Thursday, September 24, 2009

Obama sold out frugal consumers for his union bosses financiers

At almost midnight, Friday, September 11, 2009, timed while the country was sleeping, President Obama signed a prohibitive 35% tariff on low-cost Chinese tires. The result will be jobs lost, and prices greatly increased on tires. This directly punishes the middle class and those lower on the economic ladder: frugal consumers. And it rewards the union bosses who financed his election. When push came to shove, the President of the United States of America supported those few union bosses who paid for his election with workers' union dues and turned his back on the many who are financially struggling in part as a result of his policies. It shows what kind of a man the president is....And China is threatening retaliation against U. S. chickens and auto parts. Mr. Obama is continuing to make America mediocre -- the country that championed free international trade that brought millions of human beings out of abject poverty.


A Web posting somewhere by Doug Palmer, Reuters:

Obama is hampering trade with policies like his embargo on Chinese tires

Trade policies pursued by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress since the start of the year could lead to the loss of 585,800 U.S. jobs, a study said on Tuesday (September 15,2009). The study done for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce attributed almost two-thirds of the potential job losses, or 383,400, to Congress’ failure to approve free trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea. Passing the two agreements and a third pact with Panama should be part of a national plan to double U.S. exports over the next five years, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue told reporters in a conference call. "A major surge in exports is our best path out of a recession, out of double-digit unemployment and the exploding deficits we’re now experiencing," Donohue said.

And: China on Tuesday invoked defense of its "public morals" in appealing a World Trade Organization ruling against restrictions on distribution of Hollywood movies and other Western media, according to a copy of the appeal reviewed by The Wall Street Journal (September 22, 2009).  The move reflects escalating trade tensions between the two major trade partners ahead of the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh this week.

And on September 24, the United Steelworkers union in conjunction with three paper companies leveraging its success with its beholden President of the United States, filed another antidumping case against China and Indonesia, this time with shiny, coated paper.  Obama is supporting the kind of trade wars that caused the Great Depression.  Have at it Mr. President you sold out frugal tire consumers, now sell out the United States, for union bosses cash.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Racism

Racism is an animosity toward other races, or a belief in racial superiority.  Prejudice is an irrational, ill-informed dislike of somebody typically with the opinion formed earlier. Discrimination: unfair treatment of one person or group, usually because of prejudice about race.  In the United States, free speech is (or) was protected by the U. S. Constitution, and I assume thought, too.  Therefore I'd argue that racism is protected under the Constitution.  I am not a constitutional lawyer, but I beleive some speech is illegal, as yelling "Fire" in a theater is.  I do not know if the word "Nigger", spoken, has been incorporated in the "Fire" exemption from free speech or not.  But thinking it shouldn't be.  Of course, certain form of thinking is indeed illegal, with thoughts inferred from action.  Beating up a white guy by a black guy might be a "hate" crime.  Certainly a black guy beat up by a white guy would be.  Both the beating and what the beater might be thinking, "hate".  Prejudice is, by that same token as racism, not illegal.  It's an animosity or a belief. 

Perhaps ex-presidents Carter and Clinton were right, along with Bill Cosby, that racism is behind the disagreements with and challenges to the Obama crusade.  But I am certain they don't know since they cannot know what is in the hearts of man.

I have argued for years that the reason African Americans haven't made it up the economic ladder, or integrated into society like the Irish, Jewish, Italian, and Chinese -- all victims of original discrimination, is that the Democratic Party has built bureaucracies, mostly Democrat voters, that rely on convincing African Americans that they are, in fact, victims of racism Ilegal) and discrimination (illegal).  While African Americans vote almost universally for Democrats, what have the Democrats done for African Americans?  Crime, Drugs, Gangs, Unwed Mothers/Fatherless Families, Substandard Education still exist rampantly even after three decades of Democrats taking their votes and spending taxpayer money.  Until African Americans analyze and measure their votes against accomplishments by Democrats in exchange (and come up empty handed), nothing will change. 

Our president is African American and he's so far siding with unions against the best for students.  Yes, teachers union bosses pay for Democrat elections and the status quo.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Our Leader Speaketh with Forked Tongue

From the Wall Street Journal, Monday, September 14, 2009: "Fact-Checking the President on Health Insurance", by Scott Harrington. [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574409501904118682.html] The article describes a number of "facts" delivered by the president in one of his TV speeches that were, at best, exaggerations and, at worst, out and out lies.  But even a bigger problem is that apparently the president will demonize anyone and any company if it will expand the possibility for him to takeover the healthcare system in this country.  Go to and read the article, but if the president was interested in "reform" of healthcare, he'd dialogue with those who disagree.  They might have some good ideas, but no, he is not at all interested in anyone else's good ideas, only those that extend his power.  Our leader, I am afraid, speaketh with a forked tongue.

"OPINION SEPTEMBER 14, 2009, 9:51 A.M. ET Fact-Checking the President on Health Insurance

His tales of abuse don't stand scrutiny.
By SCOTT HARRINGTON

In his speech to Congress last week, President Barack Obama attempted to sell a reform agenda by demonizing the private health-insurance industry, which many people love to hate. He opened the attack by asserting: "More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care. It happens every day."

Clearly, this should never happen to anyone who is in good standing with his insurance company and has abided by the terms of the policy. But the president's examples of people "dropped" by their insurance companies involve the rescission of policies based on misrepresentation or concealment of information in applications for coverage. Private health insurance cannot function if people buy insurance only after they become seriously ill, or if they knowingly conceal health conditions that might affect their policy.

Traditional practice, governed by decades of common law, statute and regulation is for insurers to rely in underwriting and pricing on the truthfulness of the information provided by applicants about their health, without conducting a costly investigation of each applicant's health history. Instead, companies engage in a certain degree of ex post auditing—conducting more detailed and costly reviews of a subset of applications following policy issue—including when expensive treatment is sought soon after a policy is issued.

This practice offers substantial cost savings and lower premiums compared to trying to verify every application before issuing a policy, or simply paying all claims, regardless of the accuracy and completeness of the applicant's disclosure. Some states restrict insurer rescission rights to instances where the misrepresented or concealed information is directly related to the illness that produced the claim. Most states do not.

To highlight abusive practices, Mr. Obama referred to an Illinois man who "lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about." The president continued: "They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it."

Although the president has used this example previously, his conclusion is contradicted by the transcript of a June 16 hearing on industry practices before the Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigation of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The deceased's sister testified that the insurer reinstated her brother's coverage following intervention by the Illinois Attorney General's Office. She testified that her brother received a prescribed stem-cell transplant within the desired three- to four-week "window of opportunity" from "one of the most renowned doctors in the whole world on the specific routine," that the procedure "was extremely successful," and that "it extended his life nearly three and a half years."

The president's second example was a Texas woman "about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne." He said that "By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer more than doubled in size."

The woman's testimony at the June 16 hearing confirms that her surgery was delayed several months. It also suggests that the dermatologist's chart may have described her skin condition as precancerous, that the insurer also took issue with an apparent failure to disclose an earlier problem with an irregular heartbeat, and that she knowingly underreported her weight on the application.

These two cases are presumably among the most egregious identified by Congressional staffers' analysis of 116,000 pages of documents from three large health insurers, which identified a total of about 20,000 rescissions from millions of policies issued by the insurers over a five-year period. Company representatives testified that less than one half of one percent of policies were rescinded (less than 0.1% for one of the companies).

If existing laws and litigation governing rescission are inadequate, there clearly are a variety of ways that the states or federal government could target abuses without adopting the president's agenda for federal control of health insurance, or the creation of a government health insurer.

Later in his speech, the president used Alabama to buttress his call for a government insurer to enhance competition in health insurance. He asserted that 90% of the Alabama health-insurance market is controlled by one insurer, and that high market concentration "makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly—by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates."

In fact, the Birmingham News reported immediately following the speech that the state's largest health insurer, the nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, has about a 75% market share. A representative of the company indicated that its "profit" averaged only 0.6% of premiums the past decade, and that its administrative expense ratio is 7% of premiums, the fourth lowest among 39 Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans nationwide.

Similarly, a Dec. 31, 2007, report by the Alabama Department of Insurance indicates that the insurer's ratio of medical-claim costs to premiums for the year was 92%, with an administrative expense ratio (including claims settlement expenses) of 7.5%. Its net income, including investment income, was equivalent to 2% of premiums in that year.

In addition to these consumer friendly numbers, a survey in Consumer Reports this month reported that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama ranked second nationally in customer satisfaction among 41 preferred provider organization health plans. The insurer's apparent efficiency may explain its dominance, as opposed to a lack of competition—especially since there are no obvious barriers to entry or expansion in Alabama faced by large national health insurers such as United Healthcare and Aetna.

Responsible reform requires careful analysis of the underlying causes of problems in health insurance and informed debate over the benefits and costs of targeted remedies. The president's continued demonization of private health insurance in pursuit of his broad agenda of government expansion is inconsistent with that objective.

Mr. Harrington is professor of health-care management and insurance and risk management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "


The biggest lie of which President Obama and the Democrats must convince American voters is that business/commerce/companies are against and at odds with the people. This is a bold-faced lie. The people ARE business. Business creates wealth and jobs. The people and business are one, together, mutually supportive. Only those seeking to gain and retain power, raw power over others would attempt to differentiate and divide the two, people and business.

Obama's healthcare speech was filled with outright lies, half-truths, distortions. I will not go into detail, because this has been covered heavily by the, let's say, conservative media and blogesphere. In the NY Times, NBC and their ilk, nothing; it was all honest and a true attempt to be bipartisan. Notice that Fox News viewers are climbing and the rest are tumbling.




To speak with forked tongue is to make false promises or to speak in a way which is not honest. Or put another way, "forked tongue" (from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia): A forked tongue is a tongue split into two distinct ends at the tip; this is a feature common to many species of reptiles. The image has given rise to the expression "to speak with a forked tongue", meaning to say one thing and mean another or, in more general terms, to act in a duplicitous manner.

These postings will in order of latest first, present examples of the President of the United States, Barack Obama, saying one thing and either meaning or doing another, "in a deceitful and duplicitous manner".

While this doesn't yet fall under the split infinitive, it will. Espouser of free trade, President Obama must choose free trade or support for his financiers, the unions, in this case the United Steelworkers. Union bosses want tariffs to cut the supply of affordable tires from China to the United States consumer. 55% added to low-cost tires' prices. Union bosses see this as saving union jobs; estimates are that it would cost Americans betwen $300,000,000 and $600,00,000 in higher prices, affecting lower-income people mostly. American companies don't even make those tires, so American companies need time to gear up to manufacture the tires it quit making. Also estimated is that for every union job "saved" would cost 12 - 25 jobs of people distributing, selling and installing tires not immediately available. Obama can sign a Section 421 complaint filed by United Steelworkers' bosses or not. Stay tuned to mid-September.

Can lying be any worse than lying to your spouse? President Obama promised his wife, Michelle, that if she would allow him to run for the presidency, ("allow him"?) he would, promise, promise to quit smoking. Mr. Obama lied to his wife. He still smokes.

And speaking of smoking. Obama promised he will never tax anyone making under $250,000 (or was it $200,000) a year. Since slightly more than half of today's smokers (53%) earn less than $36,000 per year and Obama just spiked the federal tax on cigarettes he lied to America. Period!

Change was Obama's mantra to get elected. Clean up Washington of lobbyists and money changers. Change from President Bush's "politicization". That was the get-elected fork in his tongue. The actual fork in his tongue, proven in practice is reward those who paid for his election. Lobbyists are climbing all over his administration and Congress as is usual. "Change" was a lie. And what did his campaign-funders buy? Well certainly GM and Chrysler, but also ambassadorships. No matter experience in foreign policy, the money they brought to his campaign bought them what they wanted. ("The Ugly Ambassador" replayed.) The following nominees brought in at least $500,000 and most personally contributed the maximim legally allowed by law to the Obama Campaign, many bundled the maximum $300,000 to pay for the inauguration/coronation: Charles Rivkin bought France; Nicole Avant bought The Bahamas; Howard Gutman bought Belgium; Don Beyer bought Switzerland; Mathhew Barzun bought Sweden; Willima Eacho III bought Austria; Bruce Oreck bought Finland; Donald Gips bought South Africa; John Roos bought Japan, and Louis Susman bought the United Kingdom. Now these money changers have not been confirmed, only nominated by President "Change" Obama.

Back in the "stimulus" bill production rush, President Obama promised to "save or create" 3 million jobs if the "stimulus" was passed, along with stopping unemployment at a maximum of 8%. In the dark of night without reading it, Congress passed it for Obama's signature. The "simulus" was born. And his promise came from forked tongue. Today's unemployment, 9.5% is heading for over 10%. And today's (this is July 2009) jobs have shed 2,600,000 since passage of the "stimulus". Was it as Vice Presdient Biden said, that the administration "misread" the economy, or did he simply pick a couple numbers out of his ass that would sell stupid Congresspeople, or did he simply lie to us Americans. No matter, he was wrong, cruelly wrong.

6/17/2009: The Obama administration is declining to release documents that would identify visitors to the White House, embracing a legal position the Bush administration also took, according to a watchdog group (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) that filed a federal lawsuit over access to the records.
The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed its lawsuit after being denied access to Secret Service records. Obama's refusal to release the records and his "pledge of transparency" indicate he speaketh with a forked tongue. [Newsmax.com: http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/us_white_house_secrecy/2009/06/17/225751.html?s=al&promo_code=81B4-1]

June 15 or so, 2009: In drawing a curtain over "transparency" President Obama is protecting a friend and supporter of his, Kevin Johnson, a Democrat and mayor of Sacramento, CA, who plays basketball with our president. Obama did not follow Congress' own rules in firing Inspector General official Gerald Walpin. Walpin investigated, reported and was fired personally by Obama: Johnson used to run a nonprofit academy St. Hope which improperly used AmeriCorps recruits to recruit students to his academy, for politicking, to run and perform personal duties for Johnson, such as washing his car and driving him around, and doing bookkeeping for St. Hope. Johnson apparently settled for a small amount to run for mayor. And another is the Teaching Fellows Program, run by the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. Walpin's audit[www.cncsig.gov/AuditReports.html] uncovered myriad violations including duplicate awards of $16 million and costs of over $750,000. Walpin's directives were stonewalled by AmeriCorps' parent organization, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), which is now chaired by, as a payoff to, Democratic Alan Solomont for political fund raising. AmeriCorps now is $6 billion in a bill signed by Obama in April. Obama is a political animal, Mr. Walpin is unemployed for being a "government-employed whistle-blower" and blowing the whistle on Obama's cronies.

(In an irony, the First Lady Obama ran the AmeriCorps-funded nonprofit Public Allies in Chicago from 1993-1996 and served on its national board. It, too, was investigated by the Inspector General's office and violated basic rules including a lack of internal controls over education grants and living allowances given to people not being legal citizens or permanent residents.)

June Eleventh: President Obama announces that he thinks taxpayers are stupid. He proposes to give the Congressional oxymoron, "PayGo" or "Pay-as-you-go" legal bindingness. This means other expenses need to be cut or taxes raised to pay for Congressional spending...well, except for roughly everything Congress spends. PayGo was promised and broken by Nancy Pelosi in 2006, 2007 and most egregiously in 2008 and this year. And as for Obama's current "promise" - PayGo doesn't include his $787,000,000,000 "stimulus" (Aka Relect Democrats) bill; or fiscal 2009's $3,500,000,000,000 budget with its record non-wartime deficit (13% of GNP); not Medicare (growing at 9.2% a year and being broke within less than a decade); how about discretionary spending? (Discretionary spending...isn't that, like, discretionary?) This 40% of the budget -- $1,400,00,00,00 -- doesn't count; a $2,000,000,000 subsidy to "poor people" -- aka hopefully Democratic voters -- for heating is not counted; the annual "fix" on the Democratic-passed Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) $576,000,000,00...not counted; the final insult to American tax-payers is that ObamaCare's $1,200,00,00,000 to $1,500,00,000,00 price tag isn't includable until AFTER the 2012 election. Mr. Obama still has the left-leaning media slurping at his every word and his "personal" approval is still high, because of his silver forked tongue!

(6/9/09) President Obama pushed on Congress his "Stimulus" bill, that I call the "Reelect Democrats in 2010 and Forever Bill" that would get America out of this recession. (Congress passed, but did not read, the bill.) The other side of his tongue admitted that only 5% or so of the dough would blow out in 2009 -- thus not helping much of anything except Democrats. But wait! Polls say a majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of federal spending. And since unemployment is growing, people aren't happy. (The bill was only $787,00,000,000.) And he promised he'd "create or save" 600,000 jobs his second magic hundred days in office vs. 150,000 "created or saved" the first 100. No matter that those numbers are uncountable. With those polls, he'll start writing the checks himself.

"What we are not doing, what I have no interest in doing, is running GM", President Obama said while he was taking control of GM.

During his presidental campaign, Mr. Obama vehemently opposed a healthcare mandate on individuals; and he savaged Sen. McCain for discussing taxing healthcare benefits derived from employers. Now is now and President Obama extends his "just joking" scenario to now being open to 1) "I am open to shared responsibilities" - mandates, but, of course with a
hardship waiver" however he will define that. And also on the table is taxing healthcare benefits derived from employers, but maybe only those which are "Cadillac plans" [since taken off the table it was put on, because most union-negotiated plans are, if nothing, Cadillacs.] Or maybe just the plans of "rich people".

In Cairo June 4, 2009, President Obama stated his commitment to "governments that reflect the will of the people". And "freedom to live as you choose", ummm democracy. But he's slashing Bush's support for democracy promotion. $30 million - 60% - in one program, $11 million in another. Several slots in his administration for "senior directorship for democracy" and "Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy..." among others won't be filled. And his man Robert Gates (Defense Secretary) stated that "if we set for ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla [democratic countries] over there, we will lose." In other words, Obama continues his rhetoric instead of acts. Forked.

BABs take from you and subsidize states

Fifty billion more U. S. taxpayer dollars thrown out to control states.  Build America Bonds, ("BABs") from the Obama administration's toothless "stimulus" shuts U. S. municipalities from the tax-free bond markets, but hands them subsidies on their interest rates.  And obligates the central government and gives it more and more power.  Mandates will be coming, mark my words.  But for now capital improvements ("earmarks?") subsidize state and local governments through a 35% federal tax subsidy, transferring their interest payments in part to taxpayers all over the country.  $27 billion had been sold by the first of September, with Texas and California accounting for just under half the issuances.  Democratic-controlled California desperately needs the help.  More to come for the unexpected consequences of another wild idea from Franklin Delano Obama.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

A joke about our president

So what's the difference between infomercial king Billy Mays and the Billy Mays of politics, Barack Obama?

1)  Billy Mays wasn't on TV as much.

2)  Billy Mays sold useful products.

3)  Billy Mays was exciting and interesting.

4)  Billy Mays was successful.

5)  Billy Mays worked for a living

6)  Billy Mays wouldn't lie to me.

7)  We can criticize Billy Mays without being called a racist or Nazi.

8)  Billy Mays didn't sell out the Eastern Europeans to his buddies the Russians.

9)  Billy Mays wasn't friends with domestic terrorists.

10)  Billy Mays is dead.

No Oversight on the Micromanaging Oversighters.

While Wikipedia may not be the ultimate of factual information, the following is from Wikepedia:

"The Comptroller General has the responsibility to audit the financial statements that the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget present to the Congress and the President. For every fiscal year since 1996, when consolidated financial statements began, the Comptroller General has refused to endorse the accuracy of the consolidated figures for the federal budget, citing '(1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.'"

If this were a private enterprise, Congressional Democrats would have the executives in jail. Yet, in spite of either their ignorance or hypocrisy, Congress continues to delve into and attempt to control every facet of private enterprise (not to mention humans). Some might think its activity is simply casting a net for campaign contributions to reelect them.  Some might think they should improve their own knitting.


Congress is well-paid. Too well-paid, some might argue. Let's compare Congresspeople to members of boards of directors of private-enterprise companies. (A somewhat analogic comparison also would be to compare a president and his administration to business executives.)


The currently projected budget of the United States of America (although perhaps President Obama's budget has recently changed, but no matter to this exercise) reflects revenue of $2,700,000,000,000. If that number is divided by the number of Congresspeople, 535, the revenue per Member is $5,046,728,971. There are approximately 1,800,000 employees of the federal government (as of 2007 and excluding intelligence agencies such as CIA) which yields about 3,365 federal employees per each Member of Congress.

Now let's compare that "responsibility" (if you can use that word with Congress) to that of a member of a board of directors of the couple of the largest American corporations. Revenues of Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.(WMT) are $400 billion to $450 billion a year. With ten to fifteen members of its board of directors, that equates to around $26 to $45 billion in revenues for which each board member is responsible. This, compared to about $5 billion per member of Congress.

XOM with about 80,000 employees and WMT, with more employees than the U. S. Government, has about 2.1 million, so the number of employees per board member is 5,333 and 210,000 versus 3,365 per Congressional Member.

Members of Congress are currently paid $174,00 plus an extraordinary amount of "perks" such as fat retirement plans, gold-plated healthcare, free parking, and, for many, cars and drivers and free flights on corporate-sized and military jets. Directors of XOM and WMT get between $220,000 and about $325,000 in cash and stock, restricted in sale. The pay is arguably roughly the same.

Interestingly, the boards of XOM and WMT have only 4 – 5 committees and a staff of perhaps a few people, plus some ad-hoc consultants. The individual members have no staff. Board members are up for election each year.

Now compare that to Congress, with 45 committees:

House of Representatives
Personnel: Each Member is alloted $748,312 to hire up to 18 staff and four additional temporary, part-time, of shared staff. Staff can not be paid more than $151,974 per year.
Official office expenses: Each Member begins with a base allowance of $187,236 to spend on office expenses. Office expenses may include travel costs, office equipment, district office rental, stationary and office supplies, telecommunications, printing, postage, computer services, and other office-related expenses. The price for travel cost is judged by a formula (explained in this document). The minimum mileage amount for a Member is $6,200.
Senate
Administrative and clerical: This allowance is allocated based on the size of the Senator's state. The amount varies from $1,685,301 for a state with a population less than 5 million to $2,833,718 for a state with a population topping 28 million.
Legislative assistance: Each Senator is alloted $450,477 to hire three Legislative Assistants to be paid no more than $150,159.


As for staff, according to C-Span (http://www.c-span.org/questions/weekly35.asp):   
(Prior to the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 staff rarely topped one or two advisers.)
Personal Staff--who work for individual Members of Congress--11,692

Committee Staff--who work for either the majority or minority on congressional committees--2,492
Leadership Staff--who work for the Speaker, Majority Leader, Minority Leader, Majority Whip or Minority Whip--274
Institutional Staff-- majority or minority party floor staff, and non-partisan staff: police, legislative clerks, building, janitorial--5034
Support Agency non-partisan Staff—Congressional Research Service [747], Congressional Budget Office [232], and General Accounting Office [3,500].

FYI, this indicates that partisan staff -- those who apparently work for a Member's reelection -- number 19,592 and the non-partisan staff equals only 4,479. 

Or roughly 24,000 staff versus virtually none for the private-company boards of directors.
Members of the U. S. House of Representatives are elected every two years, Senators, four.

Congress Members do work from Tuesday to Thursdays with liberal time off (including at least a month in August), while boards of directors work less and have probably a maximum of twelve meetings a year.

Well that's about it.  Fair and balanced, to coin (or copy) a phrase.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Rich Get Richer...Oops

The Democratic Party's power-grabbing mantra, "the rich get richer" was dealt a severe blow not found in any of the left-leaning media. New figures show the "rich" getting poorer. Today's top 1% of taxpayers -- those making $400,000 a year -- are expected to end 2010 at 15% to 19% of all income, down severely from the 23.5% in 2007. American is getting more equal or "fair" as Democrats would describe it. End of Story.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

U. S. Green Jobs run by Communist

Well the below-mentioned key component in Obama's "green jobs" stuff, the communist Van Jones quit, mercilessly hounded by Fox News, but one "progressive" out means nothing to the Obama search for Utopian Power. It continues.


President Obama is committing billions and billions of taxpayers' money -- formerly yours and mine -- to a highly-risky, unproven, but politically-correct endeavor. Green Jobs. In charge? A person who has never held a job. He's a proven non-profit founder and fund raiser, anti-police activist and self-professed Communist: Van Jones.
This is proof positive that possibly President Obama doesn't have the best interests of America and the majority of its citizens in mind.
March 10, 2009, the Obama White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Nancy Sutley announced that Van Jones was appointed Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at CEQ, described as "a key post".
In 1993, Jones started Bay Area PoliceWatch, the region's only bar-certified hotline and lawyer-referral service for victims and survivors of police abuse. PoliceWatch began as a project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. From 1996-1997, Jones and PoliceWatch led a successful campaign to get officer Marc Andaya fired from the San Francisco Police Department. In 1999 and 2000, Jones was a major leader in the campaign to defeat Proposition 21, a proposition proposed and passed in 2000 that increased a variety of criminal penalties for crimes committed by youth and incorporated many youth offenders into the adult criminal justice system.
In 2001, Jones and Ella Baker Center launched the Books Not Bars campaign which led a successful campaign to block the construction of a proposed "Super-Jail for Youth" in Oakland's Alameda County.
In 2007 the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign was Jones' first concerted effort to combine his lifelong commitment to racial and economic justice with his newer commitment to solving the environmental crisis. It soon took as its mission the establishment of the nation's first "Green Jobs Corps" in Oakland. On October 20, 2008, the City of Oakland formally launched the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, a public-private partnership that will "provide local Oakland residents with job training, support, and work experience so that they can independently pursue careers in the new energy economy."
Next, his "Green For All" formally opened its doors on January 1, 2008. In its first year, Green For All organized "The Dream Reborn," the first national green conference where the majority of attendees were people of color and launched a campaign for a Clean Energy Corps initiative which would create 600,000 'green-collar' jobs while retrofitting and upgrading more than 15 million American buildings.
A racially charged activist group called "Color of Change" founded by Van Jones, a special advisor to the Obama Administration, is trying to silence popular radio and Fox News personality Glenn Beck by calling for a boycott of Beck’s TV advertisers; putting tax-payer dollars to dubious use, the not-for-profit organization has hired well-heeled Hollywood publicist Ken Sunshine to further instigate the boycott. On July 28th, Beck made a comment on the Fox & Friends morning show about Obama’s reaction to the arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. During the discussion of "Professor-Gate," Beck connected the President’s past association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright to Obama’s comment that Cambridge police officer, Sgt. James Crowley, acted stupidly. Though Beck acknowledged most of the Obama administration is in fact white, he concluded that the President’s world experience made him a "racist." Now "Color of Change" has tried to bully at least five of Beck’s big advertisers -- SC Johnson, Progressive Insurance, Geico, Procter & Gamble and Nexus Lexis -- to pull their ads from Beck’s national cable program
Van Jones has been a strong voice for green jobs and we look forward to having him work with departments and agencies to advance the President’s agenda of creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources. Jones will also help to shape and advance the Administration’s energy and climate initiatives with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities
2008 New York Times best-seller, The Green Collar Economy.
Watch Jones’ panel at the first official meeting of the Middle Class Task Force in Philadephia chaired by Vice President Joe, and featuring major Democrat activists, fund raisers and John Podesta.

On October 7, 2008, HarperOne released Jones's first book, The Green Collar Economy. The book outlines Jones's "substantive and viable plan for solving the biggest issues facing the country--the failing economy and our devastated environment." The book has received favorable reviews from such environmental activists as Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Laurie David, Paul Hawken, Winona LaDuke and Ben Jealous. It is the first environmental book authored by an African-American to make the New York Times bestseller list.
Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker profiled Jones in January:
"Your goal has to be to get the greenest solutions to the poorest people," Jones told me. "That’s the only goal that’s morally compelling enough to generate enough energy to pull this transition off. The challenge is making this an everybody movement, so your main icons are Joe Six-Pack—Joe the Plumber—becoming Joe the Solar Guy, or that kid on the street corner putting down his handgun, picking up a caulk gun."
Speaking to the East Bay Express, Jones said he first became radicalized in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King riots.
"I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary. I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist."
Jones was still a law student at Yale Law School at the time. While volunteering as a legal monitor during a protest following the Rodney King riots, Jones was arrested along with other legal monitors and some protesters. He was released after 4 hours.

Yes, he'll be in charge of "creating" "green jobs" in capitalist, free-enterprise America.

And as sort of an aside, President Obama, hater of oil and gas, apparently only hates it here in the U. S. According to a Wall Street Journal editorial (August 18, 2009, page A 16, "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling"). Obama is lending upwards of $2,000,000,000 to Brazil's state-owned Petrobras to finance exploration offshore of Rio de Janeiro, through the U. S. Import-Export Bank.