Opinion at large


Tony Hayward, BP CEO, gets lambasted for attending a sailboat race off the English coast. American news media goes off the deep end to criticize his attendance and the people of the Gulf coast are in dire straits. I believe every member of the state run media had something derogatory about Bp's head man. On the contrary, President Obama can play 5 hours of golf, watch FIFA Soccer and 3 hours of Baseball and not a peep from his sycophants in the media. However, I think it was a just a mistake. They just overlooked it being so busy with Tony. It makes me sick how bias the media has sunk to. ObieWanKenobi gets a pass on almost everything and any conservative or even republican is crucified at the stake. Deep water Horizon will be (is) Obama's Katrina. His poll numbers pertaining to the oil spill are dismal, along with his job performance numbers. Obama still finds time to golf and play while the residents of the Gulf of Mexico see their lives destroyed. In my opinion, the blame game should be delayed until the oil gushing out of the earth is stopped. There will be plenty of blame to go around. I am not, by any means, defending BP. They should pay and pay dearly. I am against the Obama machine thuggery that extorted $20B from BP without any legal and Constitutional authority. BP had already complied with Federal law funding $100M. Barry O had to get the money. I trust the pay czar, Ken Feinberg to distribute the $20B. I'm sure some of that money will end up in a few democrats' campaign coiffures? Another angle I've been following is the white house allowing this spill to continue, so he can push his "Cap & Trade' initiative? This is not below this administration. Obama will do anything to further his socialistic agenda. Why didn't he utilize the Europeans expertise and specialized equipment? Countries from all over the world have offered help to no avail. Why? Just because they aren't union members? Is he that bought and sold by the unions? This will take Barry down to a new low, poll wise and confidence index. There is already a "crisis of confidence." The Obama administration is quite incompetent and ineffective dealing with this disaster. However, there is a second disaster, the government's response, or lack of response to this paramount tragedy. This will haunt Obama until he is voted out in 2012. Not to mention, the Obama administration manipulated a professional engineers' report that stated that they agreed to halt "new" drilling leases. The administration changed the report to say "all" drilling. Clearly, the engineers have contested this notorious report. I know this sounds like a right wing conspiracy theory, however, look at the facts that we are dealing with. If this isn't a ploy to pass Cap & trade, then, he is not handling this disaster in a thorough, competent manner, which makes this just as bad. This ban on drilling will kill thousands of jobs in the oil industry. Obama wants a alternative energy economy, however, this move to cleaner energy will take decades. I think the Governors of the Gulf states will begin to take over the oil spill strategy to clean up and minimize the destruction. The Government is completely inadequate and there is so much red tape. I was amazed that the political minions and the administration diss Tony Hayward for going sailing after he has been relieved of his oil spill duties and the anointed one is playing golf, watching sports, Paul McCartney and Kelly Clarkson are performing at the white house between bowling. If we could only fire Obama? Too dream... We must fight the Cap & Trade proposed legislation under all circumstances. This will be the biggest job killer yet. Obama's crowning achievement to totally destroy our economy.
Organizing for America? or just Obamabots?



Dereliction of Duty


Congressional Democrats skip passing a budget—and hope no one notices.

BY Stephen F. Hayes

June 28, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 39

The 1974 Budget and Impoundment Act requires Congress to pass a budget resolution by May 15 of each year. Congress hasn’t done so yet in 2010. But that isn’t so unusual. Delays are common.

They are usually the result of interparty or intercameral disputes. But this year is different. Congressional Democrats aren’t simply delaying, they’re deliberately refusing to offer a budget until after the November elections. They’re simply choosing to ignore the law.

The politics are not complicated. Democratic leaders do not want to send members home to face their constituents after voting for a budget that would take the deficit to record levels. But the spending trajectory established by Barack Obama—and rapidly growing entitlements—leaves them little choice. The administration’s own proposal, offered in February, runs a deficit of 7-10 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product for the next nine-year budget window. That’s unsustainable and irresponsible. So rather than vote for such a grotesquely distended budget, Democrats reason, better to simply skip the vote and shrug off whatever criticism comes.

This isn’t speculation. Representative Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Northern Virginia with a competitive race this fall, confirmed the strategy in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I’m not going to vote for anything with that magnitude [of deficit],” he said. He’s betting his constituents won’t care. “Name one person who won or lost an election because they didn’t get a budget resolution passed. It’s totally inside baseball.”

If the politics are simple, the implications are real.

In the short term, failing to pass a budget resolution almost guarantees even more irresponsible spending. A budget resolution sets spending targets for congressional committees and makes it procedurally more difficult for members of Congress (in either house) to increase spending. (In the Senate, for instance, adding new spending requires 60 votes after a budget resolution and only 51 before.)

Keith Hennessey, who served as senior White House economic adviser under George W. Bush, describes the short-term effects this way:

Without an annual budget resolution, .  .  . discipline does not exist. Committee chairmen spend and tax as they see fit, because there is no overarching structure to rein them in. It can become budgetary chaos.

And budgetary chaos means more spending.

It’s win-win for congressional Democrats: Moderates get to avoid a tough vote and liberals get to spend more. “The Democrats get what they want and the taxpayers get the shaft,” says Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio who’s a leading critic of the Democratic strategy.

That’s bad. But the long-term problems are worse. If Congress does not pass a budget resolution before the election, Democrats will push one through during the lame-duck session before a new Congress is sworn in. Democrats will be able to ratchet up discretionary spending, and these increased levels of spending will be the fallback levels in the event that future spending disputes require Congress to revert to continuing budget resolutions.

If ensuring budgetary chaos and locking in higher levels of discretionary spending isn’t depressing enough, there’s always the prospect of a genuine debt crisis.

Virtually everyone agrees that the current level of federal spending is unsustainable. In congressional testimony earlier this month, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that something has to change.

“We need to convince markets in the medium and longer term that we have a sustainable fiscal path for balancing our budget or at least bringing our deficits down,” Bernanke said. Although he does not favor immediate deep spending cuts, Bernanke acknowledged the “need” for a plan.

Yet the Obama administration has shown no interest in cutting spending. Indeed, President Obama wrote to European leaders ahead of the upcoming G-20 summit in Toronto and warned that their austerity measures—including spending cuts—could slow our recovery. In that same letter, Obama raised the possibility of still greater U.S. government spending. “In fact, should confidence in the strength of our recoveries diminish,” he wrote, “we should be prepared to respond again as quickly and as forcefully as needed to avoid a slowdown in economic activity.”

If the Obama administration won’t cut spending and the current deficits are unmanageable, we’re left with just one option: Raise taxes.


Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, thinks that the administration is taking the country to the brink in order to create a political environment where significant tax hikes are salable: “I don’t think they’re totally uncomfortable with a debt crisis because in a crisis they can do a VAT (value-added tax).”

When Republicans cut taxes in 2003, Democrats accused them of trying to limit the size of government by depriving it of the revenues it needs to grow. Ryan says this was half right. The tax cuts were primarily meant to generate immediate economic growth, but Republicans indeed hoped that down the road they would “starve the beast.”

Democrats, says Ryan, now want to “stuff the beast.” “When debt and deficits get so out of control, they’ll need to come up with a way to address the problem.”

The Democratic strategy: Create a crisis so that they have to create a solution.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

2 Comico:

Hatch a Plan to Repeal Obamacare


The Utah Republican gets serious about repeal

In a perfect world, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) would like to “fully repeal” Obamacare. “That’s what I voted for earlier this year,” he says, alluding to the Senate GOP’s repeal amendment from March, which failed by a vote of 58 to 39. “But, for now, full repeal is very tough. I would like to see that, but Republicans only have 41 votes.”

With those numbers — stuck in the minority until at least January 2011, with Pres. Barack Obama in office until January 2013 — Hatch says Republicans “need to be strategic, going after Democrats’ arguments and specific provisions” while simultaneously strengthening the broader case against Obamacare. That strategy, he says, is the best way, this year, to stop the Democrats’ march down the “primrose path to socialism.” Last Thursday, to get the ball rolling, Hatch introduced two new repeal measures: One would repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, and the second would repeal the employer mandate.

Will the bills pass? Probably not, Hatch admits. He also does not expect Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to let the proposals come up for a vote anytime soon. Still, Hatch says, by opening this battlefront, “we can make the Democrats jumpy, saddling them with their albatross.”

“By attacking the mandates, we take away the Democrats’ arguments against our calls for full repeal, where they say we’d take away protections for people with preexisting conditions,” Hatch explains. “Focusing on the mandates enables us to shine a light on the most unconstitutional aspects of this lousy piece of legislation. It compels them to talk specifics. Let’s remember that these mandates are the central tenets of Obamacare. Gut them and the law falls apart.”

Hatch believes his bills will play a role in keeping his party, and the American people, engaged in the health-care debate, which he says is far from over. “We need to talk about this every day, never stop, and keep the pressure on, doggone it,” he says. “I can only dream of one day having 60 solid fiscal conservative votes. Until then, we have to fight to stop the federal government from forcing people to buy something they don’t want, against their will. If the government can do that, going directly against the Commerce Clause, it can do anything it wants.”

Hatch places his efforts alongside what he sees as a growing repeal movement nationwide. He points to the federal courts, where 20 states have jointly challenged parts of Obamacare, and to Virginia, where state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is issuing a legal challenge to the mandates, as examples of momentum.

Last week, a Rasmussen poll showed that 58 percent of likely voters favor repeal. Four polls in the last month — CBS, CNN, Public Policy Polling, and Quinnipiac — show Americans opposed to Obamacare. (An Associated Press poll, showing the opposite, is debunked by Jeffrey H. Anderson here.) “People deep down know we’re right,” Hatch says. “The drumbeat of the liberal media for Obamacare has been nonstop. They want people to accept that it’s passed. But let me be clear: We don’t have to live with it. We don’t have to succumb.”

President Obama, if reelected, will try to move the country to a single-payer system. That’s my theory, at least,” he says. “They know this system isn’t going to work, so they’ll be ready to say, ‘Why don’t we let the government take care of it, and we won’t tax anybody.’ That’s what they want to see happen. And if that happens, it’ll be over.” What’ll be over, senator? “The greatest country in the world,” he says. “We’ll lose our status as the greatest.”

Cuccinelli, the Virginia attorney general, is a leading advocate of repeal, and he tells NRO that he is pleased that Hatch is “taking the lead” in the Senate. “Policy-wise, people have issues with other parts of the health-care bill, but it’s important to work to bring it within the bounds of the Constitution.” Hatch, he says, “is laying down the marker for 2010 and 2012, doing his part to make this part of the national debate. It’s not like something Bill Clinton would do — action for the sake of action — it’s a principled way to show people that we get it, that we mean it, and that we’re the party that will defend the Constitution.”


Hatch’s Senate maneuvers also come on the heels of similar repeal attempts in the House. Last Tuesday, Rep. Dave Camp (R., Mich.) introduced an amendment to scrap the individual mandate, which failed by a vote of 230 to 187. “I commend Mr. Camp for offering that motion to recommit,” Hatch says. “Over 20 Democrats voted for his measure. It’s another example of why Republicans need to keep the heat on.”

Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) tells NRO that Hatch’s plan is “sound” and “the best we can do until we see where we are in January after the new Congress comes in.” Along with the “second opinions” on Obamacare being offered on a weekly basis by Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), a physician, Hatch’s bills “will keep the debate at the forefront, and the public informed,” he says.

Question of the week:
Where in the world is Al Gore? It seems that his marriage is going the way of climate change. Down the tubes. Has he been taking advice from Tiger?

Rest in Peace:
Rahm "Twinkle Toes" Emanuel is reportedly leaving his post at the white house in December. Good Riddance! Rumor has it that Saul Alinsky will fill this position from the grave.

Quote of the day:
NBC's Brzezinski: I'm "Working With The White House" On Oil Spill Talking Points

Writings of Our Founding Fathers

Federalist Papers

Federalist No. 51


The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments


From the New York Packet.


Friday, February 8, 1788.


Author: Alexander Hamilton or James Madison


To the People of the State of New York:


TO WHAT expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the Constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. Without presuming to undertake a full development of this important idea, I will hazard a few general observations, which may perhaps place it in a clearer light, and enable us to form a more correct judgment of the principles and structure of the government planned by the convention. In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others. Were this principle rigorously adhered to, it would require that all the appointments for the supreme executive, legislative, and judiciary magistracies should be drawn from the same fountain of authority, the people, through channels having no communication whatever with one another. Perhaps such a plan of constructing the several departments would be less difficult in practice than it may in contemplation appear. Some difficulties, however, and some additional expense would attend the execution of it. Some deviations, therefore, from the principle must be admitted. In the constitution of the judiciary department in particular, it might be inexpedient to insist rigorously on the principle: first, because peculiar qualifications being essential in the members, the primary consideration ought to be to select that mode of choice which best secures these qualifications; secondly, because the permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that department, must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them. It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices. Were the executive magistrate, or the judges, not independent of the legislature in this particular, their independence in every other would be merely nominal. But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State. But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on the other hand, that it should be fortified. An absolute negative on the legislature appears, at first view, to be the natural defense with which the executive magistrate should be armed. But perhaps it would be neither altogether safe nor alone sufficient. On ordinary occasions it might not be exerted with the requisite firmness, and on extraordinary occasions it might be perfidiously abused. May not this defect of an absolute negative be supplied by some qualified connection between this weaker department and the weaker branch of the stronger department, by which the latter may be led to support the constitutional rights of the former, without being too much detached from the rights of its own department? If the principles on which these observations are founded be just, as I persuade myself they are, and they be applied as a criterion to the several State constitutions, and to the federal Constitution it will be found that if the latter does not perfectly correspond with them, the former are infinitely less able to bear such a test. There are, moreover, two considerations particularly applicable to the federal system of America, which place that system in a very interesting point of view. First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself. Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and may possibly be turned against both parties. The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradnally induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful. It can be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular form of government within such narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it. In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good; whilst there being thus less danger to a minor from the will of a major party, there must be less pretext, also, to provide for the security of the former, by introducing into the government a will not dependent on the latter, or, in other words, a will independent of the society itself. It is no less certain than it is important, notwithstanding the contrary opinions which have been entertained, that the larger the society, provided it lie within a practical sphere, the more duly capable it will be of self-government. And happily for the REPUBLICAN CAUSE, the practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and mixture of the FEDERAL PRINCIPLE.


PUBLIUS.

References:
http://www.hotair.com/
http://www.michellemalkin.com/
http://www.wnd.com/
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
http://www.nro.com/
Stephen f. Hayes
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
www.the hill.com
Library of Congress/Federalist Papers
Robert Costa