Lost in Translation - The Obama Economy

Opinion at large

Some mornings, I can't wait to get up, turn the news on and listen to the spin. It never ceases to amaze me, how our Messianic, narcissistic President can make a speech (daily) and pee down our legs and tell us it's raining. This jobs report was not a surprise, Gallup has the unemployment rate at 10.1%! The government reported 9.6% because they did not include the last two weeks of September. The 77,000 temporary census jobs ended and the private sector grew by an anemic 64,000 jobs overshadowed by the previous month's 93,000 new jobs. When I hear Obama speak (I try not to), he has lost his spark, enthusiasm and I don't think he believes his rhetoric and lies. I do business with many small business owners and they are not spending money, hiring employees, buying capital equipment, and extremely uncertain of their (our) future. Even the liberal sycophants are bailing on the anointed one. Harry Reid's son, Rory, is running for Governor of Nevada. He came out against Obamacare! Imagine Sunday dinner at the Reid's. Rory said Obamacare was bad for Nevada. That will leave a mark. The spin doctors are scheming an attempt to minimize the outright implosion of the democrat party with poll after poll showing the republicans creaming the democrats. I heard some democrat representatives state that they might not vote for Pelosi for minority speaker of the house. I heard she was shopping for a really small gavel. Imagine a life without Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? To dream! I speak with a lot of like minded people (very conservative) and they are really mad to the point of voting all of congress out of office. The number one issue is the economy/unemployment. Yesterday's unemployment numbers are the last numbers before the midterms. Rasmussen reports 63% angry at federal government polices and 43% very angry. This is what voters will remember when they go to the voting booths. Obama said a few months ago, that he would not rest until the economy turned around, that he would have a laser-like focus on the economy. Talk is cheap. How can the American people trust a man who knowingly lies to the populous? He doesn't follow through on anything the citizens want, only on his agenda. Let's not forget the record number of people on food stamps? A mere 41 million people! The socialistic nanny state has begun. Is this part of Obama's plan? Or is he just entirely incompetent? Either way, he is destroying America.

 "Socialism dampens the human spirit. Statism kills it." 

I find it alarming that Canadians and Europeans are criticizing America for the ridiculous spending the President and congress are accruing. Shouldn't we analyze why they are warning us? My worries are more spending policies in the lame duck session before the incumbents are fired. When they return from their latest time off, the democrats will be licking their wounds and ready and willing to pass more stimulus spending bills instead of lowering taxes. How about a spending and hiring freeze in the federal government? That would be worth ten fold in good PR for Obama (never happen). If we can win enough seats in the house and senate, possibly, we can slow down the liberal policies because some seats are unoccupied and would be filled immediately. In closing, Obama and the incumbents realize 24 days out, that there isn't much they can do now. The latest jobs report was the nail in the democrat's coffin. Our Panderer in Chief can go out and give speeches to his former base, however, the majority of his base feels disenfranchised.

Remember November!

Obama going hand to hand combat with the republican majority:



Progressive Feudalism

By Thomas Lifson


The changes wrought on the American political economy by progressives have taken us in the unmistakable direction of feudalism. The morphological resemblance between the progressive version of America and the historic feudal regimes of Western Europe and Japan is obvious if one takes a few moments to consider the changes in the proper context.


Legal Equality


Feudalism assigned people to different classes based on birth and assigned different privileges and obligations to the classes. The noble classes were considered a different order of humanity from the commoners, and the two groups led separate lifestyles. In addition to huge economic disparities, the two groups had very different rights. If one was of noble birth in Japan, for instance, he could carry a sword. For commoners, unlawful possession of a sword was a capital crime.


In progressive America, two groups today have a parallel distinction. Birth, and birth alone,* determines whether one is a member of a designated victim class, entitled to preferences in college admissions, scholarships, and employment, factors which have a major formative influence on life prospects. Moreover, the ability to litigate as the victim of discrimination with the possibility of massive financial returns is enhanced. According to the testimony of two Department of Justice lawyers, membership in a designated victim class brings with it immunity from prosecution under Civil Rights statutes.


Personal Autonomy


Under feudalism, the ruling class had few limits on its power and regarded the commoner classes as under their tutelage, hopelessly incompetent to make important decisions on their own. Many spheres of life were devoid of personal autonomy. What one wore and where one worked was closely regulated, and in feudal England or France, one could discern whether a person was a peasant, a blacksmith, a merchant, or a noble instantaneously, merely by dress.


In contrast, the bourgeois revolution, which overthrew the European feudal order, gave birth to the radical Enlightenment notion that each person should be the master of his or her own destiny, fit to make the important decisions in life autonomously. What one wore or ate was up to the individual.


In progressive America, personal decisions such as what to eat are now regarded as the proper concern of our government masters. Foie gras was forbidden by the city of Chicago for two years, and if you want to have your restaurant food cooked in trans fats like butter, you ought to know that New York City has a say in the matter.


Common to the feudal and progressive regimes is a deep and abiding disdain for the classes needing regulation and guidance. It is not so much that they hate or despise the lesser beings over which they rule, as it is a sense of obligation to make the right decisions for them.


Sumptuary Laws


Feudal rulers reserved for themselves certain luxuries. In feudal Japan, silk was an extravagance reserved exclusively for the noble classes. Wealthy merchants sometimes purchased garments with silk linings but with humble cotton, wool, or linen outer surfaces, so as to enjoy the warmth and softness of silk while preserving their lives.


In progressive America, Nancy Pelosi regularly jets from Washington, D.C. to her home in San Francisco on a luxury Gulfstream private jet belonging to the Air Force when she isn't commandeering a larger C-32 executive transport, the military version of the Boeing 757. Meanwhile, corporate executives were forced to cancel orders for and sell executive jets during the financial crisis of 2008-9. While President Obama told corporations to not hold meetings in Las Vegas, federal agencies are free to have meetings there.


Guilds


Under feudalism, officially recognized guilds enjoyed monopolies and special privileges, and in return, they offered financial and other support to the ruling class. In progressive America, powerful labor unions are allowed to force people to pay them dues in order to work in certain companies and public organizations. In return, these unions channel vast amounts of money in campaign donations to ruling class politicians at election time.


Moreover, unions can be insulated from the market consequences of their actions, as in the UAW members whose health care pension costs drove GM and Chrysler bankrupt but whose lavish benefits were preserved at taxpayer expense. Money spent under the stimulus bill has been channeled mostly to union members.


Estates


In European feudalism, clergy enjoyed special status as both advisers to rulers and justifiers of ruling class power. They were even called the First Estate, for they interpreted God's law, usually in a manner which maintained that the kings ruled by divine right.


In progressive America, a comparable role is played by lawyers and the courts, which enjoy vast powers and can command wealth that would be the envy of any bishop or cardinal in feudal France. Many of our most important decisions in progressive America are now taken away from the people's representatives in legislative bodies and decided by courts, themselves comprising members of the legal class.


Taxation


Under feudal regimes, the rulers took as much as they could in taxes, up to the point where peasants began starving and tax revenues decreased. In progressive America, taxes have also trended in that direction.


The Bourgeoisie


Under feudalism, the bourgeois class were regarded as upstarts and a threat to the legitimate ruling class. They were despised, ridiculed, and regulated. In progressive America, President Obama sees profit as an optional feature of corporations, and the disdain, regulation, taxation, and liability which business owners must endure have never been worse. As with feudal rulers, the progressive ruling classes see the bourgeoisie as vulgar pretenders to their own exalted status and a threat to their own power.


Back to the Future?


If progressivism has its way, more and more of our lives will be regulated by government bureaucrats setting rules and regulations and licensing people to engage in even the most mundane tasks. It is quite accurate to say that the reforms won by the rising bourgeois class from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, limiting and then ending feudalism, are in full retreat in progressive America.


It is time to rename progressives "regressives," a change I first proposed several years ago.


Thomas Lifson is editor and publisher of American Thinker.

Pathetic Funnies:

Obama waking up on November 3rd

Ulterior motives (repost)

Promoting Job Creation and Economic Growth

By Doug Schoen

Given the Rasmussen Reports polls released this week that show that 86% think the issue of the economy is very important, and just 38% of Americans say the economy will be stronger in a year, it is clear that creating jobs and stimulating the economy is a top priority for our country.

Despite the significance of this issue, there has been no rational discussion among political, business and academic leaders on how to create jobs and encourage entrepreneurship.


As Kauffman Foundation CEO Carl Schramm points out in the Economist, government policy debates lack a real discussion on how we spend and tax, and politicians often simply champion small businesses as the key to job creation, when in fact, firms less than five years old are responsible for nearly all net job creation. Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post adds that this distinction between new and old firms is much more significant than the distinction between small and big firms: over long periods, almost all job growth comes from new businesses, due to high failure rates among existing firms.


The White House lacks a coherent job creation strategy. The administration has passed a stimulus package that has not produced the results that were anticipated and promised, it has given bailouts to banks and automobiles to simply stop these companies from going under, and it wants to increase taxes for those making over $250,000 annually by letting the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. Most recently, Obama proposed a plan to invest $50 billion in infrastructure – a plan that was met with skepticism, as infrastructure investments do not usually stimulate the economy quickly.


The Republicans meanwhile, have simply opposed all of the Democrats’ ideas. They are against stimulus plans, against the health care bill, against cap-and-trade, and against tax increases. In the Pledge to America that the Republicans released last month, Republican simply reiterated their positions of “no.” They called for taxes to not be raised, the health care law to be repealed, federal spending to be limited, and Congressional approval for any federal regulation that would add to the deficit.


Entrepreneurial activity is key to a sustained economy recovery. Not only are entrepreneurs responsible for net new job growth in the U.S. economy, but a majority of the employment they generate remains as new firms grow, which creates a lasting impact on the economy. Although only a fifth of start-ups make it to their 25th birthday, employment figures stayed at 68 percent of the initial number. Thus, the number of start-ups that flourish and continue to create jobs balance the jobs lost by companies that close.


The Kauffman Foundation has the most comprehensive plan on how to create jobs and promote entrepreneurship. Here are some ideas that should be included in such an agenda to promote job creation and economic growth.


• Promote a culture of freedom and innovation in America by reducing overly burdensome regulation and limiting the impact of punitive lawsuits of those who create new businesses.


• Develop policies that promote innovation to develop incentives for successfully commercializing innovative new ideas and new businesses.


• Invest in innovation, especially in sectors like energy and health, to create jobs.


• Ensure a skilled workforce through entrepreneurially-driven improvements in our school system, entailing better training in the sciences and engineering, and government policies to support programs that train future entrepreneurs and encourage entrepreneurial activity.


• Promote more open-minded immigration policies to encourage the world's best and brightest to study work and start businesses here.


• Remove red tape and regulation from small businesses to encourage job growth and job creation in smaller firms.


• Offer tax credits for high net worth individuals who invest in small or new businesses.


• Reduce or eliminate taxes for entrepreneurs during their first six months or a year of business activity.


• Set up federal government and state sponsored investment funds for new businesses generally or in areas where it is particularly productive to encourage new entrepreneurial activity.


• Develop coaching or mentoring policies for entrepreneurs to encourage business development and job growth.


• Support efforts by state and local government to encourage entrepreneurial activities through the development of strong local educational systems and institutions and supportive infrastructures designed to attract and stimulate new business development and creation.


The bottom line, creating jobs and promoting entrepreneurship is paramount to our nation’s recovery. The voters already know this, and it is time for the politicians to act.


Quote du jour:
A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

Theodore Roosevelt

Writings of Our Founding Fathers

Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 65


The Powers of the Senate Continued


From the New York Packet.


Friday, March 7, 1788.


Author: Alexander Hamilton


To the People of the State of New York:


THE remaining powers which the plan of the convention allots to the Senate, in a distinct capacity, are comprised in their participation with the executive in the appointment to offices, and in their judicial character as a court for the trial of impeachments. As in the business of appointments the executive will be the principal agent, the provisions relating to it will most properly be discussed in the examination of that department. We will, therefore, conclude this head with a view of the judicial character of the Senate.


A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.


The delicacy and magnitude of a trust which so deeply concerns the political reputation and existence of every man engaged in the administration of public affairs, speak for themselves. The difficulty of placing it rightly, in a government resting entirely on the basis of periodical elections, will as readily be perceived, when it is considered that the most conspicuous characters in it will, from that circumstance, be too often the leaders or the tools of the most cunning or the most numerous faction, and on this account, can hardly be expected to possess the requisite neutrality towards those whose conduct may be the subject of scrutiny.


The convention, it appears, thought the Senate the most fit depositary of this important trust. Those who can best discern the intrinsic difficulty of the thing, will be least hasty in condemning that opinion, and will be most inclined to allow due weight to the arguments which may be supposed to have produced it.


What, it may be asked, is the true spirit of the institution itself? Is it not designed as a method of NATIONAL INQUEST into the conduct of public men? If this be the design of it, who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves? It is not disputed that the power of originating the inquiry, or, in other words, of preferring the impeachment, ought to be lodged in the hands of one branch of the legislative body. Will not the reasons which indicate the propriety of this arrangement strongly plead for an admission of the other branch of that body to a share of the inquiry? The model from which the idea of this institution has been borrowed, pointed out that course to the convention. In Great Britain it is the province of the House of Commons to prefer the impeachment, and of the House of Lords to decide upon it. Several of the State constitutions have followed the example. As well the latter, as the former, seem to have regarded the practice of impeachments as a bridle in the hands of the legislative body upon the executive servants of the government. Is not this the true light in which it ought to be regarded?


Where else than in the Senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? What other body would be likely to feel CONFIDENCE ENOUGH IN ITS OWN SITUATION, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an INDIVIDUAL accused, and the REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE, HIS ACCUSERS?


Could the Supreme Court have been relied upon as answering this description? It is much to be doubted, whether the members of that tribunal would at all times be endowed with so eminent a portion of fortitude, as would be called for in the execution of so difficult a task; and it is still more to be doubted, whether they would possess the degree of credit and authority, which might, on certain occasions, be indispensable towards reconciling the people to a decision that should happen to clash with an accusation brought by their immediate representatives. A deficiency in the first, would be fatal to the accused; in the last, dangerous to the public tranquillity. The hazard in both these respects, could only be avoided, if at all, by rendering that tribunal more numerous than would consist with a reasonable attention to economy. The necessity of a numerous court for the trial of impeachments, is equally dictated by the nature of the proceeding. This can never be tied down by such strict rules, either in the delineation of the offense by the prosecutors, or in the construction of it by the judges, as in common cases serve to limit the discretion of courts in favor of personal security. There will be no jury to stand between the judges who are to pronounce the sentence of the law, and the party who is to receive or suffer it. The awful discretion which a court of impeachments must necessarily have, to doom to honor or to infamy the most confidential and the most distinguished characters of the community, forbids the commitment of the trust to a small number of persons.


These considerations seem alone sufficient to authorize a conclusion, that the Supreme Court would have been an improper substitute for the Senate, as a court of impeachments. There remains a further consideration, which will not a little strengthen this conclusion. It is this: The punishment which may be the consequence of conviction upon impeachment, is not to terminate the chastisement of the offender. After having been sentenced to a perpetual ostracism from the esteem and confidence, and honors and emoluments of his country, he will still be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. Would it be proper that the persons who had disposed of his fame, and his most valuable rights as a citizen in one trial, should, in another trial, for the same offense, be also the disposers of his life and his fortune? Would there not be the greatest reason to apprehend, that error, in the first sentence, would be the parent of error in the second sentence? That the strong bias of one decision would be apt to overrule the influence of any new lights which might be brought to vary the complexion of another decision? Those who know anything of human nature, will not hesitate to answer these questions in the affirmative; and will be at no loss to perceive, that by making the same persons judges in both cases, those who might happen to be the objects of prosecution would, in a great measure, be deprived of the double security intended them by a double trial. The loss of life and estate would often be virtually included in a sentence which, in its terms, imported nothing more than dismission from a present, and disqualification for a future, office. It may be said, that the intervention of a jury, in the second instance, would obviate the danger. But juries are frequently influenced by the opinions of judges. They are sometimes induced to find special verdicts, which refer the main question to the decision of the court. Who would be willing to stake his life and his estate upon the verdict of a jury acting under the auspices of judges who had predetermined his guilt?


Would it have been an improvement of the plan, to have united the Supreme Court with the Senate, in the formation of the court of impeachments? This union would certainly have been attended with several advantages; but would they not have been overbalanced by the signal disadvantage, already stated, arising from the agency of the same judges in the double prosecution to which the offender would be liable? To a certain extent, the benefits of that union will be obtained from making the chief justice of the Supreme Court the president of the court of impeachments, as is proposed to be done in the plan of the convention; while the inconveniences of an entire incorporation of the former into the latter will be substantially avoided. This was perhaps the prudent mean. I forbear to remark upon the additional pretext for clamor against the judiciary, which so considerable an augmentation of its authority would have afforded.


Would it have been desirable to have composed the court for the trial of impeachments, of persons wholly distinct from the other departments of the government? There are weighty arguments, as well against, as in favor of, such a plan. To some minds it will not appear a trivial objection, that it could tend to increase the complexity of the political machine, and to add a new spring to the government, the utility of which would at best be questionable. But an objection which will not be thought by any unworthy of attention, is this: a court formed upon such a plan, would either be attended with a heavy expense, or might in practice be subject to a variety of casualties and inconveniences. It must either consist of permanent officers, stationary at the seat of government, and of course entitled to fixed and regular stipends, or of certain officers of the State governments to be called upon whenever an impeachment was actually depending. It will not be easy to imagine any third mode materially different, which could rationally be proposed. As the court, for reasons already given, ought to be numerous, the first scheme will be reprobated by every man who can compare the extent of the public wants with the means of supplying them. The second will be espoused with caution by those who will seriously consider the difficulty of collecting men dispersed over the whole Union; the injury to the innocent, from the procrastinated determination of the charges which might be brought against them; the advantage to the guilty, from the opportunities which delay would afford to intrigue and corruption; and in some cases the detriment to the State, from the prolonged inaction of men whose firm and faithful execution of their duty might have exposed them to the persecution of an intemperate or designing majority in the House of Representatives. Though this latter supposition may seem harsh, and might not be likely often to be verified, yet it ought not to be forgotten that the demon of faction will, at certain seasons, extend his sceptre over all numerous bodies of men.


But though one or the other of the substitutes which have been examined, or some other that might be devised, should be thought preferable to the plan in this respect, reported by the convention, it will not follow that the Constitution ought for this reason to be rejected. If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert. Where is the standard of perfection to be found? Who will undertake to unite the discordant opinions of a whole community, in the same judgment of it; and to prevail upon one conceited projector to renounce his INFALLIBLE criterion for the FALLIBLE criterion of his more CONCEITED NEIGHBOR? To answer the purpose of the adversaries of the Constitution, they ought to prove, not merely that particular provisions in it are not the best which might have been imagined, but that the plan upon the whole is bad and pernicious.


PUBLIUS.

References:
http://www.hotair.com/
http://www.wnd..com/
http://www.theblaze.com/
http://www.americanthinker.com/
http://www.americanspectator.com/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
CNBC
Doug Schoen
http://www.thehill.com/
http://www.breitbart.com/
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.quotationspage.com/
Thomas Lifson
Library of Congress/Federalist Papers
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/

This is the fight of our lifetime!

Opinion at large

After attending the Restoring Honor rally on 8/28, I was appalled by what I saw on Saturday at the One Nation Working Together Rally in DC. Why you ask? The RHR was a calm, peace loving group of patriotic Americans estimated at 400,000 people who brought their own garbage bags and cleaned up after themselves. Basically, they left the Mall cleaner than they found it. The One nation rally was a slap in the face of hallowed American ground. People come from all over the world just to see our spectacular national interests. First, I wasn't at the One Nation rally. There is no way I would never go near those people. As posted last week, the who's who of socialist, communist, unions, gay rights, immigration, anti-war, pro choice and various liberal college groups were on the ticket to make a extreme left showing. There isn't a comparison between the two rallies. One has respect and patriotism for this country and one has disdain and hatred for this country. I honestly believe that we continue on this divided path and the economy continues to tank, there could be another civil war between the capitalist, patriot conservatives and the radical progressives aka, socialists, communists and associated groups. Obama has contributed to the divide, in which, I feel it is calculated on his part (Cloward-Piven strategy) to fundamentally change the dynamics of the way we live. Obama endorsed the One Nation rally. Yes, a standing President endorsing a socialist/communist rally against America.  

This is one main reason I am adamant about the republicans (conservatives) taking back congress on November 2nd. This will be the first step in removing radical progressives from the ranks of our elected representatives. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it is the best financial system in the world. Why is Europe trending to the right, because socialism does not work. If there is one funny aspect of these whackos, is they seem never to be happy. I am a bonafide capitalist and I am a happy man. My wife and I enjoy life. We have worked very hard and happen to be very thankful for the life we have created. No one has ever given us anything. My parents taught my sisters and me, hard work, persistence and appreciation of living in the greatest country in the world. He knew this, my father had been around the world many times.  I guess we live in an entitlement, nanny society where everyone wants a hand out? Forget working hard and smart for what you want. Why not, take it from someone who has earned it. One question I ask liberals when I debate them is, why do they think it is okay to take money from one person and give it to another? I've yet to get an answer. What I get is rhetoric and spin. Never a solid, realistic answer. Obama, the great uniter divider, has manufactured a war between the haves and have nots. His administration and the liberal congress are complicit in this ploy. In example, Reid Obama, Pelosi, Durbin, Kerry, Sharpton have all weighed in and escalated this issue. Liberal pundits receive their talking points daily from the White House fax machine to push their liberal agenda and attempt to beat us down. Sorry Barry, it will never deter our resolve, the conservative patriots will persevere and you will be another democrat one term President. You have awoken a sleeping giant. I don't call it the Tea Party movement. I call it the American movement. The democrats will find that out in November. The state run media can manipulate the polls and statistics any way they want. The facts and American people will show up in droves, while the Obama supporters and liberals will not show up because they are depressed and disillusioned. Even though Obama has been quite successful pushing through his liberal agenda, democrats farther to the left don't think he has done enough. Gitmo, immigration, Crap and Trade, Card check and other policies are still not passed. We, on the right, think believe Obama is a socialist, way too far to the left. The midterm elections will be a referendum on Obama's agenda. The liberal pundits can spin it any way they want, however, ObieWonKenobi knows he isn't feeling the love. Just look at his polls. Remember November! Get out the vote.  

Patriots v. Commies:
 


One Nation -Incredibly trashy:



One Nation (of Commies):


Tea Party-You hater raters:


Clueless-We can do better:
Top 12 Politician Constitutional Contempt Clips

 
Stop all the bad stuff
By Larry Kudlow

At a small, informal breakfast in Midtown New York Tuesday morning, House Republican leader John Boehner said the lame-duck Congress, scheduled roughly for November 15 through December 22, will pass a bill that extends all the Bush tax cuts. And he said President Obama will not veto that bill.


Boehner reminded the breakfast group that George Stephanopoulos asked Obama many times in a recent Good Morning America interview whether he would veto an extension of the full Bush tax-cut program. And not once did Obama answer the question.


That’s a shrewd point by Mr. Boehner. It harkens back to Obama’s last full White House press conference, when the president also dodged a question about vetoing a full extension of the tax cuts.


In practical terms, Boehner expects this lame-duck tax-cut bill will be part of an omnibus appropriations bill to fund the government. (There is no FY2011 budget.) He felt an omnibus bill would be better than a continuing resolution. In effect, it would be a mini reconciliation package — and a pro-growth package at that.


Boehner also made it clear that he was unhappy with the 99 Republicans who just voted — along with most Democrats — to pass the China trade-and-currency-protection bill. He basically said, “No, we must not go in that direction.” And he believes the bill will come to nothing, in particular under Republican leadership.


Boehner understands that such a bill would take a toll on middle- and lower-income people. Indeed, a massive price increase on Chinese imports brought on by protectionist tariffs, or a whopping hike in the value of the Chinese yuan, would slam all the folks who shop at Wal-Mart and Dollar General.


John Boehner himself has a strong free-trade record, and he grasps the need for a stable dollar. When asked about the plunging dollar during the 2000s, and how higher interest rates and inflation subverted the Bush tax cuts, he nodded in agreement. Boehner seems to get it.


More generally, the Republican leader is focused on stopping any regulatory, tax, and trade barriers to job creation. When asked about the main agenda point for a GOP Congress, Boehner said, “Stop all the bad stuff.”


I like it. Stop all the bad stuff.


So after the breakfast I got to thinking about the economy and a couple of front-page stories in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal about the huge corporate-profits comeback and the incredibly strong financial position of American business. True enough, while firms have been stockpiling cash and making money hand over fist, and while they have yet to hire new workers or invest in new projects in earnest, the financial-health numbers are very impressive.


After-tax profits through the second quarter are up $1.2 trillion, marking the third-highest profits share of the economy since 1947. The cash hoard runs around $2 trillion, about half of which is overseas. It’s actually cheaper for firms to borrow and refinance their debt at rock-bottom interest rates than to pay the 35 percent tax rate on repatriating foreign earnings. Here’s an idea: How about a 5 percent tax holiday to bring those foreign earnings back home?


So U.S. companies have borrowed nearly $500 billion in the corporate bond markets this year. The railroad Norfolk Southern Corp. actually borrowed a quarter of a billion dollars in 100-year bonds. And Microsoft tapped the borrowing market for $4.75 billion at an interest rate of less than 1 percent.


Now, the New York Times put a sinister spin on this, as one might expect. The Gray Lady complained that while firms are getting cheap money, they’re not yet creating jobs. Fine. That’s true. But we are seeing the first faint signs of capital investment spending. Non-defense capital-goods orders are growing at 20 percent year-on-year and shipments are rising at 13 percent. And private job creation is coming in about 70,000 per month.


Of course, with the huge uncertainty over federal tax-and-regulatory policy and the economy itself, American business is being very cautious. But if John Boehner and the Republican cavalry can ride to Washington to keep tax rates down and “stop all the bad stuff,” then business and the economy may be poised for a massive spring-back.


The most recent Gallup poll of likely voters shows Republicans leading Democrats 53 to 40 percent in a high-turnout scenario, and 56 to 38 percent in a low-turnout scenario. So it would seem the Republican cavalry is coming. If policy and politics move in the right direction following the November elections, the cloud of uncertainty could begin to evaporate and the U.S. economy could explode on the upside.


Think of it.


Pathetic Funnies:

And you thought you knew what was in Obamacare?

Obama’s Communist Mentor

Frank Marshall Davis parroted the Communist line and attacked Democratic icon Harry Truman.


When you write a book, particularly one that requires several years of research, you tend to encounter a bunch of unexpected information. Sometimes you find things that, if reported, will undoubtedly prompt partisans to demand you explain yourself. For me, this begins that process of explaining, given that one of the major characters in my new book on American Communists, Dupes, is Frank Marshall Davis.


Allegations regarding Davis’s Communism are sure to infuriate the Left because of the influence Davis once had over our president. He was a drinking buddy of Barack Obama’s maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, and spent time with young Obama. He turns up in the president’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, shrewdly identified only as “Frank”: “I was intrigued by old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes.” Recently, a U.S. Communist-party official confirmed the relationship, bragging in a speech of the Communist Davis’s formative influence over Obama. And yet when the allegations surfaced during the 2008 campaign, they went virtually unreported in the mainstream media.


After an almost four-year-long sojourn in which I tried to ascertain whether Davis was a progressive duped by Communists, or, conversely, a Communist who duped progressives, I determined the latter. No doubt, this conclusion — which means the leader of the free world was strongly influenced by a Marxist — will bring the unholy wrath of liberals. Yet, they should brace themselves for another kind of anger. Once they read what Davis did and wrote, they might redirect their rage. In truth, Davis’s targets were mainly Democrats, and especially a Democratic icon, Harry Truman. What Davis said about Truman was unbelievably outrageous. Worse, he said it because it was the Moscow line.


Since the early 1990s, I’ve been absorbed with archives from the Soviet and Communist world — I’ve looked at every kind of declassified holding. In recent years, I’ve concentrated on an extraordinary cache of material from the Comintern Archives on Communist Party USA (CPUSA). This material is utterly damning to the American Left, especially in its vindication of the worst fears and warnings of anti-Communists. Not surprisingly, our illustrious “scholars” in the academy are studiously ignoring it.


When I heard the accusations that Davis was both a Communist and a former mentor of Obama’s, I began noticing his name in documents, from House and Senate investigations to materials for hideous Communist fronts such as the American Peace Mobilization, a group that supported or opposed Hitler based entirely on whether he was signing non-aggression pacts with Stalin’s USSR or invading Stalin’s USSR. This group also unrelentingly demonized Franklin Delano Roosevelt.


I learned that Davis served as an editor and writer for a Communist-line publication, the Chicago Star, in the 1930s. I next learned that the Midwest native had flown thousands of miles away to Hawaii to take up permanent residence, just when American Communists were looking to launch a publication there, namely the Honolulu Record. Subsequently, Davis wrote a weekly column for that publication.


With the help of two super-impressive researchers, including one living in Hawaii, I procured Davis’s weekly “Frank-ly Speaking” columns for the Record. These writings flawlessly parroted official Soviet propaganda and portrayed the likes of Harry Truman, George Marshall, and other courageous Democrats as colonialist-imperialist-fascist-racist monsters. Davis even denounced the Marshall Plan. As any student of this era knows, only the Soviet Union, via the public voices of Stalin and Molotov, took this absurd position.


In column after column, Davis claimed Truman craved not only a “third world war,” but to “rule Russia.” Davis said that Truman’s “fascism, American style” was motivated by an anti-Communism that was fueled by veiled racism. Davis repeatedly asserted that the Soviet Union not only desired peace — as Stalin seized Eastern Europe, while also killing tens of millions of his own people — but had abolished poverty, unemployment, and even racism.


Such examples from Davis are so voluminous that they constitute the longest chapter in my 600-plus-page book. Summarizing them here is impossible. But here are three telling examples.

In a Feb. 9, 1950, piece, Davis pushed the Communist line that framed Truman as the butcher of Hiroshima, a man who used the bomb not to end World War II and save lives — with Stalin’s enthusiastic support — but to try to take the world. “When we dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima,” wrote Davis, “we believed the world was ours. Having defeated the Axis powers on the battlefront, we were ready to show the Russians who was boss of this world.”



In a Jan. 26, 1950, column, titled “Free Enterprise or Socialism,” Davis painted a stark picture of an America on the verge of another Great Depression, the fault of a “virtual dictatorship of Big Business.” He concluded that in the face of “still rising unemployment and a mounting depression, the time draws nearer when we will have to decide to oust the monopolies and restore a competing system of free enterprise, or let the government own and operate our major industries.”


Davis’s May 18, 1950, article was a very important, albeit insidious, illustration of where Moscow stood on postwar Germany, and the unforgivable way American Communists followed in lockstep. The Bolsheviks had long wanted a “Sovietized” Germany, and the end of World War II, with Germany on the losing side and the USSR on the winning one, presented a golden opportunity. What stood in the way? America. Thus, the Communist party worldwide attacked American policy in West Germany. Here, too, the Soviets issued an unbelievable set of talking points, arguing that America wanted not a free West Germany but a revived Nazi Germany.


Ridiculous as this claim was, Davis characteristically saluted the red flag. “It is a known fact that many honest American officials have quit their posts in disgust over the way in which Western Germany is being handed back to the Nazis,” reported Davis. America’s policy of de-Nazification was a sham — “one of the big jokes of the 20th century.” It was, alleged Davis, the product of a racist-fascist-imperialist-capitalist conspiracy led by Democrats and Big Business: “The big industrialists who financed Hitler have been handed back their factories and the old school ties with Wall Street are almost as strong as they ever were.”


What kind of West Germany was America helping to its feet? According to Frank Marshall Davis, “It is the Germany of the master race theory. . . . The fascists we sought to exterminate in World War II as ‘the greatest threat to mankind the globe has ever known,’ are now our partners. . . . ‘What d’you say we kiss and make up?’”


Today, American politicians, including Barack Obama, travel to Berlin to make eloquent speeches about how the United States rightly stood beside Berliners in resisting the Soviet Union in those scary, early days of the Cold War. That wasn’t true for Frank Marshall Davis. Davis stood on the other side of the wall.


As someone who has long studied this period, I recognized Davis’s writing immediately as the crass propaganda pushed by Communists around the world at that time. Congress thought the same thing. Within only months of the appearance of these columns in the Honolulu Record, Davis’s name was appearing in investigations of the Communist movement. Eventually, in December 1956, he was called to testify before the U.S. Senate, where he pleaded the Fifth Amendment. In a Senate report in 1957 titled “Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States,” Davis was plainly listed as “an identified member of the Communist Party.”


Later, even sympathetic biographers would discern the obvious. A 1999 book, The New Red Negro, by James Edward Smethurst, a professor at the University of Massachusetts who earned his Ph.D. at Harvard, concluded that Davis “was almost certainly a CPUSA member.”


More conclusive was John Edgar Tidwell, a University of Kansas professor and Davis biographer. “Sometime during the middle of [WWII], [Davis] joined the Communist Party,” Tidwell recorded. In the introduction to a 2002 volume of Davis’s writing he edited, Black Moods: Collected Poems, Tidwell produced a letter by Davis to a Kansas friend he was recruiting to CPUSA. Davis wrote: “I’ve never discussed this with you and don’t know whether you share the typical American uninformed concepts of Marxism or not, but I am risking such a reaction by saying that I have recently joined the Communist party.”

Later still, during the 2008 presidential campaign, further testimony on Davis’s party membership came from actual Communists themselves (I quote them in the book).



The real smoking gun, however, is Davis’s declassified 600-page FBI file, which was recently released through a freedom-of-information request by a fellow researcher. A cursory glance at these pages — which include accounts by informants and eyewitnesses — quickly reveals that Davis was a Communist. As evidence for readers, we have isolated and published about a dozen pages from the file in the appendix of my book, including one that lists Davis’s actual Communist-party number: 47544.


That number is consistent with those of the period. Consider the Communist-party numbers of some of the Hollywood Ten figures whom liberals laughably still defend as innocent lambs: John Howard Lawson (47275), Albert Maltz (47196), Alvah Bessie (46836).


In sum, a mentor of the current president of the United States was a Communist — and not only a party member, but an actual propagandist for Stalin’s USSR, a man who unceasingly demonized Democratic presidents and their policies and cherished ideals. Even in World War II, Davis was on the wrong side: He was flatly pro-Soviet and anti-American.


If you feel like you’ve been duped, or at least deprived of some significant background information about the man who is now the elected leader of the free world, you can thank our shameless, woefully biased media for failing to do its job.


– Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and the newly released Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.

Quote du jour:
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

Sir Winston Churchill

 Writings of Our Founding Fathers

Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 64

The Powers of the Senate


From the New York Packet.


Friday, March 7, 1788.


Author: John Jay


To the People of the State of New York:


IT IS a just and not a new observation, that enemies to particular persons, and opponents to particular measures, seldom confine their censures to such things only in either as are worthy of blame. Unless on this principle, it is difficult to explain the motives of their conduct, who condemn the proposed Constitution in the aggregate, and treat with severity some of the most unexceptionable articles in it.


The second section gives power to the President, "BY AND WITH THE ADVICE AND CONSENT OF THE SENATE, TO MAKE TREATIES, PROVIDED TWO THIRDS OF THE SENATORS PRESENT CONCUR."


The power of making treaties is an important one, especially as it relates to war, peace, and commerce; and it should not be delegated but in such a mode, and with such precautions, as will afford the highest security that it will be exercised by men the best qualified for the purpose, and in the manner most conducive to the public good. The convention appears to have been attentive to both these points: they have directed the President to be chosen by select bodies of electors, to be deputed by the people for that express purpose; and they have committed the appointment of senators to the State legislatures. This mode has, in such cases, vastly the advantage of elections by the people in their collective capacity, where the activity of party zeal, taking the advantage of the supineness, the ignorance, and the hopes and fears of the unwary and interested, often places men in office by the votes of a small proportion of the electors.


As the select assemblies for choosing the President, as well as the State legislatures who appoint the senators, will in general be composed of the most enlightened and respectable citizens, there is reason to presume that their attention and their votes will be directed to those men only who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue, and in whom the people perceive just grounds for confidence. The Constitution manifests very particular attention to this object. By excluding men under thirty-five from the first office, and those under thirty from the second, it confines the electors to men of whom the people have had time to form a judgment, and with respect to whom they will not be liable to be deceived by those brilliant appearances of genius and patriotism, which, like transient meteors, sometimes mislead as well as dazzle. If the observation be well founded, that wise kings will always be served by able ministers, it is fair to argue, that as an assembly of select electors possess, in a greater degree than kings, the means of extensive and accurate information relative to men and characters, so will their appointments bear at least equal marks of discretion and discernment. The inference which naturally results from these considerations is this, that the President and senators so chosen will always be of the number of those who best understand our national interests, whether considered in relation to the several States or to foreign nations, who are best able to promote those interests, and whose reputation for integrity inspires and merits confidence. With such men the power of making treaties may be safely lodged.


Although the absolute necessity of system, in the conduct of any business, is universally known and acknowledged, yet the high importance of it in national affairs has not yet become sufficiently impressed on the public mind. They who wish to commit the power under consideration to a popular assembly, composed of members constantly coming and going in quick succession, seem not to recollect that such a body must necessarily be inadequate to the attainment of those great objects, which require to be steadily contemplated in all their relations and circumstances, and which can only be approached and achieved by measures which not only talents, but also exact information, and often much time, are necessary to concert and to execute. It was wise, therefore, in the convention to provide, not only that the power of making treaties should be committed to able and honest men, but also that they should continue in place a sufficient time to become perfectly acquainted with our national concerns, and to form and introduce a system for the management of them. The duration prescribed is such as will give them an opportunity of greatly extending their political information, and of rendering their accumulating experience more and more beneficial to their country. Nor has the convention discovered less prudence in providing for the frequent elections of senators in such a way as to obviate the inconvenience of periodically transferring those great affairs entirely to new men; for by leaving a considerable residue of the old ones in place, uniformity and order, as well as a constant succession of official information will be preserved.


There are a few who will not admit that the affairs of trade and navigation should be regulated by a system cautiously formed and steadily pursued; and that both our treaties and our laws should correspond with and be made to promote it. It is of much consequence that this correspondence and conformity be carefully maintained; and they who assent to the truth of this position will see and confess that it is well provided for by making concurrence of the Senate necessary both to treaties and to laws.


It seldom happens in the negotiation of treaties, of whatever nature, but that perfect SECRECY and immediate DESPATCH are sometimes requisite. These are cases where the most useful intelligence may be obtained, if the persons possessing it can be relieved from apprehensions of discovery. Those apprehensions will operate on those persons whether they are actuated by mercenary or friendly motives; and there doubtless are many of both descriptions, who would rely on the secrecy of the President, but who would not confide in that of the Senate, and still less in that of a large popular Assembly. The convention have done well, therefore, in so disposing of the power of making treaties, that although the President must, in forming them, act by the advice and consent of the Senate, yet he will be able to manage the business of intelligence in such a manner as prudence may suggest.


They who have turned their attention to the affairs of men, must have perceived that there are tides in them; tides very irregular in their duration, strength, and direction, and seldom found to run twice exactly in the same manner or measure. To discern and to profit by these tides in national affairs is the business of those who preside over them; and they who have had much experience on this head inform us, that there frequently are occasions when days, nay, even when hours, are precious. The loss of a battle, the death of a prince, the removal of a minister, or other circumstances intervening to change the present posture and aspect of affairs, may turn the most favorable tide into a course opposite to our wishes. As in the field, so in the cabinet, there are moments to be seized as they pass, and they who preside in either should be left in capacity to improve them. So often and so essentially have we heretofore suffered from the want of secrecy and despatch, that the Constitution would have been inexcusably defective, if no attention had been paid to those objects. Those matters which in negotiations usually require the most secrecy and the most despatch, are those preparatory and auxiliary measures which are not otherwise important in a national view, than as they tend to facilitate the attainment of the objects of the negotiation. For these, the President will find no difficulty to provide; and should any circumstance occur which requires the advice and consent of the Senate, he may at any time convene them. Thus we see that the Constitution provides that our negotiations for treaties shall have every advantage which can be derived from talents, information, integrity, and deliberate investigations, on the one hand, and from secrecy and despatch on the other.


But to this plan, as to most others that have ever appeared, objections are contrived and urged.


Some are displeased with it, not on account of any errors or defects in it, but because, as the treaties, when made, are to have the force of laws, they should be made only by men invested with legislative authority. These gentlemen seem not to consider that the judgments of our courts, and the commissions constitutionally given by our governor, are as valid and as binding on all persons whom they concern, as the laws passed by our legislature. All constitutional acts of power, whether in the executive or in the judicial department, have as much legal validity and obligation as if they proceeded from the legislature; and therefore, whatever name be given to the power of making treaties, or however obligatory they may be when made, certain it is, that the people may, with much propriety, commit the power to a distinct body from the legislature, the executive, or the judicial. It surely does not follow, that because they have given the power of making laws to the legislature, that therefore they should likewise give them the power to do every other act of sovereignty by which the citizens are to be bound and affected.


Others, though content that treaties should be made in the mode proposed, are averse to their being the SUPREME laws of the land. They insist, and profess to believe, that treaties like acts of assembly, should be repealable at pleasure. This idea seems to be new and peculiar to this country, but new errors, as well as new truths, often appear. These gentlemen would do well to reflect that a treaty is only another name for a bargain, and that it would be impossible to find a nation who would make any bargain with us, which should be binding on them ABSOLUTELY, but on us only so long and so far as we may think proper to be bound by it. They who make laws may, without doubt, amend or repeal them; and it will not be disputed that they who make treaties may alter or cancel them; but still let us not forget that treaties are made, not by only one of the contracting parties, but by both; and consequently, that as the consent of both was essential to their formation at first, so must it ever afterwards be to alter or cancel them. The proposed Constitution, therefore, has not in the least extended the obligation of treaties. They are just as binding, and just as far beyond the lawful reach of legislative acts now, as they will be at any future period, or under any form of government.


However useful jealousy may be in republics, yet when like bile in the natural, it abounds too much in the body politic, the eyes of both become very liable to be deceived by the delusive appearances which that malady casts on surrounding objects. From this cause, probably, proceed the fears and apprehensions of some, that the President and Senate may make treaties without an equal eye to the interests of all the States. Others suspect that two thirds will oppress the remaining third, and ask whether those gentlemen are made sufficiently responsible for their conduct; whether, if they act corruptly, they can be punished; and if they make disadvantageous treaties, how are we to get rid of those treaties?


As all the States are equally represented in the Senate, and by men the most able and the most willing to promote the interests of their constituents, they will all have an equal degree of influence in that body, especially while they continue to be careful in appointing proper persons, and to insist on their punctual attendance. In proportion as the United States assume a national form and a national character, so will the good of the whole be more and more an object of attention, and the government must be a weak one indeed, if it should forget that the good of the whole can only be promoted by advancing the good of each of the parts or members which compose the whole. It will not be in the power of the President and Senate to make any treaties by which they and their families and estates will not be equally bound and affected with the rest of the community; and, having no private interests distinct from that of the nation, they will be under no temptations to neglect the latter.


As to corruption, the case is not supposable. He must either have been very unfortunate in his intercourse with the world, or possess a heart very susceptible of such impressions, who can think it probable that the President and two thirds of the Senate will ever be capable of such unworthy conduct. The idea is too gross and too invidious to be entertained. But in such a case, if it should ever happen, the treaty so obtained from us would, like all other fraudulent contracts, be null and void by the law of nations.


With respect to their responsibility, it is difficult to conceive how it could be increased. Every consideration that can influence the human mind, such as honor, oaths, reputations, conscience, the love of country, and family affections and attachments, afford security for their fidelity. In short, as the Constitution has taken the utmost care that they shall be men of talents and integrity, we have reason to be persuaded that the treaties they make will be as advantageous as, all circumstances considered, could be made; and so far as the fear of punishment and disgrace can operate, that motive to good behavior is amply afforded by the article on the subject of impeachments.


PUBLIUS.

References:
http://www.hotair.com/
http://www.nronline.com/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.theblaze.com/
http://www.thehill.com/
http://www.michellemalkin.com/
http://www.dailycaller.com/
Wahington Examiner
Larry Kudlow
http://www.quotationspage.com/
Library of Congress/Federalist Papers
Paul Kengor