Tag Archives: Daily Caller

The Role Of Internet News Sites

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English: Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator from Florid...

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The Weekly Standard posted an article yesterday about the role of an Internet blogger in bringing to light the errors in a very negative Reuters story about Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Matt Lewis, a blogger for the Daily Caller, pointed out the errors in the story, forcing Reuters to correct five of the items listed in the story. Reuters has admitted that the story is regrettable.

The article at The Weekly Standard reports:

It was so bad, in fact, that the editors and writer involved have been asked not to talk about it. (I reached out to editors David Lindsey and Eric Walsh, but have not heard back.)

The article, by David Adams, had intended to detail why Rubio was an unlikely pick for Vice President: “Rubio may not be as coveted as Gingrich or Romney would have it appear as they press for votes in Florida, where more than 450,000 Hispanics identify themselves as Republicans,” Reuters David Adams wrote. “Despite his reputation as a watchdog over federal spending, Rubio, 40, has had significant financial problems that could keep him from passing any vetting process as a potential vice presidential choice, Republican and Democratic strategists say.”

But after pressure from the Rubio staff, Reuters was forced to issue corrections that quickly became a larger talking point than the article itself.

Without the work of Matt Lewis, this story would have been allowed to go unchallenged, and a good man would have been smeared in the press. That is the reason why we need the Internet and Internet news sources!

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Who Gets Rich In The Obama Economy

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Today’s Daily Caller posted an article about President Obama’s speech in Las Vegas calling for a plan to boost the American use of natural gas. I’m sure it is only a coincidence that George Soros will benefit greatly if the plan is put into action.

The Daily Caller reports:

Westport Innovations, a recent purchase by Soros, would benefit from the windfall of policies that pursue the use of natural gas for transportation. The company, whose shares have been projected to explode if Congress were to approve the Natural Gas Act, makes natural gas engines for heavy-duty trucks.

“Soros’s investment funds have pumped about $122 million into WPST, and he’s added to his control as recently as December and March, when he picked up over a million shares, bringing his total to 5.5 million shares,” reported BigGovernment.

“If Westport reaps the predicted windfall, one of the chief beneficiaries will be George Soros, a major Obama donor and supporter. Soros’s hedge fund holds.

There have been a lot of investments in ‘green energy’ by political leaders who felt that they could put policies in place that would reward them rather than be in the best interests of America. We need to remember that specific legislation was passed before Solyndra declared bankruptcy that put the American taxpayer on the hook for the loss rather than the investors in the company. We also need to remember that in the bankruptcy of Chrysler, the interests of the unions were protected over the interests of the Preferred Stockholders, which is against bankruptcy law.

Crony capitalism seems to be one of the strongest traits of the Obama Administration. When November comes, we need to end both crony capitalism and the Obama Administration.

 

 
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About That Common Sense In The Senate I Just Mentioned–Here Is The Other Side Of The Coin

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Yesterday the Daily Caller reported on Senator Barbara Boxer’s reaction to the bill that the House of Representatives passed that cuts payroll taxes.

The article reports:

Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Boxer, the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, assailed a provision House Republicans attached to their payroll tax-cut bill that would delay boiler regulations the Environmental Protection Agency recently enacted.

“They have attached a poison pill — literally, colleagues — because it will kill 8,100 more people more than would have otherwise been killed from pollution,” Boxer said. “They attach that to the payroll tax cut. So have that for a Christmas gift.”

“We have asked for a lot from Santa in our day but we have never asked for lead, arsenic and mercury,” Boxer concluded.

This is the kind of rhetoric Senator McCaskill was speaking out against in the previous article. These words are not true, not constructive, and not consensus building.

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I Think There Is A Problem With This

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 America has three branches of government–the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. The idea is to divide the power so that no one branch takes control of the government. There is also the added benefit that each branch protects its own interests by keeping an eye on what the other branches are doing. Thus, we have Congressional hearings when the Executive branch gets a little feisty. The purpose of these hearings is to hold everyone accountable. The process works when everyone is held accountable. The process does not work when information is withheld from Congressional committees and the committees cannot properly do their work.
 

Yesterday the Daily Caller reported on some recent testimony by Attorney General Eric Holder at the Operation Fast and Furious hearings. It seems that Attorney General Holder has not been entirely forthcoming with his emails regarding Operation Fast and Furious.

The article reports the following testimony:

“Most of the 5,000 documents you turned over are emails,” Issa said to Holder. “Mr. Attorney General, I have a question for you. Not one of these emails, in fact, is yours. Aren’t you a prolific emailer?”

Holder responded that, “No,” he is not a “prolific emailer.”

Issa followed up: “Don’t you email?”

Holder responded in the affirmative. “Do you have a personal email account as well as an attorney general email account?” Issa pressed.

“I have an email account at the Justice Department, yes,” Holder equivocated.

If I remember correctly, the press went after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for using her personal email account for business when she was governor. Somehow the major press is not noticiing that the Attorney General seems to have done the same thing.

The article further reports:

Holder continued to avoid the line of questioning, and said that he’s provided an “unprecedented” amount of documents to Congress. But, he still wouldn’t cite a legal reason why he’s refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas and requests.

“In making production determinations, we have followed what attorneys general in the past have always used — applicable standards, whether these are Republican or Democrat attorneys general,” Holder said. “The information we’ve provided you has been responsive, has been, I think, wholesome and also unprecedented.”

I think this is political-speak for I am not going to willingly give you the information you are looking for–you are going to have to come after it. I hope Committee Chairman Representative Darrell Issa will do just that.

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Laziness Is Not An American Problem

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On Saturday, the Daily Caller reported that President Obama blamed America’s financial difficulties on laziness and stated that the cure is more central government. Huh?

He stated that America has been lazy in recent decades about attracting foreign investment.

The article reported:

In September, after saying the U.S. had lost its competitive edge, Obama also suggested the cure lies with Democratic policies. The country can recover its competitiveness, he said, because the country has “the best universities, the best scientists, and best workers in the world.” Many Democrats routinely say they support education, science and labor, and that Republicans oppose all three.

That is truly a spin on the truth. Republicans actually do support education, science, and labor–just not controlled by Washington, D.C. The cost of education was lower and SAT scores higher before the Department of Education was created. Education does better when it is controlled at the local level–less money is spent on administration and the needs of the individual community can be met much more efficiently. Science does very well when it is allowed to work under the rules of free enterprise. When government interferes in free enterprise, bad things happen (Solyndra, for example). Republicans do not oppose labor–they do oppose labor interfering with the rights of corporations to build plants and employ people wherever they choose (Boeing in South Carolina).

Americans are not lazy–they are being severely limited by over regulation. The intrusion of the federal government into the everyday lives of Americans has become totally ridiculous. The government has shut down the Central Valley in California to preserve a fish that may not even be a separate species. Because of that action, many more Californians are out of work and all Americans are paying more for groceries. The government is about to put regulations into effect that will increase the cost of electricity for every American by at least 10 per cent. The problem is not laziness on the part of Americans–the problem is government overreach.

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Getting The Facts Out When The Story Has Not Been Told Correctly

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Normally our military SEAL teams are a rather quiet group. They don’t say much about who they are or what they do. However, when the story of one of their missions is inaccurately told, occasionally they speak out. Well, one did.

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted a story about the account of the killing of Osama Bin Laden as told by one of the SEALs involved.

The article reports:

“It became obvious in the weeks evolving after the mission that the story that was getting put out there was not only untrue, but it was a really ugly farce of what did happen,” said Chuck Pfarrer, author of Seal Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden.

Two major discrepancies cited in the article:

1. The helicopter did not crash land. It went down later on–after the killing of Bin Laden.

2. Bin Laden was not unarmed–he was reaching for the AKSU rifle he kept by the headboard.

These are important details. It makes you wonder how much of the accounts of various events the White House relates is accurate.

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Just Wondering …

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The Daily Caller reported today that Herman Cain told reporters today that he would not answer questions about the alleged charges against him while he was speaking to the group Docs4PatientCare at the group’s annual meeting in Alexandria, Virginia. I have no problem with that–the whole story is ridiculous. The Women’s Liberation movement has made sexual harassment charges a joke–anything you decide makes you uncomfortable can be classified as sexual harassment. The standard is so low that opening a door for a woman can be considered harassment.

Anyway. I am wondering where these charges came from. I have no doubt that someone who claimed harassment was paid a severance and let go. I just want to know who she approached with her information. My actual guess is that the attack came from the Republican establishment. If they are really good, they will blame Rick Perry for the attack–that would eliminate two non-Republican-establishment candidates at once. I realize that I am in the tall weeds here, but I do wonder who gave the story to Politico. I don’t think Herman Cain has handled the charges well, but he is so inexperienced and understaffed that he can easily be caught off guard.

I do wonder who dug up the dirt and I am prepared not to believe anything I hear about the source until well after the 2012 election. The truth may or may not ever come out!

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Balancing The Budget In Washington Seems To Be Very Different Than Balancing Your Budget At Home

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Jeff Sessions

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Yesterday the Daily Caller reported that according to the Democrats in the Senate an appropriations bill about the pass in the Senate includes a spending cut of $1 billion from last year. Sounds great–until you actually do the math.

Senator Jeff Sessions pointed out some problems with the bill:

He lamented that spending for disaster relief would increase from $101 million to $2.7 billion dollars. Sessions called such money a “slush fund” because it could be appropriated without being counted toward the total spending.

“Why?” Sessions asked. “Well, it’s a disaster, and disaster spending doesn’t count. Don’t you know?”

Sessions’ second concern was the mandatory spending, which is another chunk of funding that Sessions said “the bill’s sponsors say you should not count … they insist that mandatory spending is not under the control [of] appropriators.”

According to the Budget Committee Republican staff’s numbers, the mandatory appropriations would rise from just over $109 billion to just over $117 billion, for an increase of $8 billion.

In total, Republicans say, that amounts to a $9.4 billion increase, none of which is counted toward the final sum, a fact Sessions called “logic that only exists in Washington.”

This is one example of why when Americans keep asking for spending cuts and are told that spending cuts are happening, the budget never actually goes down.
It is time to take note of every participant in budget gimmicks that increase spending and vote them out of office next November.

 

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An Interesting Supporter Of Voter Identification

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Congressman Artur Davis (D. Ala.) visiting tro...

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Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article about former Alabama congressman Artur Davis, an African-American Democrat, who has recently changed his position on voter identification laws.

The article reports:

“I’ve changed my mind on voter ID laws — I think Alabama did the right thing in passing one — and I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office,” Davis wrote in an October 17 op-ed published in the Montgomery Advertiser.

“The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt.”

Every person in America has probably heard a story from a friend or relative that they went to vote in an election and were told that they had already voted. Laws that require voters to show identification will greatly reduce that kind of voter fraud.

The article further reports:

Democratic activists say the new laws aren’t needed, and the the ID requirements will make it harder for poor people, Hispanics or African-Americans to vote. In Alabama, the new law “is about suppression, not protection,” Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell said in September.

“There’s really no evidence of reduced voter turnout,” said Republican Scott Gessler, Colorado’s Secretary of State, in an interview with The Daily Caller. “But that does really stop the left screaming about it because, in part, it is a wedge issue they use to get people to vote.”

Hopefully the American people have figured this out!

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Closing Your Eyes To Danger Does Not Make It Go Away

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Yesterday at rightwinggranny.com I posted excerpts from the American Enterprise Institute report on the increased activities of Hezbollah terrorists in Latin America. Last Sunday I reported at rightwinggranny.com on a speech given by Brigitte Gabriel in Massachusetts that night. Ms. Gabriel spoke of the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration into the American government.

Today the Daily Caller reported:

Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole confirmed on Wednesday that the Obama administration was pulling back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive.

The article further reports:

In a Wednesday Los Angeles Times op-ed, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) president Salam al-Marayati threatened the FBI with a total cutoff of cooperation between American Muslims and law enforcement if the agency failed to revise its law enforcement training materials.

…Specifically, al-Marayati called for a new “interagency task force” to review the training materials — a task force including representatives of the Islamist organizations the FBI is tasked with monitoring.

We are in serious peril if this sort of thinking continues. I just hope we can hold on until 2012 and elect people who will at least recognize the fact that the number one threat to America at this time is Islamic terrorism. Hezbollah is financed and backed by Iran–they are not Baptists. We need to wake up and pay attention.

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Do We Really Need Elections ?

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Official photo of Governor Beverly Perdue (D-NC).

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This article is based on two articles in the Daily Caller and one from John Hinderaker at Power Line. There was also a link on the Drudge Report which first alerted me to the information.

The Daily Caller reports a recent statement by North Carolina Democratic Governor Bev Perdue:

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, N.C., according to the Raleigh News & Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”

Excuse me, the Constitution calls for elections for Representatives to the House of Representatives every two years and for Senators every six years. The idea is that the House is more responsive to the public and the Senate is supposed to be a more thoughtful body because it is less worried about elections. I could right a book about whether it actually works that way, but that was the intent. To think that the way to solve our current economic problems is to throw out the Constitution is not only nuts, it is not appropriate for an elected official. I don’t know about on the state level, but on a national level, all elected officials are sworn to uphold the Constitution. This was not an appropriate remark from any elected official.

 

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One Answer To The Deficit And To Job Creation

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In April of this year, the Daily Caller posted a story about the high cost of government regulations. The article reports:

Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, combed through the 81,405 pages of the Federal Registry — which contains the nation’s regulations on businesses, and state and local governments — and cites a report showing that regulation cost the economy a whopping $1.75 trillion in 2008.

In July, Forbes posted an article about the cost of Government regulation stating:

The country’s wealth creators need a real review of regulations, not comforting words from federal officials. Out of over 3,500 rules finalized in 2010, OIRA (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) reviewed 66 — and of those only did benefit calculations for 20.

A simple perusal of the Federal Register shows over 430 rules costing over $65 billion so far this year alone, let alone the entire Crain (Nicole and Mark Crain, author of the SBA’s oft-cited report finding of $1.7 trillion in regulatory costs) universe of rules, which stops at 2008. As the Crains note, regulatory costs are often “indirect,” compared with direct taxation.

The article at the Daily Caller also points out:

Combining regulatory costs with federal FY 2010 outlays of $3.456 trillion reveals a federal government whose share of the entire economy now reaches 35.5 percent.
In 2010, federal agencies issued 3,573 final rules.

While agencies issued 3,573 final rules, Congress passed and the president signed into law a comparatively “few” 217 bills. Considerable lawmaking power is delegated to unelected bureaucrats at agencies, an abuse addressed recently in proposals such as the REINS Act.
Proposed rules in the Federal Register have surged from 2,044 in 2009 to 2,439 in 2010, a jump of 19.3 percent.
I don’t know what the President will say in his economy speech tomorrow night, but unless he agrees to cut government regulations drastically, the unemployment numbers will not change significantly.

 

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If We Cut The Budget, There Will Be No Police, Parks, Teachers, Traffic Enforcement, Schools, Life On Earth As We Know It, Etc.

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People opposed to cutting government spending always threaten that if the cuts are made, very visible necessities will abruptly disappear. It’s an argument that goes on all the time all over the country. No one every says, “If we cut spending, five employees whose jobs overlap with five other employees will be terminated.” Well, it is the silly season in Washington, and the truth is on vacation.

Byron York at the Daily Caller posted an article yesterday pointing out that our budget problems have to do with spending–not entitlements.

The article points out:

There’s no doubt federal spending has exploded in recent years. In fiscal 2007, the last year before things went haywire, the government took in $2.568 trillion in revenues and spent $2.728 trillion, for a deficit of $160 billion. In 2011, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the government will take in $2.230 trillion and spend $3.629 trillion, for a deficit of $1.399 trillion.

Mr. York concludes:

The bottom line is that with baby boomers aging, entitlements will one day be a major budget problem. But today’s deficit crisis is not one of entitlements. It was created by out-of-control spending on everything other than entitlements. The recent debt-ceiling agreement is supposed to put the brakes on that kind of spending, but leaders have so far been maddeningly vague on how they’ll do it.

This issue could be an important one in the coming presidential race. Should Republicans base their platform on entitlement reform, or should they focus on the here and now — specifically, on undoing the damage done by Obama and his Democratic allies? In coming months, the answer will likely become clear: entitlements someday, but first things first.

There will be an increase in government expenditures as the baby boomers retire. Restructuring Social Security is probably a good idea–but it has to be done in a way that keeps faith with the people who have paid into the program all of their working lives. Social Security should never be ‘means tested’–that would make it another welfare program. The people who paid into it should receive benefits from it. Remember that those who may be financially well off probably paid more into Social Security than those who made less during their lifetimes. Therefore, to ‘means test’ the program would simply make it a wealth redistribution program–not what it was originally intended to be. A large part of the problem with Social Security is the fact that Congress has spent all of the money. There is a part of me that wants to force Congress to reimburse the Social Security fund with their retirement money. It seems only fair.


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