The contents are based on Fact and Truth. Challenges are invited.
The day’s top political news:
Army limits media access at Palin event at NC base
The U.S. Army will allow the media limited coverage of Sarah Palin's appearance at Fort Bragg, but will bar reporters from interviewing her or her supporters on the post.
A Fort Bragg spokesman initially said the Army would ban the media from Palin's book signing next week, fearing it would turn into political grandstanding against Obama. After The Associated Press and The Fayetteville Observer protested, Col. Billy Buckner said the post would permit restricted access.
Buckner said the setup will allow reporters their right to access while preventing the appearance from turning political - something that officials believe would violate policy. They also know it would not help Obama.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091120/D9C31PS80.html
House Republicans call on Treasury Secretary Geithner to resign
An angry Congress lashes out at Obama as economic woes take their toll
Growing discontent over the economy and frustration with efforts to speed its recovery boiled over Thursday on Capitol Hill in a wave of criticism and outright anger directed at the Obama administration.
Episodes in both houses of Congress exposed the raw nerves of lawmakers flooded with stories of unemployment and economic hardship back home. They also underscored the stiff headwinds that the administration faces as it pushes to enact sweeping changes to the financial regulatory system while also trying to create jobs for ordinary Americans.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/19/AR2009111903167.html?hpid=topnews
Jesse Jackson: 'You can't vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man'
The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”
The remark stirred a murmur at the reception, held by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Foundation as part of a series of events revolving around the 25th anniversary of Jackson’s run for president. Several CBC members were in attendance, including Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who’d introduced Jackson.
Davis, is running for governor of Alabama and a vote for the Pelosi health scheme would have been politically damaging.
Opinion:
Liberal obsession with Sarah Palin is very telling and may result in unintended consequences
I’m not yet ready to sign onto a Sarah Palin presidential run, but her recent round of interviews through which she is pushing her new book, produces some thoughts worth sharing.
Liberals are revealing deep seated terror at the thought of a Sarah Palin loose across the nation – but are also so intrigued, they can’t help themselves when it comes to talking about her.
I think back to a Georgia gubernatorial campaign in the mid 60s. A flurry of billboards appeared across the state, touting an unknown peanut farmer’s campaign. The billboard displayed a very interesting political tactic.
It was printed in green and included a picture of the candidate in one corner. A political rule holds that campaigns should avoid reprinting photos in colors other than black. The colored ink makes fat look fatter, bald look balder, and, in the case of Jimmy Carter, made him look rather toothless.
It made Carter look as ugly as possible. The strategy was to introduce Carter in this unflattering manner, then, when he actually appeared in person or on television, people would have an immediate and more positive impression. “He’s really rather nice looking” was the response Jodie Powell and Hamilton Jordan intended to generate. To a great extent, their ploy seemed to work. Thus Carter got an early boost, not to mention rapid name ID because the tactic generated a fair amount of discussion.
bottom line – Carter benefitted from the use of the ugliest and most unflattering presentation.
All this came to my mind as I watched Sarah Palin on interviews with Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly over the past two days. Liberal efforts to undercut and destroy Palin may be having a result for which the far left didn’t bargain.
Liberals are terrified of Palin. I suspect she is the subject of many really bad dreams for Democrat politicians. She is what liberals fear most: a conservative woman, who is attractive and who can make a good appearance.
Despite some missteps during the presidential campaign, Palin has managed to do just that. Of course her strange decision to suddenly step down from her gubernatorial post, remains puzzling.
She handles herself well these days, a big improvement from some network gaffes during the campaign. She has learned.
The AP reveals just how seriously Palin scares liberals. As her book is being released, they have assigned a huge fact checking task force – eleven reporters at least – to focus entirely on sifting through every sentence and paragraph, every tidbit or footnote they can find, seeking anything with which they can embarrass or inflict political damage on Palin herself and any future political outing she may decide to undertake.
We can all wish the AP had offered us as much effort in providing similar scrutiny to the Pelosi and Reid health care bills – all four thousand pages. Of course they didn’t – those bills are designed – not for honest reform but for government take over of our health care system.
Palin’s book is a huge distribution success. Even before it was released, it was designated a best seller – a huge best seller.
Now America gets a good look at her and sees the contrast between liberal images of her as an extremist, way out, wacko political nut case. She is not. Plus, in truth, she has a far more impressive personal background that Biden – and Obama – based on what we are allowed to know about Obama.
Palin has no hidden stories, no secret ventures or experiences, and she is openly patriotic and honesly religious.
What a contrast!
People can recognize this contrast and draw their own conclusions. Plus timing favors Palin. Her reintroduction comes at a time in which the waves of activism fostered by the tea party movement, are in full sway. Democrat efforts to impose an extreme form of health care reform, plus the new Democrat tax scheme disguised under the Cap and Trade misnomer, spurs along grass root resentment. On top of this, Homeland Security Secretary – who sees those Americans (especially veterans) who differ with Obama on key political issues as potential terrorists – now tells us another attempt to grant amnesty to the millions of illegal aliens, is on the Obama play sheet.
The overreaching frenzy of the liberal media to shoot down Palin has already failed. How far the momentum it has created carries her toward further political success, awaits the unfolding of future events.
There is yet no strong bet on who will run as the GOP candidate in 2012 or beyond, but the choice is one Sarah Palin need not hurry. Her opposition is doing all it can to push her along toward whatever victory she chooses.
Buddy
NEWS: Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid has filed cloture on the motion to proceed to consider his health care scheme (HR 3590), which will be the shell he’ll use to ultimately proceed to his health care language. The vote will be this Saturday night at 8 pm.
The Ron Paul Amendment Passes Financial Services Committee
Washington, DC – Congressman Ron Paul (TX-14) announces that amendment based on HR 1207 has passed in the Financial Services Committee by a vote of 43-26 and will be included in major banking reform legislation.
The Paul amendment:
• Removes the blanket restrictions on GAO audits of the Fed
• Allows audit of every item on the Fed's balance sheet, all credit facilities, all securities purchase programs, etc.
• Retains limited audit exemption on unreleased transcripts and minutes
• Sets 180-day time lag before details of Fed's market actions may be released
• States that nothing in the amendment shall be construed as interference in or dictation of monetary policy by Congress or the GAO
“While HR 3996, if passed, will grant sweeping new powers to the Federal Reserve, at least with this amendment attached, it won’t be acting in secret anymore. This is a major victory for Federal Reserve transparency and government accountability. I am very grateful to Congressman Bachus and all the other Members who were so supportive and helpful in this effort,” stated Congressman Paul.
The days’ top blogs:
1.
Unlawful health reform?
George F. Will
PHOENIX
In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health-care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea. The institute, America's most potent advocate of limited government, embraced Eric Novack's idea for protecting Arizonans from health-care coercion. In 2008, Arizonans voted on Novack's proposed amendment to the state's Constitution:
"No law shall be passed that restricts a person's freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type. No law shall interfere with a person's or entity's right to pay directly for lawful medical services, nor shall any law impose a penalty or fine, of any type, for choosing to obtain or decline health care coverage or for participation in any particular health care system or plan."
Proponents were outspent five to one by opponents who argued, meretriciously, that it would destroy Arizona's Medicaid program, with which many insurance companies have lucrative contracts.
Nevertheless, the proposition lost by only 8,687 votes out of 2.1 million cast, and Arizonans will vote on essentially the same language next November.
But does not federal law trump state laws? Not necessarily. Clint Bolick, a Goldwater Institute attorney, says, "It is a bedrock principle of constitutional law that the federal Constitution established a floor for the protection of individual liberties; state constitutions may provide additional protections."
In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court held that under the Constitution's system of "dual sovereignty," states' "retained sovereignty" empowers them to "remain independent and autonomous within their proper sphere of authority." The court has been critical of the "federalism costs" of intrusive federal policies and recently has twice vindicated state sovereignty in ways pertinent to Novack's plan.
In 2006, the court overturned an interpretation of federal law that would have nullified Oregon's "right to die" statute. The court said states have considerable latitude in regulating medical standards, which historically have been primarily state responsibilities.
In 2000, Arizona voters endorsed an English immersion policy for students for whom English is a second language. Federal courts had issued an injunction against such policies because they conflicted with federal requirements of bilingual education. This year, however, the Supreme Court mandated reconsideration of the injunctions because they affect "areas of core state responsibility."
The court says the constitutional privacy right protects personal "autonomy" regarding "the most intimate and personal choices." The right was enunciated largely at the behest of liberals eager to establish abortion rights. Liberals may think, but the court has never held, that the privacy right protects only doctor-patient transactions pertaining to abortion. David Rivkin and Lee Casey, Justice Department officials under the Reagan and first Bush administrations, ask: If government cannot proscribe or even "unduly burden" -- the court's formulation -- access to abortion, how can government limit other important medical choices?
Democrats' health bills depend on forcing individuals to buy insurance or face severe fines or imprisonment. In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office said forcing individuals to buy insurance would be "an unprecedented form of federal action," adding: "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States."
This year, the Congressional Research Service delicately said "it is a novel issue whether Congress may use the [commerce] Clause to require an individual to purchase a good or service." Congress has the constitutional power to "regulate commerce . . . among the several states." But a Federalist Society study by Peter Urbanowicz and Dennis Smith judges it perverse to exercise coercion under the commerce clause "on an individual who chooses not to undertake a commercial transaction." As Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) says, there is "a fundamental difference between regulating activities in which individuals choose to engage" -- e.g., drivers can be required to buy auto insurance -- "and requiring such activities" just because an individual exists.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) says Congress can tax -- i.e., punish -- people who do not buy insurance because the Constitution empowers Congress to tax for "the general welfare." So, could Congress tax persons who do not exercise or eat their spinach?
When asked whether any compulsory insurance purchases are constitutional, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was genuinely astonished: "Are you serious? Are you serious?" In 1803, in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote, "The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the Constitution is written." He was serious.
2.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/66717-obamacare-endorsements-what-the-bribe-was
ObamaCare endorsements: What the bribe was - The Hill's Pundits Blog
Check this out from The 29th Day - Solutions in a World of Accelerating Change.
This my father's collaborative online book. He was a health actuarial consultant for many years and an expert in health care financing.
This is the old "Put the $250 billion physician payment fix in a separate Bill to keep it out of the Health Care Reform Bill, so cost estimates for the Health Care Reform Bill would exclude it, thereby 'reducing' the cost estimate for the Health Care Reform Bill by $250 billion" trick.
OR, to put it more succintly, "The health care overhaul bill produced by House Democrats ... The measure also drops a reprieve for doctors from scheduled pay cuts for treating Medicare patients, which House leaders now plan to pursue separately from the broader health bill." Source: fox news
OR, to put it more verbosely, "The Senate is poised to take action on a costly bill to hike Medicare payments to physicians just weeks before bringing a sweeping healthcare overhaul to the floor.
Next year, without congressional intervention, Medicare’s fees to physicians would drop by 21 percent.
In addition to their desire to prevent those cuts, Democrats are eager to win the support of physicians for healthcare reform. The American Medical Association (AMA) has already endorsed the House healthcare reform bill, which contains a $245 billion payment fix.
But doing so would also open Democrats to charges they were skirting the budget rules they established for themselves and were underestimating the cost of healthcare reform by moving a related bill separately.
The congressional budget resolution contains provisions that originated in the House allowing Congress to pass a physician payment fix without paying for it.
House Democrats are also considering moving a physician-payments bill in a separate, non-offset vehicle from healthcare reform.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) are continuing to back the House's approach, which is a permanent fix at a cost of roughly $240 billion, rather than an offset, one- or two-year fix." source: thehill.com/homenews/senate/63141-senate-eyes-hike-to-physicians-medicare-fees-
3.
Wall Street Journal – Market Watch
Lawmakers cap leverage limits for 'too-big-to-fail' institutions
Big banks and funds couldn't have a debt to equtiy ratio of greater than 15 to 1
Ronald D. Orol, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Large systemically significant financial institutions can't over-leverage themselves and have a debt to equity ratio greater than 15 to 1, according to a provision approved by the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday.
"Leverage was a key contributor to the financial crisis," said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., the provision's author.
Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., backed the provision, arguing that it would likely impact the largest 20 or 25 financial institutions while allowing smaller regional banks "which do not pose a threat to the economy" a bit more flexibility.
The proposal was approved along with several other provisions as part of a broad bank regulatory reform bill that has been under consideration by the committee since Tuesday. The panel is expected to complete work on regulatory reform by Friday.
On Thursday, the committee is scheduled to examine a wide variety of controversial provisions, including a measure to audit the Federal Reserve and a provision that would decide which institutions would pay into a fund that would be used to dismantle a large financial institution so that its collapse does not unsettle the markets.
The Senate Banking Committee also is expected to consider bank regulatory reform legislation starting later this week and running throughout December.
The panel's ranking member, Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., expressed skepticism about the leverage limit.
"I know the amendment addresses excessive leverage which we're all concerned about," Bachus said. "Although we're capital starved right now, leverage creates jobs, but also produces risk."
Risk retention flexibility
Late Thursday, the committee approved a Rep. Walt Minnick, D-Idaho, provision, which would give bank regulators the flexibility to identify how much of a stake originators of securitized products would need to retain. Based on the provision, lenders would need to hold as little as zero of the security in the case of low-risk products to as high as 10% of it for risky securities.
The provision was approved with the bipartisan support of both Frank and Bachus.
"If the securitizer is packaging high risk junk bonds, the bank regulator may want to have the originator boost the amount they need to hold onto from 5% to 10%," Minnick said. "If it is a plain vanilla or low risk product, such as a corporation offering a credit enhanced short term note, the regulator could have the authority to say that there would not be any risk retention by the originator."
4.
Government Data Imply High Immigrant Crime Rates
Study: Findings Contradict Older Research Showing Low Rates
WASHINGTON – Center for Immigration Studies has published a detailed report on immigration and crime based on a variety of recently released data, including some obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. The newer government data implies that immigrants have relatively high rates of crime. This contradicts older academic research that generally found low rates of crime. The overall picture of immigrants and crime remains confused due to conflicting information and a lack of good data.
The report, 'Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue,' is authored by Steven Camarota and Jessica Vaughan.
Among the findings:
• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates that immigrants (legal and illegal) comprise 20 percent of inmates in prisons and jails. The foreign-born are 15.4 percent of the nation’s adult population. However, DHS has not provided a detailed explanation of how the estimates were generated.
• Under contract to DHS in 2004, Fentress, Inc. reviewed 8.1 million inmate records from state prison systems and 45 large county jails. They found that 22 percent of inmates were foreign-born. But the report did not cover all of the nation’s jails.
• The 287(g) program and related efforts have found high rates of illegal-alien incarceration in some communities. But it is unclear if the communities are representative of the country:
o Maricopa County, Ariz.: 22 percent of felons are illegal aliens;
o Lake County, Ill.: 19 percent of jail inmates are illegal aliens;
o Collier County, Fla.: 20 to 22 percent of jail inmates and arrestees are illegal aliens;
o Weld County, Colo.: 12.8 to 15.2 percent of those jailed are illegal aliens.
• DHS states that it has identified 221,000 non-citizens in the nation’s jails. This equals 11 to 15 percent of the jail population. Non-citizens are 8.6 percent of the nation’s total adult population.
• The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports that 26.4 percent of inmates in federal prisons are non-citizens. However, federal prisons are not representative of prisons generally or local jails.
• Recent reports by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) and Immigration Policy Center (IPC) showing low rates of immigrant incarceration highlight the data problems in many studies. The 2000 Census data they used are not reliable.
• An analysis of the data used in the PPIC and IPC studies by the National Research Council found that 53 percent of the time the Census Bureau had to make an educated guess whether a prisoner was an immigrant. The studies are essentially measuring these guesses, not actual immigrant incarceration.
• The poor quality of data used in the PPIC and IPC studies is illustrated by wild and implausible swings. It shows a 28 percent decline in incarcerated immigrants 1990 to 2000 – yet the overall immigrant population grew 59 percent. Newer Census data from 2007 show a 146 percent increase in immigrant incarceration 2000 to 2007 – yet, the overall immigrant population grew only 22 percent.
• The 'Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities' shows that 8.1 percent of prisoners in state prisons are immigrants (legal and illegal). However, the survey excludes jails and relies on inmate self-identification, which is likely to understate the number of immigrants.
• In 2009, 57 percent of the 76 fugitive murderers most wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were foreign-born. It is likely however that because immigrants can more readily flee to other countries, they comprise a disproportionate share of fugitives.
• Most studies comparing crime rates and immigration levels across cities show no clear correlation between the immigrant share of a city’s population and its level of crime. This is one of the strongest arguments that immigrants do not have high crime rates. However, such studies generally measure only overall crime, not crimes specifically committed by immigrants. Also, a 2009 analysis by DHS’ Office of Immigration Statistics found that crime rates were higher in metropolitan areas that received large numbers of legal immigrants.
• From 1998 to 2007, 816,000 criminal aliens were removed from the United States because of a criminal charge or conviction. This is equal to about one-fifth of the nation’s total jail and prison population. These figures do not include those removed for the lesser offense of living or working in the country illegally. The removal and deportation of large numbers of criminal aliens may reduce immigrant incarceration rates because many will not return and re-offend, as is the case with many native-born criminals.
• Some have argued that the fall in overall national crime rates since the early 1990s is evidence that immigration actually reduces crime. However, overall crime rates are affected by many factors. Moreover, the 1970s and 1980s saw crime rates rise along with immigration levels.
• Overall incarceration rates are also a poor means of examining the link between immigration and crime. Since the 1970s, the share of the U.S. population that is incarcerated has grown almost exactly in proportion to the share of the population that is immigrant. But unless inmates can be identified as immigrant or native-born this information sheds little light on the issue of immigrant criminality.
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