Energy Department Loses $42M on Clean-Energy Loan to Mich. Van Company

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green_vansThe Energy Department conceded Friday that the federal government will lose $42 million on a loan to a shuttered Michigan van manufacturer — part of the same program that provided a $529 million loan to an electric car maker that also has gone under.

Vehicle Production Group (VPG), which made vans for the disabled, ceased operations in February and laid off 100 workers, two years after receiving a $50 million federal loan under the same clean-energy program that provided a $529 million loan to electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc., according to the Associated Press.

VPG had paid back $5 million of the $50 million federal loan this spring, and the remainder of its debt was sold at auction this week to Humvee manufacturer AM General, which paid $3 million to buy the loan.

Read more from this story HERE.

Spread the Wealth: Job Growth 52% Greater for Foreign-Born Workers Under Obama

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obama_foreign_workersUnder President Barack Obama, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released today, the increase in the number of foreign-born people employed in the United States has been 52 percent greater than the increase in the number of native-born people employed.

In January 2009, when President Barack Obama first took office, says the BLS, there were 21,375,000 foreign-born people employed in the United States. In August 2013, there were 23,833,000 foreign-born workers employed in the United States. That means that since Obama took office the number of foreign-born people holding jobs inside the United States has increased by 2,458,000.

By contrast, in January 2009, there were 119,061,000 native-born Americans employed in the United States, and, in August 2013, there were 120,676,000—an increase of 1,615,000.

The 2,458,000 increase in foreign-born workers since January 2009 is 843,000 (or 52 percent) greater than 1,615,000 increase in native-born workers.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Implementation and Abortion Funding With Your Tax Money Coming Soon

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0CareIt’s silent. It’s deadly. And it’ll impact you and your family. Obamacare is coming (sooner than you may realize) and as pro-lifers, it’s imperative we be prepared.

The implementation begins as early as October with the funding for insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage. I don’t want you to be caught in the dark, which is why I felt it was necessary to re-visit this topic and provide you with important information relevant to your health insurance decisions.

The largest issue of contention is the abortion mandate. This is a secondary premium that’ll be on the majority of insurance plans and its sole purpose is to fund abortions. The reason this separate premium exists is because under the Hyde amendment, the government cannot directly provide funding for elective abortion services. This abortion surcharge will be collected by the insurance company, not the government, which is how Obamacare dodges the restrictions of the Hyde amendment.

What’s important to realize is the law dictates that the abortion surcharge is not disclosed until the time of enrollment. And even then, it can only be mentioned in the “Summary of Benefits and Coverage.” Essentially, it’s purposely hidden in the fine print. Your employer may not even know that their plan requires the abortion payment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Thousands Show for German anti-NSA Protest

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German_protestThousands took to the streets in Berlin Saturday in protests against Internet surveillance activities by the US National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, and the German government’s perceived lax reaction to them.

Organisers, among them the opposition Greens, The Left and Pirates parties, said 20,000 people turned out. Police would not confirm the figure, saying only their “tally differs from that of the organisers”.

The protest was organised under the slogan “Freedom Rather Than Fear” and demonstrators carried banners saying: “Stop spying on us” and, more sarcastically: “Thanks to PRISM (the US government’s vast data collection programs) the government finally knows what the people want.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Utah Shepherd Survives After Being Gored by Elk

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A wild bull elk gored a shepherd in the mountains in eastern Utah, puncturing one of the man’s lungs, knocking him unconscious and forcing him to walk several miles for help.

Sheepherder Hugo Macha, 31, was in good condition in a Grand Junction, Colo., hospital Friday, three days after the rare attack in the La Sal Mountains.

“He was already worrying about his sheep,” said Polly Hill, co-owner of the 1,000 sheep Macha tends, in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. “The doctor said he was lucky because the way the lung was punctured it kept it from collapsing. He might be able to come home Sunday. We will take care of him until he is back on his feet.”

Macha, who is from Peru, told rescuers that he’d been sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree Tuesday evening when the elk appeared and started heading toward him. He tried to get away, according to Utah Division of Wildlife Resources officer Dennis Shumway, but the animal ran him down, knocked him to the ground and gored him with its antlers.

When he came to, the elk was nowhere to be found.

Read more from this story HERE.

Truth Leaking Out? Nerve Gas Points to Rebels

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Former U.S. intelligence analysts claim current intelligence analysts have told them Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was not responsible for the Aug. 21 poison gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, which killed 1,429 people, of whom more than 400 where children.

They claim the “growing body of evidence” reveals the incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters.

“The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war,” one former U.S. intelligence analysts said.

The analysts referred to a meeting a week before the Aug. 21 incident in which opposition military commanders ordered preparations for an “imminent escalation” due to a “war-changing development” that would be followed by the “U.S.-led bombing of Syria.”

In addition, the former U.S. analysts said that Israel welcomed limited U.S. military action but not so much that it would strengthen rebel groups, which are “increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Congress Voting 6 to 1 Against Strike

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congressSuggesting an uphill fight for President Barack Obama, House members staking out positions are either opposed to or leaning against his plan for a U.S. military strike against Syria by more than a 6-1 margin, a survey by The Associated Press shows. The Senate is more evenly divided ahead of its vote next week.

Still, the situation is very fluid. Nearly half of the 433-member House and a third of the 100-member Senate remain undecided.

By their statements or those of aides, only 30 members of the Republican-led House support intervention or are leaning in favor of authorizing the president to use force against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government in response to a chemical weapons attack last month.

Some 192 House members outright oppose U.S. involvement or are leaning against authorization, according to the AP survey.

The situation in the Democrat-controlled Senate is better for Obama but hardly conclusive ahead of a potential vote next week. The AP survey showed those who support or are leaning in favor of military action holding a slight 34-32 advantage over those opposed or leaning against it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Graham’s Hawkish Posture Confronts War-Weary Voters in South Carolina

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(DoD Photo By Glenn Fawcett) (Released)

(DoD Photo By Glenn Fawcett) (Released)

As one of the leading advocates for bipartisan immigration reform, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had already firmly affixed himself to one cause deeply unpopular with conservatives heading into a re-election year.

Now as a war-weary Congress weighs a military strike in Syria, he finds himself championing another policy that risks antagonizing the base.

Graham is on board for launching targeted missile strikes in Syria to diminish its chemical weapon capacity and assist the rebels who have been stuck in a three-year slog with President Bashar Assad that’s resulted in more than 100,000 dead. . .

Read more from this story HERE.

Ed Asner Explains Hollywood Silence on Obama, Syria: They ‘Don’t Want to Feel Anti-Black’

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Photo Credit: Hollywood Reporter

Photo Credit: Hollywood Reporter

In 2003, ahead of a U.S. attack on Iraq, a robust anti-war movement in Hollywood included a TV commercial starring Martin Sheen and Sean Penn visiting Baghdad. There were online petitions signed by Ed Asner; letters to President George W. Bush pleading for peace were signed by Matt Damon, Tim Robbins, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin; former M*A*S*H star Mike Farrell fronted multiple press conferences where celebrities denounced war. In interviews, Janeane Garofalo stopped identifying herself as an actor — she preferred to be called a member of the U.S. anti-war movement.

The good news for President Barack Obama as he considers a military response against Syria for using chemical weapons against rebels is that he probably won’t have to deal with a similar anti-war movement from Hollywood. But that’s not because there isn’t opposition. It’s just not organized, and, as Asner and Farrell – two of the industry’s most vocal progressive activists — told The Hollywood Reporter Friday, perhaps it never will be.

While some conservatives see hypocrisy, Farrell says that an all-out war in Iraq under Bush, a Republican who was very unpopular in Hollywood, was a much bigger deal than potential missile strikes against Syria under the direction of Obama, a Democrat who drew millions for his campaigns from showbiz industry donors.

Asner, 83, and Farrell, 74, both expressed extreme disappointment in Obama for advocating military action.

“What he is talking about in Syria is a potential war crime,” Farrell said. “It will be illegal, and if citizens are killed it certainly could be considered a war crime.”

Read more from this story HERE.

August Jobs Report: We’re ‘Dead in the Water’

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Obama_jobsOne of the first economists I read after the monthly, “official” jobs report comes out is James Pethokoukis of AEI’s public policy blog.

Pethokoukis has a nice way of breaking through all the spin and revealing an employment picture that goes inside the numbers to tell us the true nature of the jobs market.

After August’s horrible numbers, Pethokousis doesn’t seem optimistic.

How do you know the August jobs report was pretty bad? When the best thing you can say is that it might have met Wall Street expectations if not for a temporary shutdown in the porn industry last month. (The motion picture and sound recording industry lost 22,000 jobs in August, according to the BLS.) Sure, the White House can argue, as economic adviser Jason Furman did right after the report’s release, that the “incoming economic data broadly suggest that the recovery continues to make progress.” But consider the following:

1. This was the jobs report that was supposed to reflect an economy kicking into higher gear. Goldman Sachs, for instance, was looking for 200,000 net new jobs. And whisper estimates were even higher. Instead, the economy added just 169,000 jobs vs. the 180,000 consensus forecast. HERE.