The days top political news: House passes climate-change Tax bill
Fifteen states have depleted their unemployment insurance funds so far, forcing them to borrow from the U.S. Treasury.
A record 30 of the country's 50 states are expected to have to borrow up to $17 billion by next year
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, the chief congressional advocate of taxing some employer-provided benefits to help pay for an overhaul of the U.S. health system, says any change should exempt perks secured in existing collective- bargaining agreements, which can be in place for as long as five years.
The exception, which could make the proposal more politically palatable to Democrats from heavily unionized states such as Michigan, is adding controversy to an already contentious debate. It would shield the 12.4 percent of American workers who belong to unions from being taxed while exposing some other middle-income workers to the levy.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aDvu77pZr7k4
Democrat schemes and scams
Castle (R - DE)
Kirk (R - IL)
Lance (R - NJ)
LoBiondo (R - NJ)
Smith (R-NJ)
McHugh (R - NY)
Reichert (R - WV)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597492337757443.html
President Obama's TV health-care forum on Wednesday evening was useful, because revealing. Namely, Mr. Obama shared more than he probably intended about the kind of rationing that his health plan will inevitably impose.
At one point in the town hall, broadcast from the East Room by ABC news, a woman named Jane Sturm told the story of her 105-year-old mother, who, at 100, was told by an arrhythmia specialist that she was too old for a pacemaker. She ended up getting a second option, and the operation, for which Ms. Sturm credits her survival.
"Look, the first thing for all of us to understand that is we actually have some -- some choices to make about how we want to deal with our own end-of-life care," Mr. Obama replied. After discussing ways "we as a culture and as a society [can start] to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves," he continued that in general "at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."
What Mr. Obama is describing is his preferred health-care future. WASHINGTON –Congressman Spencer Bachus (AL), the top Financial Services Committee Republican, made the following statement during floor consideration of the Waxman-Markey bill. “Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the Waxman-Markey bill. “This legislation creates a new multi-trillion dollar market for Carbon Allowance Derivatives overnight, all without one hearing before the Financial Services Committee. This continues a disturbing pattern of conduct of passing sweeping legislative proposals without consideration of the consequences and ramifications. “While Congress and financial regulators continue to work to determine how best to oversee existing derivatives markets, it is ill-advised to rubber stamp the creation of a brand new, hard to price, and convoluted Carbon Allowance Derivative Market. The new market would be open to potential abuse because it will be difficult for regulators to understand and monitor. “Under the Waxman-Markey bill the government would issue allowances (carbon allowance permits) that allow companies to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases. Companies that emit too much can buy allowances from companies that produce less than their limit. In addition to carbon allowances, there are carbon offsets which allow companies to emit greenhouse gases in excess of the federal cap or limit. They do this by investing in projects that cut emissions and it is anticipated that many of these projects will be in developing countries. C.F.T.C. Commissioner Bart Chilton anticipates that overnight the bill will create a $2 trillion dollar market, which he describes as ‘the biggest of any commodities derivative product in the next five years.’ Robert Shapiro, a former undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration and a co-founder of the US climate Task Force warns that ‘we are on the verge of creating a new trillion dollar market in financial assets that will be securitized, derivatized, and speculated by Wall Street, like the mortgage-backed securities market.’ Mother Jones’s Rachel Morris warns that without strong financial regulation of the market you could have abuses, over leveraging and ultimately collapse of the market. Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman has described these offset projects as ‘fraught with opportunity for game playing, which will be fully exploited, I’m sure.’ “Many of these projects will be created in developing countries. A clean coal project in China or India could be used for carbon offsets, as could a tree planting project in Brazil or Borneo. As much as China needs to clean up their environment, should Americans pay for it? Should a tree planting project in Borneo allow the discharge of more pollution in America? Many of these remote projects will be notoriously difficult to confirm and monitor. Even in America with a well-established regulatory system we witnessed abuses in the subprime mortgage market. The derivatives market has the potential for even greater game playing in remote countries with questionable rule of law and little regulation. “Michele Chan of Friends of the Earth says if not properly regulated the offset derivatives could become what she calls ‘subprime carbon’—futures contracts that promise emissions reductions but fail to deliver and then become toxic or worthless. Already the financial markets and speculators are planning how to slice and dice them and sell them to investors. It sounds altogether too familiar—a brand new, hard to price, vast convoluted market of carbon derivatives. And if these warnings are correct, one that certainly could pose a systemic risk in the financial markets. “If you liked what Wall Street did with the securitization of subprime mortgages, you’ll love what they are going to do with carbon derivatives. “Finally, ‘cap and tax’ will have a devastating impact on my home state of Alabama. The bias against coal and the renewable energy mandates will force consumers in Alabama to buy expensive ‘green power’ from other states, which will raise energy costs across the board. One study has projected that the typical family in Alabama could eventually see electricity bills rise by more than $1500 a year. Higher energy costs will make our manufacturers less competitive, and Alabama and the rest of our country will lose jobs to nations like China, Korea, and Mexico which have lower energy costs. “This bill is bad for Alabama, bad for the U.S. economy, and doesn’t even begin to solve the serious energy challenges facing our nation.”
If or when the Administration's speculative cost-cutting measures under universal health care fail to produce savings, government will start explicitly limiting patient access to treatments and services regarded as too expensive. Democrats deny this eventuality, but health planners will have no choice, given that the current entitlement system is already barreling toward insolvency without adding millions of new people to the federal balance sheet.
Earlier, a physician asked Mr. Obama if he would subject his own family to the restrictions of a national health plan, even if specialists recommended treatments that weren't covered. The President was noncommittal: "And you're absolutely right that, if it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care."
We suspect most Americans would agree.
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
2.
Bachus Floor Statement on Waxman-Markey Bill
(NOTE: Republican leadership, such as Congressman Bachus, did all they could to turn back Democrat efforts to pass this huge tax bill. Sadly, they lacked the necessary numbers to prevail and – incredibly – eight Republicans turned their backs on party loyalty and the welfare of America itself, and voted for the bill. Had they remained loyal, the bill would have lost.)
3.
American Thinker
Obama, the African Colonial
L.E. Ikenga
Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign "isms", instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.
The tropes of America's racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.
Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970's from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from -- also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to -- but at the same time it does.
My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself -- those of us who know our history -- have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies:
(NOTE: The accuracy of this statement can be seen in Obama’s unceremonial rejection of things British by returning a White House bust of Winston Churchill to the British embassy. He continued insulting Great Britain by a tasteless gift to Prime Minister Brown just prior to their first meetings in Washington. Obama gave the almost blind Brown a sack of DVDs of old movies and a few Obama speeches. The movies will not play in England – the DVD systems are not compatible. Obama compounded his felony by later giving an Ipod to the Queen. Obama is Kenyan still and resents British rule. After all, his father was a member of the terror group, the Mau Mau.)
First, Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not. Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious.
Second, and most importantly, too many Americans know very little about Africa. The one-size-fits-all understanding that many Americans (both black and white) continue to have of Africa might end up bringing dire consequences for this country.
Contrary to the way it continues to be portrayed in mainstream Western culture, Africa is not a continent that can be solely defined by AIDS, ethnic rivalries, poverty and safaris. Africa, like any other continent, has an immense history defined by much diversity and complexity. Africa's long-standing relationship with Europe speaks especially to some of these complexities -- particularly the relationship that has existed between the two continents over the past two centuries. Europe's complete colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century, also known as the Scramble for Africa, produced many unfortunate consequences, the African colonial being one of them.
The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC's have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories. AC's use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama's Muslim heritage).
On the other hand, AC's strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It's when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.
The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa.
However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the "will of the people" becomes completely irrelevant.
Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual.
In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father -- an eloquent piece of political propaganda -- Obama styles himself as a misunderstood intellectual who is deeply affected by the sufferings of black people, especially in America and Africa. In the book, Obama clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American. And to prove this, he goes on a quest to understand his Kenyan roots. He is extremely thoughtful of his deceased father's legacy; this provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.
Barack Obama Sr. was an African colonial to the core; in his case, the apple did not fall far from the tree. All of the telltale signs of Obama's African colonialist attitudes are on full display in the book -- from his feigned antipathy towards Europeans to his view of African tribal associations as distracting elements that get in the way of "progress". (On p. 308 of Dreams From My Father, Obama says that African tribes should be viewed as an "ancient loyalties".)
Like imperialists of Old World Europe, the ACP sees their constituents not as free thinking individuals who best know how to go about achieving and creating their own means for success. Instead, the ACP sees his constituents as a flock of ignorant sheep that need to be led -- oftentimes to their own slaughter.
Like the European imperialist who spawned him, the ACP is a destroyer of all forms of democracy.
Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you:
1. Convince the people that "clinging" to any aspect of their cultural (tribal) identity or history is bad and regresses the process of "unity". British Imperialists deeply feared people who were loyal to anything other than the state. "Tribalism" made the imperialists have to work harder to get people to just fall in line.
Imperialists pitted tribes against each other in order to create chaos that they then blamed on ethnic rivalry. Today many "educated" Nigerians, having believed that their traditions were irrelevant, remain completely ignorant of their ancestry and the history of their own tribes.
2. Confiscate the wealth and resources of the area that you govern by any means necessary in order to redistribute wealth. The British used this tactic to present themselves as empathetic and benevolent leaders who wanted everyone to have a "fair shake". Imperialists are not interested in equality for all. They are interested in controlling all.
3. Convince the masses that your upper-crust university education naturally puts you on an intellectual plane from which to understand everything even when you understand nothing. Imperialists were able to convince the people that their elite university educations allowed them to understand what Africa needed. Many of today's Nigerians-having followed that lead-hold all sorts of degrees and certificates-but what good are they if you can't find a job?
4. Lie to the people and tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse. One thing that the British forgot to mention to their Nigerian constituents was that one day, the resources that were being used to engineer "progress" (which the British had confiscated from the Africans to begin with!) would eventually run out. After WWII, Western Europe could no longer afford to hold on to their African colonies. So all of the counterfeit countries that the Europeans created were then left high-and-dry to fend for themselves. This was the main reason behind the African independence movements of the1950 and 60's. What will a post-Obama America look like?
5. Use every available media outlet to perpetuate the belief that you and your followers are the enlightened ones-and that those who refuse to support you are just barbaric, uncivilized, ignorant curmudgeons. This speaks for itself.
America, don't be fooled. The Igbos were once made up of a confederacy of clans that ascribed to various forms of democratic government. They took their eyes off the ball and before they knew it, the British were upon them. Also, understand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.
L.E. Ikenga can be reached at leikenga@gmail.com.
(Will Obama be America's Robert Mugabe?)
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