A massive case of double standards – Tea Party Nation

A massive case of double standards – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

As the IRS scandal bursts upon America, there is a lot to talk about.  Tea Party and conservative groups are ordered to produce reams of evidence to support their request for non-profit status.  Some of the requests go well beyond what the IRS needs to determine if a group is a legitimate non-profit.

While the IRS is putting conservative groups through the wringer, there is one gigantic example of double standards at the IRS.   This case alone is compelling enough to demand at the very least a lot of IRS employees be fired or perhaps even the IRS be disbanded.

 What is it?

 While the IRS causes as many problems for conservative organizations as possible, liberal organizations get a completely free pass on everything. 

 Liberal groups or groups with connections to Obama are quickly approved for non-profit status.  Liberal groups that violate the rules governing their non-profit status get a free pass.

 No group more exemplifies this problem than Media Matters for America.

 Media Matters for America is a 501c3.  As such it is described as an educational non-profit, which means that its purpose must be to support the public good and it must, for the most part, avoid partisan activities.

 Media Matters has been nothing but partisan.  In fact, one would be hard pressed to find anything Media Matters has done that a sane person could call educational.

 Instead Media Matters has led a coordinated attack on Fox News.  It has colluded with the Obama Justice Department to smear anyone who dares to speak against the Obama Regime. 

 Media Matters engaged in a war against Fox News, that was called a guerilla warfare campaign of sabotage against Fox.

 edia Matters is one of a number of left wing tax-exempt groups that should be investigated for a violation of their tax-exempt status. 

 When Media Matters coordinated with the Justice Department to spin coverage of the Fast and Furious scandal, many experts viewed that as a complete violation of their status as a non-profit organization.

 Unfortunately for America, we will not see an investigation anytime soon.  The left has a simple philosophy.  The government exists to help the left grab power, maintain power and punish those who would oppose the left.

 The other culprit here is the tax code itself.  Neither Media Matters nor many of these other left wing groups would exist but for the fact the tax code allows for the creation of these non-profits.    The left learned long ago how to control and use non-profits to their advantage.

 The tax code is seven times longer than the Bible and unlike the Bible; there is no good news to be had.  It is time we abolished the entire Byzantine tax code.  If groups like Media Matters want to survive, let them do so without taxpayers subsidizing them. 

 While conservatives also use non-profits, that is still no reason to keep non-profits or the tax code.

 A tax code that gives someone like Barack Obama the tools to oppress those who disagree with them, is a tax code that is antithecal to liberty. It is a tax code that must be abolished in favor of a tax code that embraces and expands liberty.

It is time for the IRS to be disbanded.

 

Is the Obama Dam of Lies About to Burst? – Tea Party Nation

Is the Obama Dam of Lies About to Burst? – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

Usually there are signs a dam is about to burst. Tiny cracks show up, the structure makes strange noises, and then, whoosh! That’s what we are witnessing as the President, the former Secretary of State, and the Attorney General struggle to keep the bulwark of lies and half-truths they have built intact. It is showing signs of collapse.

Liberals say absurd things all the time—mostly because they either don’t know the facts or because they prefer to ignore or obfuscate them. The current example is the shout-it-from-the-rooftops claim that Republicans are “politicizing” the events in Benghazi that left a U.S. ambassador and three security personnel dead.

In the wake of the House hearings on May 8th, the most elemental politics is at work within the White House and that is the decision to abandon Hillary Clinton. The decision to appoint her Secretary of State was political and, since the President sets foreign policy, it kept her wing of the party in the tent while affording the White House the opportunity to keep her conveniently on the road and largely out of the spotlight.

Name a single treaty or significant foreign policy achievement of Hillary Clinton’s time as Secretary of State. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nienta.

Consider the meltdown of influence the United States has had in the Middle East where the single act of a Tunisian peddler who committed suicide as a response to the harassment of the police set off a revolution that drove its dictator from office and then spread rapidly to Libya where Gaddafi was killed and to Egypt where its dictator (and ally of the U.S.) was driven from office with the President’s blessing. And, for two years, the U.S. has stood on the sidelines and watched as the Syrian dictator has slaughtered 70,000 Syrians, driving some 2.5 million to flee to Turkey and Jordan.

It has taken eight months since the September 11, 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate and a House committee hearing to learn the truth as to why repeated requests for increased security assets were denied in a nation that is still essentially a war zone between the north and the south. We still do not know who told available forces to stand down. The President and his regime call this “politicizing.”

Beyond Benghazi, every decision the President makes or chooses not to make has political implications. The choice to go to bed the night of the attack and then fly to a fundraiser the following day was political. As Commander-in-Chief he had responsibility to issue the orders to protect his diplomats—our diplomats—but he is also the Great Delegator and, as the noose tightens around Hillary, she is very expendable.

It’s a political decision to exploit the murders in a Connecticut elementary school to attack the Second Amendment and gun ownership. The response of ordinary people was to go out and buy a gun. Indeed, fear of the White House’s intentions has made the President the greatest gun salesman in the nation.

Even in the Obama Justice Department there is the odor of deception that still reeks from the bungled gun-running program called “Fast and Furious” which allowed guns purchased In the U.S. to be transferred to various Mexican drug cartels. The result, in one case, was a dead U.S. Border Patrol officer, an ICE agent, and an unknown number of Mexican cartel victims. It took a presidential executive order to throw a blanket of silence over the role of the Justice Department in this lethal debacle. That’s political.

Now we learn that the Justice Department obtained Associated Press phone records in a probe to discover the source of a leaked story. AP officials called it a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how a news organization gathers news. The ever-reliable, politically-correct, liberally oriented AP has become a crack in the dam.

The revelation that the Internal Revenue Service “targeted” the Tea Party, patriotic, and pro-Israel groups for special attention regarding their tax status now adds to a growing sense of a regime without any internal limits on its exercise of power.

The result is a period in which the barely concealed scorn of the President, his wife, and those around him in appointed and elected office has half the population outraged while the other half is content to live parasitically, not paying taxes, and receiving an amazing array of benefits which a bankrupt nation cannot afford.

When enough people—citizens, voters, taxpayers—think they are being lied to and betrayed by those in high office, the dam of lies will begin to show signs of bursting under the pressure of their pent up anger.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

 

Amnesty Bill is a Multi-Million Dollar Fraud – Tea Party Nation

Amnesty Bill is a Multi-Million Dollar Fraud – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

Native-born and naturalized Americans who are currently seeking work are already competing with illegal immigrants—a term that the Associated Press says it will no longer use—or standing in line behind them as they sign up for all manner of welfare benefits. The official estimate of the number of illegal aliens—oops, undocumented aliens—in the nation is estimated to be eleven million, but if the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill becomes law, it will act as a magnet to attract millions more.

As Roy Beck, the founder and president of NumbersUSA, points out, “If Congress passes the Senate Gang of Eight bill, it would be like re-creating ALL of the Top 20 cities in the United States, filling them entirely with foreign citizens and giving them lifetime work permits to compete with America’s struggling workers—in just ten years’ time.”

NumbersUSA analysts spent two weeks reading the 844-page bill, concluding that 33 million lifetime work permits would be given to foreign citizens in the first decade if the bill passes. A revised bill has 867 pages and, according to a Daily Caller article, “contains 999 references to waivers, exemptions, and political discretion”, more even than Obamacare.

That’s a lot of competition for jobs and it will hit those graduating from high school and college the hardest. Right now, the youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds is 11.7% and, among them, the African-American cohort’s rate it 20.1% and Hispanics’ rate is 12.6%. An additional 1.7 million young adults are not counted as “unemployed” because they are not in the labor force, meaning that they have given up looking for work due to lack of jobs. Do we really want to add millions of formerly illegal immigrants to the work force at this time?

The Center for Immigration Studies also analyzed the Gang of Eight amnesty bill and discovered that it is essentially a Get Out of Jail card:

The report, by Ronald Mortensen, a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, shows that the token penalties, when they do exist, are not commensurate with the employment-related felonies committed by the majority of illegal aliens, nor are they commensurate with the benefits received by illegal aliens.

Just as unfortunate is the fact that millions of victims of these crimes are ignored while the amnestied illegals are rewarded and even benefit from the so-called penalties, as the monies actually go into a fund that provides services to the very people who paid the “penalties”.

“Illegal aliens will be rewarded for breaking laws for which American citizens are routinely punished,” said Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “For example, an American citizen would face a maximum penalty of ten years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 for using a fraudulent Social Security card, but under this bill the illegal alien would face a $1,000 penalty covering all his many offenses, a penalty which in many cases will be waived. Then, they would be issued a new Social Security number without any past bad credit or arrest records.”

View the full report at: http://cis.org/immigration-reform-amnesty-illegal-aliens-and-their-…
Dr. Mortensen discovered the following amnesties for illegal aliens and their employers:

Amnesty for the estimated 75 percent of illegal aliens committing Social Security fraud.

Amnesty from returning to home countries for 10 years before adjusting status.

Amnesty for illegal aliens committing Identity theft.

Amnesty for illegal aliens by officially authorizing them to continue committing identity theft by using fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers belonging to American citizens.

Amnesty for illegal aliens who have committed perjury on I-9 forms.

De-Facto amnesty from the token $1,000 penalty, since it effectively pre-pays services provided to illegal aliens.

Amnesty from existing exclusion, deportation, and removal orders:

While illegal aliens would be granted amnesty for crimes they have committed, government employees who discover Social Security fraud, identity theft, or perjury on I-9 forms while reviewing applications for provisional status would be prohibited from notifying victims, law enforcement, etc. with a threat of a $10,000 penalty. This is 10 times more than the $1,000 penalty paid by an illegal alien who has committed felony identity theft.

Amnesty for employers found to have employed illegal aliens or who are currently employing illegal aliens. Moreover, employers may continue to employ illegal aliens, accept fraudulent Social Security numbers, and renew falsified I-9 forms for those who apply for provisional status.

Amnesty for employers who did not withhold and/or submit payroll taxes for individuals illegally in the United States.

Amnesty for employers who violated labor laws by paying unfair wages, who failed to pay wages, etc.

Amnesty for employers who facilitated Social Security fraud and identity theft by providing or accepting false Social Security numbers.

While employers would be held harmless, government employees who find that employers violated the law while reviewing applications for temporary status would be prohibited from notifying the appropriate law enforcement authorities. If government employees do report tax or labor violations, they could face a fine of $10,000.

Thanks to the passage of Obamacare, the amnesty bill would increase the cost of the nationalized health care system. Betsy McCaughey, the lieutenant governor of New York from 1995 to 1998, in an April 29 letter in The Wall Street Journal, warned that “One looming cost is health care. Under the Obama health law, starting January 1, 2014 legal immigrants will be eligible for subsidized private health plans on the exchanges as soon as they arrive in the U.S.”

“The Senate Gang of Eight’s proposed bill will add $100 billion to the cost of Obamacare’s subsidies over the next decade by doubling the number of legal immigrants entering the country with green cards.” Ms. McCaughey noted that, in 2012, 484,072 immigrants entered that way. “The Gang of Eight plan will push it to about one million. About half of those green card holders will be eligible for the maximum assistance with premiums, subsidies and copays, totaling $9,000 per person, and more than 80% will qualify for at least some taxpayer-funded Obamacare subsidy.”

Little known or reported is the fact that the Schumer-Rubio bill includes two “slush funds” amounting to $150 million that would be used to fund groups like La Raza and the American Immigration Lawyers Association with taxpayer money.

The prevailing wisdom is that the amnesty bill will create more Democrat than Republican voters and that is precisely its purpose. Its victims will be every native-born and naturalized citizen paying taxes and trying to cope with a healthcare system that will be on life-support soon enough.

The proposed bill is a massive multi-million fraud. If it passes and is signed into law, the further destruction of America will be accelerated.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

Related articles

• Senate immigration bill gives illegal aliens multiple amnesties: New study (ConservativeActionAlerts.com)
• An Open Letter to Senator Rubio About Consequences of Illegal Immigration (shepherdspiehole.typepad.com)
• Amnesty Bill Abolishes “Illegal Immigrants,” Creates “New Americans” (independentsentinel.com)
• Holder: Amnesty is a Civil Right??? AYFKMOW? They are ILLEGAL ALIENS!!!!!! (therightofway.net)
• Senate Gang of 8 Legislation: Amnesty Now, Citizenship Later Without Border Security (heritageaction.com)
• WHO NEEDS AMNESTY? Millions of Illegal Aliens Ripping Taxpayers Off for $20 Billion a Year in “Tax Credits” (directorblue.blogspot.com)

 

Endgame – Tea Party Nation

Endgame – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

We are rapidly approached the endgame in American politics. 

 

The endgame is the place the liberals want us to be.    There is only one thing stopping them from hitting the endgame point.

 What is it?

 Republican control of the House of Representatives.

 What is their endgame point?

 It is socialism. It is the end of freedom and liberty. 

 The left is engaged in the strategy known as Cloward-Piven.  It is named after two Marxist professors who wanted to bring down the government first in New York City and then eventually in America.

 The strategy is simple.  Overwhelm the system with demands that it cannot meet.  Then the system will collapse.

 We are seeing that today.  From America’s overwhelming debt, to amnesty, to Obamacare, the left is trying to create so many demands on America’s economic system that it will collapse.

 There is one last hurdle they have to overcome to get there.

 That is Republican control of the House of Representatives. 

 As this year opened, one of the biggest topics of conversation in DC was whether Harry Reid, the bordello child from Nevada and erstwhile majority leader for the Party of Treason in the Senate would change the rules to abolish the filibuster. 

 Looking back on it now, it seems obvious he would not do it. 

 Why?

 Because it would have been a meaningless point. 

 Harry Reid can get the Party of Treason to pass as many bills as it wants but as long as the Republicans control the House, most of those bills would be DOA.

 But what happens if the Party of Treason gains control of the House again in 2014?

 Then you can count on Harry Reid eliminating the filibuster so that a simple majority vote gets bills passed in the Senate.

 This of course assumes that the Party of Treason maintains control of the Senate.  At this point, things look good for the Republicans to take control of the Senate.  However, in 2010 and 2012 things also looked good.  Never underestimate the ability of the Republican Party to blow an election.

 If the Party of Treason takes control of the House, Reid will abolish the filibuster in the Senate by rule change and then you will see the all out, final assault on liberty.

 Liberals openly talk about the need to limit freedom and liberty.

 Melissa Harris Perry is a left wing nut job on MSNBC, the official channel of the Party of Treason.  She caused controversy with comments recently about how children should not be raised by their parents but by a collective community.

 Now she has doubled down on her comments.  In a promo airing on the Channel of Treason, she says:

 “This isn’t about me wanting to take your kids, and this isn’t even about whether children are property. This is about whether we as a society, expressing our collective will through our public institutions, including our government, have a right to impinge on individual freedoms in order to advance a common good. And that is exactly the fight that we have been having for a couple hundred years.”

 Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao would have loved her.  After all, they impinged on the individual freedom of life and liberty to advance a “common good.”

 If the Party of Treason ends up controlling the House and the Senate after the 2014 elections, we will see the impinging of individual freedom for the advancement of the “common good.”

 Freedom of speech and religion will be gone.  The Second Amendment will be gone.  The 7^th Amendment will be at best curtailed if not eliminated.  The 10^th Amendment will simply be a museum piece and state boundaries will be little more than lines on a map. 

 We will no longer be the United States of America but the United State of America, with a tyrannical, massive central government.

 This is what our founding fathers feared. 

 This is the end game for liberals.

 The 2014 election comes down to one simple point.  Either real Americans win the election or we all lose our freedom so the left can advance their “common good.”

 But as we know about liberals, their ideas never benefit the common people nor are they good.

 

Democrats poke real Americans in the eye – Tea Party Nation

Democrats poke real Americans in the eye – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

The level of outrage from the action of the Obama Regime doesn’t seem like it could get any higher.

 Then they do something else. 

 Conservatives accuse the Obamas of acting like they are royalty not the family of the elected leader of this nation.  Is there some truth to this and if there is will the Republicans finally do something about it?

 The Obama’s have been outdoing themselves on vacations.  They have been averaging more than one a month.  Now, they have done two in one week. 

 The Obama daughters (possibly with Michelle Obama, though the coverage on this has not been clear) started the week at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas.  Now they have gone to the slopes of Idaho for skiing.

 Must be nice to be able to take two vacations in one week. 

 Barack Obama could certainly afford for his family to take two vacations in one week.  He is a millionaire.  The problem is not the family going on vacations.  The problem is the millions of dollars it costs to protect them while they are on vacation.

 Not to be out done, Vice President and brain donor Joe Biden has gone on vacation to the beach as well.

 Cost to the taxpayers?  Unknown.

 It would never occur to the Obamas, the Bidens or for that matter any member of the Party of Treason to lead by example.  In case they don’t remember, real America, namely America that is outside of the Washington DC bubble, is still suffering from the Great Obama Depression.

 If you believe the statistics from the Obama Department of Labor, unemployment is around 8%.  The labor force participation rate is a better indicator of how the economy is doing.  It is at an all-time low.

 Millions of Americans are out of work or are forced into part-time work because of the Obama Regime’s policies.  Millions of Americans can’t even do a weekend getaway much less a full fledged vacation. 

 What does Obama do?

 He does not care.

 After all, he thinks he is royalty. He thinks he is entitled to this.

 With millions of Americans unemployed and a stagnant economy, the question is, are the Republicans ever going to do anything about this?  Are they ever going to fight?

 The Obama White House costs Americans  $1.4 billion a year.  This includes a quarter of a million dollars a year for calligraphers and over $100,000 a year for the Presidential dog groomer.

 Why can’t those positions be eliminated?

 And while those positions are being eliminated, perhaps the GOP should pass a rider to the budget that says Obama gets one vacation a year.  If he wants more than that, he foots the bill for all of it.  He pays for Air Force One.  He pays for the hotels.  He pays for his own security.

If someone were doing a real job as poorly as Obama is doing his, do you think he would even get one paid vacation, much less several?

 There are millions of real Americans who are suffering.  To watch the Obamas vacation like royalty, on their tax dollars is adding insult to injury.

Sebelius Finally Admits Premiums Will Rise as a Result of ObamaCare – Katie Pavlich

Sebelius Finally Admits Premiums Will Rise as a Result of ObamaCare – Katie Pavlich.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is finally admitting that the Affordable Care Act isn’t actually that affordable. Think tanks have been warning for years about the expensive cost of ObamaCare and many have already seen their health insurance premiums rise as a result of its implementation yet, the administration has denied the bill will actually increase costs for consumers until now.

Some people purchasing new insurance policies for themselves this fall could see premiums rise because of requirements in the health-care law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Tuesday.

Ms. Sebelius’s remarks come weeks before insurers are expected to begin releasing rates for plans that start on Jan. 1, 2014, when key provisions of the health law kick in. Premiums have been a sensitive subject for the Obama administration, which is counting on elements in the health law designed to increase competition among insurers to keep rates in check. The administration has pointed to subsidies that will be available for many lower-income Americans to help them with the cost of coverage.

The secretary’s remarks are among the first direct statements from federal officials that people who have skimpy health plans right now could face higher premiums for plans that are more generous. She noted that the law requires plans to provide better benefits and treat all customers equally regardless of their medical claims.

“These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, and so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market,” she said. “But we feel pretty strongly that with subsidies available to a lot of that population that they are really going to see much better benefit for the money that they’re spending.”

Most people who have “skimpy plans” have them because they either a) don’t need a fancy health insurance plan b) can’t afford a health insurance plan. Forcing consumers into plans they don’t need or can’t afford is counter productive. Not to mention, Sebelius argues consumers will see a “much better benefit for the money that they’re spending.” Better benefits? Does she mean better benefits of having fewer doctors?

Most physicians have a pessimistic outlook on the future of medicine, citing eroding autonomy and falling income, a survey of more than 600 doctors found.

Six in 10 physicians (62 percent) said it is likely many of their colleagues will retire earlier than planned in the next 1 to 3 years, a survey from Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found. That perception is uniform across age, gender, and specialty, it said.

Another 55 percent of surveyed doctors believe others will scale back hours because of the way medicine is changing, but the survey didn’t elaborate greatly on how it was changing. Three-quarters think the best and brightest may not consider a career in medicine, although that is an increase from the 2011 survey result of 69 percent.

“Physicians recognize ‘the new normal’ will necessitate major changes in the profession that require them to practice in different settings as part of a larger organization that uses technologies and team-based models for consumer (patient) care,” the survey’s findings stated.

About two-thirds of the survey responders said they believe physicians and hospitals will become more integrated in coming years. In the last 2 years, 31 percent moved into a larger practice, results found. Nearly eight in 10 believe midlevel providers will play a larger role in directing primary care.

Or how about the better benefits of fewer life saving medical devices thanks to the innovation and job killing medical device tax in ObamaCare?

Biomedical or medical device engineering firms are already laying off workers who develop crucial medical products due to the “unforeseen” costs, or in other words, the costs of ObamaCare. Not to mention, the more money these companies pay to the government, the less money they have to invest in research and development.

The Obama administration is no longer trying to lie about ObamaCare, instead they’re simply trying to justify the lies by making everyone feel better about the so-called benefits ObamaCare will offer at a much higher price.

Related articles

• HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius admits Obamacare is raising some peoples insurance rates… (bluegrasspundit.com)

 

A Carbon Tax Would Destroy America – Tea Party Nation

A Carbon Tax Would Destroy America – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

If you want to know what a carbon tax on emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would do to America you need only look at the destruction of industry and business in Australia, along with the soaring costs for energy use it imposes on anyone there.

“The carbon tax is contributing to a record number of firms going to the wall with thousands of employees being laid off and companies forced to close factories that have stood for generations”, Steve Lewis and Phil Jacob reported in a March 18 issue of The Daily Telegraph, a leading Australian newspaper.

“Soaring energy bills caused by the government’s climate change scheme have been called ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ by company executives and corporate rescue doctors who are trying to save ailing firms.”

The passage of a carbon tax in America would have the exact same results and it remains a top priority for the White House and Democrats in Congress who see it as a bonanza in new funding for the government.

As Paul Driessen says in a Townhall.com commentary, “More rational analysis reveals that dreams of growth are nothing more than dangerous tax revenue hallucinations. They would bring intense pain for no climate or economic gain.”

Too many Americans still believe that CO2 is causing global warming, but CO2 plays no role in climate change and is barely 0.038 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere. More to the point, there is no warming and hasn’t been for the last seventeen years as the Earth is in a natural cooling cycle that has prolonged the advent of spring with severe snow storms throughout the nation.

There is no scientific justification for such a tax, but those advocating it don’t care about the science. They care about raising revenue for an ever-growing government to spend and waste.

Driessen points out that “Hydrocarbons (coal, oil, and natural gas) provide over 83% of all the energy that powers America. A carbon tax would put a hefty surcharge on everything we make, grow, ship, eat, and do. It would put the federal government in control of, not just one-sixth of the economy, as under Obamacare, but 100% of our economy and lives. It would make the United States increasingly less productive, less competitive globally, less able to provide opportunities for our children.”

The case for a carbon tax simply doesn’t exist, but there are powerful forces in Congress and the support of the White House to impose such a tax. The power of the environmental movement and its long history of lies about the climate, primarily the global warming hoax, cannot be dismissed or ignored.

In Australia, “The Australian Securities & Investments Commission reports there were 10,632 company collapses for the 12 months to March 1—averaging 886 a month—with the number of firms being placed in administration more than 12 percent higher than during the global financial crisis.” It represents “a record high…led by widespread failures in manufacturing and construction, which accounted for almost one-fifth of collapses.”

Greg Evans, the chief economic economist for the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that “It defies logic to adopt a policy which even the Treasury acknowledges will lower our standards of living and be harmful to national productivity.” Adding to Australia’s struggling companies, the carbon tax and one on mining were showing up as “sovereign issues” in discussions with foreign investors.” Who would want to invest in Australia if these two taxes were destroying the economic strength of the nation?

Politics in Australia is no less a battleground than here in America. Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who introduced the carbon tax, just beat back a bid by her Labor Party’s dissidents to reinstall former leader Kevin Rudd who lost to her in 2010 and 2012. Much of the opposition to her comes from the harm being inflicted by the carbon and mining taxes.

Marlo Lewis is a senior fellow in energy and environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. During the 2012 campaign, he described a carbon tax as “political poison for the Republican Party.” Mitt Romney opposed it, but ‘the big attraction of carbon taxes these days is not as a global warming policy but as a revenue enhancer. In both parties, deficit hawks and big spenders (often the same individuals) are flailing for ways to boost federal revenue.”

That is precisely the problem afflicting a nation whose Congress and President could not find a reason to cut anything from the federal budget. The result was the “sequestration” that imposed cuts neither party could agree upon.

In a Fox News article, “Here comes Team Obama’s carbon tax”. Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment and author of “Democracy Denied” reported that “The Treasury Department’s Office of Environment and Energy has finally begun to turn over documents about its preparations for a carbon tax in response to transparency warrior Chris Horner’s Freedom of Information Act request. The documents provide solid evidence that the Obama administration and its allies in Congress have every intention of implementing a carbon tax if we fail to stop them.”

President Obama’s nominee to be the next Secretary of Energy, Ernest Moniz, is on record wanting to double or triple the cost of energy, much as his predecessor wanted.

A carbon tax, if enacted, would totally undermine a nation that has a debt climbing toward $17 trillion and millions unemployed in an economy that is struggling to inch its way out of the depths of the financial crisis.

If you wanted to destroy America, you could do it with a carbon tax. Australia is reeling from the cost to its economy and the higher energy costs its people are paying. We don’t want that here.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

Related articles

• Carbon tax hallucinations (wattsupwiththat.com)
• DRIESSEN: Obama’s misguided carbon tax plans (washingtontimes.com)
• Obama’s Carbon Dioxide Lies (iceagenow.info)

Dumb and Dangerous: America’s Fast Pass for Saudi Arabia – Michelle Malkin.

Dumb and Dangerous: America’s Fast Pass for Saudi Arabia – Michelle Malkin .

It’s business as usual in the post-9/11 world. Your federal government is back to pandering to wealthy travelers from Saudi Arabia. In the eyes of our massive homeland security apparatus, the comfort of Saudis is a higher priority than the safety of American citizens.

And thanks to reckless, feckless bureaucrats who fear being labeled “racists,” “xenophobes” and “Islamophobes,” political correctness remains the handmaiden of terror.

According to a new report released this week by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security plans to bestow “trusted traveler” status to travelers from Saudi Arabia. Yes, the home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers will soon enjoy the exclusive privilege of new entry shortcuts into the U.S.

Fox News points out: “Only an exclusive handful of countries enjoy inclusion in the Global Entry program: Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands. According to the IPT, some officials are questioning why Saudi Arabia gets to reap the benefits of the program, when key U.S. allies like Germany and France are not enrolled.”

Saudi suck-up Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, hailed “the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” and pledged to work with the government to facilitate “legitimate trade and travel.”

This foolish move is astonishing but not unprecedented. As I noted in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration had created its own fast-pass system for Saudi elites called “Visa Express.” Thanks to this GOP idiocy, three of the 9/11 hijackers skipped the usual consular interview process and bypassed long lines in the hot Saudi sun.

Throughout the jihadist-coddling Saudi kingdom, applicants could simply file their visa paperwork through travel agencies and courier companies for a small fee — without having to appear in person or submit to extensive background checks. The U.S. embassy in Riyadh bragged before 9/11: “Applicants will no longer have to take time off from work, no longer have to wait in long lines under the hot sun and in crowded waiting rooms, and no longer be limited by any time constraints.”

Investigative reporter Joel Mowbray obtained the shocking, shoddy applications filed by the hijackers — whose omissions about where, when and what they planned to do when they arrived in the U.S. should have raised blood-red flags. But after the Saudi-dominated 9/11 jihad crew murdered nearly 3,000 innocent men, women and children on our soil, Bush administration officials bent over backward to assure touchy Saudis that no changes would be made “in determining visa eligibility as a result of the (9/11) attacks.” Visa Express was expanded.

 

Map of the territory and area covered by present-day Saudi Arabia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Moreover, State Department employees were banned from communicating with foreign governments about their citizens’ visa applications, making it virtually impossible to verify vital information. The Bush State Department official in charge of implementing the “Visa Express” program that helped enable 9/11 hijackers and their colleagues was not punished. Instead, she received “cash prizes for ‘outstanding performance in the 12 months from April 16, 2001, to April 15, 2002′ — a period during which at least five of the 9/11 terrorists received visas that should have been denied according to the law,” as Mowbray noted, “and during which September 11 happened.”

Since that time, consular screening has remained an abject joke. There is still no operational tracking system to detect and deport hundreds of thousands of visa overstayers, including untold numbers of illegal aliens from jihad-friendly Middle Eastern countries. Law enforcement training for consular officials is scant. And Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., stated the obvious about Obama’s Fast Pass 2.0: “I think you have radical Wahhabism in certain elements in Saudi Arabia, and I think to be more lenient there than in other places would be a mistake.”

Twelve years after a Saudi-dominated cabal of young male Muslims committed mass murder in the skies and brought down the Twin Towers, your government refuses to do the unapologetic national security profiling necessary to prevent another domestic attack by foreign jihadis. Instead, they’re searching your grandma’s knitting bag, your Marine’s prosthetic limbs and your toddler’s bags packed for Disneyland — while waving Saudi “trusted travelers” through the fast lane. Deadly deja vu.

Related articles

• Dumb and Dangerous: America’s Fast Pass for Saudi Arabia (conservativeread.com)
• Dumb and Dangerous: America’s Fast Pass for Saudi Arabia (cnsnews.com)
• Concern Growing Over DHS Decision to Give Saudi Arabia Fast Track Travel Privilege (foxnewsinsider.com)
• America’s Fast Pass for Saudi Arabia (nationalreview.com)
• The Bloodsucking Barbaric Saudis Given Special “Fast Pass” Around Customs Intended for Civilized Nations (therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com)
• Special Travel Benefit for Saudis a “Slap in the Face” (culturaljihad.wordpress.com)

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 Mini-Ice Age has Arrived–Despite What Obama Says – Tea Party Nation

The Mini-Ice Age has Arrived–Despite What Obama Says – Tea Party Nation.

by Alan Caruba

Climatologists and meteorologists are familiar with the last Mini Ice Age (MIA) that occurred between 1350 and 1850 AD. It is also referred to as the Little Ice Age. Suffice to say it was cold and, as such weather cycles tend to do, it altered history in a variety of ways.

The failure of crops was one aspect of the cold spell and in France the revolution that overthrew the monarchy is attributed to the unhappiness of its citizens, but famine in the northern hemisphere was widespread. In the United States, it is best recalled for the horrid winter our revolutionary war soldiers spent at Valley Forge. At one point during the cycle Americans spent what they called “a year without summer” when the weather remained too cold to plant crops.

Since climate is cyclical, it is not surprising that the MIA followed the Medieval Warm Period, also known as a climate optimum. Crops flourished, empires rose and declined, and neither cycle had a thing to do with so-called greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and everything to do with what was happening on the sun.

As spring arrives in the U.S., there was also a broad band of snow storms that comes with it.

One of the world’s most respected long-term climate forecasters is Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist whose expertise is relied upon by corporations and others who need to know what the weather will really be as opposed to the criminally false claims about global warming. His website, WeatherAction, is well worth visiting.

In his own words, “WeatherAction is involved in the Global Warming/Climate Change debate where we point out that the world is now cooling not warming and there is no observational evidence in the thousands and millions of years of data that changes in CO2 have any effect on weather or climate. There are no scientists in the world who can produce such observational data. There is only effect the other way, namely that ocean temperatures control average CO2 levels.”

Recently Corbyn announced that “The CO2 story is over. It has been pointing the world in the wrong direction for too long. The serious implications of the developing mini ice age to agriculture and the world economy through the next 25 to 35 years must be addressed.” World cooling is now locked in says Corbyn, citing the decrease in average solar activity and a jet stream that is often further south than normal, resulting in extreme weather events.

Following in the heels of Corbyn’s forecast was the release of a new report by Dr. David Whitehouse, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and what makes it fairly extraordinary after decades of global warming propaganda is that he concludes that there has been no statistically significant increase in annual global temperatures since 1997. That’s seventeen years of atrocious lies about a warming earth.

The irony that Dr. Whitehouse includes in his report is that the atmospheric composition of carbon dioxide has increased during that time from 370 ppm to 390 ppm. So, everything you have been told about carbon dioxide emissions and those of other so-called greenhouse gases “causing” a warming earth is just lies, lies, and lies.

“If the standstill (lower temperatures) continues for a few more years,” wrote Dr. Whitehouse, “it will mean that no one who has just reached adulthood, or younger, will have witnessed the earth get warmer during their lifetime.”

Now here’s the kicker. The President of the United States, according to a recent Business Week article, “is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving projects, from pipelines to highways.” The result “could be significant delays for natural gas export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists say.”

“In taking the step,” said Business Week reporter Mark Drajem, “Obama would be fulfilling a vow to act alone in the face of a Republican-run House of Representatives unwilling to pass measures limiting greenhouse gases.”

The President, as usual, is lying through his teeth. There is no global warming or, as it is more frequently called these days, climate change unless you include a colder earth in that change.

The result will be four years of a second term in office during which Obama and his minions will do everything they can to slow what little is left of the U.S. economy, currently growing at a rate that requires a microscope to detect.

For the rest of us, the Mini Ice Age has arrived.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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• The new Mini Ice Age is upon us! (sott.net)
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