Obama’s Anti-Stimulus: His Energy Policies Take Money Out Of Economy

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Photo Credit: Win McNamee“I have to tell you that there are some Democrats, for example, who represent states or districts that are heavily reliant on old power plants and are more heavily manufacturing based,” President Obama said during a Google online chat session with the public on Friday. “And the truth is that if you produce power using old power plants, you’re going to be emitting more carbon, but, to upgrade those plants means energy is going to be a little more expensive, at least on the front end.”

Naturally, Obama understated the costs involved in upgrading power plants and switching to new sources of energy. But his remark is true in its essentials: In exchange for very modest reductions in carbon emissions, his policies require consumers to pay higher upfront prices for electricity.

Now compare Obama’s statement to the theory behind his stimulus package — both the $800 billion package he championed and signed in 2009 and the additional stimulus he has since asked Congress to enact. The assumption underlying his proposed and enacted deficit spending, expansion of entitlements (such as food stamps) and demand-side tax breaks as stimulus is that Americans have a temporary cash-flow problem. The idea is that because people don’t have enough money in their pockets, commerce is suffering, causing hiring to lag. So by providing a small pay increase to workers and extra business for contractors, the Recovery Administration was supposedly alleviating this temporary cash crunch so as to ease the economy back onto the road to recovery.

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Who Killed The Middle Class?

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey “It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.” So said Barack Obama in his State of the Union address.

And for one of his ideas to reignite that engine, Republicans applauded. “And tonight, I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union – because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.”

One wonders if any of those in the hall who rose robotically at the phrase “free and fair” were aware of the trade results just in from 2012. What were the 2012 figures for the European Union?

U.S. exports to Europe fell, imports from Europe rose, and our trade deficit with the EU shot up 16 percent to $116 billion. We ran a trade deficit with Italy of $20 billion, with Ireland of $25 billion, with Germany of $60 billion. The Europeans are eating our lunch.

What about South Korea, the country with whom we signed a free-trade deal in 2012? U.S. exports to Korea fell last year, and due to a surge in imports our trade deficit in goods with South Korea soared 25 percent to $16.6 billion.

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Heads Roll As The Religion Of “Turn The Other Cheek,” Meets The Religion Of “Peace”

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Photo Credit: Irish CentralThe latest casualty in the war against Christianity, is a Tanzanian pastor who lost his head to an outraged Muslim mob. The incensed mob was demanding all non-halal butcher shops and especially pork butchery, be forbidden

A spokesman said a group of youths believed to be Muslim, assaulted several Christians, including a butcher shop owner, using sticks and machetes. During the confrontation Pastor Mathayo Kachili, of the local Assembly of God Church, was beheaded.

Besides the Pastors beheading, several other people were injured critically during the incident and taken to the local hospital in Buseresere for treatment.

Christians in a small village in southern Egypt are rebuilding their lives and homes after hundreds of Muslims rampaged through their community firebombing houses and businesses, over rumors of a romantic relationship between a Christian and a Muslim.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram, a group seeking to impose Islamic law on the country, picked out Christians in a small village, gathered them in a group before massacring them. 15 people died in the attack; many had had their throats slit.

These are not isolated incidents as Muslim extremists attack other religions wherever the two meet, but Christianity seems to be singled out.

According to a report named Christiana-phobia, by the think tank Civitas: The “lion’s share” of persecution faced by Christians arises in countries where Islam is the dominant faith. Between half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have left the region or have been killed in the past century.

“There is now a serious risk that Christianity will disappear from its biblical heartlands,” it claims.

Violent oppression of Christians has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations, especially in Africa and the Middle East. In some countries it is government sanctioned violence that burns down churches and imprisons parishioners.

In others countries, groups and vigilantes take matters into their hands by murdering Christians and driving them out of regions they have called home for centuries.

One Christian pastor in an affected country described the situation this way: “On the Christian side, strong emphasis is placed on the teaching of Christian love, patience, mercy and forbearance. But in such a situation one wonders what the future of Christianity and of the nation as a whole can be.”

“Muslims believe that if they die in the course of a Holy War (or Jihad) they will go directly to heaven. We are dealing with a religious philosophy where war is a must! The whole weight of the challenge is now on our shoulders. Who can tell how successfully we will respond?”

It seems, the Christian philosophy of turning the other cheek, is on the road to running out of cheeks to turn, in Muslim dominated countries. It seems when it comes to tolerating other religions, the religion of “peace” isn’t so peaceful.

Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

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Don’t Be Fooled By ‘Bipartisan’ Approach To Amnesty

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Photo Credit: M. RyderMore than a few Republicans in the United States Senate seem to have contracted a severe case of what Harry Truman called “Potomac Fever” (wanting to go along to get along in Washington). Apparently still trembling from the recent election debacle, they have cobbled together a deceptive and destructive “bipartisan” compromise on illegal alien amnesty.

Now, of course, the Senate Republicans aren’t calling their legislative legerdemain “instant legalization” as conservative journalist Charles Krauthammer properly characterized it. They know (as Judicial Watch demonstrated in its Election Day poll) that most Americans, including a good number of Hispanics, want the immigration laws enforced. So instead, in typical politispeak, you’ll hear senators use words like “pathway to citizenship” and “doing it for the children.”

Unfortunately, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, clearly casting an eye to the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, has bought into the amnesty lie and is being used by the left to provide cover for their open borders proposal. As the Florida Sun-Sentinel reported:

“Rubio’s mission is to reassure tea party conservatives that these proposals don’t amount to a blanket ‘amnesty,’ while rallying reluctant Republicans and helping their party gain the trust of Hispanic voters. In a sense, the rising Republican star is working in tandem with President Barack Obama, who flies to Las Vegas today to pitch similar changes in immigration law.”

Therein lays a large part of the problem: As Mr. Rubio should know, if you’re on the same page with Mr. Obama on so-called immigration reform, you’re on the wrong page. Still, instead of persuading the president to change his ways, Mr. Rubio is now on a “charm offensive” to sell a bill of goods to conservatives, from Mark Levin to Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity, with varying degrees of success.

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In Defense of Christine O’Donnell

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreAmericans love to watch public figures eviscerated publicly. Progressives love to bash conservatives. And the media will go out of their way to cripple conservative candidates (even if it means missing wildly and making an ass out of themselves, i.e., Wolf Blitzer and Marco Rubio’s water bottle). But progressives, the media and the American public will eventually cease their assault, if for no other reason than the story gets old and the appetite for schadenfreude eventually wanes.

For over two years now, center-right political professionals — from Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove down to local GOP pols — have trashed Christine O’Donnell without relent. They’ve made her name synonymous with embarrassing failure. The declamations are tossed off casually by TV’s alleged conservatives, usually as a cautionary tale. Among the right’s talking heads, Christine O’Donnell is invoked as a two-word epithet utilized to dismiss unfit and extreme Republican candidates, most often Tea Party upstarts. I object. Partly to correct the historical record, partly to defend Christine, partly to stymie a lingering and erroneous bit of conventional wisdom on the right, but mostly to tell Karl Rove that he can go sit on a volcano, I offer a sadly rare defense of Christine O’Donnell.

First of all, if you like Rand Paul and Marco Rubio and the scores of other conservatives who won competitive races in the 2010 tea party wave, you should thank your lucky stars for Christine O’Donnell. Whatever you think of the candidate herself, she took an unseemly barrage of media arrows that would have otherwise landed on other candidates. With every old clip Bill Maher released of Christine’s antics on “Politically Incorrect,” the legacy media spent hours ridiculing her. Across the networks, on October day after October day, liberal media elites relished, reveled in and replayed every O’Donnell gaffe and misstep. It was probably good for their ratings. And they may have thought that they were damaging the Republican brand. What they were actually doing was wasting hour upon hour of airtime ridiculing one candidate while ignoring political races across the country. Christine O’Donnell’s media flogging was a national shield for conservatives in close races. Witting or not, her sacrifice deserves recognition, if not gratitude.

In reality, moderates like Mike Castle are guarantors of conservative defeat. Political debate always ends in compromise. If Castle is “moderate,” then why should anyone entertain proposals from the far right? In every debate, the question is not whether conservatives win, but how much we lose. If America wants to vote itself socialist, that’s fine, but, at the moment, we’re not giving it a choice. With either party, we’re just taking baby steps toward statism and ruin.

And that’s my final point, and the only one that really matters: A Republican loss is not necessarily a loss for conservatism, nor is a win a win. And anyone who wanted to elect Mike Castle is not fighting for the conservative cause.

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EPA Corruption and Scandal

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photo credit: wallygThe EPA and Ms. Lisa Jackson, its chief, have committed extensive violations of law that should receive in-depth scrutiny from Congress, law enforcement and the American people. Yes the Obama administration has yet another serious scandal on their hands. The scandal features a fantasy administrator, ‘Richard Windsor’, and ‘his’ email account. The account was established and used by Ms. Jackson to camouflage controversial EPA processes, discussions, decisions and accountability. To date the known evidence suggests violations of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), mail and wire fraud laws. Additionally it surfaces another example of the Obama administration’s epidemic chicanery with the law, Congress and the Constitution and another failure to keep faith with the American people.

Upon closer inspection the EPA like the GSA and other Obama administration agencies, demonstrates a lack of managerial/administrative control. It also exhibited a culture of obfuscation, malfeasance and corruption that did not blossom overnight. And like other Obama scandals, the mainstream media has again decided to cover it with their much practiced three monkey act.

For perspective a little recent history is in order. Lisa Jackson, who is departing the EPA, stated in November of 2011 that “…What EPA’s role is to do is to level the playing field so that pollution costs are not exported to the population but rather companies have to look at pollution potential of any fuel or any process or any plant or utility when their making investment decisions.”

Simply translated Ms. Jackson makes clear that her job and the EPA’s are to hurt companies/industries that produce energy counter to the wishes of the Obama administration (and the left’s agenda). Ms. Jackson also demonstrates a very low economic IQ, since higher costs incurred by energy companies will be passed to end users/consumers.

Coupling her statement with President Obama’s pronouncement of a year ago, i.e. “Where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and do it ourselves”… exposes his strategy to “legislate” by regulation and executive order (with Jackson and the heads of other agencies helping). Although Obama indicated it would be “nice” to work with Congress, his intentions are to evade the two centuries-old legislative process of the Constitution and impose his will on all Americans. The EPA under Jackson has become a key bludgeon in this political and ideological power grab and has used illegal methods in the effort.

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No End To ObamaCare’s Hostility Towards Religion

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photo credit: fibonacci blueThe Obama administration is trying to convince us it has softened its contraceptive mandate, partly in an effort to calm opposition from the religious community. But the threat to religious liberty is as virulent as ever.

The administration has not budged on its plan to require that female workers and college students have free access to “reproductive services,” including sterilization procedures, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs.

And religious organizations still will pay, albeit indirectly, for the services the government is mandating. Further, thousands of private companies will be forced to pay directly for practices they abhor, in clear violation of their religious liberty.

This is not an acceptable “accommodation,” as the administration argues. Under the rule proposed on Friday, most religiously-affiliated organizations can apply to be exempt from the ObamaCare mandate.

Initially, the administration proposed exempting only churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship. But after 44 lawsuits were filed across the country by and on behalf of nonexempt hospitals, colleges, charitable organizations and others, the administration relaxed the definition in its new proposal.

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Carbon Tax Hallucinations

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Average planetary temperatures haven’t budged in 16 years. Hurricanes and strong tornadoes are at or near their lowest ebb in decades. Global sea ice is back to normal, while the Antarctic icepack continues to grow. The rate of sea level rise remains what it was in 1900.

And yet, President Obama and many politicians, newscasters and alarmist scientists continue to insist that carbon dioxide emissions are changing Earth’s climate, and we need to take immediate action to prevent storms like Hurricane Sandy and avert catastrophes predicted by IPCC computer models and “scientific consensus.” Not surprisingly, polls show public support for controlling CO2 output and taxing hydrocarbon use – to “ensure climate security” and “save vital federal programs” from budgetary axes.

As the liberal lobby Think Progress put it, people “overwhelmingly” prefer a carbon tax on “big polluters” versus cuts in favorite programs “like education, Social Security, Medicare and environmental protection.”

Five-alarm climate claims, skewed polling questions and phony taxes-versus-grandma budget alternatives will almost always ensure support for carbon taxes – especially among Bigger Government and Ban Fossil Fuels constituencies. More rational analysis reveals that dreams of hundred-billion-dollar windfalls from slapping regressive new taxes on job creation and economic growth are nothing more than dangerous tax revenue hallucinations. They would bring intense pain for no climate or economic gain.

Employing Energy Information Administration data, a recent Heritage Foundation study by economists David Kreutzer and Nicolas Loris found that a tax starting at $25-per-ton of CO2 emitted and increasing by 5% per year would cut a family of four’s income by $1,400 annually, raise their utility bills by $500 a year, and increase gasoline fill-ups by up to 50 cents per gallon. That’s $2,000 a year chopped from their budget for food, vacations, home and car payments and repairs, college and retirement savings, dental and medical care, and overall quality of life.

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What Is Obama’s Real Objective?

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I write this column with a certain amount of trepidation, knowing the subject not only believes he has the power to order targeted assassinations of American citizens, but has actually already misused that perceived authority. So here goes.

I have come to the conclusion that nearly everything Barack Obama does under the color of his authority as president is designed to weaken our country economically, militarily and morally.

I don’t think I could ever make that statement about any of his predecessors – and there have been some real bad ones.

Let’s begin with his economic policies. It’s not that those policies have not worked as intended. The problem is that they have worked exactly as intended. As he told us while campaigning in 2008, it’s about redistributing the wealth. That’s what he thinks his job is. That’s what he believes he was elected to do. That’s what he thinks he has the power to do, and he fully intends to use it as he has through his first term.

Worse, he does this not with misguided idealism and benevolent intentions. He does it as socialists always do, to break the back of free enterprise, private property rights and an economy that while no means perfect is the best mankind has been able to use to uplift the poor and provide individual citizens with the incentives to be as productive as possible.

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Mark Steyn: Acheive Ye This Goal – the Monarchical Urge Persists

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I’m also issuing a new goal for America,” declared President Obama at his State of the Union on Tuesday. We’ll come to the particular “goal” he “issued” momentarily, but before we do, consider that formulation: Did you know the president of the United States is now in the business of “issuing goals” for his subjects to live up to?

Strange how the monarchical urge persists even in a republic two-and-a-third centuries old. Many commentators have pointed out that the modern State of the Union is in fairly obvious mimicry of the Speech from the Throne that precedes a new legislative session in British Commonwealth countries and continental monarchies, but this is to miss the key difference. When the Queen or her viceroy reads a Throne Speech in Westminster, Ottawa, or Canberra, it’s usually the work of a government with a Parliamentary majority: In other words, the stuff she’s announcing is actually going to happen. That’s why, lest any enthusiasm for this or that legislative proposal be detected, the apolitical monarch overcompensates by reading everything in as flat and unexpressive a monotone as possible. Underneath the ancient rituals — the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod getting the door of the House of Commons slammed in his face three times — it’s actually a very workmanlike affair.

The State of the Union is the opposite. The president gives a performance, extremely animatedly, head swiveling from left-side prompter to right-side prompter, continually urging action now: “Let’s start right away. We can get this done. . . . We can fix this. . . . Now is the time to do it. Now is the time to get it done.” And at the end of the speech, nothing gets done, and nothing gets fixed, and, after a few days’ shadowboxing between admirers and detractors willing to pretend it’s some sort of serious legislative agenda, every single word of it is forgotten until the next one.

In that sense, like Beyoncé lip-synching the National Anthem at the inauguration, the State of the Union embodies the decay of America’s political institutions into a simulacrum of responsible government rather than the real thing, and a simulacrum ever more divorced from the real issues facing the country. “Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion,” said the president. Really? Who knew? “Now we need to finish the job.” Just one more push is all it’ll take.

What’s he on about? The annual “deficit” has been over a trillion for every year of Obama’s presidency. The cumulative deficits have, in fact (to use a quaint expression), increased the national debt by $6 trillion. Yet Obama claims Washington has “reduced the deficit” by $2.5 trillion and all we need to do is “finish the job.” Presumably this is a reference to allegedly agreed deficit reductions over the next decade, or quarter-century, or whatever. In other words, Obama has saved $2.5 trillion of Magical Fairyland money, which happily frees him up to talk about the really critical issues like high-speed rail and green-energy solutions. These concepts, too, exist mainly in Magical Fairyland: If you think Obama-approved taxpayer-funded “high-speed rail” means you’ll be able to board a train that goes at French or Japanese speeds, I’ve a high-speed rail bridge to Brooklyn to sell you.

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