Chevy Volt Costing Taxpayers Up to $250K Per Vehicle

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Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government.

The Volt subsidies flow through multiple companies involved in production. The analysis includes adding up the amount of government subsidies via tax credits and direct funding for not only General Motors, but other companies supplying parts for the vehicle. For example, the Department of Energy awarded a $105.9 million grant to the GM Brownstown plant that assembles the batteries. The company was also awarded approximately $106 million for its Hamtramck assembly plant in state credits to retain jobs. The company that supplies the Volt’s batteries, Compact Power, was awarded up to $100 million in refundable battery credits (combination tax breaks and cash subsidies). These are among many of the subsidies and tax credits for the vehicle.

It’s unlikely that all the companies involved in Volt production will ever receive all the $3 billion in incentives, Hohman said, because many of them are linked to meeting various employment and other milestones. But the analysis looks at the total value that has been offered to the Volt in different aspects of production – from the assembly line to the dealerships to the battery manufacturers. Some tax credits and subsidies are offered for periods up to 20 years, though most have a much shorter time frame.

GM has estimated they’ve sold 6,000 Volts so far. That would mean each of the 6,000 Volts sold would be subsidized between $50,000 and $250,000, depending on how many government subsidy milestones are realized.

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 Read More at Michigan Capitol Confidential By Tom Gantert, Michigan Capitol Confidential

Iranian Dissidents Face Obama-Made Holocaust

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If you are having trouble understanding Obama’s Iran policy, you are not alone. But for the 3,400 Iranian dissidents living at Camp Ashraf, Obama’s Iran policy is more than confounding, it is a death sentence.

Obama’s Iran policies are leading to a highly preventable holocaust for the residents of Camp Ashraf, located just North of Baghdad in Northern Iraq. The Iranian dissidents living in the camp face imminent attack and a death march to an Iranian prison. Now that the U. S. has ended its active military presence in Iraq, the fate of these unarmed dissidents will be in the hands of the Iraqi government, which wants only to appease its dangerous neighbor to the East.

These dissidents cannot be admitted to the U.S. as refugees because Obama’s State Department insists on labeling them “terrorists.” Meanwhile, the real terrorists running the government in Tehran laugh at our inept attempts to persuade them to abandon their nuclear weapons program.

The State Department’s indifference to the fate of these Iranian dissidents precedes the Obama administration. It is rooted in the State Department’s 30-year courtship of non-existent “moderates” in the Iranian government, the same phantom moderates who have failed to influence the government to abandon the quest for nuclear weapons–and missiles that can deliver those weapons anywhere in the world.

The unarmed Iranian dissidents in Camp Ashraf, have not had the protection of the U.S. Army since January of 2009, and now, even the potential of U.S. Army intervention will be missing.

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 Read More at Human Events By Rep. Tom Tancredo, Human Events

Poll: Paul in top spot in Iowa GOP battle

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(CNN) – With 13 days to go until the Iowa caucuses, a new poll indicates that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas sits atop the field of Republican presidential candidates in the state that holds the first contest in the primary and caucus calendar.

According to an Iowa State/Gazette/KCRG survey released Wednesday, 28% of likely Iowa GOP caucus goers say Paul, the longtime congressman who’s making his third bid for the White House, is their first choice for the Republican nomination, with 25% backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Paul’s three point margin over Gingrich is well within the survey’s sampling error.

Eighteen percent of those questioned say they support former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who’s making his second run for the White House, with 11% backing Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Seven percent say Rep. Michele Bachmann of neighboring Minnesota is their first choice for the GOP nomination, with 5% backing former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, less than one percent supporting former Utah Gov. and former ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, with 5% undecided.

The poll was conducted over a long period of time, starting on Dec. 8 and ending on Dec. 18. The survey indicates that with the caucus closing in, the battle for Iowa remains fluid, with only 28% saying they’ve definitely decided on which candidate they would support.

But the survey suggests that when it comes to the commitment of support, Paul may have an advantage.

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 Read More at CNN Political Ticker By Paul Steinhauser, CNN Political Ticker

The Tea Party train wreck that never happened

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Three weeks ago, E.J. Dionne (or “Baghdad Bob,” as James Taranto has called him) saw nothing but doom in the GOP’s future, as “the Republican establishment … is essentially powerless,” having surrendered its soul to the evil Tea Party, which has driven the country to hell.

Events since have proved this judgment mistaken: The establishment lives, and is doing its duty; part of the Tea Party has been merging with it; and the “system” is working as planned.

What are the signs that the system is working? When the prospect of former House speaker Newt Gingrich as the presidential nominee of the Republican Party first appeared to be rising, first responders from all parts of the party rushed to their stations en masse.

Former House colleagues called him unstable. The National Review termed him “erratic.” Ann Coulter called him all hat and no cattle. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., weighed in with a similar judgment.

Tea Party stars rushed to shore up Mitt Romney, the most probable Gingrich alternative. Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., had already endorsed him. Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., now endorsed him. Christine O’Donnell, who unseated Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware’s GOP Senate primary, endorsed the ex-moderate.

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 Read More at washingtonexaminer.com By Noemie Emery, washingtonexaminer.com

Feud Between Romney, Gingrich Intensifies

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The slugfest between Republican presidential frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich is escalating, with two sparred from a distance over attack ads that have come to dominate the volatile contest.

The rift underscores the contrasting campaign styles of the two men as they ready their final pitches to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. And it left each decrying a new campaign finance system — fueled by deep-pocketed political action committees — that each benefits from.

In Iowa, Gingrich vowed his White House bid would remain positive, while in the next breath he labeled the Romney camp’s tactics “disgusting.” The former House speaker, known for a bare-knuckles campaign style when he engineered the GOP takeover of the House in the 1990s, suggested at a campaign stop on Tuesday that his opponents “hire consultants who get drunk, sit around and write stupid ads.”

Romney protested that he couldn’t control the independent PAC expenditures, but pointedly declined to disavow the ads. The former businessman and Massachusetts governor, who’s been on the stump in New Hampshire, is seeking to project a tough, pragmatic image, allowing there’s “no whining in politics.”

“I’m a big boy,” he said on MSNBC.

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 Read More at OfficialWire By Kasie Hunt and Shannon Mccaffrey, OfficialWire

Gingrich Assails Judges As He Courts Conservatives

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As he works to rev up his conservative base in Iowa with just two weeks to go until the state’s caucuses, Newt Gingrich is launching a full-throated assault on a reliable GOP target: judges.

There is little love for the judicial branch among the Republicans seeking the White House. But Gingrich’s ridicule has been, by far, the sharpest and the loudest. And it’s taken a central role as his campaign struggles to stay atop polls in Iowa, a state where irate social conservatives ousted three judges who legalized same-sex marriage.

“I commend the people of Iowa for sending a strong signal that when judges overreach that they can find a new job,” Gingrich told about 200 supporters who turned out to hear him speak in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday.

Gingrich has suggested that judges who issue what he termed “radical” rulings out of step with mainstream American values should be subpoenaed before Congress to explain themselves before facing possible impeachment. As president, he said, he’d consider dispatching U.S. marshals to round up judges who refuse to show voluntarily. In extreme cases, whole courts could be eliminated.

In the final debate before voters weigh in at the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Gingrich called the courts “grotesquely dictatorial.” He cast the fight in stark religious terms reminiscent of the culture wars, in which a secular, legal elite was encroaching on religious liberties.

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 Read More at OfficialWire By Shannon Mccaffrey, OfficialWire

Is the Republican aristocracy afraid of winning, or just content with losing?

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Northeastern, milquetoast Republican “moderates” who toil long and hard to avoid the social embarrassment of association with uncivilized, conservative inhabitants of flyover country must understand that we in the Party base are NOT willing to graciously lose the 2012 election.

If Karl Rove, George Will and Peggy Noonan wish to escape the disapproving gaze of haughty Hamptons friends by mocking every Republican candidate who vaguely appeals to conservatives, let them. This time around, we who actually appreciate living and working in a free, prosperous United States are not going to surrender our ideals to the “wise counsel” of RINO elites for the sake of “party unity.”

In mid November, David Frum–that eager ambassador of feigned conservative values–submitted to New York Magazine a primer on the dangers posed to the Republican Party by the “radical right.”

In it, he expresses amazement that anyone in “his Party” can “…[denounce] the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan as an outrageous insult” or that they could conceive the iron-fisted federal “…regulation of private insurance [and] individual mandates” could lead to death panels! (1)

He is mortified that members of “his Party” adhere to the outrageous contention that Barack Obama is “…willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism.”

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 Read More at Coach Is Right By Doug Book, Coach Is Right

Jeb Bush pens campaign-like economic manifesto

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With a little more than two weeks to go before Republicans begin voting in presidential caucuses and primaries, the GOP faces the possibility of a muddled result in Iowa; a primary race that may take months of bitter campaigning to resolve; and a large number of Republican voters who remain unhappy with the current presidential field. Some of those voters are still hoping another candidate might enter the race.

That is why a new article from former Florida governor Jeb Bush is likely to attract attention from voters and political analysts alike. In the Wall Street Journal, Bush has written an article, “Capitalism and the Right to Rise,” that could be read as a simple statement of economic beliefs — or a campaign manifesto.

Bush begins the piece with a nice word for House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan. After that, the article is a standard Republican call for an end to excessive and intrusive government regulation. “We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise,” Bush writes. “We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck. That is what economic freedom looks like.”

Perhaps Bush just wanted to say something. Or perhaps he wanted to join the presidential conversation, either as an influential voice or a possible candidate. If his motivation is the latter, it would be a change from months — years — of denying that he would run for president in 2012. Both Bush and members of his family have said repeatedly that he will not run, that after spending his peak earning years as governor of Florida, he needed to make money for his family. Were he to decide to take run, Bush would have to reconcile his action with his many, many denials.

Of course, he wouldn’t have to persuade those Republicans who would still like to see another candidate enter the race. Polls have shown that a significant number of GOP voters, perhaps a third, are not satisfied with the current field. And some commentators, most notably Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, have suggested that the race might end up in a deadlocked convention, or with the entrance of a new candidate after early caucuses and primaries.

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 Read More at Washington Examiner By Byron York, Washington Examiner

Is it twenty minutes to midnight in America?

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That our republic is sinking like the Titanic with only twenty minutes left until midnight is the stark theme of an astonishing new book by citizen historian Joseph J. Breitfeller. Drawing a trenchant comparison with the ineptitude of leadership that allowed the magnificent ship Titanic to sink after the bridge ignored five iceberg warnings; the author says America is fast heading to a similar fate.

The Four Horsemen of America’s Apocalypse are the four progressive Democrat Presidents, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and now the worst, Barack Hussein Obama says Breitfeller whose book belongs in the stocking of every American patriot and conservative this Christmas!

As the 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic approaches on April 14, 2012, we need to give this book’s main premise careful consideration. Just as a flawed captain was unable to lead, even to directing deployment of life boats dropped into the icy Atlantic only 1/2 full, our current captain is destroying America’s life boats of Constitutional Governance, States Rights, and Smaller Federalism, thereby pulling us into the vortex of a sinking republic.

The author has created a remarkable analogy of the Titanic’s tragedy with what Progressives have done with their sea of liberal policies and governance. Only an 85% cut in the federal government (pg. 301) will bring us out of our sinking economy says Breitfeller who proposes cutting to the core Pentagon excesses such as the ski center in the Bavarian Alps and its over 200 golf courses, to closing the Departments of Education, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the NEA and NEH and the Farm Credit Administration. “Closed, Delegation withdrawn,” should be the fate of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Breitfeller proscribes!

A real step forward merits the closing of the Federal Reserve Banking System which is a big part of our problem because of its lack of audits, lack of transparency and its connection to the executive branch and financial markets.

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 Read More at Coach Is Right By Suzanne Eovaldi, Coach Is Right

House cybersecurity bill would establish federal overseer

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Members of the House Homeland Security Committee introduced a cybersecurity bill on Thursday that would establish a quasi-governmental entity to oversee information-sharing with the private sector.

Like the other cybersecurity bills offered by the House GOP, the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness (PrECISE Act) encourages private firms to share information on cyber threats but stops short of mandating new security standards for sectors deemed critical to national security.

“The risk of cyberattack by enemies of the United States is real, is ongoing and is growing,” said Chairman Pete King (R-N.Y.). “The PrECISE Act, in line with the framework set forth by the Speaker’s Cybersecurity Task Force led by Rep. [Mac] Thornberry [R-Texas], protects our critical infrastructure without a heavy-handed and burdensome regulatory approach that could cost American jobs.”
The bill would clearly delineate the cybersecurity functions of the Department of Homeland Security by requiring DHS to evaluate cybersecurity risks for critical infrastructure firms and determine the best way to mitigate them.

“Cybersecurity is truly a team sport, and this bill gives DHS needed authorities to play its part in the federal government’s cybersecurity mission and enables the private sector to play its part by giving them the information and access to technical support they need to protect critical infrastructure,” said House Cybersecurity subcomittee Chairman Dan Lungren (R-Calif.).

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 Read More at The Hill By Gautham Nagesh, The Hill