Tag Archives: Democratic Party

Some Insight As To What Is Happening With The Immigration Debate

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It does not take a genius to figure out that our current immigration system does not work. That is not the question. The question is, “What do we need to do to fix it?” One school of thought seems to make everyone here already legal to some extent and then close the borders at our leisure. The other extreme is to kick everyone who is here illegally out and then sort out the mess that follows. Neither approach will actually work.

It was hoped that the ‘gang of eight’ in the House of Representatives would help find a compromise position that most of us could agree on. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case.

On Thursday, Breitbart.com reported that Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) has left the House of Representatives version of the ‘gang of eight’ because of a change in the previously discussed bill. Initially, the House group had decided that illegal immigrants should have to pay for their own health care, but as the talks continued, Democrats insisted that illegal aliens have access to government health care.

The article reports:

“I have tremendous respect for the members of the bipartisan group who have been working with me to fix our broken immigration system,” Labrador said in a statement. “But after today’s meeting, the framework of the bill has changed in a way that I can no longer support. Like most Americans, I believe that health care is first and foremost a personal responsibility. While I will no longer be part of the bipartisan ‘Group of Eight’ House negotiators, I will not abandon my efforts to modernize our broken immigration system by securing our borders and creating a workable guest worker program. I remain hopeful that the House can pass a bill around these principles and I will keep fighting to make it happen.”

The article also reports that Senator Marco Rubio is also looking for a graceful exit from the Senate ‘gang of eight.’ Politically, I think the best outcome of this debate for the President is for nothing to get passed. In looking at what the Democrat party is insisting in including and excluding in the legislation, I suspect that President Obama may get his wish. If nothing is passed, expect to see immigration as a campaign issue in 2014, with Democrats complaining that the Republicans are causing gridlock. Understand that the Democrats are making sure that there are enough ‘poison pills’ in their immigration proposals to prevent them from being passed. It is truly a shame that we have become so political that very few Congressmen are actually considering the well being of the country.

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The Problem With Playing Politics With A Tragedy

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In the current world of the Internet, it would behoove politicians to look into past statements regarding a tragedy before making total fools of themselves.

Yesterday’s Daily Caller posted a story about comments made by Rhode Island’s Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse after the tornado outbreak in Oklahoma. Senator Whitehouse spent 15 minutes chastising GOP senators for denying the theory of anthropogenic global warming. The implication being, of course, that the tornadoes were the result of global warming and that if the Republicans would just acknowledge global warming, the tornadoes wouldn’t have happened. Right. He somehow forgot to mention that tornadoes in the middle of the country in the spring are more common that hurricanes on the east coast in the summer. But it gets better.

A blogger named Steven Goddard posted the following Newsweek article from April 1975:

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This is the link to the entire article.

The Senator does not need to play politics with this tragedy. What he does need to do is to figure out a way to get aid to the people affected by creating a bill that will help them that does not include tons of pork-barrel spending. I strongly suggest that he devote his time to crafting that bill rather than citing science that has already been proven to be faulty.

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Another Twist In The Benghazi Saga

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Obviously there are some prominent members of the Democrat party who would like to be the party’s nominee for President in 2016. Hillary Clinton has been, up to this point, the seemingly favored candidate. Other people who might want to run would be Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, who served in the Senate until 2012, Andrew Cuomo, currently the governor of New York, and John Kerry, who has been there before. You have to wonder how the scandal surrounding Benghazi is impacting their actions and decisions.

On Friday, CNS News reported that John Kerry, currently Secretary of State, has stated the following regarding Benghazi, “I am absolutely determined that this issue will be answered, will be put to bed, and if there’s any culpability in any area that is appropriate to be handled in some way with some discipline, it will be appropriately handled. …The State Department will leave no stone unturned.”

John Kerry has dealt with the Clintons (and the Obamas) before. Both families are known for their ruthlessness in dealing with anyone who gets in the way of what they are trying to accomplish. Remember the Clintons and the White House Travel Office and Barack Obama somehow getting the sealed divorce records of his Congressional opponent released.

I don’t see how any intelligent person can believe that Hillary Clinton was simply an innocent bystander on the night that Benghazi was attacked and in the events that unfolded afterward. It will be interesting to watch the actions of the other possible Democrat contenders for the 2016 Presidential nominee as this scandal unfolds.

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Is The Goal To Solve Problems Or To Punish The Rich?

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The Hill posted an article today about the budget proposal expected to come from President Obama in the near future. One aspect of the budget will be to limit how much ‘the rich’ will be able to keep in their individual retirement accounts.

The Obama Administration says that this proposal will add ‘fairness’ to the tax code. The provision is expected to raise $9 billion in ten years. At this point, I would like to point out that the current budget deficit is approximately $16 trillion dollars, and the projected annual deficit for 2013 will probably be in the neighborhood of $1 trillion dollars.

Let’s look at this concept of ‘fairness’ for a moment. How is it fair to continue to take money away from people who earn it and give it to people who don’t? How is it fair to punish someone who has worked hard and been successful for their efforts and success? Who has decided that we need ‘fairness?’ In 2009, the top 1% of earners paid 36.73 percent of the taxes (according to the National Taxpayers Union). How is that fair?

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Bad Optics Don’t Matter If The Press Is On Your Side

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It’s very easy when the Democrats do something outrageous to say, “What if a Republican had done that?” The obvious answer is that if a Republican had done it, the articles would have been on the news all day and night and on the front page of all major newspapers in the country. It is unfortunate, but the press is no longer doing its job of keeping Americans informed–instead it has taken the position of cheerleaders for President Obama and the Democrat party.

Breitbart.com posted an article yesterday about President Obama’s priorities in dealing with the sequester budget cuts.The President has taken some pricey vacations lately. Contrast this with President Bush who simply headed for his ranch in Texas when he could. The problem is not the pricey vacations–it is the fact that the pricey vacations are happening at a time when school children on spring break cannot visit the White House due to sequestration budget cuts. It is a matter of priorities. The message I believe the White House is sending is that sequestration will impact American school children who want to see the White House, but my family will go first class anywhere we want regardless of the cost. Has the mainstream media bothered to mention these priorities. President Obama is President and his family is the First Family–not the Royal Family.

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Why Massachusetts Needs Two Political Parties

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A one-party political system does not work, regardless of which political party it is. As Dr. Benjamin Carson stated in his address at the National Prayer Breakfast, “But, why is that eagle able to fly, high, forward? Because it has two wings: a left wing and a right wing. Enough said.”

Anyway. The Boston Herald is reporting today that the glitch in the Massachusetts welfare department has cost the Massachusetts taxpayers $3.4 million in overtime.

The article reports:

More than 900 employees in the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) — mostly caseworkers — shared in the $3.4 million OT bonanza between November 2010 and May 2011, the department acknowledged after a Herald public records request.

DTA authorized the wages — an average of roughly $3,500 each — so staff could address a backlog of 30,000 clients whose eligibility had to be recertified after the agency overpaid food-stamp clients by $27 million in federal money.

I suppose we should be grateful that at least the overpaid food-stamp clients were paid with federal money. Federal money–are these the same people who keep telling us they can’t cut spending?

The article also reports:

The welfare department has been undergoing a shake-up since ex-Commissioner Daniel Curley was forced to resign on Jan 31, after a devastating inspector general’s report claiming another $25 million in taxpayer money is going to welfare recipients who aren’t eligible.

One of the people who has been on top of this from the start is state Rep. Shaunna O’Connell (R-Taunton). Her response to this mess was, “The governor recently called this leakage — I would call this an avalanche. This is an astronomical number to pay out in overtime for outright mismanagement.”

Hopefully she will continue to hold the Massachusetts government responsible for their total mismanagement of taxpayer money.

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Should The Federal Government Have Limits On Its Borrowing Or Spending?

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This article has two sources–The Western Center for Journalism and CNS News. Both sources report that the Democrats want to repeal the debt ceiling that limits the amount of money that the government can borrow.

The Western Center for Journalism reports:

House Democrats are pushing legislation to repeal the federal debt ceiling, saying the borrowing limit has no practical purpose and has come to be used for political maneuvering that can have devastating economic repercussions.

New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler said the debt ceiling is arbitrary, doesn’t affect the deficit and has become a Republican means to “blackmail” the country to advance the GOP’s political agenda.

CNS News reports:

Nadler, [Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)],along with fellow House Democrats Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), held a press conference to introduce a bill that would repeal the debt ceiling entirely.

Nadler, taking questions for the group, said the debt ceiling should be taken “off the table” in any negotiations over federal spending, and he refused to say if Democrats should offer any bill that would solve either problem.

“Basically what we’re saying is that the debt ceiling should be taken off the table. There’s plenty to fight about, unfortunately, the levels of taxation, the levels of spending – there are real disagreements on that. You need both houses and the president to agree on that.”

Has anyone bothered to put this in the context of your personal finances? If you were thousands of dollars in debt, with no prospect of paying back what you owe, how would the bank react if you went to them and asked that they raise your debt ceiling? As American citizens, we are not able to continue to spend more than we earn, why are we willing to let the government do this?

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Running For Senator In Nebraska

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We all remember the ‘cornhusker kickback’ from the debate on Obamacare and the fact that it resulted in Senator Ben Nelson deciding not to run for re-election. The Democrats chose Bob Kerrey to run for the Senate seat that Ben Nelson occupied.

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted a story about Bob Kerrey and some of the positions he has taken in his campaign for the Senate.

The article reports some recent statements:

Democratic Senate candidate Bob Kerrey said Thursday that he hates the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act and that his own businesses might drop employee insurance and pay the federal fine for doing so if the mandate goes into effect in 2014.

 Kerrey said wealthy Americans pay their fair share in taxes. And he said President Barack Obama made a big mistake by not following the recommendations of his own bipartisan budget deficit commission.

That doesn’t sound as if he is in agreement with the Obama campaign.

The article quotes additional comments:

“I hate the employer mandate,” Kerrey said. “I think it’s going to have a counterproductive impact. We don’t have any (insured employee) that costs us less than $7,000 (a year), and the fine’s $2,000. We’ll dump ’em off. We won’t call it dumping, we’ll say … ‘Go get it from the exchange.’”

He said the employer mandate “will accelerate an already breaking-down employer-based system.” That portion of the law should be repealed, he said.

What Bob Kerrey is saying makes sense. Why is it that other Democrats cannot recognize the logic in his statements? If Obamacare stands, we will see the private healthcare industry in America destroyed and the quality of healthcare in America decrease very quickly.

As I have said before, please note that the nastiest parts of Obamacare go into effect after the election this year. We will begin to see the impact in the increased taxes we will all face in January 2013 and other negative things will take effect within the year.

We need to repeal (and replace) Obamacare.

 

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Preparing For The Coming (???) Attack On Paul Ryan

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Actually the attack on Paul Ryan has already begun, but here’s some ammunition for present and future attacks.

Ed Morrissey posted an article at HotAir today about Erskine Bowles‘ comments on Paul Ryan’s budget proposal. As you remember, Erskine Bowles was the co-chair of Barack Obama’s deficit committee (the one that President Obama appointed and then totally ignored the conclusions of). Erskine Bowles is a Democrat budget wonk and a presidential adviser. His committee made serious recommendations about the deficit that were not even seriously discussed by President Obama.

HotAir posted what Erskine Bowles said about Paul Ryan’s budget plan:

“Have any of you met Paul Ryan? We should get him to come to the university. I’m telling you this guy is amazing, uh. I always thought that I was OK with arithmetic, but this guy can run circles around me. And, he is honest. He is straightforward. He is sincere.

And, the budget that he came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion…just like we did.

The President came out with his own plan and the President came out, as you will remember, with a budget and I don’t think anyone took that budget very seriously. Um, the Senate voted against it 97 to nothing. He, therefore, after a lot of pressure from folks like me, he came out with a new budget framework and, in the new budget framework, he cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years. And, to be candid, this $4 trillion cut was very heavily back-end loaded. So, if you looked at it on a 10 year basis and compared apples-to-apples, it was about a $2.5 trillion cut.”

Erskine Bowles did not come out in support of Paul Ryan’s budget, but his statement shows an obvious respect for the budget (and for Paul Ryan). At some point we have to stop accusing people of pushing granny over a cliff and actually start looking at where we are and what we need to do to avoid going over the cliff ourselves. I believe Paul Ryan would be a wonderful person to lead that discussion.

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With Friends Like These…

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One of the things that we all need to remember (not necessarily happily) about the November election is that on November 7, 2012, the 2016 presidential campaign begins. Obviously, one of the major players in that campaign on the Democrat side will be Hillary Clinton. Hillary has kept her head down during the past three years and behaved very well. Predictably, her husband has not.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted a story today about some of President Clinton‘s recent statements. President Clinton remarked that Mitt Romney had a ‘sterling’ record when he ran Bain Capital. President Obama has used attacks on Bain Capital and Mitt Romney’s record there as a major part of his campaign. Unfortunately, Bill Clinton was not the only Democrat who felt the attacks were not helpful.

Mr. Morrissey explains the problems with the attacks:

While Obama attacked Romney for normal private-equity management, he’s been trying to raise money hand over fist from the same industry.  In fact, a Bain executive, Jonathan Lavine, is one of Obama’s major bundlers and was with the company (and Romney was not) when GS Industries shut down the steel plant, a decision used to slam Romney in an Obama campaign ad.

I am not sure the average voter is aware of the hypocrisy here, but at suspect at some point the Romney camp will point it out.

The article rightly concludes:

However, it’s also just as true that Clinton waited for quite a while to defend Romney’s business record, and his advice in this case — to find another line of attack — is probably a lot smarter than Simon’s advice to keep beating a very dead horse.

Expect to see a lot more of Bill Clinton in the next four years.

 

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Not-So-Transparent Transparency

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The Washington Examiner posted an article yesterday about the White House’s attempt to spin the “working wives vs non-working wives” dust-up. It seems that when President Obama took office, in a move toward historic transparency, he opened up the White House visitor logs to the public. That really is nice–I think Americans have a right to know who their President is talking to. However, there seems to be a slight snag in the process.

The article reports some dodging and weaving by Press Secretary Jay Carney:

“The point I was making yesterday is that often when we get inquiries about the visitor list, the WAVES list, just based on names, it turns out that people with common names appear  . . .  sometimes there are other people with the same names,” Carney told reporters today. “So all I was simply saying is that at that point, we had no way of verifying that this was one person.”

Carney was explaining why he responded, “I know three, personally, women named Hilary Rosen. So I’m not sure that those represent the person we’re talking about necessarily,” when he was asked about Rosen’s many trips to the White House. (Obama was exposed to embarrassment when Rosen, a Democratic strategist and familiar figure in the White House, said that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life.”)

The article then asks, “If the White House visitor logs can’t be used for “verifying” the identity of White House visitors, are the logs “still providing the American people with an unprecedented amount of information about their government” as promised?” That is a very good question. 

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This Is Just Getting More Complicated

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As I have previously stated, I have no idea what to make of this. There seem to be some valid questions about President Obama’s eligibility to be President. On Monday wnd.com reported that in addition to the court case in George about putting the President on the ballot (see rightwinggranny.com), there are other states taking a closer look at how they qualify candidates for elections.

The article reports:

Whatever the outcome in Georgia, the issue is gaining traction in other states, too, including Alabama, Tennessee, Arizona, New Hampshire, and even Illinois, Obama’s home political base.

There, in a complaint recently filed by Stephen F. Boulton of McCarthy Duffy LLP and Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation, their client is asking for a change in state law to allow the vetting of political candidates.

Whatever happens in Georgia, Americans have the right to be fully confident that a candidate on the ballot has been checked to make sure he meets the qualifications for the office he is seeking.

The article points out:

The newest round of court actions do not try to have a judge determine Obama is not qualified for the Oval Office and remove him from it, they simply challenge his eligibility for the 2012 election.

Many of the cases cite Minor v. Happersett, a U.S. Supreme Court opinion from 1875 that said a “natural born citizen” would be a person whose parents both were citizens.

“This complaint does not request any injunction against any state or federal government official. Instead this complaint asserts that the private entity, Defendant Democratic Party, intends to act negligently or fraudulently in a manner that will cause irreparable harm to the plaintiffs, to the states, and to the citizens of the United States,” said one of the filings.

It continued, “Because Mr. Obama has admitted that his father was not a U.S. citizen, and because this fact has been confirmed by the U.S. State Department, any reasonable person with knowledge of these facts would doubt Mr. Obama’s constitutional qualifications. Therefore, any representation by the Democratic Party certifying said qualifications would be negligent, absent further evidence verifying Mr. Obama’s natural-born status.

“Plaintiffs further request an injunction prohibiting the Democratic Party from making any representation to any state official asserting, implying, or assuming that Mr. Obama is qualified to hold the office of president, absent a showing by the party sufficient to prove that said representation is not negligent.”

Van Irion, lead counsel for Liberty Legal Foundation, also is working on several of the issues, and has brought the question in court in Arizona.

The question is out there. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Meanwhile, have you read about this in the mainstream media?

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There Seems To Be A Slight Difference Of Opinion On This

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The Washington Times reported yesterday that the Senate voted Tuesday to give the U.S. military first crack at holding al Qaeda operatives, even if they are captured in the U.S. and are American citizens, and also reaffirmed the policy of indefinite detention.

A website called Democracy.now reports:

A provision in the National Defense Authorization Act would authorize the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect — anywhere in the world — without charge or trial. The measure would effectively extend the definition of what is considered the military’s “battlefield” to anywhere in the world, even within the United States.

This is the link to the actual text of the bill at Thomas.gov. What the bill does, contrary to the panic expressed in Democracy.now, is allow the military to deal with terrorists in military courts rather than civilian courts. Terrorists have no right to be tried in American criminal courts with all the benefits of American citizens, regardless of where they are captured–they are not criminals, they are terrorists.

If you think this is a new thing, please review the case of the Nazi saboteurs who came ashore on Long Island in 1942 (at fbi.gov). Like it or not, we are at war. We have been at war since 1979, when Iran and its radical Muslim leaders declared war on us. We ignore the fact that we are at war at our own peril.

Please note that the vote of this bill was bipartisan. The article at the Washington Times reports: 

Tuesday’s 61-37 vote to buck Mr. Obama and grant the military dibs exposed a deep rift within the Democratic Party. Sixteen Democrats and one independent who caucuses with them defied the veto threat and joined 44 Republicans.

This bill protects the safety of Americans. If you doubt that, please follow the link to Thomas.gov and read the bill or the summary.

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Quote Of The Day

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Rahm Emanuel (right) and Senator Dick Durbin (...

Image via Wikipedia

Jan Schakowsky is a Democrat Congresswoman who has represented the ninth district of Illinois since 1999. WLS in Chicago posted the following quote from her today:

Schakowsky said that Americans don’t deserve to keep all of their money because we need taxes to support our society.

The exact quote was:

“I’ll put it this way. You don’t deserve to keep all of it and it’s not a question of deserving because what government is, is those things that we decide to do together. And there are many things that we decide to do together like have our national security. Like have police and fire. What about the people that work at the National Institute of Health who are looking for a cure for cancer.”

I don’t want to keep all of my money–I just want to keep more of it than the government takes and gives to other people.

If you agree with Congresswoman Schakowsky, you probably vote for Democrat candidates. If you disagree, you probably vote for Republicans. That is the debate in America right now. The 2012 elections will tell us who is winning the debate.

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