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Editorial: The Mirage of Bipartisan Health Care Meetings

With the seating of newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, Barack Obama has now agreed to hold televised meetings with Republicans and Democrats on health care reform. This feeble attempt by Obama and the Democrats to look bipartisan is nothing more than calculated damage control trying to prevent the inevitable losses in the coming 2010 mid-term elections.

According to Politico, Barack Obama stated that he wants to “look at the Republican ideas out there.” But the real question is, where was this idea six months ago when Congressional Democrats were having backroom meetings while crafting a bill like a one-party aristocracy?

This shows once again that Barack Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress will only listen to the American people when they are forced to. And in this case, it took the special election in Massachusetts.

If this government was truly created “by the people, for the people,” then why was it that the Obama Administration and Congress refused to drop their push for socialized medicine even though the American people were vehemently opposed to it? (Final Health care poll showed 58% opposed the current bill according to Rasmussen Reports)

And before we get all excited about Obama’s newfound ways, let’s remember he has only promised to “look” at Republicans and not to start over with bipartisan input. In fact, at the Obama-GOP Baltimore confab some weeks back, Obama explicitly said that he had “read every Republican bill.” Apparently, that gem now enters the growing repository of Obama “misstatements.”

This paper has repeatedly called for Barack Obama and his Democratic majority in Congress to go back to the drawing boards and take an honest and open look at ways to lower costs in the health care industry.

One major idea that has been ignored by Obama and his cohorts is to allow state-to-state competition. It’s simple, why should someone from North Carolina not be allowed to buy health insurance from South Carolina?

In almost every case, more competition equals lower prices.

Another major idea that has been ignored is tort reform. According to Legal Newsline, “the Congressional Budget Office director, Douglas Elmendorf, has said as much as $54 billion could be saved over the next 10 years if Congress enacts legal reforms including a $250,000 cap on damages for pain and suffering and a $500,000 cap on punitive damages and restricting the statute of limitations on malpractice claims.” And this doesn’t even include the likely savings that will occur based upon a reduction of defensive medicine often practiced by doctors today.

These are just two entirely obvious ideas that have been ignored by the Obama Administration and Congress. They should be included in the mix when Congress goes back to the drawing board. And they should start with a tabula rasa – to be filled in at the will of the American people.

N.C. Schools: Those Who Erase History

By William A. Wilson

It is one thing to forget, ignore or misinterpret our nation’s history, but a group of uber-liberal educrats in North Carolina is taking the radical revisionism of America one step further. These politically-correct, taxpayer-funded “thought police” are actually trying to erase American history from our children’s textbooks.

What do they want to replace it with? Radical environmental propaganda from left-wing extremists who view American liberties as obstacles to overcome, not safeguards to be defended.

In perhaps the most glaring example to date of our government’s descent into socialist madness, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is attempting to remove all American history prior to 1877 from its textbooks, replacing it with a “global studies” curriculum.

Rather than learning about George Washington crossing the Delaware or Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves (while studying from documents like the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation), high school students in North Carolina would instead be indoctrinated with more multicultural rhetoric and the fuzzy science of climate change (while studying form the Koran and the “Copenhagen Accord”).

This sort of raw indoctrination is worse than misguided – it’s treasonous.

If this new anti-American curriculum is adopted, American children would no longer learn about the principles on which this nation was established – and the blood that was shed in defense of those principles – they would instead be spoon-fed Obama administration talking points on how intolerant, imperialist America owes a huge financial debt to the rest of the world, one that we can start repaying immediately by helping developing nations “combat global warming.”

“What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach (history) where students are connected to it, where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day,” the chief academic officer for North Carolina’s school system told FOX News.

What rubbish. These government censors are trying to rewrite history, pure and simple.

By removing the entire first century of American history from our children’s textbooks, these radicals are doing more than just putting a “liberal spin” on things – they are trying to fundamentally alter the world view of future generations of U.S. citizens. They are trying to rip out American democracy by its roots and replace it with what Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has dubbed the “New Socialism,” the exploitation of climate-based fear-mongering as a means to facilitate a massive wealth transfer from American taxpayers to third-world governments, many of which are hostile to the United States.

Joseph Goebbels would no doubt be proud of such a curriculum – and the objective behind it.

Unable to convince the “America of today” to blindly follow Obama’s socialist vision, these “Green Nazis” are endeavoring to create an “America of tomorrow” that is more receptive to their agenda – even as the scientific case for climate change continues to crumble all around them.

This attempted indoctrination must not stand. Not only must this so-called curriculum be rejected, but the educrats pushing it must be dismissed and never allowed near our children again.

An abiding respect and appreciation for America’s bedrock freedoms and founding wisdom are the only things currently keeping these socialist hordes from overrunning this county – which is no doubt why they are now being targeted.

America was founded on a set of fundamental principles – a core collection of “self-evident” truths that forms the basis of who we are as a people. We cannot allow those truths to be erased – or those principles to be discarded – for anything, least of all the latest liberal zeitgeist.

Bill Wilson is the president of Americans for Limited Government.

A Lesson for Dems from Delawares Beau Biden

By Chris Slavens

The Democrats’ future in the U.S. Senate looks even gloomier following Delaware Attorney General Joseph R. “Beau” Biden’s announcement on January 25 that he would not run for the seat vacated by his father, Vice President Joseph R. “Joe” Biden, Jr. Democrats at the national level, unnerved by a recent series of Republican victories in special elections, had looked to the younger Biden as their best hope for keeping both of the First State’s Senate seats in Democratic hands. The refusal of the vice president’s son to run for Senate in the nation’s second-smallest state says a lot about the current political climate.

Delawareans have been voting for (or against) Bidens since 1969, when 26-year-old Joe Biden ran for county council and won, only to run for U.S. Senate two years later, bypassing the usual political ladder of state offices and scoring a tremendous upset victory over Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs. In 2006, his son ran for state attorney general, successfully relying on family name recognition to defeat an opponent that was significantly better qualified. Of course, most followers of national-level politics probably have one question about the goings-on of Delaware: Who the heck cares?

The Obama administration cares. So does the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democrats across the country who see their Senate majority slipping away, one seat at a time. The fact is, Biden was their only hope to defeat Delaware’s Republican candidate, current U.S. Representative Michael Castle, a former two-term governor whose moderate status has earned him nine House terms in a strongly Democratic state. Barring a miracle for Democrats, Castle will occupy a seat held by their party since 1972.

Sound familiar? Massachusetts, anyone? If Democrats have learned anything from recent losses, it is that they do not own certain states or offices, regardless of history or tradition. Their compliance with the president’s radical agenda is fueling a popular nonpartisan tea party movement, and awakening citizens who have previously stayed out of politics. Just as the Senate seat recently won by Scott Brown has been called “the Kennedy seat,” so could Delaware’s, temporarily held by placeholder Ted Kaufman, be called “the Biden seat.”

No longer. The younger Biden’s wise decision not to run, thereby protecting his political future, should be a warning sign for other Democrats, as well as the White House. A prominent figure in a tiny state is unwilling to run despite his party’s urging, while the current administration and Congress are losing popularity. It is not a coincidence. How will Democrats fare in more moderate, evenly-divided battleground states, with candidates that cannot lean on local popularity and power like that of the Biden family?

Republican Scott Brown’s recent upset victory taught us a lesson, or should have. Political parties or families do not own seats, and dissatisfaction with a White House agenda can affect local races. The lesson from Delaware, in the form of “Beau” Biden’s refusal to run, is that at least one Democrat has learned from what happened in Massachusetts, and now, faced with the prospect of a loss in the November election, is unwilling to wager his political future for the sake of a floundering party. In the coming months, as campaign filing deadlines draw closer, how many other would-be candidates will discover that, like Biden, they are not gamblers?

Chris Slavens, former contributor to the Wilmington News Journal,  is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.

ALG in the News: Tea Party conference hit by allegations of profiteering and hijacking


ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured article, The London Telegraph quotes ALG Senior News Editor on the tea party movement.


Tea Party conference hit by allegations of profiteering and hijacking

The first national conference for America’s burgeoning Tea Party movement has been hit by allegations of profiteering and hijacking of the cause.

By Alex Spillius in Washington

Disgruntled critics within the grassroots conservative movement have become particularly incensed by the $100,000 (£63,000) fee to be paid to Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate who will be the star of the event as its keynote speaker.

After adverse comments from Right-wing bloggers - one commented: “that’s a lot of damned tea” - Mrs Palin has promised to donate the fee to “campaigns, candidates and issues”.

“My only goal is to support the grassroots activists who are fighting for responsible, limited government - and our Constitution,” she wrote in USA Today, defending her decision to speak at the convention.

“The nature of the Tea Party movement means there may never be a ’perfectly orchestrated’ event: democracy in action doesn’t come with a manual.”

A loose confederation of conservative campaigners, the Tea Party movement sprung up in opposition to the bank bail outs and President Barack Obama’s £492 billion stimulus bill. It gathered steam with vocal opposition to his plans to overhaul the health care system, which caused several Democrats to dilute their support.

But now leading activist groups have scrapped plans to attend the movement’s first major event, which begins today [thurs] at a plush resort hotel on the outskirts of Nashville.

Several sponsors have pulled out along with two speakers, the Republican congresswomen Michelle Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, who were concerned about the event’s for-profit status.

Tickets for three days of speeches, workshops and strategy sessions cost £343, with the closing banquet featuring Mrs Palin alone costing £218.

Intended to unite the disparate movement that is threatening to revolutionise American politics, the event is doing more to divide it. Eric Erickson, founder of the leading Right-wing blog RedState.com, said the high charges being sought from modest-earning activists by little-known organisers “sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks if I fork over my bank account number”.

“I think the tea party movement has largely descended into ego and quest for purpose for individuals at the expense of what the tea party movement started out to be,” he said.
The event is the brainchild of Judson Phillips, a lawyer backed financially by Bill Hemrick, a retired businessman who made a fortune from baseball player cards. He was initially keen to involve Mrs Palin in a business venture.

At first Mr Phillips said that all profits would go to a political fund to support conservative candidates. Lately he has claimed the convention could even lose money.

Robert Romano, a spokesman for Americans for Limited Government, a Washington pressure group, said: “The for-profit model for tea parties is probably a mistake. It clearly hasn’t benefitted the movement to proceed in that manner.”

Continue reading here.

Letting the Public Sector Sleep in Peace

By Carter Clews

Newly seated Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has triggered a firestorm by having the audacity to go on ABC’s “This Week” and suggest: “We need to put a freeze on federal hires and federal raises because, as you know, federal employees are making twice as much as their private counterparts.”

Public employee union bosses, of course, exploded in anger. Public employees swooned and reached for the smelling salts (as opposed to their usual fare of bon-bons and Sominex). And Barack Obama reportedly performed a séance in hopes of raising Ted Kennedy from the dead.

But, the fact is: Scott Brown was right – as far as he went. And he should have gone much further. We don’t simply need to put a freeze on federal hires and raises. We need to fire federal employees. The American people, themselves, are clearly prepared to do their part come November. But, it would be a chipper idea to get a head start now by firing about ten percent of the drones and dregs now feeding from the federal trough.

Everywhere else in America, workers are reporting to work each morning not knowing whether they will have a job by the end of the day. More than ten percent of American workers – if you believe Barack Obama’s Labor Department – are now unemployed. And if you add those who are working part time because they can’t find full time jobs, as well as those who have simply given up looking, the figure is nearly double that.

But, there is one place where no one worries about losing his or her job, where the very idea of a pay cut is little more than laughable, and where the next pay raise is as certain as the sun rising in the east and Barack Obama spending money. No, it’s not the Enchanted Kingdom. It is, of course, the federal “work” place.

Scott Brown stirred the coals by citing public employee compensation figures from a study put out by the prestigious Cato Institute. So, let’s look at what that study reported about the U.S. government’s 1.9 million civilian public employees – and then we can decide for ourselves whether the paper pushers have a leg to sleep on.

According to the Cato study, the average private sector employee in America today makes $59,909 year. For that, he or she makes a product or performs a service for which the average American consumer feels content to shell out his or her hard-earned money. It’s called fair trade. It’s all part of the free enterprise system that has made America the most prosperous and productive nation in the history or the world.

And then you have the public sector employee. According to the Cato study, the average federal civilian employee makes $119,982 a year. If you said to yourself, “Why, that’s nearly twice as much as the average private sector employee!” you are absolutely correct (and if you went to public school, your math teacher is probably scratching her head and wondering how you figured that there out).

For that $119,909, the public employee produces … paper. Well, let’s be fair – not just paper; he or she also produces rules, regulations, red tape, baby showers, birthday parties, Christmas (whoops, sorry Holiday) parties, retirement parties (from what, God only knows), party parties, and a wide variety of other social events that would be a major impediment to work, were any actually being done.

Interestingly enough, federal civilian employees even make $6,000 a year more than federal military employees. So, if you are giving any thought as to whether to fight for your country, or just sleep it off, you might want to go to usajobs.gov rather than marines.mil. Why risk your life with the few and the proud when your own government will pay you more just to get a good day’s sleep?

And it gets worse. From 2000 to 2008, the pay for federal civilian employees skyrocketed 57%, while the pay for workers in the private sector grew by only 31%. No wonder the average voluntary quit rate for federal employees is only one-third that of private sector workers. The only question is: What is it they’re quitting – stringing together paper clips?

Let’s face it, the federal government could save billions of dollars a year in direct compensation simply by cutting the federal employee force by just ten percent. It could save hundreds of billions more by then eliminating the regulatory agencies that employ these paper-pushing bureaucrats. And it could start with the thoroughly useless Department of Agriculture, which provides taxpayer-funded bed and board to 100,000 sleepwalking sloths.

So, here’s the bottom line: Scott Brown is moving in the right direction. Only he and his fellow free marketeers need to move much further and far faster. Because if they don’t, Barack Obama will soon have every American feeding at the public trough. And the last sight you will see are the once fabled Captains of Industry flicking off the lights as they move real jobs offshore and let the public sector sleep in peace.

Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News.

Rahms Discourse

ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.

Reclaiming Education

By David Bozeman

In 2000, George W. Bush reclaimed the presidency for the GOP (albeit by a whisker) by co-opting such Democratic ‘kitchen table’ issues as education. Granted, in 2000, with relative peace and prosperity, such a softer message could far better resonate. But today, with a shaky world economy, the need for real education reform is as strong as ever, and conservatives, once again, can take the lead in addressing a problem that has, sadly, remained dormant for much of the last decade.

President Bush’s No Child Left Behind produced a mixed bag of results, but his remarks about the “soft bigotry of low expectations” highlighted the educational ghetto that has trapped so many poor, inner-city students in cycles of low test scores, high dropout rates and poverty. A post-9/11 world slowed the momentum toward greater reform, and the Obama Administration has, predictably, reversed some positive trends toward offering disadvantaged students the same choices enjoyed by wealthy liberals (President Obama, for the record, sends his daughters to an elite, private school).

The Democrats, by way of Senator Dick Durban of Illinois, cut funding for the District of Columbia’s voucher-based Opportunity Scholarship Program, an initiative that supporters claim raised student test scores. Voucher opponents, including President Obama, fear the effects of taking money out of the public system.

Interestingly, liberals, to whom ‘choice’ is all the rage in sexual matters and who preach the wonders of diversity in the workplace and higher academia, are dead set against allowing education dollars and students to venture outside the NEA’s cookie-cutter ghetto. Obama, despite his support for charter schools and greater emphasis on math and science, mouths feel-good platitudes, such as “rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones and demanding results from government at every level.”

But neither left nor right in 2010 appears serious about reform. As long as primary education is a public monopoly, no one can expect the public sector to reform itself out of a job, outside of the occasional tweaks in time for elections. Not even the D.C. school system, notorious for low-test scores, crime and high dropout rates, elicits the national outrage it would if it were a private company failing its customers with such alarming consistency. According the The Washington Post in July of ‘09, only about one half of elementary students in the District’s public schools were deemed proficient in math and reading. This was an increase from about one-third in 2007. Gains at the middle and high school levels were more modest, with proficiency rates around 40%. Also disturbing, the Post reported in June of last year a study that put on-time graduation rates below 50%.

Howard Rich, of Americans for Limited Government, notes that there aren’t enough choices out there to create a real constituency for change. When fed mediocrity long enough, one considers it the norm. He writes that nationally, only about 60,000 students receive scholarships. Parental choice simply isn’t available in most states and usually consists of government controlled means-tested programs.

True education reform is not a mere ‘issue’ that could gain traction. It speaks to the individual needs and potentials of all American students. Some will excel in technical trades, some will shine artistically, and some will require the strict discipline of religious instruction. The next leg of the Tea Party movement could ask why the Democrats, who campaigned on ‘change’ and a ‘yes, we can’ chant, are unwilling to defy a status quo that inner city students and their parents have already confronted. The American Right could do well with leadership to step forward and side with the students of the District of Columbia and all students and their parents across the land. Sometimes being on the winning side of an issue is not as important as determining yourself what the defining issues are.

Like it or not, our economy is no longer industrial-based. Many if not most jobs of the technical and information age require 21st Century training, and the future, whether one is discussing education, the economy or politics, belongs not to those who merely react but to those who ACT. Whichever side steps up to speak for students will own the education agenda for the upcoming decade.

David Bozeman, former North Carolina Libertarian Party Chairman, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.

Too Hot Not To Note: Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009


ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured list, Judicial Watch announces Washington’s Ten Most Corrupt Politicians.


Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes:

  1. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 "Ten Most Corrupt" list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against Dodd for undervaluing a property he owns in Ireland on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms. Judicial Watch's complaint forced Dodd to amend the forms. However, press reports suggest the property to this day remains undervalued. Judicial Watch also alleges in the complaint that Dodd obtained a sweetheart deal for the property in exchange for his assistance in obtaining a presidential pardon (during the Clinton administration) and other favors for a long-time friend and business associate. The false financial disclosure forms were part of the cover-up. Dodd remains the head the Senate Banking Committee.
  2. Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year's worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign. Ensign admitted in June to an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff members, who then allegedly obtained special favors from the Nevada Republican in exchange for his silence. According to The New York Times: "The Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee are expected to conduct preliminary inquiries into whether Senator John Ensign violated federal law or ethics rules as part of an effort to conceal an affair with the wife of an aide…" The former staffer, Douglas Hampton, began to lobby Mr. Ensign's office immediately upon leaving his congressional job, despite the fact that he was subject to a one-year lobbying ban. Ensign seems to have ignored the law and allowed Hampton lobbying access to his office as a payment for his silence about the affair. (These are potentially criminal offenses.) It looks as if Ensign misused his public office (and taxpayer resources) to cover up his sexual shenanigans.
  3. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending. Not only was OneUnited Bank in massive financial turmoil, but it was also "under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives' use." Rep. Frank admitted he spoke to a "federal regulator," and Treasury granted the funds. (The bank continues to flounder despite Frank's intervention for federal dollars.) Moreover, Judicial Watch uncovered documents in 2009 that showed that members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues, even as liberals led by Rep. Frank continued to block attempts to rein in the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). For example, during a hearing on September 10, 2003, before the House Committee on Financial Services considering a Bush administration proposal to further regulate Fannie and Freddie, Rep. Frank stated: "I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two Government Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury." Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008. Frank also engaged in a relationship with a Fannie Mae Executive while serving on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
  4. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system. (Did we mention Geithner now runs the IRS?) It wasn't until President Obama tapped Geithner to head the Treasury Department that he paid back most of the money, although the IRS kindly waived the hefty penalties. In March 2009, Geithner also came under fire for his handling of the AIG bonus scandal, where the company used $165 million of its bailout funds to pay out executive bonuses, resulting in a massive public backlash. Of course as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner helped craft the AIG deal in September 2008. However, when the AIG scandal broke, Geithner claimed he knew nothing of the bonuses until March 10, 2009. The timing is important. According to CNN: "Although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders on Tuesday that he learned of AIG's impending $160 million bonus payments to members of its troubled financial-products unit on March 10, sources tell TIME that the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on Feb. 28. That is ten days before Treasury staffers say they first learned 'full details' of the bonus plan, and three days before the [Obama] Administration launched a new $30 billion infusion of cash for AIG." Throw in another embarrassing disclosure in 2009 that Geithner employed "household help" ineligible to work in the United States, and it becomes clear why the Treasury Secretary has earned a spot on the "Ten Most Corrupt Politicians in Washington" list.
  5. Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won't be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro's Cuba. Moreover, there is his soft record on terrorism. Holder bypassed Justice Department procedures to push through Bill Clinton's scandalous presidential pardons and commutations, including for 16 members of FALN, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that orchestrated approximately 120 bombings in the United States, killing at least six people and permanently maiming dozens of others, including law enforcement officers. His record in the current administration is no better. As he did during the Clinton administration, Holder continues to ignore serious incidents of corruption that could impact his political bosses at the White House. For example, Holder has refused to investigate charges that the Obama political machine traded VIP access to the White House in exchange for campaign contributions – a scheme eerily similar to one hatched by Holder's former boss, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Holder Justice Department also came under fire for dropping a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. On Election Day 2008, Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb threatened voters as they approached polling stations. Holder has also failed to initiate a comprehensive Justice investigation of the notorious organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is closely tied to President Obama. There were allegedly more than 400,000 fraudulent ACORN voter registrations in the 2008 campaign. And then there were the journalist videos catching ACORN Housing workers advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration, and child prostitution laws. Holder's controversial decisions on new rights for terrorists and his attacks on previous efforts to combat terrorism remind many of the fact that his former law firm has provided and continues to provide pro bono representation to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Holder's politicization of the Justice Department makes one long for the days of Alberto Gonzales.

See 6-10 here.

Obamas Budget: Fiscal Armageddon

By Howard Rich

“We’re not going to save our way out of this recession. We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession.” – U.S. Majority Whip Jim Clyburn

Just days before Congressman Jim Clyburn had the “audacity” to admit what D.C. politicians were actually doing with our tax dollars, U.S. President Barack Obama had the cowardice to continue concealing government’s unprecedented generational larceny.

“It is critical that we rein in the budget deficits that we’ve been accumulating for far too long,” Obama said in unveiling his latest effort to distract American citizens from a looming fiscal Armageddon.

Of course, after proposing a so-called “budget freeze” in his State of the Union speech, Obama rolled out the “Mother of all Boondoggles” (for now, at least), a $3.8 trillion spending plan for the coming fiscal year that includes a record $1.6 trillion deficit (on top of the $1.4 trillion deficit government will run in the current fiscal year). By the end of this month, the Treasury now projects that the U.S. will hit its $12.4 trillion debt ceiling, coming on the heels of a vote last week in the Senate to raise the debt ceiling from $12.4 trillion to $14.294 trillion. And just this week, Moody’s warned that the nation’s Triple-A rating could be in jeopardy “if the current upward trend in government debt were to continue and become irreversible.”

“It would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children’s future to pay our way today,” Obama said – but then he did just that, endorsing a spending plan that grows government by hundreds of billions of dollars when the nation can least afford it, and when the country’s first major entitlement bubble is about to burst.

According to a new CBO report, Social Security outlays will exceed revenues for the first time in 25 years in 2010 – and a wave of red ink is rapidly building up behind this immediate tipping point as the program will run permanent deficits beginning in 2016. Meanwhile a similar Medicaid implosion is on the horizon, and on top of these brewing disasters we have the hundreds of billions of dollars America must devote to interest payments on its mushrooming debt.

Yet amazingly, with the same sleight of hand that his so-called stimulus “created or saved” imaginary jobs (in non-existent Congressional districts), Obama now claims that federal deficits will begin to magically decline by 2012 – although even his rosiest numbers don’t envision annual deficits falling below $1 trillion until after 2020.

Where will our national debt be at that point? $24 trillion?

That’s classic Washington calculus though, isn’t it? Nothing ever gets cut from government, as we just have politicians who promise to borrow less of your money at some point in the increasingly distant future. But that point in the future never actually arrives, because there is invariably some emergency or perceived social obligation which crops up to justify yet another massive expansion of government.

In addition to excluding such politically-correct contingencies from his spending plans, Obama also erroneously claims that future deficits could be reduced if only the U.S. Congress were to pass his socialized medicine proposal – with its estimated $2.5 trillion price tag.

Only according to Obama’s asinine arithmetic do spending explosions and entitlement expansions equate to future savings.

This fiscal lunacy is clearly not what the American people want. Yet even though they held up unmistakable “STOP” signs in elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama and his Congressional allies are ignoring the message and pushing the pedal to the floor as they drive this nation off of a fiscal cliff.

Obama’s rampant spending isn’t even the gravest danger, either, as his budget threatens to exacerbate the damage by putting future economic growth in a stranglehold.

While Obama claims to have placed “jobs” at the top of his priority list, his budget raises taxes on capital gains and hikes upper income tax brackets as part of an effort to pump more than $460 billion into government’s coffers – mirroring the faulty “payment plan” behind his socialized medicine proposal.

And while soaking the rich makes for great populist rhetoric, it doesn’t create jobs – in fact, it ensures that job creators keep what little money Washington leaves them with buried in their back yards, not making payroll.

With his presidency on the ropes, Barack Obama is portraying himself to the masses as a deficit hawk focused on improving our economy.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

His unprecedented spending binge would stab at the very heart of job creation in this country, while plunging this nation deeper into a deficit spiral from which it might never ever be able to escape.

Howard Rich, Chairman of Americans for Limited Government, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.

Obama: The Real Gambling Man

ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge.
 
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