It is time for the UN to go – Tea Party Nation

The Gadsden flag (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is time for the UN to go – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

Can someone please tell me what good the UN does?

 Can someone name me one benefit America receives from being not only the host to that band of thugs, dictators and malcontents, but footing far too much of the bill?

 Now, the UN is at it again.  This time it is the RIO conference.  While the diplomats are living it up, many on our tax dollars, they are coming out with an incredible list of demands.

 From Fox News:

 Three weeks before the U.N.-sponsored Rio + 20 summit conference on sustainable development, member countries that  the United States hoped would produce a five-page summary of goals are instead haggling over a mammoth  grab-bag of demands for new planetary regulation and assertions that  industrialized countries, led by the U.S., should  pay for, among other things, an unprecedented and massively expensive transfer of technology and funds to the developing world.

At one point, the text being debated by hundreds of negotiators climbed to 171 pages  before being cut back by executive fiat to 86 pages—only to start climbing steeply again.

The unwieldy document covers everything from sustainable food strategies to codes of corporate responsibility to technology transfers—on highly favorable terms—to developing countries. Copies of the document are not being made publicly available.

The emergency  bargaining session was intended as a last-ditch effort to bring some focus, energy and concision to the text after previous scheduled meetings led only to the current, bloated document.

“We were hoping it would inspire people, get them interested in the issues writ large,” a senior State Department official told Fox News. “ Right now, it’s just a long list of everybody’s projects, which is less valuable. “

The haggling over what will be said at the end of the three day Rio + 20 meeting, which starts on June 21 in Brazil, does not bode well for the summit, which U.N. organizers hope will  inaugurate not only a radical overhaul of the world economy but a new and still unspecified era of “global environmental governance.”

 Global governance?  What the hell are they passing out down there, crack for them to smoke?

 The UN is made up of such sterling members as Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Zimbabwe and Belarus.  Most of the members of the United Nations are dictatorship and we are even going to give them anything?

 Don’t even give them the time of day.

 The United Nations continues to be a very expensive joke on the United States.  If these third world countries want to be prosperous, they should do what we do.  They should have free markets, free elections and allow liberty and freedom.  Instead you have such distinguished nations as Egypt, which promotes female circumcision. 

 It would be nice if one of our politicians had the cojones to stand up and tell the UN to go pound sand.  Obama want because he wants us to become one of those socialist countries where liberty is on the endangered species list.  Romney isn’t any better on this front.  It would be nice to have just one major leader stand up and tell the United Nations to go to hell.  

Obama Thinks I’m a Democrat – Tea Party Nation

Obama Thinks I’m a Democrat – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

I received a fund raising letter from the Democratic National Committee this week urging me to join and to support President Obama.

How desperate does the DNC have to be to be sending letters to registered Republicans?

The letter included a separate message from Obama and it is instructive as much for what it doesn’t say as what it does. “These are challenging times for all of us who care about reclaiming the middle class security that’s been lost over the past decade, so everyone in this country gets a fair shake and has a chance to get ahead.”

“Over the past decade…” That would include George Bush’s two terms and Bush had no where near the levels of unemployment Obama has. In fairness, the financial crisis did not hit until September 2008 at the end of Bush’s second term. Still, we elect presidents to solve such problems, not contribute to them or spend four years blaming everyone and everything ELSE.

Obama’s stimulus actually cost jobs including his takeover of General Motor and Chrysler, as well as his veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. When you add his war on the coal industry, that includes the mining jobs lost and the shutdown of coal-fired plants.

Like everything else that Obama says or writes, it is deceptive. What follows is an appeal to American values that Obama does not share, given his heavy support of the union movement. “You and I share a vision of a big, compassionate, bold America, where we are all in it together and look out for one another. An America where hard work is rewarded and responsibility pays off—so everybody, if they work hard, if they take care of their responsibilities, if they look after their families, can get their piece of the American dream.”

I seem to recall that George W. Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative”, but Obama’s idea of compassion involved putting as many Americans on the dole as possible. Nearly half of all Americans today are receiving government aid and, in the stagnant economy he has produced, they need it. As for working hard, you need jobs for that and millions have given up looking because there aren’t enough jobs.

“The next 7 months are going to be tough, not just for me but for Democrats up and down the ballot who refuse to accept the idea that we can just cut our way to prosperity at the expense of the middle class, our children and seniors.” Most Americans understand by now that you cannot spend your way to prosperity, that piling up massive debt while failing to reform “entitlement” programs and cutting taxes just means more debt.

As for the next 7 months being tough, Democrat candidates who supported Obamacare and other legislation are losing out in the primaries to those who opposed it. In the polls, Romney is tied with Obama when people compare the two men and, when it comes to who they will trust with the economy, Romney wins.

As for the Democratic National Committee, they worry that “Our get-out-the-vote efforts will be especially critical this year, due to the Republican Party’s extensive efforts to suppress the ability of Americans to register and vote.” Oh, you mean like providing proof that you actually live in the district where you want to register or vote? That you are a citizen and are here legally? That’s what Democrats call suppression.

The biggest fear that Republicans and independents have these days is that Democrats will use Chicago-style tactics to steal the election. One need only think back to the way the 2000 election outcome had to go all the way to the Supreme Court. That time we came within a hair’s breath of having Al Gore as president.

How and why the DNC sent me a membership and fund raising letter is a mystery to me or maybe it’s not so mysterious. Maybe it is a sign of how desperate they are?

© Alan Caruba

The Steroid-Pumped Version of “Taxes Are for the Little People” – Daniel J. Mitchell – Townhall.com

The Steroid-Pumped Version of “Taxes Are for the Little People” – Daniel J. Mitchell – Townhall.com

I’m not a big fan of international bureaucracies, mostly because they always seem to promote bad policy such as higher tax rates.

• The International Monetary Fund is urging higher tax rates and pushing for nations to replace flat tax systems with so-called progressive taxation.
• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has embraced Obama’s class-warfare agenda and is pushing for higher tax rates in America.
• The United Nations is working with statists such as George Soros and urging global taxes.
• Even the World Health Organization has adopted some of this activist left-wing mentality, and is pushing global tobacco taxes.

To add insult to injury, the bureaucrats who work at these organizations have created very comfortable lives for themselves while the rest of us pick up the tab, as documented here and here.

But the ultimate insult is that the overpaid and pampered bureaucrats receive tax-free salaries while they jet-set around the world pushing for higher taxes.

Yes, you read correctly. They demand higher taxes for everyone else, but their bloated salaries are exempt!

Here’s some of what the UK-based Guardian just reported about the head of the IMF.

“Taxes for thee, but not for me”

Christine Lagarde, the IMF boss who caused international outrage after she suggested in an interview with the Guardian on Friday that beleaguered Greeks might do well to pay their taxes, pays no taxes, it has emerged. As an official of an international institution, her salary of $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year is not subject to any taxes. …Lagarde, 56, receives a pay and benefits package worth more than American president Barack Obama earns from the United States government, and he pays taxes on it. The same applies to nearly all United Nations employees.

To make matters worse, these globe-trotting bureaucrats have figured out all sorts of ways of padding their pay.

Base salaries range from $46,000 to $80,521. Senior salaries range between $95,394 and $123,033 but these are topped up with adjustments for the cost of living in different countries. A UN worker based in Geneva, for example, will see their base salary increased by 106%, in Bonn by 50.6%, Paris 62% and Peshawar 38.6%. Even in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, one of the poorest areas of the world, a UN employee’s salary will be increased by 53.2%. Other benefits include rent subsidies, dependency allowances for spouses and children, education grants for school-age children and travel and shipping expenses, as well as subsidised medical insurance. For many years critics have complained that IMF, World Bank, and United Nations employees are able to live large at international taxpayers’ expense.

So how do these bureaucrats justify their lavish salaries and gold-plated benefits?

Officials from the various organisations have long maintained that the high salaries are a way of attracting talent from the private sector. In fact, most senior employees are recruited from government posts.

Kudos to the Guardian for exposing this nonsense, particularly the fraudulent claim that lavish compensation packages are need to attract and retain these incompetent bureaucrats.

But let me add to the Guardian’s analysis. In a recent email exchange with several people, I addressed this issue, specifically commenting on whether the head of the IMF, Ms. Lagarde, should get a giant salary because she could earn more money in the private sector. I wrote that there were two responses to this assertion.

1. She has genuine skills as a wealth creator. In which case, we should force her out of the IMF as soon as possible so her talents can be used productively rather than destructively.

2. She can get big bucks by trading on her connections and entering the world of corporatism. Work for KPMG, or the Carlyle Group, or some other entity that specializes in getting favorable deals for the elite. That’s not the private sector.

In either case, her salary in her current position should be zero. Unless we think she should be paid the value of her marginal product, in which case she probably owes the world’s taxpayers several hundred billion dollars.

In other words, it doesn’t matter whether Ms. Largarde’s ability to earn lots of money is the result of genuine ability or cronyism. Since the IMF is pursuing bad policy, her value in that position is below zero.

My Cato colleague Richard Rahn was correct when he wrote that it is the ultimate hypocrisy for tax-free bureaucrats to lobby for higher taxes on the rest of us.

And that’s why defunding these parasitic international bureaucracies is not just good fiscal policy and good economic policy, it’s also the morally just policy.

Breaking News: The Great Obama Depression is getting worse. – Tea Party Nation

Breaking News: The Great Obama Depression is getting worse. – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

May’s unemployment report has been released and if the Obama Regime was hoping that would help his reelection bid, they are going to be sorely disappointed.

 Unemployment, at least the number that is released and citied by the drive by media, went up to 8.2%.  Those are the preliminary numbers and amazingly enough when you deal with the Obama Regime those preliminary numbers are never as good as the revised numbers.

 What is even worse than the rise in the unemployment rate is the fact the economy only produced 69,000 new jobs.  That is not even enough to keep up with the population growth, much less make a dent the number of Americans who are not working.

 From Fox News:

 U.S. employers created 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate ticked up. The dismal jobs figures could fan fears that the economy is sputtering.

The Labor Department also says the economy created far fewer jobs in the previous two months than first thought. It revised those figures down to show 49,000 fewer jobs created.

The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in April, the first increase in 11 months.

The economy is averaging just 73,000 jobs per month over the past two months — roughly a third of jobs created per month in the first quarter.

 Welcome to the Great Obama Depression.  The economy is dying and what does Barack Obama say?  He says he wants four more years.

 Just so everyone remembers, when the Democrats took over Congress in 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.6%.    Since the Democrats took over Congress, the unemployment rate at one point almost doubled.  

 How much longer do we have to put up with these fools?  They want to follow the path the European nations have followed and guess what?  America now has European levels of unemployment. 

 George W. Bush and the Republicans of ten years ago were no great conservatives, but they did a better job of running the economy than the Obama, Pelosi, Reid axis of fiscal evil has. 

 There is a moral in this story for Mitt Romney and the GOP.  When Romney is elected this fall, as he will be and the GOP will take control of both Houses of Congress, they had better use conservative principles quickly to jump start the economy. 

 If they simply want to be big government Republicans, then the economy will continue to stagnate and in 2016 we will get someone even worse than Barack Obama.

Romney: Obama had little to lose in Solyndra – Washington Times

Image via CrunchBase

Romney: Obama had little to lose in Solyndra – Washington Times.

‘It’s the taxpayers that get stuck’

By Seth McLaughlin – The Washington Times

Standing outside the shuttered California headquarters of Solyndra on Thursday, Mitt Romney said President Obama must answer to voters for the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars he gambled on the politically connected solar technology company, which went belly-up in 2011.

Across the country in Boston, Mr. Obama’s top campaign strategist charged that Mr. Romney, the Republicans‘ presumptive presidential nominee, failed to help a struggling economy in Massachusetts when he served one term as governor from 2003 to 2007.

In an election that is being billed as a referendum on Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy and federal spending, Mr. Romney and congressional Republicans have accused Mr. Obama of being more interested in using taxpayer money to reward his allies and push his ideology — even as Democrats have argued that Mr. Romney’s job-creating credentials fall short of the smart businessman’s image he is trying to portray.

“If the business had done spectacularly well, the shareholders — his friends — would have done very, very well, but the taxpayers would have just gotten their money back,” Mr. Romney said. “On the other hand, of course, if the business failed, as it did, it’s the taxpayers that get stuck with losing a half a billion dollars. So it’s heads and his cronies win, and tails and the taxpayers lose.”

With deep ties to the White House, Solyndra was awarded $535 million in government-backed loan guarantees, even as some staffers in the administration warned that it was a worrisome gamble and cautioned the president and his advisers against the plan.

Mr. Obama toured the solar panel facility in 2010, holding it up as one of the success stories to come out of the $831 billion in federal stimulus spending. At the event, he called companies like Solyndra “the true engine of economic growth.”

“Well, you can see that it’s a symbol of something very different today. It’s a symbol not of success, but of failure,” Mr. Romney said Thursday, arguing that the way the administration handed out the federal grants sent the wrong message to companies “that the best way to get ahead is not with the best ideas and the best technology and the best people and the best marketing, but instead with the best lobbyists.”

“That is not the nature of how America works,” he said.

David M. Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s top strategist, looked to deliver a different message in Massachusetts, where he opened his remarks, just steps away from the Statehouse that Mr. Romney used to occupy, by saying, “It is great to be in Massachusetts — Obama country.”

He painted the Republican as a political huckster, saying that Mr. Romney is once again peddling the false narrative that his experience as a “corporate buyout specialist” has given him special insight into how to jump-start the economy and get Americans back to work.

“After selling himself to Massachusetts as an economic savior, the Massachusetts record was alarmingly weak,” he said. “As you’ve heard, under Gov. Romney, the state was 47th in job creation — fourth from the bottom.”

Manufacturing jobs, he said, vanished at twice the national rate, household income fell, the size of the state government grew and Mr. Romney raised more fees than any other governor in the country — including for marriage licenses and home sales.

He also held up a 2007 study from Northeastern University that he said showed that on key labor market measures, the state often ranked near or at the bottom when compared with other states.

“It wasn’t happenstance that Massachusetts stumbled under Gov. Romney,” Mr. Axelrod said. “He brought the orientation of a financial engineer, whose career has not been about generating jobs, it has been about generating short-term profit. Not about generating long-term growth, or building for the future, but about taking what he can when he can.”

The news conference, though, was largely overshadowed by a boisterous group of Romney supporters who crashed the event after word of it leaked overnight.

While Mr. Axelrod and local Democratic leaders spoke, the pro-Romney forces booed and taunted them with noisemakers and chants, including “Where are the jobs?” and, perhaps fittingly, “Solyndra, Solyndra.”

Clearly rattled, Mr. Axelrod tried to silence them early on, but to no avail.

“You can shout down speakers, my friends, but it is hard to Etch-a-Sketch the truth away,” he said.

The punch-counterpunch came less than 24 hours after Mr. Obama phoned Mr. Romney to congratulate him on clinching the Republican nomination Tuesday, following his strong showing in the Texas primary.

Five months from Election Day, polls show the race is basically a dead heat, with Mr. Obama running a couple of points ahead of Mr. Romney in the latest Realclearpolitics.com average of polls.

Most of the same polls, though, also show that while Mr. Obama is the more likable of two candidates, voters tend to side with Mr. Romney when they are asked whom they trust more to strengthen the economy.

Related articles

• Video: Famous Chicago political organizer … outorganized?; Update: Romney holds surprise presser of his own outside Solyndra (hotair.com)
• TRENDING: Romney makes surprise visit to Solyndra (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

Threats, deals got drug companies on board with Obama – Washington Times

Threats, deals got drug companies on board with Obama – Washington Times.

GOP releases data on health care talks

By Paige Winfield Cunningham – The Washington Times

Top administration officials cut backroom deals with the nation’s top drug companies to win support for President Obama’s health care overhaul, threatening them with steeper taxes if they resisted and promising a better financial deal for the industry if they acquiesced, according to internal documents released Thursday by House Republicans.

In some of the key deals, Mr. Obama agreed to drop his long-standing support for letting Americans buy cheaper foreign prescription drugs — something the pharmaceutical industry vehemently opposed — and the drugmakers promised to mount a public campaign to sell the public on the health care legislation.

The drug industry financed the famous “Harry and Louise” commercials in the early 1990s that many credit with helping to turn public opinion against President Clinton’s massive health care bill. In 2009, the industry revived the fictional married couple — this time with words of praise for Mr. Obama’s bill.

The material released by House GOP members provides a rare insider look at the wheeling and dealing on Capitol Hill as Mr. Obama tried to shepherd his bill through Congress, in the face of near-unanimous GOP opposition.

The details emerged as House Republicans released emails it obtained during a yearlong investigation into the closed-door negotiations between the White House and lobbyists for drug companies. House Republicans said those negotiations violated the promises of transparency Mr. Obama made during his 2008 campaign.

“We really have now been able to build a case that there was a sequential, planned, organized strategy for the White House to trade policy for politics, if you will,” said Rep. Michael C. Burgess, Texas Republican. “They were willing to give up on things they thought were sound principles.”

The documents show that former White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina and health care reform point woman Nancy-Ann DeParle told drug company representatives in June 2009 that if they didn’t cooperate on the initiative, Mr. Obama would demand a 15 percent rebate on Medicare drugs and push to remove the tax deduction for direct consumer advertising — items that could cost the industry $100 billion over the next decade.

The threats appeared to work, and the parties met the next month to hammer out a final deal. The drug companies agreed to pay higher Medicaid rebates and a new health care reform fee to raise $80 billion for the legislation, and promised to run positive television ads about it.

In exchange, the White House gave them direct input into the new policies and promised to let them continue to set their own drug prices.

Ms. DeParle threw in an extra prize to reward pharmaceutical companies for their cooperation, saying she and other officials decided to reverse the administration’s position on drug importation, which Mr. Obama supported while running for president.

“I made [the] decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation on this bill,” she wrote to Bryant Hall, chief lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

Administration officials have denied that they negotiated directly with PhRMA, instead saying it was Senate Democrats who brokered the agreement.

But Republicans said their findings contradict the White House and confirm what the GOP has long contended: that the White House bypassed members of its own party to iron out specific details with the drug companies.

The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment, but congressional Democrats defended the deal-making, saying it was no different from what had been done for major legislation under previous presidents.

“President Obama’s efforts to enlist the support of private industry are exactly what presidents have always done to enact major legislation. His efforts are what Americans expect of their leaders,” said Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Diana DeGette, top Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee, in a memo responding to the GOP’s investigation, calling it “one-sided, misleading, and full of significant errors.”

They said the $80 billion deal the White House struck was changed in the final legislation and that the deal-making worked for American consumers: “The drug provisions have lowered pharmaceutical costs by over $3 billion for millions of seniors and have saved taxpayers billions of dollars.”

PhRMA said the industry’s negotiations with the White House were a normal part of doing business.

“Before, during and since the health care reform debate, PhRMA engaged with Congress and the administration to advance these priorities,” said PhRMA Senior Vice President Matthew Bennett. “We look forward to ongoing work with Congress and the administration on bipartisan policy solutions that improve patient health.”

Republicans said the investigation punctured a hole in Mr. Obama’s pledges of transparency during the 2008 campaign — including a vow to televise all of the health care negotiations so Americans could see who was lobbying for the drug companies and other big players in the debate.

“When you are supposedly acting in the public’s behalf, when you have promised that this is going to be the central feature of your administration, you darned well better behave that way,” Mr. Burgess said.

The findings come during a period of uncertainty for the Affordable Care Act, with the Supreme Court expected to rule on the law’s constitutionality in late June. A poll released Thursday showed support for the law dropping by 5 percentage points in April since the justices heard constitutional arguments in late March.

Thirty-seven percent of respondents to the May Kaiser Family Foundation poll said they feel favorably toward the law, while 44 percent said they have unfavorable views of it.

That’s a reversal from how Americans initially felt about the law in April 2010, when support outranked opposition by 6 percentage points. Kaiser has tracked public opinion about the law every month since Congress enacted it two years ago.

Holder’s Chutzpah – Thomas Sowell – Townhall Conservative Columnists

Holder’s Chutzpah – Thomas Sowell – Townhall Conservative Columnists.

Attorney General Eric Holder recently told a group of black clergymen that the right to vote was being threatened by people who are seeking to block access to the ballot box by blacks and other minorities.

This is truly world-class chutzpah, by an Attorney General who stopped attorneys in his own Department of Justice from completing the prosecution of black thugs who stationed themselves outside a Philadelphia voting site to harass and intimidate white voters.

This may have seemed like a small episode to some at the time, but it was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The U.S. Attorney who was prosecuting that case — J. Christian Adams — resigned from the Department of Justice in protest, and wrote a book about a whole array of similar race-based decisions on voting rights by Eric Holder and his subordinates at the Department of Justice.

The book is titled “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.” It names names, dates and places around the country where the Department of Justice stopped its own attorneys from pursuing cases of voter fraud and intimidation, when it was blacks who were accused of these crimes.

If Mr. Adams is lying, he has taken a huge risk in citing individuals by name and quoting them directly. Yet, despite the fact that most of those he accuses are lawyers, apparently no one has sued him. Moreover, Adams has also testified under oath before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, on the racial double standard at the Department of Justice, when it comes to voting rights.

What Attorney General Holder has been complaining loudly about, and launching federal lawsuits about, are states that require photo identification to vote. Holder calls this blocking minority “access” to the voting booths.

Since millions of black Americans — like millions of white Americans — are confronted with demands for photo identification at airports, banks and innumerable other institutions, it is a little much to claim that requiring the same thing to vote is denying the right to vote. But Holder’s chutzpah is up to the task.

Attorney General Holder claims that the states’ requirement of photo identification for voting, in order to prevent voter fraud, is just a pretext for discriminating against blacks and other minorities. He apparently sees no voter fraud, hears no voter fraud and speaks no voter fraud.

Despite Holder’s claim, a little experiment in his own home voting district showed how easy it is to commit voter fraud. An actor — a white actor, at that — went to a voting place where Eric Holder is registered to vote, and told them that he was Eric Holder.

The actor had no identification at all with him, either with or without a photo. He told the voting official that he had forgotten and left his identification in his car. Instead of telling him to go back to the car and get some identification, the official said that that was all right, and offered him the ballot.

The actor had the good sense not to actually take the ballot, which would have made him guilty of voter fraud — and, being white, he would undoubtedly have been prosecuted by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.

But the actor had made his point. When a white man with no identification can go to a voting site, impersonate a black man who lives in that district, and get his ballot offered to him, then it is far too easy to commit voter fraud.

Does not Attorney General Eric Holder understand that? Of course he understands it! The man is not stupid, despite his other failings.

Holder’s pooh-poohing of voter fraud dangers, and hyping the “threat” of denying minorities “access” to the voting booth, are completely consistent with his drive to (1) maximize the number of votes by black Democrats and (2) spread as much fear as possible among minorities that they are under siege, and that the Democrats are their only protection and salvation.

It is a political protection racket, with payoffs in votes.

Nor can Holder’s boss, Barack Obama, be unaware of voter fraud. After all, he comes from Chicago, where voting officials refuse to discriminate against dead people.

EDITORIAL: A climate of hypocrisy – Washington Times

EDITORIAL: A climate of hypocrisy – Washington Times.

Liberals live it up while preaching austerity

There’s nothing so profitable as being among the concerned climate experts who preach austerity. These enlightened few hector ordinary Americans into sacrificing their functional light bulbs, toilets and sport utility vehicles so the planet can be preserved. According to them, failure to give up these luxuries will overheat the globe and provoke devastating floods and hurricanes.

The peddlers of such apocalyptic tales rarely practice austerity themselves. Earlier this month, Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, asked Michael J. Ahearn, chairman of the board for First Solar Inc., to come and testify before a congressional oversight panel about his solar-panel business. Sun power is hailed by the left as the solution to the world’s energy needs. That’s why the Obama administration showered First Solar with $1.5 billion in taxpayer-backed gifts, recognizing the firm’s unquestioned eco-correctness.

An impious Mr. Issa, however, couldn’t help but inquire about how Mr. Ahearn made the journey from Tempe, Ariz., to Washington. According to liberals, carbon dioxide – the odorless gas that makes respiration possible – is destroying the Earth itself. So instead of driving an SUV, we’re all supposed to take the bus, ride a bicycle or even walk. Mr. Ahearn did none of these. “I flew in yesterday on a Challenger,” he explained. “A 300,” referring to the model.

According to data from Bombardier, the manufacturer of the $20 million luxury jet, the round trip would have produced about 21.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s equal to five years’ worth of per-person emissions from the average household, by the Environmental Protection Agency’s reckoning. There’s no telling how many thousands of households would have to turn down the thermostat to offset the emissions from the annual travel of just one green-energy CEO.

Many more need to forgo modern technology to offset the impact of a global-warming strategy session. At the 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, for example, about 1,200 limousines and 140 private jets were used to ferry the international bigshots looking “to save the world,” the London Telegraph reported. These posh conferences are always held in exotic locales such as Cancun, Mexico, and Durban, South Africa, subjecting the popular resort destinations to critical shortages of organic champagne and sustainable caviar.

Bureaucrats from around the world suddenly forget about planet-saving travel options such as wind-powered ships (otherwise known as sailboats) when booking reservations. Those who aren’t of the level to qualify for a private jet can attend the next U.N. conference in Doha, Qatar, in November on Qatar Airways, the event’s official airline. “Doha is home to world-class hotels and restaurants, where you can enjoy 5-star service and renowned Qatari hospitality,” the airline bragged in its advertisement to attendees. “You can also indulge in some fine shopping at luxurious shopping malls or a variety of water and beach sports available at various hotels and resorts throughout Doha.” Now that’s austerity.

It’s hard to avoid the obvious conclusion that government envoys and renewable-energy hucksters don’t really credit their own claims. The global-warming myth is simply an excuse to pillage public coffers to enhance their personal lifestyle.

House orders solid base line on border – Washington Times

House orders solid base line on border – Washington Times.

Seeks new measurement for illegal immigration control

By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times

 

Former U.S. President George W. Bush in a Border Patrol dune buggy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the Obama administration scrapped the old definition for measuring border security two years ago, it left the government without any way of measuring how much of the U.S.-Mexico border is under operational control.

On Wednesday, the House pushed back, approving a bill demanding that the Homeland Security Department come up with a good yardstick for measuring border security and produce a concrete plan to get the country closer to that goal.

The bill passed by voice vote and had the support of both Republican and Democratic leaders on homeland security issues, signaling a bipartisan desire for real data on whether the border is secure — a precondition both sides say is necessary before they can talk about legalizing illegal immigrants already in the U.S.

“We just can’t change the rules if we don’t like the results,” said Rep. Candice S. Miller, the Michigan Republican who sponsored Wednesday’s legislation prodding the administration.

Her bill orders Homeland Security to submit a plan within 180 days that would detail how to achieve control of the borders within five years.

Under the Bush administration, the government used a measure called “operational control,” which was defined as areas where the government could adequately detect and respond to illegal crossings.

At last check in 2011, Congress‘ auditors said the administration had just 44 percent of the border with Mexico under operational control, and just 2 percent of the Canadian border met that standard.

Lawmakers said the Obama administration stopped releasing operational control data in 2010. A year ago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano announced that her department was working to come up with a new yardstick instead.

In the interim, it has been using apprehensions of illegal immigrants along the border as a measure, but all sides agree that has limitations. For example, nobody knows exactly how many people avoided capture and made it into the U.S., and it doesn’t account for those crossing only to drop off drugs.

A secure Southern border has become a key hurdle for President Obama’s push to legalize the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the U.S.

The administration argues that it has made dramatic strides in security, but opponents point to the lack of total operational control as evidence that the situation is not resolved.

“Given that the Obama administration has given up reporting the level of operational control on the border, it’s no wonder Congress has to force them to come up with an approved plan to achieve it,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who used to call for legalization but now says it must be put off while the country focuses on border security first.

Neither the Homeland Security Department nor Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the border strategy, replied to requests for comment Wednesday on either the legislation or on progress toward a new measure of security.

But in testimony to the House this month, Border Patrol Chief Michael J. Fisher said the old measures were part of the earlier strategy for a giant boost in manpower and infrastructure as the Border Patrol tried to build its capabilities.

Now with twice the personnel and armed with drones and other new technology, the Border Patrol says it’s ready to start looking at better measures — which it will call the Border Conditions Index — though what those are is still under development.

“The Border Conditions Index is a tool CBP created in response to requests by Congress for metrics to track and communicate conditions at the border,” Mr. Fisher said in a March letter to Rep. Darrell E. Issa, chairman of the House oversight committee. “In particular, the Border Conditions Index will be a measurement that attempts to combine various statistics and effects.”

He said the index was “currently undergoing peer review” but said it will try to measure the number of people who got away, as a key component.

Ms. Napolitano has also suggested it should measure border violence and the number of people deterred from trying to cross in the first place.

The index is supposed to be ready for use in fiscal year 2013, which begins in four months.

Frustration at the lack of a good measure spans both parties in Congress.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, approved of Wednesday’s bill, saying it was time to ask for a broad security strategy so Congress could see what kind of financial commitment it will take to get control of the borders.

The House bill also would require the administration to run its new Border Conditions Index by specialists at one of the government’s national laboratories to make sure the measures it chooses are acceptable.

Mrs. Miller said she is open to a new yardstick but that the administration needs to be upfront about what it will measure.

“What does a secure border look like to them? Of course I would think that an accountability matrix would use the miles of fence that have been built, all the various technologies, some of the aerial things — UAVs,” she said in an interview. “If that is what they’re going to be utilizing, then they need to explain it to the Congress.”

Armed EPA Agents Visit Asheville Man – Tea Party Nation

Armed EPA Agents Visit Asheville Man – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

Sometimes a small incident says volumes about a large government agency. In this case the Environmental Protection Agency.

Around 1.45 PM on May 23, Ashville, North Carolina resident Larry Keller was in the midst of an international call which he had to cut short in order to answer his front door. He found two armed agents of the EPA who were accompanied by an Ashville Police officer.

According to a May 24 news story in the Ashville Tribune, a weekly newspaper to which I am a contributing columnist, the agents had blocked his and his neighbor’s driveways with their cars. They had driven all the way from Raleigh to confront him.

What had he done? The unannounced visit had been occasioned by news that Dr. Al Armendariz, a regional EPA administrator whose 2010 lecture had been videotaped and been released by the office of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) on April 25th. In the lecture, Dr. Amendariz had said that the agency’s “general philosophy” was to “crucify” oil and gas producers.

He compared the agency’s “philosophy of enforcement” to the way, as a Wall Street Journal editorial reported, “Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. “They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them, And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. The point is to ‘make examples’ of alleged lawbreakers.”

The case in point had been Range Resources, a driller who had been exonerated of charges of water pollution as the result of fracking. As the Wall Street Journal noted, the reference to executions “raise(d) questions not only about” not only Dr. Arnendariz’s comments “but the EPA’s larger impartiality and judgment.”

Keller, who describes himself as “a bit of a political activist” had emailed the EPA Director of External Affairs, Dr. David Gray, saying “Hello Mr. Gray. Do you have Mr. Armendariz’s contact information so we can say hello?”

That was enough to dispatch two armed agents to his front door. He was told by one agent that “…my choice of words in the email could be interpreted in many ways.” They did not identify themselves, but asked if he had ever been arrested. He responded swiftly that he had not. When he asked for a copy of his email, they refused to provide it because “the case was still under investigation.”

His wife arrived home and the agents did not want a witness so “They left in a big hurry.”

The Ashville Tribune by Catherine Hunter quoted Keller who described their attitude as “accusatory” reporting that he compared “their tactics to those of Nazi Germany SS methods.”

Keller contacted the agent’s supervisor, Michael Hill, and was told that the incident with Dr. Armendariz “had prompted so many emails and calls that authorities in Washington, DC ordered an investigation.”

Keller’s email inquiry to contact Dr. Armendariz was treated as a threat when it clearly was not. Since when is trying to contact an EPA administrator a crime?

“I want the world to know,” said Keller, “the government is reaching into the privacy of our homes and computers. I’ve never been so offended by the power of government in my life.”

Do we really want an EPA that uses such tactics against a citizen who has merely indicated an interest in contacting one of their administrators to comment on what he had said during a lecture?

Do we really want an EPA whose working “philosophy” regarding the oil and gas industry is to “crucify” it in order to regulate it and, as we know, is trying to thwart drilling, as well as to end the coal industry that provides an energy resource that produces one half of all the electricity in the nation?

It is, as noted, just one small incident, but it reflects the way the EPA functions in a presumably free society. Over the years I have read of many incidents in which the EPA has asserted powers to impede the most innocent actions of citizens and it is long past the time when this agency is reined in by Congress.

The only option at this point is to rid the nation of the Obama administration, crack down on the EPA, and rid us of the threat it poses in its efforts to deny entire industries from providing the energy the nation requires and attacks our agricultural and ranching communities for practices that reflect its normal operation.

As they used to advertise horror films, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” An EPA that operates on the basis of intimidating its chosen enemies and that seeks to intimidate citizens inquiring about it, is reason enough to be afraid.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

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