The day’s top political news:
Obama fires GM CEO Rick Wagoner
Wagoner is now a high-profile casualty of government intervention, forced out as part of the Obama administration's sweeping last-ditch effort to save the century-old auto giant.
Wagoner, 56, who spent 32 years with GM working all over the world, stepped down effective immediately, the company said in a statement early Monday.
He was replaced as CEO by Fritz Henderson, the company's vice chairman and chief operating officer. Expect more government incursions on Detroit.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090330/D978B77O0.html
Barack Obama causes UK to clear its decks -- an entourage of 500 staff, an armour-plated limousine and a fleet of decoy helicopters. America's new president will arrive for his first visit to Britain amid huge razzmatazz on Tuesday for the G20 summit.
But it will be his closed-door meetings with world leaders that are likely to prove the most significant of the trip
Britain will get its first chance to see Barack Obama this week when a White House cavalcade - complete with armoured limousines, helicopters, 200 US secret service staff and a six-doctor medical team - sweeps into the UK.
Obama will fly into London for his first visit to the UK as president of the United States on Tuesday to take part in the G20 summit in the capital's Docklands area. He will not be travelling light.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/29/obama-london-visit-uk-g20
Barack Obama learns this week whether his rock-star allure for Europeans translates into tangible support for U.S. foreign-policy goals.
At an April 3-4 North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit along the French-German border, the president will seek to line up more allied manpower and money for his new plan to step up the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
He’ll also try to forge consensus on deterring Iran’s nuclear ambitions and put relations with Russia on a smoother course.
The trip, which includes a Group of 20 economic meeting in London, marks Obama’s debut as an international leader after spending the first 10 weeks of his presidency battling the U.S. recession.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=apSvUz11yF_4&refer=worldwide
Opinion:
Pick yourselves up, and “march to the sound of the cannon”
Our nation has reached a point at which public outrage needs demonstration. Not that public opinion will move Obama into a more acceptable course, but public opinion can create great movement among many in Congress and in the Senate.
This must become our time for organization that lays groundwork for the elections of 2010 – an election in which only the House and only one third of the Senate are up for election and re-election. Such a time gave us the Newt Gingrich revolution against the extremes of Bill Clinton.
Many have asked how to accomplish the challenge of setting up their own “Tea Party” protest.
We are indebted to www.theconservativerevolution.com:
Buddy
How to Organize Your Own “Tea Party” Protest
Brendan Steinhauser
I posted the following 10 easy steps to organizing your own “Tea Party” protest on my blog, The Conservative Revolution. If you would like some more ideas, just drop me a line!
1. Pick a location, date and time in your town. I’d suggest main street at an intersection with lots of traffic.
2. Tell your friends, family, co-workers and everyone else you know about the protest. Build an rsvp email list so that you can provide quick updates if something changes. You should also create a facebook group so that the group can communicate with one another.
3. Make 5-10 signs with legible slogans that send a clear message to the public and the media. Write in BIG LETTERS.
4. Call your local talk radio hosts and ask them to announce the location, date and time on the air for a few days leading up to the protest. Send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper announcing the protest. Email the bloggers in your area and ask them to post a notice about the protest.
5. Write a press release and email, mail and fax copies to the local tv stations, radio stations and newspapers. Call the reporters that cover local events or politics and leave messages on their voice mail.
6. On the day of your protest, show up with your group, be loud, visible, happy and engage the public. Wave your signs, make lots of noise and move around to get attention. If reporters interview you, give them some good sound bytes for their stories. Stay on message and keep your answers short and coherent.
7. Bring sign-in sheets to capture the names, emails and phone numbers of everyone who attends the protest and/or says that they support what you are doing. You will then have a big list of people that can plan the next, much bigger and louder, event. Also bring handouts with one page of quick facts about why you are protesting in the first place.
8. Add your pictures, video and an after-action report to your facebook group, and send this stuff to the bloggers and reporters that you originally contacted. Ask them to post the photos, story and video.
9. Thank everyone who attended via email and phone, and set up a meeting to plan your next event. Now you have a list of people in your community that can help make the next protest huge. Encourage everyone to commit to bring at least one friend to the next protest.
10. Organize a carpool and go find a friend in your neighboring town or county and help them organize a protest there. You and your people are now veterans and should be able to keep the momentum going around your area.
Email me if you have any questions or want some ideas for signs. bsteinhauser @freedomworks.org
Good luck!
The Day’s top blogs:
First a brief overview:
1.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123811027597352881.html
Business Beats Card Check
—For Now But can Corporate America stay united?
KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
The business community is dancing a victory jig over Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's announcement that he'll provide the crucial vote to stop Big Labor's top priority, the "card check" bill. Fair enough, though the real test of corporate America is yet to come.
Mr. Specter has been in the hot seat, the one Republican who had previously voted to debate card check -- legislation that would eliminate secret ballots in union elections. Up for re-election next year in a big union state, he was under intense pressure to again help his labor allies by giving Democrats the filibuster-breaking vote.
He might have done it, too. Instead, the business community managed something it has not managed in years: unity.
2.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92865
BORN IN THE USA?
Eligibility lawyer says Homeland Security shadowing him
Reports incidents involving county, federal agents
Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
A lawyer spearheading the effort in Washington state to bring light to the issue of Barack Obama's eligibility to be president says he was shadowed all day today by officers with the federal Department of Homeland Security, the Snohomish County sheriff's office and the Everitt city police department.
"There's definitely observation," attorney Stephen Pidgeon told WND. "Maybe observation in anticipation of making an arrest."
Pidgeon has been the attorney for Washington state plaintiffs challenging Obama's eligibility to be president under the Constitution's demand for that office to be occupied only by a "natural born" citizen.
(More evidence of Obama’s inability to honestly deal with this issue)
3.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjBlNjQyNzYzNzk2YjBhNjg4NDM2Y2I5MjJkMDYzNjQ=&w=MA==
Obama’s False Choice
A “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is exactly what we need right now.
Mark Steyn
Writing in the Chicago Tribune last week, President Obama fell back on one of his favorite rhetorical tics: “But I also know,” he wrote, “that we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.”
Really? For the moment, it’s a “false choice” mainly in the sense that he’s not offering it: “a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is not on the menu, which leaves “an oppressive government-run economy” as pretty much the only game in town.
This morning’s actions regarding the auto industry, by Obama – demonstrate that very fact. Obama has fired the CEO of GM, and, among other things, is forcing Chrysler to merge with Fiat.
Detroit made itself vulnerable when it asked for a federal bail out --“When you dance with the devil….”
Nuff said.
Now for the details:
1.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123811027597352881.html
Business Beats Card Check
—For Now But can Corporate America stay united?
KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
The business community is dancing a victory jig over Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's announcement that he'll provide the crucial vote to stop Big Labor's top priority, the "card check" bill. Fair enough, though the real test of corporate America is yet to come.
Mr. Specter has been in the hot seat, the one Republican who had previously voted to debate card check -- legislation that would eliminate secret ballots in union elections. Up for re-election next year in a big union state, he was under intense pressure to again help his labor allies by giving Democrats the filibuster-breaking vote.
He might have done it, too. Instead, the business community managed something it has not managed in years: unity. Hundreds of companies, industry groups and organizations made clear that should he support the bill, an unwavering business front would expend all its resources to elect a different Republican in next year's primary.
They were able to back up that threat in part because they'd successfully turned what had been a dry question of labor law into an emotional, grass-roots issue. For more than a year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups have doggedly run ads and held events to explain card check to voters. Surveys show that the more Americans know about the bill's antidemocratic provisions, the more they hate it.
That public awareness had allowed Club for Growth President Pat Toomey -- who in 2004 narrowly lost a primary to Mr. Specter -- to start beating the senator with card check in anticipation of a rematch. A Quinnipiac poll this week showed the senator trailing Mr. Toomey 27% to 41% in a matchup.
The conservative base is angry over Mr. Specter's vote for the Obama stimulus, but card check wasn't helping.
Meanwhile, the bill's introduction in Congress set off a frenzy for Mr. Specter's vote, and unions became so desperate that Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President William George publicly crowed that he had promised to change Democrats into Republicans for the primary to help Mr. Specter win. Faced with the possibility that he might now be accused of being bought off, Mr. Specter finally wrote off the legislation.
In theory, his decision to join his 40 GOP colleagues in a filibuster kills the bill.
In reality, the business community just moved into a far more dangerous phase. Big Labor spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats and get card check; it won't give up. And the unions know the corporate world has a history of fracturing.
All of which explains why, in the past weeks, the new talking point is "compromise." The union goal is to gin up support for a watered-down version of "card check," one that nervous Senate Democrats such as Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln or Colorado's Michael Bennet (both up for election) -- as well as a Republican or two -- would feel comfortable putting on the floor for debate. Once the unions fly past a filibuster, they could then "fix" the bill back to the way they like it.
To make this strategy work, the unions need some in the business community to provide political cover to Senate supporters. Democrats took their first stab at this late last week, when news leaked that the CEOs of three companies -- Whole Foods, Starbucks and Costco -- were breaking with the rest of the business world to support some sort of compromise, although the details were vague.
The point man was former Clinton counsel Lanny Davis, who remains tight with this White House. The objective was to present a "bipartisan" plan, lure other nervous businesses into discussions, and thus inspire a string of defections.
To corporate America's credit, it didn't take the bait. Instead the anti-card-check forces united to publicly scream "no compromise." At the same time, left-leaning blogs, congressmen and unions themselves began bashing the group for agreeing to negotiate. By the time the chastened group actually held its press call, it wasn't embracing a compromise so much as a general set of principles -- which helpfully included support for the secret ballot.
"Talk of a compromise at this stage is like giving away runs in the ninth inning," says Rhonda Bentz of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace.
In recent years, standard operating procedure has been for the business world to split apart in pursuit of self-interest or to get cold feet. Card check has so far been an exception, but the pressure will only increase. Left-leaning labor lawyers and lobbyists keep whispering in their corporate clients' ears that card check will indeed pass, and that they'd better cut a deal while they can. Senate Democrats are testing the waters with their home-state business communities, looking to horse trade other goodies in return for card-check indulgence.
These tactics have worked in the past. But the lesson of card check so far is that, united, the business world still wields extraordinary clout. So extraordinary that it has managed to bottle up Big Labor's top priority in a town now run exclusively by labor's Democratic patrons.
Business's continued unity, or lack of it, will decide what happens next.
2.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=92865
BORN IN THE USA?
Eligibility lawyer says Homeland Security shadowing him
Reports incidents involving county, federal agents
Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
A lawyer spearheading the effort in Washington state to bring light to the issue of Barack Obama's eligibility to be president says he was shadowed all day today by officers with the federal Department of Homeland Security, the Snohomish County sheriff's office and the Everitt city police department.
"There's definitely observation," attorney Stephen Pidgeon told WND. "Maybe observation in anticipation of making an arrest."
Pidgeon has been the attorney for Washington state plaintiffs challenging Obama's eligibility to be president under the Constitution's demand for that office to be occupied only by a "natural born" citizen. Dozens of similar cases have been filed around the country since the election and many have been dismissed, often because judges rule the plaintiffs don't have "standing" to bring a complaint.
The Washington state case, however, cites state law that vests in citizens the right to raise questions about an elected official's authority, effectively granting standing to those plaintiffs.
The case, although it has been filed, has not been brought to court for hearings yet.
Pidgeon told WND today he contacted his personal defense attorney, and also was in contact with the Alliance Defense Fund, a national organization advocating for civil liberties and religious and personal freedoms.
Pidgeon is affiliated with the organization and told WND that there would be a letter sent inquiring about the surveillance.
He said he first became aware of the situation when his wife left their rural home early in the day and reported there were three law enforcement vehicles parked nearby, along with three black Suburban-style vehicles carrying camouflage-wearing agents, apparently from Homeland Security.
Pidgeon said he has been "outspoken" about the Obama administration and its validity due to the eligibility questions, but didn't realize he was "qualifying as an enemy of the state."
He immediately reached out to a number of individuals through e-mail.
"My only protection is to contact the people I know," he said.
Officials of the Department of Homeland Security did not return multiple WND messages seeking a comment on the situation. Officials with the Snohomish sheriff's office and the Everett city police department said they didn't know anything about it.
"Where Homeland Security is concerned, obviously there are people working for the Obama administration with little consideration for free speech," Pidgeon told WND.
He said when he left his home, he had a sheriff's vehicle "marking every turn that I made."
"There's definitely observation," he said.
"The fact of the matter is that we have taken the position and it is consistent with Orly Taitz' position that Barack Obama failed to establish his bona fides by the election on November 4," he said. "We alleged under Democratic National Committee rules he had a burden to establish to the DNC's satisfaction his eligibility. He never did.
"As a consequence the burden remains on him. He didn't meet the burden of proving his eligibility to hold the office."
He said voters cannot simply rewrite the Constitution's eligibility requirements in a presidential vote. For one thing, only 52 percent voted for Obama, and the Constitution requires approval from three-fourths of the states for an amendment.
He also cited U.S. senators and congressman who have credited the online "fact" organizations such as snopes or factcheck for authenticating Obama's eligibility.
"Any senator who would rely on snopes or factcheck to establish a judicial opinion whether or not this person has documented his eligibility is a fool," Pidgeon said. And citing a federal judge who said the issue of Obama's eligibility already had been "twittered," he said that is "tantamount to malpractice."
Several hours after Pidgeon returned WND's call, he called again.
"We are definitely under surveillance and it's coordinated with Homeland Security," he said.
He said one of his associates had been followed from his home to the law firm's downtown office, and the associate was stopped just outside the building.
"The police officer claimed he didn't have brake lights working," Pidgeon said. "But he does."
Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join some 350,000 others and sign up now!
WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the legal challenges question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Further, others question his citizenship by virtue of his attendance in Indonesian schools during his childhood and question on what passport did he travel to Pakistan three decades ago.
Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers. While his supporters cite an online version of a "Certification of Live Birth" from Hawaii, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state.
Hawaiian officials have confirmed they have a birth certificate on file for Obama, but it cannot be released without his permission, and they have not revealed the information it contains.
John Eidsmoe, an expert on the U.S. Constitution working with the Foundation on Moral Law, told WND a demand for verification of Obama's eligibility appears to be legitimate.
Eidsmoe said it's clear that Obama has something in the documentation of his history, including his birth certificate, college records and other documents that "he does not want the public to know."
Officials for the Obama campaign repeatedly have refused to comment on the questions, relenting only once to call the concerns "garbage."
3.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjBlNjQyNzYzNzk2YjBhNjg4NDM2Y2I5MjJkMDYzNjQ=&w=MA==
Obama’s False Choice
A “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is exactly what we need right now.
Mark Steyn
Writing in the Chicago Tribune last week, President Obama fell back on one of his favorite rhetorical tics: “But I also know,” he wrote, “that we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.”
Really? For the moment, it’s a “false choice” mainly in the sense that he’s not offering it: “a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is not on the menu, which leaves “an oppressive government-run economy” as pretty much the only game in town. How oppressive is yet to be determined: To be sure, the official position remains that only “the richest five percent” will have taxes increased. But you’ll be surprised at the percentage of Americans who wind up in the richest five percent. This year federal government spending will rise to 28.5 per cent of GDP, the highest level ever, with the exception of the peak of the Second World War. The 44th president is proposing to add more to the national debt than the first 43 presidents combined, doubling it in the next six years, and tripling it within the decade. But to talk about it in percentages of this and trillions of that misses the point. It’s not about bookkeeping, it’s about government annexation of the economy, and thus of life: government supervision, government regulation, government control. No matter how small your small business is — plumbing, hairdressing, maple sugaring — the state will be burdening you with more permits, more paperwork, more bureaucracy.
And don’t plan on moving. Ahead of this week’s G20 summit in London, Timothy Geithner, America’s beloved Toxic Asset, called for “global regulation.” “Our hope,” said Toxic Tim, “is that we can work with Europe on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight . . . ”
“Global oversight:” Hmm. There’s a phrase to savor.
“We can’t,” he continued, “allow institutions to cherry pick among competing regulators and ship risk to where it faces the lowest standards and weakest constraints . . . ”
Just as a matter of interest, why not? If you don’t want to be subject to the punitive “oversight” of economically illiterate, demagogic legislators-for-life like Barney Frank, why shouldn’t you be “allowed” to move your business to some jurisdiction with a lighter regulatory touch?
Borders give you choices. Your town has a crummy grade school? Move ten miles north and there’s a better one. Sick of Massachusetts taxes? Move to New Hampshire, as thousands do. To modify the abortionists’ bumper sticker: “I’m Pro-Choice And I Vote With My Feet.” That’s part of the self-correcting dynamism of capitalism: For example, Bono, the global do-gooder who was last in Washington to play at the Obama inauguration, recently moved much of his business from Ireland to the Netherlands, in order to pay less tax. And good for him. To be sure, he’s always calling on governments to give more money to Africa and whatnot, but it’s heartening to know that, when it comes to his wallet as opposed to yours, Bono — like Secretary Geithner — has no desire to toss any more of his money into the great sucking maw of the government treasury than the absolute minimum he can get away with. I’m with Bono and Tim: They can spend their money more effectively than hack bureaucrats can. We should do as they do, not as they say.
If you listen to the principal spokesmen for U.S. economic policy — Obama and Geithner — they grow daily ever more explicitly hostile to the private sector and ever more comfortable with the language of micro-managed government-approved capitalism — which, of course, isn’t capitalism at all. They’ll have an easier time getting away with it in a world of “global oversight” where there’s nowhere to move to. Unfortunately, even then it won’t work. Think about it: It takes extraordinary skill to create and manage a billion-dollar company; there are very few human beings on the planet who can do it. Now look at Obama and Geithner, the two men currently “managing” more money than any individuals in human history: not billions, but trillions.
Notwithstanding the Treasury secretary’s protestations that the Yes/No prompt buttons of Turbo Tax were too complex for a simple soul such as himself, it’s no reflection on the hapless Geithner that he’s unable to fix the planet. When the Bolsheviks chose to introduce Russians to the blessings of a “command economy” 90 years ago, they were dealing with a relatively simple agricultural society largely contained within national borders. Obama and Geithner are trying to do it with a sophisticated global economy in which North American consumers, European bankers, Asian suppliers, Saudi investors, and Chinese debt-holders are more tangled than an octopuses’ orgy. Even with “global oversight” — with the Toxic Tims of Germany, Argentina, and India all agreeing on how to fix the game — it can’t be done.
Barack Obama, even when he’s not yukking it up on 60 Minutes, barely disguises his indifference to economic matters. He is not an economist, a political philosopher, a geopolitical strategist. He is the president as social engineer, the Community-Organizer-in-Chief. His plan to reduce tax deductions for charitable giving, for example, is not intended primarily to raise revenue, but to advance government as the distributor of largesse and diminish alternative sources of societal organization, such as civic groups. Likewise, his big plans for socialized health care, a green economy, universal college education: They’re about extending the reach of the state.
Unfortunately, all of it costs money he doesn’t have. So he has to borrow it, in your name. Where does the world’s hyperpower go to borrow more dough than anyone’s ever borrowed in human history? More to the point, given that, partly at the behest of Obama and Geithner, almost every other western government is ramping up national debt to cover massive bank bailouts and other phony-baloney “stimuli,” is there enough money out there to buy up the debt that’s already been run up? Last week, at the official British Treasury auction, investors failed to buy the full complement of so-called “gilt-edged” 40-year bonds. Two such auctions have already failed in Germany. The U.S. Treasury, facing similar investor reluctance to snap up $34 billion of five-year notes, was forced to increase the interest it will pay on them. The Chinese and the Saudis have long taken the view that it’s to their advantage to own as much of the western world as they can snaffle up, but it’s unclear whether even they have pockets deep enough for what America and the many Bailoutistans of Europe are proposing to spend.
In their first two months, Obama and Geithner have done nothing but vaporize your wealth, and your children’s future. What began as an economic crisis is now principally a political usurpation. And, to return to the president’s “false choice,” that “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is exactly what we need right now. It’s the quickest, cheapest, fairest, most-efficient route to economic stabilization and renewal. A regimented and eternally forgiving global command economy with no moral hazard will destroy us all.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn
APRIL 15TH TEA PARTY---@ YOUR LOCAL POST OFFICE----THE ONE OPEN LATE--- MEDIA WILL BE THERE-----WILL YOU ?............4 PM TILL THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED....... EVER......
Posted by: EINSTEIN | March 30, 2009 at 10:39 AM
Tea Party gear can be found at www.shirts4freedom.com
Posted by: richard | March 30, 2009 at 03:40 PM