Friday, September 16, 2011

The UN, a waste of 7 Billion per year.

U.N. Reform Advocate Questions What U.S. Is Getting for Its $7B Contribution

September 14, 2011

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, addresses a press conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to discuss the U.N. Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act. Standing with her is Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.). (Photo courtesy House Foreign Affairs Committee)

(CNSNews.com) – House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen acknowledged Tuesday that legislation aimed at making U.S. funding to the United Nations contingent on reforms lacks bipartisan support but said it was important to make a stand for “the principles that we believe in.”
As she prepares to mark up her bill in committee, Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) faces mounting opposition from the Obama administration and advocacy groups supportive of deeper U.S. engagement with the U.N.
The U.N. Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act (H.R. 2829) also lacks the support of a single House Democrat. The number of co-sponsors has climbed from 57 on Aug. 30 – the day the bill was introduced – to 74 as of Tuesday; all 74 are Republicans.
The bill seeks to change the way the U.N. is funded, allowing the U.S. and other member states to fund only those activities and agencies deemed efficient and in the national interest.
It also contains a raft of provisions targeting areas such as the Palestinian bid for U.N. recognition; the roles played at U.N. agencies by countries like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia; and linking reforms to support for any new or expanded peacekeeping missions.
Addressing a press conference on Capitol Hill in front of pictures of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shaking hands with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi addressing the world body, Ros-Lehtinen made an appeal to “get back to the founding principles of the U.N.”
“Let’s not make it a staging ground for pariah states,” she said.
Flanked by Republican colleagues, Ros-Lehtinen defended the initiative against administration criticism, including the charge by a senior State Department official last week that it was “backwards.”
“Some call our bill ‘backwards’ but I don’t think it's backwards to demand transparency, accountability, and reform,” she said. “I do think the adjective ‘backwards’ too often applies to what we’re paying for at the U.N.”
American taxpayers provide 22 percent of the U.N.’s regular budget and 27 percent of the peacekeeping budget, and additional billions of dollars in “voluntary” contributions to miscellaneous U.N. agencies. The total U.S. contribution in fiscal year 2010 was $7.69 billion.
“What did U.S. taxpayers get in return for all of that money?” Ros-Lehtinen asked. “We got a U.N. that is increasingly non-transparent, unaccountable, ineffective, biased against the U.S., Israel, and other free democracies.”

Illegal Amnesty, courtesy Obama.

Gutierrez: 'I Want to Thank' Obama for Bypassing Congress to Cancel Deportation of Illegals

By Edwin Mora

September 14, 2011

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., left, talks with Rep. Jose Serrano, D-NY, on Capitol

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) thanked President Obama for circumventing the Legislative branch when it comes to immigration law.
Title 8 Section 1325 of the U.S. Code makes it a federal crime to be in the United States illegally. Nevertheless, the Obama administration in August directed federal immigration officials to use "prosecutorial discretion" in deciding which illegal aliens to detain and deport.
“We had a president of the United States that recently was speaking at National Council of La Raza who said during his speech, ‘There are those who simply wish me to bypass Congress when it comes to immigration,’ and many in the audience clapped, saying, ‘Yup, bypass Congress…’” Gutierrez told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) conference on Monday.
“He (Obama) said, ‘But I can’t bypass Congress,’ and people in the audience said, ‘Yes you can,’ and you want to know something? They were right -- he could and he did, and I want to thank the President of the United States, and I want to thank all of those that work at the White House for issuing new guidance when it comes to deportations,” Gutierrez added.
(Obama in July told the National Council of La Raza that although the idea of bypassing Congress and changing U.S. immigration laws on his own was “very tempting,” his hands were tied because “that is not how our system works.”)

Obama Whitehouse says it’s still not their fault

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/09/obama-team-downplays-defeat-in-ny-house-race/1

‘White House spokesman Jay Carney attributed Turner's win in New York's 9th congressional district to local factors that do not apply nationally. "Special elections are often unique, and their outcomes don't tell you very much about future regularly scheduled elections" ‘

Fair enough on one special election, but the liberals have been soundly beaten in how many special elections now? Even the liberal medias polls, which anyone of us can remember repeated instances of being biased 5-10% toward the left as compared to the actual results, show Obama in freefall.

$528M loan to solar company failed, and cost jobs.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iRPABmRVHS0OvsDNHiJts4_89TFw?docId=51871ca72b4646b68a2c8fb121ee60b6

Another failed Obama jobs initiative. This one cost the taxpayers $528 million AND 1100 jobs. Oh, and this is yet another Obama screw-up that isn’t Bush’s fault… Bush said no only 6 months earlier. As usual the whole problem is the liberal philosophy of government micromanaging all aspects of the economy. No government ever has done so successfully, and none ever will. Only free markets can succeed.

Obama, worst president since 1920 in NY9.

What, Obama worry? New York House district elects first Republican since 1920

September 14, 2011 | 4:04am

President Obama is taking his big airplane out of Dodge today, down to North Carolina.

And who can blame him for going the opposite direction from Gotham after this morning's special election results in New York 9?

There, as forecast here last week, a 70-year-old Republican businessman and political novice named Bob Turner whacked veteran Democrat David Weprin, 53-47, in a special election to replace Rep. Anthony "Look at My Junk" Weiner.

This kind of stunning upset in that area of Brooklyn and Queens happens like clockwork every 91 years. Whenever the approval of a disinterested Democratic president hovers in the mid-30s on a stagnant economy and he looks wishy-washy on rigid support for Israel.

Weprin had everything going for him in Archie Bunker's boroughs:

He's an Orthodox Jew in a district that's 40% Jewish running against a Catholic. He's a well-known political name with state legislative experience. He has the backing of big-time Dems including Chuckie Schumer, who used to represent the district and bequeathed it to his aide Weiner. This Obama guy carried the area by 11 points back in 2008.

And Weprin's got a moustache.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, Weprin was off on the national debt by $10 trillion in one interview. But that presidential election win was 1,048 days ago. Obama's much better known now and that seems to work against him.

This White House has had its own agenda all along -- the healthcare heave, financial reforms. While all along polls told the Chicagoans that jobs and the economy are top priority.

If history repeats itself, this Obama crowd as it did after losing the Virginia governor's office and the New Jersey governor's office and Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts, will find fault with someone else, likely the candidate.

The wise Marc Ambinder hears it already.

Remember all the White House whispers about lousy campaigner Martha Coakley when she lost to Scott Brown despite (or perhaps because of?) a last-minute campaign day with Obama?

And then there were last November's midterms when voters tossed all those House Pelosi people who obeyed Obama's pleas to pass healthcare.

Those dozens of Democrats going under the bus turned out great for the president, however. With a Republican House the Democratic president has someone else to blame now when his belated jobs bill goes nowhere.

That's what he'll be touting in Raleigh-Durham today, his doomed $447 billion jobs program.

Good thing that Air Force One, like Southwest, doesn't charge for baggage because along on Obama's Southern trip is a new Bloomberg News Poll. It shows, among other gloomy tidings, that 33% approve of his economy job, 39% like his healthcare handling and 30% are pleased with his deficit doings.

Oh, and a majority don't think his new jobs program will get the job done.

Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi!

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Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi!

by John Stossel

09/14/2011

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Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi! There, I said it. To the extent people believe there are trust funds with their names on them, Social Security is absolutely a Ponzi scheme. So is Medicare. People need to hear it.

Many people think that when the government takes payroll tax from their paychecks, it goes to something like a savings account. Seniors who collect Social Security think they're just getting back money that they put into their "account." Or they think it's like an insurance policy -- you win if you live long enough to get more than you paid in. Neither is true. Nothing is invested. The money taken from you was spent by government that year. Right away. There's no trust fund. The plan is unsustainable. Medicare is worse.

Mitt Romney and other Republicans who scoff at Rick Perry shamelessly pander to older voters. They should tell people the truth.

Still, I'm not convinced Perry has more than a sound bite. In his USA Today op-ed this week, the most he says is, "We must consider reforms to make Social Security financially viable." He doesn't say what kind of reforms.

Charles Ponzi promised to make money for investors by taking advantage of price differences in coupons for postage stamps. Trouble is, he paid some early "investors" with money wheedled from later "investors."

What sustains a Ponzi scheme is deception. If people really knew how it worked, they wouldn't sign on.

Social Security and Medicare are different. You could say no to Ponzi. I wouldn't advise saying no to the government. Not if you want to stay out of prison.

Social Security is nothing more than a promise from politicians. The next gang can break the promise.

Twice the government has argued before the Supreme Court that Social Security is not insurance. In 1960, Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Arthur Sherwood Flemming submitted a brief to the courts stating: "The contribution exacted under the Social Security plan is a true tax. It is not comparable to a premium promising the payment of an annuity commencing at a designated age."

In a ruling that denied a man's property claim to Social Security benefits, the Supreme Court said, "It is apparent that the noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits is bottomed on his contractual premium payments."

So anyone who believes Social Security is an investment plan really has only himself to blame.

If you want evidence, listen to how politicians talk about your Social Security "contributions." They are taxes and nothing more. No one pretends they are premiums. In fact, President Obama and the Republicans want to stimulate the economy by extending a cut in the payroll tax for workers and cutting the employer's share of the tax -- but without reducing Social Security benefits.

Now, I like tax cuts more than the next person, but as Freeman editor Sheldon Richman points out, this one has a complication the politicians don't seem to care about:

"President Obama's jobs program calls for cuts in both sides of the payroll tax. That tax finances Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare are already taking in less money than they need to pay retirees. So they will have to cash in more of the Treasury IOUs left behind when previous surpluses were used to finance general expenditures. But the Treasury is also already running a deficit, a trillion dollars-plus. So it will have to borrow more in the capital markets in order to pay back the Social Security and Medicare funds. Unless Obama makes up the lost revenue by changing the tax code. But then money will be withdrawn from the economy in the form of higher taxes so it can be put back into the economy through the payroll-tax cut. Somehow that's supposed to stimulate the economy."

Like all jobs programs, Obama's latest plan is a scam. The economy would create ample opportunities to earn income -- and make it easier for people to look after themselves in retirement -- if the government would just slash spending, taxes, regulation and privilege.

Ponzi scheme or not, we wouldn't need Social Security.

Boeing labor case

House to vote on bill targeting Boeing labor case

Workers at Boeing Co.'s paint mix facility in Auburn, Wash. hold up their strike sanction vote ballot in 2008. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Associated Press

6:24 a.m. CDT, September 15, 2011

The House is poised to pass a measure that would undermine the government's high-profile labor case against Boeing Co. by curtailing the National Labor Relations Board's enforcement power.

The bill would prohibit the federal agency from ordering any employer to shut down plants or relocate work, even if a company illegally retaliates against unionized employees.

House Republicans say the board should not have the power to dictate where a private business can locate. GOP lawmakers have vilified the NLRB for filing a complaint in April that alleges Boeing punished union workers in Washington state when it opened a new production line for its 787 airplane in South Carolina, a right-to-work state.

"This action is having a chilling effect on businesses all across the country," said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

The bill is likely to pass the GOP-controlled House easily on Thursday, but it isn't expected to get far in the Senate, where Democratic leaders have no plans to let it come to a vote.

Republicans and their allies in the business community have gone after the NLRB for more than a year, as the agency has issued a spate of union-friendly decisions and rules. But the Boeing case has become a major political issue and a rallying cry for GOP presidential candidates courting voters in South Carolina's early primary stakes.

Union leaders say the bill would eviscerate the board's ability to enforce labor laws when companies simply eliminate work to get rid of employees who are pro-union.

The legislation "would undermine the basic rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively by permanently eliminating the NLRB's only effective remedy against a wide range of illegal conduct," Bill Samuel, government affairs director at the AFL-CIO, said in a letter to lawmakers.

Boeing has denied the allegations, saying it opened the Charleston, S.C., plant for valid economic reasons. The case is pending before an administrative law judge in Seattle and could last years.

The complaint by the board's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, does not seek to shut down the Boeing plant. The company would be required to move the new 787 production lines back to Washington state. But Boeing officials say the South Carolina facility was built specifically for construction of the 787. The company claims a ruling for the government would effectively require the company to close the $750 million plant and lay off more than a thousand new workers there.

Solomon said the decision to file a complaint was not politically motivated, but based strictly on evidence that Boeing violated the law. He said Boeing executives made a number of public statements indicating the new plant was built in South Carolina out of frustration over costly strikes by the Machinists union in Washington state, including a 58-day work stoppage in 2008.

"The decision had absolutely nothing to do with political considerations, and there were no consultations with the White House," Solomon said in a statement this week. "Regrettably, some have chosen to insert politics into what should be a straightforward legal procedure."

Boeing officials claim the board took the statements out of context and say they can point to a number of legitimate reasons for locating the new production line in Charleston.

President Barack Obama has not taken a formal position on the case, saying he is reluctant to interfere with an independent government agency. Obama has said companies need to have the freedom to relocate but must follow the law when doing so.

The Obama 2013 Tax Cliff

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904353504576567460396287134.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Business had better enjoy the next 16 months.

President Obama unveiled part two of his American Jobs Act on Monday, and it turns out to be another permanent increase in taxes to pay for more spending and another temporary tax cut. No surprise there. What might surprise Americans, however, is how the President is setting up the U.S. economy for one of the biggest tax increases in history in 2013.

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Mr. Obama said last week that he wants $240 billion in new tax incentives for workers and small business, but the catch is that all of these tax breaks would expire at the end of next year. To pay for all this, White House budget director Jack Lew also proposed $467 billion in new taxes that would begin a mere 16 months from now. The tax list includes limiting deductions for those earning more than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples), limiting tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and a tax increase on carried interest earned by private equity firms. These tax increases would not be temporary.

What this means is that millions of small-business owners had better enjoy the next 16 months, because come January 2013 they are going to get hit with a giant tax bill. Let's call the expensive roll:

• First comes the new tax hikes that Mr. Obama proposed on Monday. Capping itemized deductions and exemptions for the rich would take $405 billion from the private economy for 10 years starting in 2013. Taxing carried interest would raise $18 billion, and repealing tax incentives for oil and gas production would get $41 billion.

• These increases would coincide with the expiration of the tax credits, 100% expensing provisions and payroll tax breaks in Mr. Obama's new jobs program. This would mean a tax hit of $240 billion on small business and workers. That's the downside of temporary tax breaks and other job-creation gimmicks: The incentives quickly vanish, and perhaps so do the jobs.

So even if the White House is right that its latest stimulus plan will create "millions of jobs" through 2012, by this logic a $240 billion tax hike on small businesses in 2013 would cost the economy jobs. This tax wallop would arrive when even the White House says the unemployment rate will still be 7.4%.

• January 2013 is also the same month that Mr. Obama wants the

Bush-era tax rates to expire on Americans earning more than $200,000. That would raise the highest individual income tax rate to about 42%, including deduction phaseouts, from 35% today. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation found in 2009 that $437 billion of business income would be taxed at higher tax rates under the Obama plan. And since some 4.5 million small-business owners file their annual tax returns as subchapter S firms under the individual tax code, this tax increase would often apply to the same people who Mr. Obama is targeting with his new tax credits.

The capital gains and dividend taxes would also rise to an expected 20% rate from 15% today. The 10-year hit to the private economy for all of these expiring Bush rates: about $750 billion.

• Also starting in 2013 are two of ObamaCare's biggest tax increases: an additional 0.9-percentage point levy on top of the 2.9% Medicare tax for those earning more than $200,000, and a new 2.9% surcharge on investment income, including interest income. This will further increase the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 23.8%, for a roughly 60% increase in investment taxes in one year.

The White House's economic logic seems to be that its new spending and temporary tax cuts will so fire up investment and hiring in the next 16 months that the economy will be growing much faster in 2013 and could thus absorb a leap off the tax cliff. But this requires its own leap of faith.

Related Video

http://m.wsj.net/video/20110914/091411opinionobamatax/091411opinionobamatax_512x288.jpg

WSJ Editorial board member Steve Moore on President Obama's plan to pay for temporary tax cuts by hiking income and business taxes over the long haul.

The White House also predicted a similar economic takeoff from the 2009 stimulus that was supposed to make a tax hike possible in 2011. Then last December Mr. Obama proposed new tax incentives only for 2011 because the economy was supposed to be cooking by 2012. Now it wants to extend those tax breaks so the economy will be cruising in 2013.

All of this assumes that American business owners aren't smart enough to look beyond the next few months. They can surely see the new burdens they'll face in 2013, and they aren't about to load up on new employees or take new large risks if they aren't sure what their costs will be in 16 months. They can also reasonably wonder whether Mr. Obama's tax hike will hurt the overall economy in 2013—another reason to be cautious now.

For the White House, the policy calendar is dictated above all by the political necessities of the 2012 election. Mr. Obama will take his chances on 2013 if he can cajole the private economy to create enough new jobs over the next year to win re-election, even if those jobs and growth are temporary. Business owners and workers who would prefer to prosper beyond Election Day aren't likely to share Mr. Obama's enthusiasm once they see the great tax cliff approaching. Look out below.

Obama's running out of people to blame.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/15/despite-stimulus-funding-solyndra-and-4-other-companies-have-hit-rock-bottom/

Carville to Obama: Fire Your Staff, Indict Wall Street

It’s becoming obvious to many in the Democrat part that Obama will not be reelected. Carville’s suggestion? Blaming American citizens, the Republican party, the Tea Party, American business, earthquakes, foreign countries, and on and on has not worked. So it’s time to throw some liberal saffers under the bus in a last ditch effort to blame someone other than Obama.

‘WASHINGTON (TheStreet) -- James Carville, the Democratic strategist, told President Obama in an op-ed piece for CNN.com that it's time some presidential staffers are shown the door.

" Mr. President, your hinge of fate must turn. Bill Clinton fired many people in 1994 and took a lot of heat for it. Reagan fired most of his campaign staff in 1980. Republicans historically fired their own speaker, Newt Gingrich. Bush fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. For God's sake, why are we still looking at the same political and economic advisers that got us into this mess? It's not working."

Carville said he was motivated to write the piece after results in two special elections Tuesday didn't go Democrats' way.

Carville said Obama should indict people, particularly those on Wall Street who "haven't been held responsible for utterly ruining the economic fabric of our country."

Obama should demand answers from Attorney General Eric Holder as to why no one has been indicted, and "his explanations aren't good, fire him too," Carville said.

"As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation," Carville wrote in his op-ed.

"The course we are on is not working," Carville said. "The hour is late, and the need is great. Fire. Indict. Fight." -- Written by Joseph Woelfel’

I bleed Ford blue.

I wasn't brand loyal, until GM became Government Motors. Now I bleed Ford blue.