An Hour of Darkness. Or Light! – Tea Party Nation

An Hour of Darkness. Or Light! – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

On Saturday, Greens around the world will turn off their lights in a symbolic “Earth Hour” gesture against climate change, the term they adapted in the face of the fact that the Earth has been cooling for seventeen years and is on the cusp of a mini-ice age that will ensure cold weather for many years to come.

Earth Hour is a protest against the use of electricity—energy—to light our lives in countless ways. Anyone who has gone through an outage as I did in the wake of Hurricane Sandy will tell you that life without electricity is an immediate return to primitive times. Mine lasted a week and included the loss of access to the Internet and the ability to use my computer and every other piece of equipment in the apartment. It was not fun.

We derive electricity from burning coal, from natural gas, from nuclear fission, and from hydroelectricity generated by huge dams. The least amount of electricity we use comes from oil and, in particular from wind and solar, a bare two percent or so. These latter two sources exist only because of government subsidies and mandates. Without these they could not compete against far more affordable and effective sources. Oil, of course, fuels all our vehicles.

What Americans generally have not absorbed is the fact that the large, multi-million dollar funded environmental organizations oppose every form of energy we use. Here is a week’s schedule of events planned to lead up to and follow Earth Hour in New Jersey by the Sierra Club chapter.

# On Thursday, March 21, they sponsored a “Fracking Waste Ban Lobby Day” in the state capital of Trenton.

# On Saturday they will sponsor an “adventure aquarium trip” devoted to sea turtles and a lecture on “how our plastic addiction impacts them.” We are no more “addicted” to plastic than to oil from which it is produced and found in virtually everything we use. Energy is not the enemy. It is the lifeblood of a successful economy and society.

# On Sunday there will be a town hall meeting about “clean energy solutions” in concert with Climate Mama, 350.org and the Sierra Club with a panel that will discuss how clean energy, solar and wind, “can dramatically reduce our use of fossil fuels and move our state forward without the pollution.” It will also discuss how “climate change has impacted you.” Americans are not going to reduce the use of fossil fuels, oil, coal, and natural gas. We already enjoy the cleanest air and, more importantly, the Earth in general and America in particular has enormous reserves of these energy reserves.

# On Wednesday, March 27, another panel will engage in “pipeline education”, ignoring the fact that America has 170,000 miles of pipelines that transport oil and natural gas throughout the nation. They are safe and secure, but none carry ethanol, a chemical that erodes not only pipelines, but damages the engines of millions of cars and trucks. The pipeline panel will likely take note of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada that has been delayed for five years now and cleared of any charges of environmental harm.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute suggests that Earth Hour is a good time to celebrate “Human Achievement Hour”, a way to debunk the global warming hoax and the nonsense surrounding “climate change”, a process that has gone on for billions of years on the planet. The notion that people can do anything about the climate is so absurd it defies the imagination.

Earth Hour is just one more way for the Greens to continue spreading their lies about fossil fuels, plastic, and chemicals they want to demonize despite the advances in health and longevity, the manufacture of products we use, and the extraordinary lifestyle we enjoy with abundant food and protection against the multitude of insect and rodent pests that afflict us, along with the many species of weeds that affect crops.

Not that long ago, Greens were spreading nonsense about “peak oil”, saying that the Earth was running out of this energy source, but new reserves of oil are being found all the time. Between 1945 and 2010, the United States alone produced 167 billion barrels of oil, more than eight times more oil than the amount of proven oil reserves it had in 1944. Oil doesn’t merely fuel our cars and trucks, but as fracking techniques have been developed, more and more of it is available. Between 1980 and 2010, the U.S. produced 77.8 billion barrels of oil and still had 20.7 billion barrels of oil reserves left.

What Americans should keep in mind during Earth Hour is that we have a White House that has done everything in its power to deprive us of the coal, oil and natural gas that we have at our disposal. It has restricted the exploration and extraction of billions of barrels of oil from offshore of our east and west coasts, and in Alaska. It has generated regulations that have already shut down coal-fired plants and is seeking to impose greater restrictions despite the fact that we have enough coal to keep them operating for hundreds of years.

With more than 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable oil under our soil, we have enough oil to fuel our present needs for the next 250 years. Delaying the Keystone XL pipeline has deprived the nation of thousands of jobs and will result in $5 billion being spent annually to import oil. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has wasted billions on “clean energy investments.”

Americans know their energy bills are increasing as the result of anti-energy policies, know that the energy sector, if allowed to flourish, would provide thousands of jobs, and should know that every drop of oil and cubic foot of natural gas we secure from our own reserves would reduce the cost to everyone in every way.

Turn on your lights at 8:30 PM on Saturday. Turn them all on. Send a message to the White House and to the world that energy is the heartbeat of life and economic growth for America and the world.

Hating energy is another form of hating humanity.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

 

The EPA is a Nation-Killer – Tea Party Nation

The EPA is a Nation-Killer – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

To the naïve and uninformed, the Environmental Protection Agency exists to ensure clean air and water in the nation. That was its initial mandate when it was created by an executive order by President Nixon in 1970. It has since become a nation killer.

In 2013 a flood of regulations will cost thousands of Americans their jobs and drive more industry overseas to avoid the cost of doing business in America. It will drive up the cost of energy from electricity, along with the cost of gas and diesel fuel. It will effectively kill much of the coal mining industry in a nation that is the Saudi Arabia of coal, an energy source that formerly provided fifty percent of all electricity in America.

The EPA is girding up to kill “fracking”, a technology that has safely been in use for decades and one that holds the promise of further provision of natural gas. The provision of oil is being thwarted as well; mostly famously by Obama’s derailment of the Keystone XL pipeline in a nation laced with energy-providing pipelines. Energy, the lifeblood of the nation, will be under attack as never before.

A new EPA ozone standard will occur, one that the EPA estimates would cost $90 billion a year while other studies put the figure at nearly a trillion dollars and destroy 7.4 million jobs. The EPA’s projections are that 650 additional communities would be deemed “non-compliant” and effectively ensure plant closings and that no new manufacturing and other businesses would set up shop.

The EPA has pushed to regulate—control—every body of water in America, no matter how small. A recent court decision derailed EPA storm-water regulations that would have established a first-time standard for post-construction storm-water runoff could include mandates on cities to change existing buildings, storm-water sewer systems, and streets. It would have been the most expensive rule in EPA history.

The EPA will release regulations on the manufacture of cement—the MACT rule—that would increase the cost of manufacturing this essential element of construction by 22% to 36%. Many such plants would have to close and the U.S. would have to import cement from nations like China.

Expect regulations on cooling towers to protect fish under the Clean Water Act. A proposed coal ash rule could cost between $79 to $110 billion over the next twenty years, ending between 183,900 and 316,000 jobs over 20 years, affecting states that include Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Missouri. The EPA has been regulating “farm dust” for decades and new rules would affect the nation’s food supplies as farmers and ranchers adjust by raising fewer livestock and the till fewer fields. Spill prevention rules would further impact farmers and ranchers.

If you were asked what is the most costly federal agency which would you suggest? Would it be the Department of Homeland Security? Department of Defense? Labor? Agriculture? Housing and Urban Development? Transportation?

In terms of the regulations it generates, the Environmental Protection Agency is the most expensive rulemaking agency. It costs $353 billion annually to comply with its regulations.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently published a report by Ryan Young, a Fellow in Regulatory Studies, regarding the EPA and it is further testimony to the way this predatory agency has gone from the first year of its operation in 1971, costing $701 million, to outlays in 2011 of $10.722 billion, employing 20,610 full-time workers.

The public is expected to believe that this army of environmental bureaucrats are all diligently saving Americans from particulates in the air, rain run-offs in the water, any pesticide that might actually protect them from pests, and the countless other life-threatening dangers that required, from 1999 to 2011, a total of 4,995 rules in the “Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.”

These regulations have little to do with clean air and water and everything to do with destroying the nation’s economy, putting thousands out of work at a time when economic growth is barely occurring, and new taxes will further reduce the spending and investment power of Americans.

After having put in motion the flood of regulations that will strangle the economy, EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, will step down after Obama’s inauguration. Her decision came after a law suit by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner will make known the thousands of emails Jackson sent under an alias, a practice forbidden to federal employees, presumably shedding light on policies and views she intended to be kept secret.

Reacting to the news of her forthcoming resignation, S.T. Kornick, Director of Research for The Heartland Institute, said, “Jackson played the environmental ‘bad cop’ to President Obama’s ‘good cop’, but the result of their tag-team effort has been a huge expansion of the EPA’s power. Appointing another bad cop to head the EPA could by itself push the nation into recession.”

The most powerful economy in the world is being destroyed from within by an agency that has declared war on America. It must be downsized and restrained if the nation is to survive.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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Blog: More outrages at the UN’s Human Wrongs Council

United Nations Human Rights Council logo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Blog: More outrages at the UN’s Human Wrongs Council.

Rick Moran

Ah, the Orwellian, through the mirror world of the United Nations where up is down, black is white and wrong is right. And the US and Israel are always wrong.

Celebrating Human Rights Day last week the UN’s so called Human Rights (sic) Council, whose membership consists of such gross human rights violators as Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Mauritania, elected the representative of Mauritania as vice president.

Hillel Neuer, of UN Watch, publicly objected, explaining

“It is obscene for the U.N. to use the occasion of Human Rights Day, when we commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to elect the world’s worst enabler of slavery to this prestigious post,” said Hillel Neuer, UN Watch executive director.

“The U.N. is making an arsonist head of the fire department. It defies both morality and common sense.”

According to a recent report by the Guardian, “up to 800,000 people in a nation of 3.5 million remain chattels,” with power and wealth overwhelmingly concentrated among lighter-skinned Moors, “leaving slave-descended darker-skinned Moors and black Africans on the edges of society.”

Meanwhile over at the UN’s Education, Science, Culture Organization (UNESCO) Syria–the country involved in a murderous civil war against its own civilian citizens, men, women, children, different religions, ethnicities, tribes–remains a member of their human rights (sic) committee which “rules on individual human rights complaints worldwide.”

Despite having murdered tens of thousands of its own people, the Bashar al-Assad regime remains a full member of UNESCO’s human rights committee, “and no one at UNESCO seems to care the slighest bit,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

(snip)

“UNESCO is allowing the Assad regime to strut in Paris as a U.N. human rights arbiter — it’s indefensible and an insult to Syria’s victims.”

(snip)

However, while a resolution was adopted censuring Syria’s violations — a welcome first for UNESCO — the promised call to oust the regime from UNESCO’s human rights panel was excised.

U.S. ambassador David Killion had urged UNESCO to revisit the decision. The watered-down text included language suggesting UNESCO chief Irina Bokova could raise the issue again, but she has failed to do so.

Not so surprisingly, when there is an occasion to condemn the US or Israel, the UN quickly springs into action.

That’s their idea of human rights.

Related articles

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EDITORIAL: EPA regulates water – Washington Times

EDITORIAL: EPA regulates water – Washington Times.

Life-giving substances shouldn’t be treated as pollutants

The environmentalist movement has gone off the deep end. It’s bad enough that the courts have allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to declare carbon dioxide, one of the essential components of life on this planet, to be a pollutant. Now the same bureaucratic zealots are going after water itself.

On Friday, Virginia Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II appeared in federal district court in Alexandria to contest the EPA’s use of the Clean Water Act to punish Virginia and Fairfax County for sending too much water into a watershed. “These regulations are expensive, cumbersome and incredibly difficult to implement,” Mr. Cuccinelli said. “And if we can’t stop this from happening in Fairfax County, it’s bound to happen across the state over and over again and at a huge price tag to the taxpayers of the commonwealth.”

The EPA’s latest action is a classic example of how Washington agencies constantly expand their purpose. Congress first adopts legislation bearing a title nobody could reasonably oppose — who’s against clean water? Over time, the courts and bureaucrats systematically extend the meaning of formerly innocuous definitions. Now instead of keeping lead out of drinking water, the agency is keeping water out of creeks.

Specifically, the agency has established a set of limits for the amount of water that can flow into Accotink Creek, which runs through Fairfax County and drains into the Potomac. The Virginia Department of Transportation and the county are on the hook for storm water that falls from the sky onto county and city roads. This water then flows into storm drains that empty into the creek. EPA hypothesizes that heavy water flows stir up “sediment,” which does fall under the Clean Water Act’s definitions. Instead of going after sediment levels directly, however, EPA has declared it can go ahead and directly target water-flow levels, which Mr. Cuccinelli says goes too far in pushing the jurisdictional envelope.

According to documents filed with the court, complying with the EPA’s bizarre rule would cost state and local governments $320 million. Mr. Cuccinelli told the court this could result in the loss of homes, as “efforts to achieve such a reduction in storm-water flow as demanded by EPA would require significant public takings of private property in order to build numerous new storm-water management structures.”

Even if VDOT and Fairfax County jump through the federal hoops, there’s no guarantee that the insects, birds and algae in Accotink Creek will see any improvement in the quality of their life. The real control of the amount of water that flows into the creek is in the hands of Mother Nature, not Uncle Sam. That’s why the court should step in and shut down the EPA’s latest power grab.

The Washington Times

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Shoving Us Over the Fiscal Cliff: Obama Blocks Tax Reform – Tea Party Nation

Shoving Us Over the Fiscal Cliff: Obama Blocks Tax Reform – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Seton Motley

Note: This first appeared in the PJ Tatler.

 

President Barack Obama’s scant involvement with the Fiscal Cliff negotiations has been limited to his rigid insistence that the tax rate on the nation’s job creators be raised from 35% to 39.6%.

 

Tax reform – as a general principle and a way to raise revenue – is a presidential non-starter.

 

Now.  Last year, the president said this:

 

“What we said was give us $1.2 trillion in additional revenues, which could be accomplished without hiking taxes — tax rates — but could simply be accomplished by eliminating loopholes, eliminating some deductions and engaging in a tax reform process that could have lowered rates generally while broadening the base.”

 

Funny, that’s what House Speaker John Boehner just proposed.  $800 billion over ten years in additional coin for the realm.  By loophole-eliminating, code-simplifying – and thus job creating – tax reform.  Not via job-killing tax rate increases.

 

And the President’s tax hikes will kill jobs – 710,000 of them.  While only raising the same $800 billion over the next decade.

 

Do not misunderstand – this is not a defense of Speaker Boehner’s revenue raise.  The Feds don’t have a revenue problem – they have a spending one.

TAUBE: U.S. should walk out of the United Nations – Washington Times

TAUBE: U.S. should walk out of the United Nations – Washington Times.

Admittance of Palestine is the last straw

By Michael Taube

Why do western democracies such as the United States remain in the United Nations? After all the politically charged decisions made by this disgraceful organization, it’s often difficult to understand the reason.

Perhaps the West’s laissez-faire attitude toward this growing cesspool of political activity is finally coming to an end. A highly controversial decision with respect to a volatile part of the world could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Two weeks ago, the U.N. overwhelmingly granted statehood to Palestine. An astonishing 138 member states supported this motion, with 41 abstaining and five not present during the vote. Only nine member states rejected this motion: Canada, the Czech Republic, Israel, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama, Palau and the United States.

Palestine is therefore recognized as a “nonmember observer state,” one of only two in this particular categorization. (The other is the Holy See.) Even though this decision has been widely interpreted as a symbolic gesture, it is far more than that. For one thing, it allows Palestine to exert greater influence and move a step closer to member state status. While they can’t participate in formal U.N. votes, the Palestinian territories will be allowed to seek membership in various U.N. agencies, bodies and committees.

This is a ridiculous decision on the part of the U.N. Palestine is not a country, and is not even close to becoming one. It has played a major role in contributing to the Middle East becoming a powder keg over the past few decades. The contentious Gaza Strip is run by the Palestinian organization Hamas, a vicious terrorist group that would like nothing more than to obliterate Israel, the United States and other western democracies. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian National Authority, has been an ineffective leader in terms of negotiating with the Israelis as well as dealing with the threat of Hamas.

Why did the U.N. back Palestine’s bid for statehood? That’s easy to understand. Most of its membership has little to no respect for liberty, freedom and especially democracy.

Don’t believe it? Here’s a short list of the U.N.’s long history of bad political decisions:

In June 2002 and August 2003, Syria chaired the U.N. Security Council.

In 2003, Iran and Iraq were scheduled to lead a U.N. nuclear disarmament conference. This was before the Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein was deposed.

In 2003, Libya helmed the U.N. Human Rights Commission. The nation was also a U.N. Security Council member during 2008-2009.

In 2011, North Korea — one of the three members of President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” — helmed the U.N. Conference on Disarmament.

In 2012, Iran was elected as vice president of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Conference.

Moreover, we must not forget the U.N.’s nearly unbroken record of condemning the state of Israel’s policies and military actions for more than 50 years. In large part, this helps explain why a territory with a terrorist history got such a significant vote of confidence.

It’s a shame. At one time the U.N. was a respected organization. It played an important role in international negotiations, building diplomatic bridges and attempting to keep or broker peace during times of war and conflict.

That’s not the case any longer. The U.N. has become a broken-down and dysfunctional organization, controlled by members who don’t respect individual rights and freedoms, democratic elections, free markets, and the safety and security of all citizens. Western nations should consider leaving the U.N. and starting a League of Democracies. This organization would promote essential principles such as liberty, democracy, and individual rights and freedoms, while excluding countries that support terrorism.

Perhaps some countries are getting the hint. Canada, which led the charge opposing Palestinian statehood, temporarily recalled high-ranking diplomats located in Israel, the West Bank, and New York and Geneva’s U.N. missions, in order to craft a proper response, and to show they’re getting fed up with the U.N.

Will the United States follow suit? Although the White House was likely frustrated with this motion, Mr. Obama’s international track record on these types of matters has been less than stellar. Yet, if there’s ever going to be a real impact, a major power like the United States needs to walk out of the U.N. for good.

Show some real leadership for a change, Mr. President, and do it.

Michael Taube is a former speechwriter for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a columnist with The Washington Times.

UN Treaties Erode US Sovereignty, Exert Control – Tea Party Nation

UN Treaties Erode US Sovereignty, Exert Control – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

Following the end of World War II in 1945, the idea of a United Nations, an international body devoted to avoiding future wars must have had a lot of appeal despite the fact that, not that many years earlier, the League of Nations that emerged after World War I had proven to be a toothless failure.

In the years since, the United Nations has prevented major world conflicts, but it has done little to curb others. It seems to exist to give its blessing to them and the U.S. has long acted as if it could not engage in a war without its permission. From the Korean War in the 1950s to Vietnam in the 1970s, to the wars in the Middle East, the U.S. has ceded its sovereign right to pursue wars in what it regarded as its national interest. Korea and Vietnam were proxy wars during the period of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

The wars in the Middle East have been a response to 9/11, first in Afghanistan and later the need to remove the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, who had waged war against Iran and Kuwait. The U.S. actually lent support to the war against Iran because we have technically been at war with Iran since 1979 when our diplomats had been seized and held hostage. Kuwait is an oil-rich nation and, if Saddam had been allowed to take over, he would have turned his attention to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations. In the Middle East, it is always about oil. And now we must add to that equation, the rise of fanatical Islam.

In all the cases cited, the United States has had to do the heavy lifting, the bulk of the fighting. World War II left us the only superpower in the world and the only one with atomic bombs. We put Western Europe back on its feet as a counterweight to the Soviet control over Eastern Europe. When it collapsed in 1991, the balance of power changed, but by then China was already on the rise economically, having embraced capitalism, but retaining Communism as its governmental system. The dictators who ran the Middle East, many of whom the U.S. either tolerated or lent support, ran into a buzz saw of discontent from their oppressed populations.

One of the largest cliques in the United Nations is made up of Middle Eastern, African and other largely Muslim nations. They and others like the Chinese and Russians have no love for democracy or freedom. The result has been the rollout of treaties intended to (1) generate enough income to make the UN financially independent and (2) exert a centralized global control over commerce and the individual lives of people worldwide.

The UN is the center for the entire global warming/climate change hoax and its Kyoto Protocols to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions. It is the home of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which just finished its 18th conference to continue its intention to transfer money from the developed nations to those that are not. The U.S. Senate unanimously rejected this treaty in 1997 when it was initially proposed.

There is, however, a Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) that is seeking ratification by the U.S. and is supported by the Obama administration. It would give the UN control over offshore drilling, requiring the U.S. to pay half of its royalties to unelected UN bureaucrats who could spend it any way they want. Moreover, it would require the U.S. to make our offshore drilling technology available to any nation that wanted it and to do so for free despite the millions spent to develop it. One fears that a lame duck Senate might ratifies it. The most recent effort to ratify it was rejected in July.

What most Americans do not know is that international treaties trump the U.S. Constitution. They have the same status as constitutional law and must be enforced by U.S. Courts. Thus, our most sacred right as a nation, our sovereignty, is eroded by such treaties. It was the reason that the Congress rejected membership in the League of Nations. We should have done the same with the United Nations, but for decades since we have provided a quarter of its budget while having just one vote in the General Assembly.

There is no doubt in my mind that the worst of the UN treaties is the current effort to exert control over the Internet. This month, representatives of the 193 member countries of the International Telecommunications Union will meet in Dubai to discuss ways to control the international exchange of Internet traffic across countries and how to extract money from it.

Gorden Crovitz, writing in The Wall Street Journal on November 25th summed up the danger this represents. “Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing aa Stradivarius to a gorilla.”

He noted that “The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day.” More importantly, “The self-regulating Internet means no one has to ask permission to launch a website, and no government can tell network operators how to do their jobs.”

It is an irony that the Internet had been the platform by which Egyptians came together to overthrow its longtime dictator, Hosni Mubarak, but which has led to the takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood and a new constitution that is based on sharia law; a huge step back to the seventh century that makes women chattel and endorses slavery. One step forward, ten steps back.

Control over the Internet is control over the free flow of ideas and information. It is control over a large portion of the world’s population. Authoritarian nations hate it and seek to control it. Its implementation would turn the world into one large prison camp.

There are other UN treaties that need rejection and the U.S. Senate this week did reject the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which former Sen. Rick Santorum, joined by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) denounced as a “direct assault on us and our families.” It, too, was an attack on our national sovereignty and the rights of parents to determine how their children are educated and cared for. It was signed by President Obama in 2009, but the Senate’s action avoided its ratification. A treaty on small-arms control would render the Second Amendment null and void.

For years conservatives have called for the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations. That act alone would likely collapse this evil international institution. It won’t happen so long as the current administration is in power.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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Waiving Freedom – Thomas Sowell – Townhall.com

Waiving Freedom – Thomas Sowell – Townhall.com.

Among the objections to ObamaCare, one that has not gotten as much attention as it should is the president’s power to waive the law for any company, union or other enterprise he chooses.

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution provides for “equal protection of the laws” for all Americans. To have a law that can cost an organization millions of dollars a year either apply or not apply, depending on the whim or political interest of the President of the United States, is to make a mockery of the rule of law.

How secure is any freedom when there is this kind of arbitrary power in the hands of one man?

What does your right of freedom of speech mean if saying something that irritates the Obama administration means that you or your business has to pay huge amounts of money and get hit with all sorts of red tape under ObamaCare that your competitor is exempted from, because your competitor either kept quiet or praised the Obama administration or donated to its reelection campaign?

Arbitrary ObamaCare waivers are bad enough by themselves. They are truly ominous as part of a more general practice of this administration to create arbitrary powers that permit them to walk roughshod over the basic rights of the American people.

The checks and balances of the Constitution have been evaded time and time again by the Obama administration, undermining the fundamental right of the people to determine the laws that govern them, through their elected representatives.

You do not have a self-governing people when huge laws are passed too fast for the public to even know what is in them.

You do not have a self-governing people when “czars” are created by Executive Orders, so that individuals wielding vast powers equal to, or greater than, the powers of Cabinet members do not have to be vetted and confirmed by the people’s elected representatives in the Senate, as Cabinet members must be.

You do not have a self-governing people when decisions to take military action are referred to the United Nations and the Arab League, but not to the Congress of the United States, elected by the American people, whose blood and treasure are squandered.

You do not have a self-governing people when a so-called “consumer protection” agency is created to be financed by the unelected officials of the Federal Reserve System, which can create its own money out of thin air, instead of being financed by appropriations voted by elected members of Congress who have to justify their priorities and trade-offs to the taxpaying public.

You do not have a self-governing people when laws passed by the Congress, signed by previous Presidents, and approved by the federal courts, can have the current President waive whatever sections he does not like, and refuse to enforce those sections, despite his oath to see that the laws are faithfully executed.

Barack Obama, for example, has refused to carry out sections of the immigration laws that he does not like, unilaterally creating de facto amnesty for those illegal immigrants he has chosen to be exempt from the law. The issue is not — repeat, NOT — the wisdom or justice of this President’s immigration policy, but the seizing of arbitrary powers not granted to any President by the Constitution of the United States.

You do not have a self-governing people if President Obama succeeds in having international treaties under United Nations auspices govern the way Americans live their lives, whether with gun control laws or other laws.

Obama’s “citizen of the world” mindset was revealed back in 2008, when he said “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that every other country is going to say okay.”

The desire to circumvent the will of the American people was revealed even more ominously when Barack Obama said to Russian President Medvedev — when he thought the microphone was off — that, after he is reelected and need never face the voters again, he can be more “flexible” with the Russians about missile defense.

There are other signs of Obama’s contempt for American Constitutional democracy, but these should be more than enough. Dare we risk how far he will go when he never has to face the voters again, and can appoint Supreme Court justices who can rubber stamp his power grabs? Will this still be America in 2016?

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President Obama: Is This the ‘Private Sector…Doing Fine?’ – Tea Party Nation

President Obama: Is This the ‘Private Sector…Doing Fine?’ – Tea Party Nation.

Note: This first appeared in Breitbart.com’s Big Government.

 Posted by Seton Motley

President Barack Obama incessantly touts the alleged “success” of the $50 billion General Motors (GM) bailout, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

General Motors – The Government’s Warped Definition of ‘Success’

Much like the Obama Economy, General Motors’ numbers are tanking.  Earlier this week we had:

GM’s 2012 Sales Growth Only 2.5%

Outstanding.  And the failures continue to abound.

General Motors 3Q Profit Falls 14 Pct (from 3Q 2011)

Sound familiar?

2011 US GDP growth: 2.0%.

2012 US GDP growth (thus far): 1.77%.

Two percent is pathetic,  and the Obama Economy can’t manage to match it this year.

 

Are things now looking up for the economy?

Economic Outlook for 2012 Even Worse Than We Thought

Things are looking worse for the U.S. economy than even three months ago.

Apparently not.  How about for General Motors?

General Motors Is Headed For Bankruptcy — Again

Outstanding.

 

This all-things-failing-equally can’t be what President Obama has in mind, right?

Government Motors is What Obama Wants to Do to ‘Every Industry’

More than 23 million people are jobless or underemployed under Obama.

Report: Negative job growth under Obama

1,035,000 Construction Jobs Lost Under Obama

Tech (sector) layoffs hit 3-year high in first half of 2012; 260% m…

Obama closes more than 2,000 car dealerships; more than 100,000 let go

111 coal plants – more than 20% of US total – closed under Obama; m…

Government-land oil and gas drill permits down 36% under Obama.

Food stamp recipient number rises from 32 million to 47 million und…

Record 5.4 million join (Social Security) disability rolls under Ob…

Welfare spending jumps 32% during Obama’s presidency

Health care premiums rise $2,370 per family under Obama.

Gasoline prices double under Obama.

Obama: “The Private Sector Is Doing Fine”

Apparently it is what President Obama has in mind.

 

NUGENT: Want a job? Vote for Romney – Washington Times

NUGENT: Want a job? Vote for Romney – Washington Times.

Team Obama can’t help you

By Ted Nugent – The Washington Times

It boils down to this: If you want to grow the economy and get a job, vote for Mitt Romney. If you want more anti-business policies and counterproductive government welfare, vote for President Obama.

The difference between the candidates is as distinct as the difference between me and anti-hunting and animal-scam goofballs such as Wayne Pacelle. I’m precious; Wayne Pacelle is the Potentate of Bizzaro.

The business community — the engine that creates jobs — is solidly lined up behind Mr. Romney.

In an interview with CNSNews.com, Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas business tycoon, stated that he’s afraid of the president. “I have no idea what goofy idea, what crazy, anti-business program this administration will come up with next. I have no idea,” he said. He went on to say that every business guy in the country is frightened by the way the president thinks.

There isn’t a single poll of small or large businesses that finds the president leading Mr. Romney. Not one.

Poll after poll of Americans finds that we trust Mr. Romney over the president on handling the economy. Just a hunch, but maybe that’s because Mr. Romney has decades of business experience compared to the president’s zero private-sector experience.

What this election is all about is jobs and the economy. While other things are important, jobs matter most, as it should be.

Too many Americans remain unemployed and underemployed. Instead of improving the economy over the past four years as he promised, the president and his clueless policies instead have torpedoed the economy and made things much worse for everyone.

If a grade were given to the president on improving the economy and creating jobs, he would get an F.

Instead of cutting taxes for business owners, which would spur the economy forward, the president wants to raise taxes on business owners. You don’t need to be Steve Wynn or Steve Forbes to know that punishing producers is a comfortably dumb move.

Making dumb economic moves is the hallmark of this president and his team, who have zero free-market experience, including the secretary of labor. Again, just a hunch, but wouldn’t it be a wise move for the secretary of labor to have some private-sector labor experience? You can’t be my bass player if you can’t play bass.

Bottom line is that the business community doesn’t believe or trust Mr. Obama.

The bottom line for Americans looking for a job is that if the business community doesn’t trust the president, Americans looking for a good-paying job shouldn’t trust him, either.

If the singular most important issue is jobs in this election, then the choice is clear. You will cast your vote for Mr. Romney, and he will win in a landslide.

If you vote for the president because you hope he will improve the economy, my advice to you is that hope isn’t a job-creating strategy. Americans would be wise to follow their heads, not their misplaced, hope-filled hearts, when entering the voting booth.

A vote for Mr. Obama is a vote to prolong America’s economic woes for another four years. America can’t afford that.

Never give your car keys to a drunk, and never trust a socialist to run a free-market economy.

Ted Nugent is an American rock ‘n’ roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is the author of “Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ‘N’ Roll” (Regnery Publishing).