions that have nothing to do with defense.

The article reports:

According to Cruz (Senator Ted Cruz), the “extraneous” land grab provisions in the NDAA include:   

250,000 acres of new wilderness designations 400,000 acres withdrawn from productive use (for energy, mining, timber, etc.) 

Fifteen new national park units or park expansions 

Eight new studies for national parks 

Three new wild and scenic river designations

3 new studies for additional designations 

Study to begin the National Women’s History Museum 

The federal government already owns an estimated 640 million acres of land, more than one-third of the entire country.  

Breitbart News reported that the text of the NDAA compromise reached by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers included a slew of unrelated public lands measures. The NDAA is considered must-pass legislation.   

Again, we are left wondering who Congress actually represents–I don’t think it is the American people.

The article further reports:

The NDAA agreement includes close to 100 natural resources provisions from across the nation, including eight Nevada public land provisions that have been priorities for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and his Republican counterpart Dean Heller.  

In a statement celebrating the attachment of the public lands provisions to the NDAA, Sen. Heller, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, acknowledges that he “worked behind the scenes for months to attach these Nevada priorities, spurring economic development and enhancing national security, to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).”  

“This is great news for the entire state of Nevada. I’ve worked tirelessly from my first days in the House of Representatives to take the lead and ensure these lands bills were top priorities. I’ve been committed from the very beginning and am glad to see the fruits of this labor,” he states. “I’m grateful my colleagues from the delegation, specifically Senator Reid and Congressman [Mark] Amodei [R-Nev.], collaborated in making these bills important action items this Congress.”  

“It was not an easy lift but the needs of Nevada were addressed, and I’m happy to achieve this goal,” he adds. “As this legislation becomes law, it will not only spur economic development in our state but enhance national security as well. Those are things we should all be proud to accomplish.”  

This NDAA is a bad bill–it cuts military benefits of active duty military and it includes a land grab that needs to be discussed on its own–not added to something unrelated. I understand that it would be inconvenient for the bill not to pass, but I hope there are enough people in the Senate who are paying attention and will say ‘no.’

Good News From Washington

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The House of Representatives has passed H.R. 3410. According to Thomas.gov, on 12/02/2014 the bill was received in the Senate and read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

H.R. 3410 is the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act or CIPA.

Thomas.gov describes the Bill as follows:

Amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require the Assistant Secretary of the National Protection and Programs Directorate to: (1) include in national planning scenarios the threat of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) events; and (2) conduct a campaign to proactively educate owners and operators of critical infrastructure, emergency planners, and emergency responders at all levels of government of the threat of EMP events.

Directs the Under Secretary for Science and Technology to conduct research and development to mitigate the consequences of EMP events, including: (1) an objective scientific analysis of the risks to critical infrastructures from a range of EMP events; (2) determination of the critical national security assets and vital civic utilities and infrastructures that are at risk from EMP events; (3) an evaluation of emergency planning and response technologies that would address the findings and recommendations of experts, including those of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack; (4) an analysis of available technology options to improve the resiliency of critical infrastructure to EMP; and (5) the restoration and recovery capabilities of critical infrastructure under differing levels of damage and disruption from various EMP events.

Includes among the responsibilities of the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) relating to intelligence and analysis and infrastructure protection to prepare and submit to specified congressional committees: (1) a comprehensive plan to protect and prepare the critical infrastructure of the American homeland against EMP events, including from acts of terrorism; and (2) biennial updates of such plan.

This is long overdue. Hopefully the Bill will pass quickly in the Senate–it is desperately needed–not only does EMP constitute a threat to our electrical grid, sunspots can also cause the same sort of disruption. If we protect the electrical grid from an EMP attack, it will also be protected from sunspots.

America’s most vulnerable target is her energy grid. Everything we do revolves around it–the storage and delivery of food, our traffic control, mass transportation, communication, and our medical facilities. We need to protect and secure that grid from natural and man-made attacks.

It’s About Time

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The only good thing that I can find in the National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”) is the fact that soldiers killed in the ‘workplace violence’ at Fort Hood may actually receive Purple Hearts and have the events of November 5, 2009, actually regarded as the act of domestic terrorism that they actually were.

Yesterday the Military Times reported:

Victims of the 2009 Fort Hood shootings will be eligible to receive Purple Hearts and combat injury benefits under a provision included in the latest defense authorization deal.

The measure is expected to be approved by Congress next week, and would end a five-year quest by Texas lawmakers to get battlefield recognition for the soldiers killed in the deadliest attack on a domestic military installation in U.S. history.

It could also be a financial windfall for the families of the 13 people killed and 32 wounded in the attack.

The latest authorization draft stipulates that Purple Heart medals will be awarded to “members of the armed forces killed or wounded in domestic attacks inspired by foreign terrorist organizations.”

The article points out that decisions on awarding the Purple Heart within the United States after a terrorist attack have not been consistent.

The article reports:

Troops injured at the Pentagon in the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, received it. Two Army recruiters shot by a radicalized Muslim outside of a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas, in June 2009 did not.

Generally speaking, the National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”) is a bad bill–it cuts military benefits at a time when we are making a lot of demands on our volunteer military (see rightwinggranny). President Obama is threatening to veto the NDAA, and frankly that would not break my heart. This bill needs to be redone after the new Congress is sworn in in 2015. If there is a week gap in funding, we can pay some things late–other than fixing the Purple Heart situation for Fort Hood victims, the bill needs to be changed. Also, if this bill is what the Republican leadership is going to give us, we need new Republican leadership.

A New Twist On The Amnesty Story

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Judicial Watch posted a story yesterday about the federal government uncovering a criminal ring of illegal immigrants that used stolen identities to defraud the U.S. government out of $7.2 million in tax refunds.

The article reports:

The mastermind of this sophisticated operation is a resourceful delinquent in Frankfurt, Delaware who runs a landscaping and cleaning business called “Las Tres Mujeres” (the three women in Spanish). Her name is Linda Avila and she’s admitted in federal court that she filed more than 1,700 fraudulent tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) using stolen identities assigned to migrant workers—mostly from Mexico—living in the U.S. illegally.

Avila altered W-2 forms with white out to cover up the names, social security numbers and addresses then wrote in other names and addresses to create the fraudulent returns, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) announcement. Foreign dependents were often added to increase the refund amounts. The IRS then cut refund checks ranging from $4,000 to more than $7,000, according to the feds. Avila provided the illegal aliens fake identification documents so they could cash the IRS refund checks. The illegal alien migrant workers kept a small fee and gave most of the money to Avila.

When federal agents searched Avila’s home in Delaware they seized about 17 boxes of fraudulent tax records, according to the DOJ document outlining the case. Templates for fraudulent W-2 forms and identification documents were also found on her computer. The records included copies of approximately 1,754 tax returns filed between 2008 and 2014 for tax years 2004 through 2013. The total loss to the IRS based on the fraudulent returns is approximately $7.2 million, federal authorities estimate.

Back in July a federal grand jury in Norfolk Virginia indicted Avila on charges of conspiracy to make false claims, mail fraud and false claims against the United States. On November 17, the same week Obama issued a long-anticipated administrative amnesty, Avila finally pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy and mail fraud. She faces three decades in prison and remains free pending sentencing on February 17. The feds have not disclosed if her illegal immigrant partners in crime will be charged.

Let’s close the borders, change the immigration laws to let the people who have been waiting patiently in line come in, investigate the activities of the people who are here illegally, and decide which of the people who are here illegally will be an asset to America.

Some Unintended Consequences Of Federal Government Overreach

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Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee in Raleigh, North Carolina. There were a number of items discussed–the Read to Achieve program, Charter Schools in North Carolina, the Founding Principles Act, and the complications in hiring substitute teachers caused by the implementation of ObamaCare. Yes, ObamaCare has made it more difficult for schools in North Carolina to hire the substitute teachers they need. Why? Because ObamaCare requires that every person working thirty hours a week be given health care.

ObamaCare requires that health benefits be extended to non-permanent full-time employees in North Carolina who traditionally have not been eligible for coverage under the State Health Plan. ObamaCare also complicates things for retired certified teachers covered under their retirement health plans. If they are substitute teaching more than 29 hours a week, they have to be covered by their employers and are no longer eligible for their retirement health care benefit.

There were two suggestions made for legislative options that would solve this problem, but my point is this, “How is it that the federal government created a problem for a state that has to be solved with a new state law?” What is the federal government doing saying anything about a state’s health care policies? The shortage of substitute teachers in North Carolina is only one of many reasons we need to rein in the federal government.

The Tenth Amendment states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

From Healthcare to Common Core, it is time to get the federal government out of the states.

Congress Needs To Cut Its Own Pay Before It Takes Benefits Away From Our Troops

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Yesterday the Military Times posted an article about the changes Congress and the President are making to the benefits received by our active duty military. This is the same military that Congress and the President have been deploying overseas for the last thirteen plus years.

The article reports:

The lower pay raise will be the most obvious hit for troops, who would be in line for a 1.8 percent raise based on anticipated private-sector wage growth.

For an E-3 with three years of service, the lower raise is a loss of about $195 a year. For an E-7 with 10 years, it comes out to $356. For an O-5 with 12 years of service, it’s $667 in annual salary.

Pentagon planners noted that move alone will save them about $3.8 billion over the next five years. Opponents argued that it creates a new wage gap between troops and their civilian counterparts, giving them less disposable income.

In addition, lawmakers approved trimming back the housing allowances paid to troops who live off base. The Pentagon initially sought to reduce the tax-free housing benefit by 5 percent by reducing the 100 percent of troops’ estimated housing costs that are covered now down to an average of 95 percent — in effect making troops pay 5 percent of their housing with out-of-pocket cash.

The new deal allowing only a 1 percent reduction for one year pushes off future decisions for now.

This is not the way to save money in the defense budget. Note that the article reports that cutting the amount of pay raises will “create a new wage gap between troops and their civilian counterparts.” Our military is a volunteer force. You can only cut wages so much before people stop volunteering.

I have a few suggestions here. How much does a welfare family receive in benefits compared to how much an enlisted military family receives in wages? Can we cut the federal government’s contribution to welfare and let the states sort out welfare fraud? Why is it that welfare programs seem to be the one thing that never gets cut? Why is welfare not running out of money and Social Security (which people pay into) always cited as going broke?

If the Republicans who got elected to Congress in November want to respect the wishes of the voters who elected them, they will find another way to cut the spending. To accept the continued hollowing out of our military and the cutting of benefits paid to our soldiers is to tamper with the national security of America. The voters will hold them accountable.

This Does Not Make Me Feel Safe

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The Blaze posted an article (and video) today about testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee today.

This is the video (as posted on YouTube):

The testimony is as follows:

During a Tuesday hearing, Chaffetz recalled that Johnson had previously promised four men nabbed crossing the Southern border in early September would be deported. The individuals were thought to have ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, an organization designated as a terrorist group by the State Department.

“Did you deport them?” the Utah representative asked Johnson.

“Uh, no. Not at this point,” Johnson answered.

“What is the disposition of those four people,” Chaffetz pressed.

“Two are detained, the two others were released by the judge — uh, not my preference — they were released by the judge and they fled to Canada and they are seeking asylum in Canada,” the homeland secretary responded, before placing blame on an immigration judge for releasing two of the four men.

Chaffetz then asked if the U.S. was aware of the location in Canada the two fled to.

“I’m not sure about their exact whereabouts, sir,” Johnson answered, later adding that he wanted the two brought back to the U.S.

“Mr. Secretary, this is the problem,” Chaffetz said. “You come, and you say — you tell the world that you’re going to deport these four people tied to — these are terrorists and you don’t. They get released.”

This testimony will not help me sleep at night.

What???!!!

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Here is a link to a Daily Caller article posted today. The article includes a video of President Obama stating that he does not have the power to pass immigration law all by himself. The article then reports the  testimony before Congress by Marielena Hincapié.

The article states:

Hincapié, Executive Director of the National Immigration Law Center, was asked by Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner why the president, after saying on at least 22 separate occasions he did not have the power to do what he did, “he did a 180.”

“Unfortunately I think the president was talking politics,” she began. “He made those comments, much to our dismay, because we believed for many years now that the president did, and does in fact have the legal authority. The president on a number of those occasions was specifically talking about immigration reform–he has been so focused on getting immigration reform done with Congress that he continually told the immigrant rights community that he could not do immigration reform.”

The article then reports the testimony of Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice:

“I think the president was correct when he said he could not make the law or change the law,” Sekulow said. “He was speaking correctly. I think when he made the statement that he has changed the law, he recognized also that he did something–he thought he changed the law. He doesn’t think, by the way, that it was simply a policy decision, he stated he changed the law, and I don’t–as I said in my testimony, Congressman, I don’t believe there’s anybody on this Committee that believes that the president has the authority to change the law. He knew he did not when he made the statement 22 times, and then he changed the law. He doesn’t get to do that.”

I guess it would be politically incorrect to admit that at some point President Obama is lying–either he believes he has the right to write law or he doesn’t. If he believes that the President has the right to write laws, I wonder where he studied the Constitution. I hope someone in Congress will, at some point, decide to stand up for the U.S. Constitution.

Selective Comebacks

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One of the more amazing things to happen in recent years is the rehabilitation of the image of Bill Clinton. George H.W. Bush had a lot to do with bringing Bill Clinton back into the public spotlight in a positive way. It seems as if America has forgiven President Clinton for his antics in the White House and his general weaknesses regarding the opposite sex. Now we are about to face a similar situation with General David Petraeus (although General Petraeus was not the serial adulterer that President Clinton was).

Yesterday Bloomberg News posted an article entitled, “Why Is the FBI Still Targeting Petraeus?” It is becoming very obvious that justice and criminology under President Obama has become a totally political matter.

The article reports:

Most importantly: According to current and former U.S. intelligence officials who have spoken to us, the FBI still has an open investigation into whether Petraeus improperly provided highly classified documents to Paula Broadwell, his biographer and the woman with whom he had an affair.

A little history: In the spring of 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation stumbled upon the Petraeus-Broadwell relationship while investigating a separate cyber-stalking matter. While the FBI has cleared Broadwell of those charges, and Obama has said Petraeus never endangered national security, the FBI’s probe remains open.

Two U.S. officials familiar with the investigation say Broadwell was never authorized to receive material that was found on her personal computer. Because this included compartmentalized intelligence that only a handful of very senior officials were approved to view, the FBI considers the breach to be a serious matter. “It was inappropriately shared and it should never have been shared,” one former senior intelligence official said.

Before we decide if this is valid, there is another series of events we need to look at (as posted at rightwinggranny). The events listed below are reported by Sharyl Attkisson:

“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.”

“They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.

I wonder how the documents the FBI is searching for arrived in Paula Broadwell’s computer.

The article at Bloomberg further reports:

What stands out here is not just that Petraeus remains under investigation but that he remains under investigation while being reintegrated into the foreign policy establishment.

To wit: Petraeus is ostensibly being investigated for mishandling classified material and yet he retains his security clearance. What’s more, he has been casually advising the White House on Iraq, where he directed the effort to end a civil war in 2007 and 2008 and still maintains close relationships with many of its leaders.

“All of us who know him and are close to him are mystified by the fact there is still this investigation into him,” Jack Keane, a retired four-star U.S. Army General said in an interview.  Keane has been both an adviser to and mentor of Petraeus since he saved Petraeus’s life during a live-fire training exercise in 1991. 

Keane questions whether the Petraeus FBI probe lasting this long may be driven by something other than a desire to investigate a potential crime. “It makes you wonder if there is another motivation to drag an investigation out this long,” he said.

General Petraeus was an honorable man who made a mistake. I suspect that the people behind this continuing investigation are less honorable. It is time to return the White House to someone who will not abuse his power to eliminate people he considers political threats.

 

Advice From A Knowledgeable Source

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Townhall.com posted an article today by Hugh Hewitt giving advice to the outgoing Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Hewitts advice is simple:

First, do not cut the expected hike in the military housing allowance or increase the deductible applicable to medical services for military families on active duty. I would hope the GOP learned its lesson last year that your base is deeply committed to the proposition that the active duty and retired-career military should be the last category to receive benefit cuts, not the first in line to get whacked.

…Next, do not vote for a Continuing Resolution that is other than a stop-gap measure. Allowing a lame duck Congress to set spending for the balance of 2015 just after the country voted overwhelmingly to reject the authority of Harry Reid and his allies over that process would itself be a rejection of the people’s vote.

Mr. Hewitt then makes a very prescient prediction:

Look, this president only knows how to do one thing, which is how to make the Congressional GOP look bad –very bad in fact. That is his goal, his entire reason for being for the next 24 months. The president intends to force a shut down next fall, and no matter what you try and do between now and then, he will force that shutdown. The only thing you can do successfully is frame his incipient irresponsibility by quickly passing an updated version of the Ryan Budget –one which removes the sequester from the Department of Defense— and then follow up with the appropriations bills that conform to that budget, communicating every day of the year that you are acting responsibly and the president is refusing to do so.

Be ready. That prediction makes a lot of sense. The President is an expert at convincing the press that he is right when he is wrong. The voters are looking for two things in the new Republican Congress–one is a return to the idea of small, limited government and the second is the developing of a backbone to stand up to a lame-duck President. I am a Republican, and I am waiting for the Republicans to convince me that they are not simply interested in being in control of the bureaucracy, but understand the need to shrink the government and cut spending.

Noble Causes The Coincidentally Result In Financial Windfalls

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Steven Hayward posted an article at Power Line today about taking the horse-drawn carriages out of Central Park in New York City. In January New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio promised that he would remove the horses from Central Park (honoring the wishes of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Mayor DeBlasio has now stated that he will introduce legislation this month to eliminate the horse-drawn carriage industry in Central Park.

Last January I posted an article explaining the financial gain involved in this move (rightwinggranny). It really isn’t about the welfare of the animals:

The bad guy in this drama, according to the carriage drivers, is  Steve Nislick, chief executive officer of a New Jersey-based real-estate development company, Edison Properties. The company “employs legions of lobbyists to influence city decisions on real estate and zoning in its favor,” journalist Michael Gross reported in 2009, pointing out that two of Edison’s businesses “have multiple locations in the same Far West Midtown neighborhood as the stables where the Central Park horses are housed.” An anti-carriage pamphlet Nislick circulated in 2008 made this interesting observation: “Currently, the stables consist of 64,000 square feet of valuable real estate on lots that could accommodate up to 150,000 square feet of development. These lots could be sold for new development.”

The Teamsters Union represents the Central Park carriage drives, and the union has already released a statement that they are unhappy with the proposed legislation.

The Unintended Consequences Of American Oil Production

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The Wall Street Journal today included an article by Daniel Yergin about the falling oil prices. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) met Thursday and decided not to cut oil production. That is a major policy change and will have worldwide impact. The demand for oil is no longer the basis for OPEC’s decisions–now the deciding factors are the surge in U.S. oil production and the new oil supply from Canada.

The article reports:

Since 2008—when fear of “peak oil,” after which global output would supposedly decline, was the dominant motif—U.S. oil production has risen 80%, to nine million barrels daily. The U.S. increase alone is greater than the output of every OPEC country except Saudi Arabia.

The world has experienced sudden supply gushers before. In the early 1930s, a flood of oil from East Texas drove prices down to 10 cents a barrel—and desperate gas station owners offered chickens as premiums to bring in customers. In the late 1950s, the rapidly swelling flow of Mideast oil led to price cuts that triggered the formation of OPEC.

Oil is currently selling at about $69 per barrel after hovering around $100 per barrel for the past three years. The shale oil being drilled in America is still economical to produce with prices between $50 and $69 per barrel, so the lower prices will not drive America from the world market.

So what are the international implications of cheap oil? The Russian budget is funded over 40% by oil, but Putin has built up a reserve of a few hundred billion dollars that will help Russia cope with the falling oil prices. Venezuela and Iran are also negatively impacted by falling oil prices. Just for the record, the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline would have a severe negative impact on the Venezuelan economy–the Gulf Coast refineries would replace the heavy oil from Venezuela with the Canadian oil.

There is, of course, the possibility that OPEC could change its mind in the Spring and cut output, but even if they were to do that, they would only be hurting themselves, as Canada and the United States would simply increase their production to make up the difference.