Congressman Darrell Issa has produced a shocking new report detailing the Obama administration’s extensive use of taxpayer-funded propaganda, which he says breaks federal law. The report created for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform details how the former Alinskyite community organizer has channeled the resources of the federal government — that is, your money — to create “a sophisticated propaganda and lobbying campaign” made up of “inappropriate and sometimes unlawful public relations and propaganda initiatives.” The highlights include:
Using federal arts grants to spread Obama’s legislative message. Last August 10, administration officials held a conference call with National Endowment of the Arts grant recipients. Buffy Wicks, a college radical who worked in Valerie Jarrett‘s Office of Public Engagement, told the invitees, “we’re going to come at you with some specific ‘asks’ here,” specifically supporting Obama’s initiatives on health care, the environment, or energy. She suggested, “We wanted folks to connect…with federal agencies, with labor unions, progressive groups, face groups [faith groups, perhaps?], women’s groups, you name it.” Within 48 hours, no fewer than 21 arts organizations released a statement endorsing ObamaCare.
The Dept. of Health and Human Services paid MIT economist Jonathan Gruber nearly $400,000 for various jobs. He did not disclose his employment by HHS while writing a string of op-eds, nor while testifying before the Senate in favor of, ObamaCare.
The Justice Dept. hired Tracy Russo, the former blogger for John Edwards, to comment on internet articles or bulletin board messages that criticized Barack Obama and his agenda. She did this anonymously or used a pen name.
A Dept. of Education officer used the White House email to send his colleagues eight bullet points to “communicate the merits of the President’s proposal with your members and their audiences.”
The federal government “highly recommended” constructing highway signs that tout big government and advertise politicians (i.... (Watch the committee’s video on the subject here.)
Obama attempted to enlist “voluntary” Hollywood propaganda for his proposals through the iParticipate campaign.
CONTINUED: http://www.impeachobamacampaign.com/congressional-report-lists-36-pages-of-obamas-crimes/
Showing posts with label taxpayer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taxpayer. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Tad DeHaven: Sen. Coburn's 2011 Gov't Wastebook
The office of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has released the 2011 edition of its annual “Wastebook.”
The document spotlights 100 particularly ridiculous expenditures of taxpayer money from the past year. From an entertainment standpoint, it’s pure gold. But it’s also infuriating, depressing, and a painful reminder of what happens when politicians and bureaucrats spend other people’s money.
CONTINUED:
http://townhall.com/columnists/taddehaven/2011/12/27/sen_coburns_2011_govt_wastebook
The document spotlights 100 particularly ridiculous expenditures of taxpayer money from the past year. From an entertainment standpoint, it’s pure gold. But it’s also infuriating, depressing, and a painful reminder of what happens when politicians and bureaucrats spend other people’s money.
CONTINUED:
http://townhall.com/columnists/taddehaven/2011/12/27/sen_coburns_2011_govt_wastebook
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
NTU: The Taxpayer's Tab, November 29, 2011
In Case You Missed It
Last week, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation released the most comprehensive and up-to-date research on what the so-called “Super Committee” could implement in the final hours of deliberation. The failure of the committee will result in automatic spending cuts for both discretionary and mandatory spending programs. However, Congress could still act to achieve the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and savings by consulting NTUF’s BillTally savings list. In fact, not only would Congress reach the target savings figure but an additional $300 billion in HALF the required time. The BillTally program measures proposed changes in federal spending using a five budget year window, rather than the ten year window used by the Super Committee.
Most Expensive Bill of the Week: The Bill: S. 1321, Practical Energy Plan Act of 2011, Annualized Cost: $1.4 billion ($6.8 billion over five years)
DETAILS AND MORE: http://action.ntu.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=12221&em_id=9202.0
Last week, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation released the most comprehensive and up-to-date research on what the so-called “Super Committee” could implement in the final hours of deliberation. The failure of the committee will result in automatic spending cuts for both discretionary and mandatory spending programs. However, Congress could still act to achieve the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and savings by consulting NTUF’s BillTally savings list. In fact, not only would Congress reach the target savings figure but an additional $300 billion in HALF the required time. The BillTally program measures proposed changes in federal spending using a five budget year window, rather than the ten year window used by the Super Committee.
Most Expensive Bill of the Week: The Bill: S. 1321, Practical Energy Plan Act of 2011, Annualized Cost: $1.4 billion ($6.8 billion over five years)
DETAILS AND MORE: http://action.ntu.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=12221&em_id=9202.0
Thursday, November 17, 2011
CCTA Issues and Watchdog Report- November 15, 2011
16 NOVEMBER 2011
ISSUES WE ARE WATCHING AND WANT TO ADDRESS
LOCAL
Craven County Board of Commissioners:
Regular Meetings: The Board of Commissioners holds regular meetings on the first and third Monday of each month. If a regular meeting day is a holiday on which County offices are closed, the meeting is held on the next business day or such succeeding day as may be specified. Regular meetings are held in the Craven County Commissioners Meeting Room at the Craven County Administration Building, New Bern, North Carolina. The meeting held on the first Monday convenes at 7:00 p.m. and allows the citizens to petition. The meeting held on the third Monday convenes at 8:30 a.m. and does not allow public comment.
Meeting November 7, 2011
Tax Releases and Refunds. Over $18,000 was refunded to citizens at this meeting. Close to $200,000 to date.
Sheriff Matters- Commissioner Jeff Taylor and a citizen named Susan Piller continued to press the Sheriff about allegations of poor training and fiscal control over the Sheriff's Office.
Present use Property Assessments & Voluntary Agricultural Districts. Tyker Gonzales attended a meeting the State conducted in New Bern for assessors and county employees from all over the State. She was told there that she is the only citizen other than government employees and contractors who has ever attended one of these meetings. She says she learned a lot. She can't be here tonight but will report her findings to us at a future meeting. The county Commissioners will consider adopting an ordinance to require a minimum of 10 acres to be eligible for a farm to be included in the Voluntary Agricultural District.
Voter ID Resolution-Legislative Request . We need you to call your Commissioner. Commissioner Dacey does not have the full support on this from fellow Commissioners that you would expect him to.
Convention Center- $150,000 for carpet. The Finance Officer says it came from the settlement with the builder, but I remember that legal fees took all of that settlement but $125,000. How did they get $150,000 out of $125,000?
DSS Crisis Intervention Program- Another $388,779 of tax money was thrown at this program. No Local or state tax money- ALL FEDERAL-That's ok with the Board.
Conduit Issuers of Tax Exempt Debt- A presentation on this subject on the agenda was skipped over. It may be "Tax Exempt" for the holder of these bonds, but I bet it is not "tax exempt" for the Taxpayer!
Craven County Board of Elections
No meeting schedule on their website. No minutes posted since Nov 2007.
Craven County Board of Education-The Board of Education holds two regularly scheduled meetings each month and special called meetings as needed. All meetings are open to the public. The Board Work Sessions are usually held at 8:30 a.m. the Tuesday prior to the Board of Education Meeting which is held at 6:00 p.m. the third Thursday of each month. The Work Session is an interactive meeting in which board members and staff discuss the current business and agree on proposals to be made at the official board meeting. Citizens interested in the details of the work of the school system are encouraged to attend this meeting.
The official Board of Education meeting is held at 6:00 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month. At that meeting there is a Public Participation section for citizen input, an Education Spotlight recognition section and a section for approval of discussed items. Meetings are held in the Board Room of the Administrative Building, 3600 Trent Road, New Bern, unless otherwise announced.
We will continue to explore the quality of education and the accurate portrayal of American history and the values of our nation's founders and adherence to the US Constitution related to instruction and books used in the curriculum.
We are also interested in the process of hiring a new Superintendent of Schools and what values he or she holds relative to the values we espouse for our children.
Havelock Board of Commissioners
Next Meeting 28 Nov 11. All regularly scheduled meetings of the Havelock Board of Commissioners are held in the City Hall Auditorium, 1 Governmental Avenue, Havelock, NC and begin at 7:00 p.m.
We found that the Havelock Board of Commissioners abuse the "Consent Agenda" the same way the Craven County Board of Commissioners did before the present Board came into office.
Concealed Carry- On 28 Nov 11 the Havelock Board of Commissioners will consider an ordinance of prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons in their parks when the State removes the prohibition state wide on 1 Dec 11. WE NEED TO PACK THEIR MEETING ROOM THAT NIGHT!
The Commissioners are angry with NC DOT about the median splitting highway 70.
They did vote down several proposals to recklessly spend taxpayer money. Most will probably come up again. These are big-ticket items coming to more than a half million dollars.
New Bern Board of AldermenWe had a big flap with the Board of Alderman on their move to restrict the Constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances. The Mayor helped resolve the issue somewhat with us by agreeing that if we requested to be on the agenda we could have more time that the 4 minutes allowed to petition at the beginning of a meeting.
We also have some concerns with the "Advance Metering Infrastructure/Demand System." It seems ok as it is being conducted on a volunteer basis but they obviously have the ability to make it mandatory and thereby regulate how much energy a customer is allowed.
REGIONAL ISSUES
Global Transpark- A colossal failure. Now actually less than 400 new jobs. Sold as providing 55,000.
Economic Development Commission- 100 Industrial Drive, New Bern, NC 28562--I couldn't find a meeting schedule. Phone: (252) 633-5300, Fax: (252) 633-3253, Jim Davis' Cell: (252) 670-0033,
Email: edc@yescraven.com
Watch out for the Industrial Facilities and Pollution Control Financing Authority. Another way to get into a money spending situation for the taxpayer.
Military Growth Task Force (MGTF)- I Couldn't find a regular scheduled meeting open to the public.
Military Growth Task Force, 656 W. Corbett Avenue P.O. Box 814, Swansboro, North Carolina 28584, Phone: 910-325-8112, Fax: 910-325-8114. Salaries way too high and very unproductive.
East Carolina Council-Down East Rural Planning Organization ~ Board Meetings: January 24, 2012; March 27, 2012; May 22, 2012; July 24, 2012; September 25, 2012; November 27, 2012--9:30 a.m., OMarks Building, 233 Middle Street, Second Floor Conference Room, New Bern, NC. In big trouble without producing much. I'll be surprised if other scandals don't break on this one. Not fulfilling it's mission and the Treasurer left and the Chairman replaced.
Coastal Community Action
"We will persevere as the voice and the catalyst of empowerment and opportunity for those who cannot succeed on their own."
Carteret Community Action, Inc. was established in 1965 as a private corporation with a public mission.
There are 15 Board positions available on the CCA Board. One third of the membership is composed of public officials or their representatives, one-third is composed of representatives of the poor, and the remainder represent business, industry, labor, religion, welfare, or other private groups and interests. One member of the Board of Directors represents the Head Start Policy Council. Directors may succeed themselves for a period not to exceed six year. Huge numbers of taxpayer dollars for health agencies.
STATE ISSUES
Voter ID- Governor Purdue vetoed. Will be hard to override, but there is a plan in place called the Local Bill Option.
Norman Sanderson's Promises Made-Promises Kept! Rep. Sanderson attended our November 15th meeting and gave us and update on the NCGA special sessions and what is happening at the state level.
Who Are These People?
State Superintendent of Schools- June Atkinson
Attorney General- Roy A. Cooper
Insurance Commissioner and State Fire Marshall-Wayne Goodwin
National Concerns- Lynn Childs (Lynn's report has also been posted on this blog!)
Popular Vote Initiative
HUD
Department of Energy
Department of Education
INVESTIGATIVE TOOLS
Attendance at Governmental Meetings (as many as possible)
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and FOIA Letter Generator
Attorney General's Office
State Superintendent of Schools
Follow-the-money Website
FBI Files (the moment a person dies)
CCTA's Website
Facebook
Constant Contact
Letters to the Editor(s)
Guidestar.org Search for Non-profits formed by Governmental Agencies)
Liaison with other Tea Party Type Groups
ISSUES WE ARE WATCHING AND WANT TO ADDRESS
LOCAL
Craven County Board of Commissioners:
Regular Meetings: The Board of Commissioners holds regular meetings on the first and third Monday of each month. If a regular meeting day is a holiday on which County offices are closed, the meeting is held on the next business day or such succeeding day as may be specified. Regular meetings are held in the Craven County Commissioners Meeting Room at the Craven County Administration Building, New Bern, North Carolina. The meeting held on the first Monday convenes at 7:00 p.m. and allows the citizens to petition. The meeting held on the third Monday convenes at 8:30 a.m. and does not allow public comment.
Meeting November 7, 2011
Tax Releases and Refunds. Over $18,000 was refunded to citizens at this meeting. Close to $200,000 to date.
Sheriff Matters- Commissioner Jeff Taylor and a citizen named Susan Piller continued to press the Sheriff about allegations of poor training and fiscal control over the Sheriff's Office.
Present use Property Assessments & Voluntary Agricultural Districts. Tyker Gonzales attended a meeting the State conducted in New Bern for assessors and county employees from all over the State. She was told there that she is the only citizen other than government employees and contractors who has ever attended one of these meetings. She says she learned a lot. She can't be here tonight but will report her findings to us at a future meeting. The county Commissioners will consider adopting an ordinance to require a minimum of 10 acres to be eligible for a farm to be included in the Voluntary Agricultural District.
Voter ID Resolution-Legislative Request . We need you to call your Commissioner. Commissioner Dacey does not have the full support on this from fellow Commissioners that you would expect him to.
Convention Center- $150,000 for carpet. The Finance Officer says it came from the settlement with the builder, but I remember that legal fees took all of that settlement but $125,000. How did they get $150,000 out of $125,000?
DSS Crisis Intervention Program- Another $388,779 of tax money was thrown at this program. No Local or state tax money- ALL FEDERAL-That's ok with the Board.
Conduit Issuers of Tax Exempt Debt- A presentation on this subject on the agenda was skipped over. It may be "Tax Exempt" for the holder of these bonds, but I bet it is not "tax exempt" for the Taxpayer!
Craven County Board of Elections
No meeting schedule on their website. No minutes posted since Nov 2007.
Craven County Board of Education-The Board of Education holds two regularly scheduled meetings each month and special called meetings as needed. All meetings are open to the public. The Board Work Sessions are usually held at 8:30 a.m. the Tuesday prior to the Board of Education Meeting which is held at 6:00 p.m. the third Thursday of each month. The Work Session is an interactive meeting in which board members and staff discuss the current business and agree on proposals to be made at the official board meeting. Citizens interested in the details of the work of the school system are encouraged to attend this meeting.
The official Board of Education meeting is held at 6:00 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month. At that meeting there is a Public Participation section for citizen input, an Education Spotlight recognition section and a section for approval of discussed items. Meetings are held in the Board Room of the Administrative Building, 3600 Trent Road, New Bern, unless otherwise announced.
We will continue to explore the quality of education and the accurate portrayal of American history and the values of our nation's founders and adherence to the US Constitution related to instruction and books used in the curriculum.
We are also interested in the process of hiring a new Superintendent of Schools and what values he or she holds relative to the values we espouse for our children.
Havelock Board of Commissioners
Next Meeting 28 Nov 11. All regularly scheduled meetings of the Havelock Board of Commissioners are held in the City Hall Auditorium, 1 Governmental Avenue, Havelock, NC and begin at 7:00 p.m.
We found that the Havelock Board of Commissioners abuse the "Consent Agenda" the same way the Craven County Board of Commissioners did before the present Board came into office.
Concealed Carry- On 28 Nov 11 the Havelock Board of Commissioners will consider an ordinance of prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons in their parks when the State removes the prohibition state wide on 1 Dec 11. WE NEED TO PACK THEIR MEETING ROOM THAT NIGHT!
The Commissioners are angry with NC DOT about the median splitting highway 70.
They did vote down several proposals to recklessly spend taxpayer money. Most will probably come up again. These are big-ticket items coming to more than a half million dollars.
New Bern Board of AldermenWe had a big flap with the Board of Alderman on their move to restrict the Constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances. The Mayor helped resolve the issue somewhat with us by agreeing that if we requested to be on the agenda we could have more time that the 4 minutes allowed to petition at the beginning of a meeting.
We also have some concerns with the "Advance Metering Infrastructure/Demand System." It seems ok as it is being conducted on a volunteer basis but they obviously have the ability to make it mandatory and thereby regulate how much energy a customer is allowed.
REGIONAL ISSUES
Global Transpark- A colossal failure. Now actually less than 400 new jobs. Sold as providing 55,000.
Economic Development Commission- 100 Industrial Drive, New Bern, NC 28562--I couldn't find a meeting schedule. Phone: (252) 633-5300, Fax: (252) 633-3253, Jim Davis' Cell: (252) 670-0033,
Email: edc@yescraven.com
Watch out for the Industrial Facilities and Pollution Control Financing Authority. Another way to get into a money spending situation for the taxpayer.
Military Growth Task Force (MGTF)- I Couldn't find a regular scheduled meeting open to the public.
Military Growth Task Force, 656 W. Corbett Avenue P.O. Box 814, Swansboro, North Carolina 28584, Phone: 910-325-8112, Fax: 910-325-8114. Salaries way too high and very unproductive.
East Carolina Council-Down East Rural Planning Organization ~ Board Meetings: January 24, 2012; March 27, 2012; May 22, 2012; July 24, 2012; September 25, 2012; November 27, 2012--9:30 a.m., OMarks Building, 233 Middle Street, Second Floor Conference Room, New Bern, NC. In big trouble without producing much. I'll be surprised if other scandals don't break on this one. Not fulfilling it's mission and the Treasurer left and the Chairman replaced.
Coastal Community Action
"We will persevere as the voice and the catalyst of empowerment and opportunity for those who cannot succeed on their own."
Carteret Community Action, Inc. was established in 1965 as a private corporation with a public mission.
There are 15 Board positions available on the CCA Board. One third of the membership is composed of public officials or their representatives, one-third is composed of representatives of the poor, and the remainder represent business, industry, labor, religion, welfare, or other private groups and interests. One member of the Board of Directors represents the Head Start Policy Council. Directors may succeed themselves for a period not to exceed six year. Huge numbers of taxpayer dollars for health agencies.
STATE ISSUES
Voter ID- Governor Purdue vetoed. Will be hard to override, but there is a plan in place called the Local Bill Option.
Norman Sanderson's Promises Made-Promises Kept! Rep. Sanderson attended our November 15th meeting and gave us and update on the NCGA special sessions and what is happening at the state level.
Who Are These People?
State Superintendent of Schools- June Atkinson
Attorney General- Roy A. Cooper
Insurance Commissioner and State Fire Marshall-Wayne Goodwin
National Concerns- Lynn Childs (Lynn's report has also been posted on this blog!)
- Supreme Court to hear Constitutionality of Obama Care
- Super Committee
- Job Bill for Veterans
- 2nd Amendment Alert
- EPA Strangling Business
Popular Vote Initiative
HUD
Department of Energy
Department of Education
INVESTIGATIVE TOOLS
Attendance at Governmental Meetings (as many as possible)
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and FOIA Letter Generator
Attorney General's Office
State Superintendent of Schools
Follow-the-money Website
FBI Files (the moment a person dies)
CCTA's Website
Constant Contact
Letters to the Editor(s)
Guidestar.org Search for Non-profits formed by Governmental Agencies)
Liaison with other Tea Party Type Groups
Friday, October 28, 2011
DC CALLER, BOB BARR: Dr. Obama’s Magical Mystery Giveaway Tour
All aboard Dr. Barack Obama’s Magical Mystery Bus Tour! If you live in one of the lucky cities and towns along the way, you too can be blessed by our marvelous and mystical commander-in-chief dispensing money, cure-alls and taxpayer elixirs at a rate not seen since the last great presidential flim-flam artist, Bill Clinton, took to the hustings.
Jobs one day; easy home refinancing the next. Health care. Social Security. Veterans benefits. Something for everyone!
With his signature American Jobs Act DOA in Congress, President Obama is trotting out a Hail Mary to Americans understandably weary of the still-faltering economy. Using his latest slogan, “We can’t wait,” as a backdrop, Obama is hawking various federal government programs, including the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), to boost his sagging poll numbers and buy the love of the electorate.
The White House hopes HARP will allow between 600,000 and 1 million homeowners with loans guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance their underwater mortgages and stave off foreclosure. As Reuters reports, Obama believes that expanding HARP “will help more homeowners refinance at lower rates, save consumers money and help get folks spending again”; in other words, he hopes it will magically cure the nagging recession in one fell swoop.
Like other Washington panaceas, this one sounds good. Mortgage rates have been pushed down by the Federal Reserve during the economy’s long downturn, which arguably would offer homeowners who take advantage of HARP extra cash each month and provide a shot in the arm to a terrible housing market. Reality, of course, is quite different.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/26/dr-obamas-magical-mystery-giveaway-tour/
Jobs one day; easy home refinancing the next. Health care. Social Security. Veterans benefits. Something for everyone!
With his signature American Jobs Act DOA in Congress, President Obama is trotting out a Hail Mary to Americans understandably weary of the still-faltering economy. Using his latest slogan, “We can’t wait,” as a backdrop, Obama is hawking various federal government programs, including the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), to boost his sagging poll numbers and buy the love of the electorate.
The White House hopes HARP will allow between 600,000 and 1 million homeowners with loans guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance their underwater mortgages and stave off foreclosure. As Reuters reports, Obama believes that expanding HARP “will help more homeowners refinance at lower rates, save consumers money and help get folks spending again”; in other words, he hopes it will magically cure the nagging recession in one fell swoop.
Like other Washington panaceas, this one sounds good. Mortgage rates have been pushed down by the Federal Reserve during the economy’s long downturn, which arguably would offer homeowners who take advantage of HARP extra cash each month and provide a shot in the arm to a terrible housing market. Reality, of course, is quite different.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/26/dr-obamas-magical-mystery-giveaway-tour/
Sunday, August 21, 2011
CCTA AUGUST WATCHDOG REPORT
16 August 2011
CCTA WATCHDOG REPORT
The Craven County Board of Commissioners continued the practice of using CDBG to purchase land in James City with county funds. It then plans to sell the property at minimal cost to a non-profit organization that, through covenants conditions contained in the deed will be required to bring the dwelling up to code and make it available as a low-moderate income (LMI) family dwelling.
The county takes a great risk with taxpayer money, in that if a person who receives a free house by CDBGs is not able to meet the property tax liability and if the county forecloses in order to collect the taxes and then buys the property at auction in order to re-sell it the chance are in today’s market that the property will not bring in enough to cover the outstanding mortgage. So far the difference has been “forgiven” but this practice may not continue as state and federal budgets tighten. We hope not so maybe the County will have to stop the practice of throwing away federal or state taxpayer’s money as long as it does not cost the County anything.
The Commissioners approved a request from the Health director to add two staff members to expand Adult Primary Care to cover people who make more than twice the federal poverty level and don’t have insurance. Why should the taxpayer pay for those who choose not to take care of themselves? Well, the rational the Board used was that if not treated at the clinic, they will show up at the emergency room and get service that they can’t pay for and therefore, those with insurance or can pay will see their costs go up. Is it a given that these people have to get free health care? Or is it a given that if the federal or state government or insurance companies will pay for it that the County will not turn it down? The salaries of these two new staff members will be paid for by someone other than the county for the short term, but what about the long term? Commissioner Mark asked this question and what we heard was that the Health Director thinks they can cover the salaries indefinitely. Time will tell. The Health Director promised to come back in about a year and let the Board know how it is working out. All 7 Commissioners voted to approve this move.
At the last evening board of Commissioner’s meeting I petitioned against both these proposals and complained about the 4-day boondoggle that Commissioners Sampson and McCabe took to the west coast at the National Association of Counties. I was surprised that no member of the Board supported me in the complaint about the two board members even though it was obvious from previous Board meeting that some members took a pass on the boondoggle to save the taxpayers some money. Nancy Murdoch wrote a letter to the editor of the sun Journal on behalf of CCTA taking the two Board members to task for this, it appeared on Sunday, Aug 14, 2011.
Tyker Gonzales is really concerned about President Obama appointing a Czar (his eighty something one) to connect his administration to “Rural America.” That includes about 16% of Americans. Why does he think that federal government needs to reach its tentacles down through the state and counties to reach American families directly? He has told every agency in the federal government to support this Czar including the Treasurer and the Secretary of Defense. Weird!
Raynor and I attended The Commissioners “Retreat” or “Work Session.” I never was really clear on what they called it, but it was very informative. Some of the subjects were:
1) The Convention Center- Several options were carefully considered to correct the problems caused by the settlement of the building into the silt. The Board has asked the staff to continue to work on an option that will cost the least and will not be a permanent solution to this problem but will allow for the continued use of the facility and therefore, generate some income while the process of repair goes forward and, who knows, could fix the problem for a goodly number of years. It seems like a good direction to go to me. I have a degree in Civil Engineering and while I am no means an expert on such structures the discussion seemed well founded in engineering principals. Commissioner Tyson was especially helpful in this dialog.
2) The Board spent considerable time and effort to plan for a celebration of the County’s 300th birthday. Some of the suggestions were:
a. Cook up the world’s largest hotdog. Try for a Guinness world record.
b. Bury a “time Capsule.”
c. Develop a scrapbook and displays.
d. Display a timeline of County history.
e. Work with the History Museum on an exhibit to highlight the County’s history.
f. Highlight each city, town, and community in the County’s history.
Gwendolyn M. Bryan, Clerk to the Board of Commissioners will be the Chairperson of a committee to plan and execute this celebration.
3) Property value re-evaluations- This subject generated a great deal of discussion. Everyone, Commissioners and staff, seemed to agree that the County should not wait 8 more years to have a re-evaluation. Several board members cited complaints that citizens did not believe the last one was done fairly. They also expressed concerns that in this market of rapidly falling property values, the citizens will not be taxed fairly because the changes in property values have been different for expensive properties and more modest properties with the most expensive ones taking the worst hits. Commissioner Tyson was very insightful in this discussion. He observed that some more modest properties have actually increased in value as buyers were more likely to seek lower priced housing while waterfront and other prime properties have dropped in valued dramatically as fewer people are willing to buy them and lending institutions are more reluctant to finance them. One of the staff members pointed out that if the property values are lowered across the board, the tax rate would have to be increased. Does it never occur to some people that maybe cuts should be made in the budget and taxes simply lowered?
4) Water rates- Careful study was given this subject. There was consensus that rates should discourage the use of more water than 9,000 gal per month. So the Board is considering a scaled rate structure that will increase the costs for those customers who consume more than that. I don’t like the idea of soaking the wealthy again so that less fortunate citizens have an easier ride, but that is obviously going to happen. Some money will have to be raised to provide for switching to another aquifer and treating the water, as it will not be as pure as the present source. There is also a storage facility that must be built. The increased charges proposed seemed modest to me in light of all that.
5) Drawing district lines within Craven County for Commissioners-The districts are supposed to be drawn to have each one contain about the same number of citizens. That would be about 14,300 or so for each one now. District 1- Tom Mark has 17,300, District 2-Jeff Taylor has 18,200, District 3-Johnnie Sampson has 21,800, District 4-Scott Dacey has 14,000, District 5-Theron McCabe has 10,000, District 6-Lee K. Allen has 11,000, and District 7 Steve Tyson has 21,800. So you can see adjustments will likely be made. The Board authorized the staff to move forward with a proposal by Marshall Hurley PLLC, Attorney, to act as consultant for the county on re-drawing the districts.
County Manager, Howard Blizzard, distributed copies of the Commissioners Bylaws (I got a copy) and said that the following subjects would be taken up after Commissioners have had time to review them:
1) Commissioner’s Travel
2) Appoints (term limits, procedures revisited)
3) Agenda Preparation and Adoption (deadlines, requests for proclamations/resolutions)
4) Protocol for engaging County Attorney (associated cost)
Please attend the sessions if you can. (And wear your CCTA Badge!)
What’s Ahead?
We should continue to keep up with the activities of our Board of Commissioners. They need our support to have anything like a conservative direction in philosophy of government. Our new representatives to the North Carolina General Assembly have done an excellent job and likewise need our support, but we can trust that they will continue to take the state in a more conservative direction. Some good legislation that passed this last session are:
1) Removed cap on the number of charter schools.
2) Tort Reform for Business and Citizens. Protects against frivolous lawsuits.
3) Annexation Reform Laws.
4) Amended Environmental Laws.
5) Repealed Land Transfer Tax.
6) A business exemption for the first $50,000 in business income.
7) Medical malpractice reform.
8) Regulatory reform. Simplifies some confusing and outdated regulations. Coordinates the regulations of different state agencies.
Several of these new laws required a veto override to become law.
However, the federal government is another story. We need to ride herd on our elected representative to Washington. So I took several issues that we at CCTA are concerned about due to our conservative philosophy of government and researched how the three elected representatives from our area have done at to supporting the conservative view on them. Here are my conclusions:
1) Right to Bear Arms- All three have done well on this one.
2) The Food Safety Act- Burr and Hagan voted for it and Jones did not.
3) Increase the Debt Limit-Burr and Hagen voted yes, Jones no.
4) The Balanced Budget Amendment- Burr and Hagan against it. Jones for it.
5) Repealing Obama Care- Burr and Jones yes, Hagan no.
We need to make our voices heard by all three of these elected representatives.
The Congressional Super Committee (unconstitutional) is shaped in favor of the left (only 1 strong conservative has been appointed). We are approaching the end of the government’s fiscal year, still without a budget.
Americans for Prosperity is sponsoring a bus trip from New Bern to Washington on 4 & 5 Nov 2011. It’s called Defending the Dream Summit. The program hasn’t been set but last year’s speakers included Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and George Will. Nancy and Don attended and said it was fantastic. I believe we can get a group rate if we have a group of from 6 to 10. Let’s try to get 2 groups. Raynor and I, Nancy and Don plan to go. Let us know if you can go. I’ve attached the information I have on it.
Hal James
CCTA Watchdog and Issues Committees Chairman
CCTA WATCHDOG REPORT
The Craven County Board of Commissioners continued the practice of using CDBG to purchase land in James City with county funds. It then plans to sell the property at minimal cost to a non-profit organization that, through covenants conditions contained in the deed will be required to bring the dwelling up to code and make it available as a low-moderate income (LMI) family dwelling.
The county takes a great risk with taxpayer money, in that if a person who receives a free house by CDBGs is not able to meet the property tax liability and if the county forecloses in order to collect the taxes and then buys the property at auction in order to re-sell it the chance are in today’s market that the property will not bring in enough to cover the outstanding mortgage. So far the difference has been “forgiven” but this practice may not continue as state and federal budgets tighten. We hope not so maybe the County will have to stop the practice of throwing away federal or state taxpayer’s money as long as it does not cost the County anything.
The Commissioners approved a request from the Health director to add two staff members to expand Adult Primary Care to cover people who make more than twice the federal poverty level and don’t have insurance. Why should the taxpayer pay for those who choose not to take care of themselves? Well, the rational the Board used was that if not treated at the clinic, they will show up at the emergency room and get service that they can’t pay for and therefore, those with insurance or can pay will see their costs go up. Is it a given that these people have to get free health care? Or is it a given that if the federal or state government or insurance companies will pay for it that the County will not turn it down? The salaries of these two new staff members will be paid for by someone other than the county for the short term, but what about the long term? Commissioner Mark asked this question and what we heard was that the Health Director thinks they can cover the salaries indefinitely. Time will tell. The Health Director promised to come back in about a year and let the Board know how it is working out. All 7 Commissioners voted to approve this move.
At the last evening board of Commissioner’s meeting I petitioned against both these proposals and complained about the 4-day boondoggle that Commissioners Sampson and McCabe took to the west coast at the National Association of Counties. I was surprised that no member of the Board supported me in the complaint about the two board members even though it was obvious from previous Board meeting that some members took a pass on the boondoggle to save the taxpayers some money. Nancy Murdoch wrote a letter to the editor of the sun Journal on behalf of CCTA taking the two Board members to task for this, it appeared on Sunday, Aug 14, 2011.
Tyker Gonzales is really concerned about President Obama appointing a Czar (his eighty something one) to connect his administration to “Rural America.” That includes about 16% of Americans. Why does he think that federal government needs to reach its tentacles down through the state and counties to reach American families directly? He has told every agency in the federal government to support this Czar including the Treasurer and the Secretary of Defense. Weird!
Raynor and I attended The Commissioners “Retreat” or “Work Session.” I never was really clear on what they called it, but it was very informative. Some of the subjects were:
1) The Convention Center- Several options were carefully considered to correct the problems caused by the settlement of the building into the silt. The Board has asked the staff to continue to work on an option that will cost the least and will not be a permanent solution to this problem but will allow for the continued use of the facility and therefore, generate some income while the process of repair goes forward and, who knows, could fix the problem for a goodly number of years. It seems like a good direction to go to me. I have a degree in Civil Engineering and while I am no means an expert on such structures the discussion seemed well founded in engineering principals. Commissioner Tyson was especially helpful in this dialog.
2) The Board spent considerable time and effort to plan for a celebration of the County’s 300th birthday. Some of the suggestions were:
a. Cook up the world’s largest hotdog. Try for a Guinness world record.
b. Bury a “time Capsule.”
c. Develop a scrapbook and displays.
d. Display a timeline of County history.
e. Work with the History Museum on an exhibit to highlight the County’s history.
f. Highlight each city, town, and community in the County’s history.
Gwendolyn M. Bryan, Clerk to the Board of Commissioners will be the Chairperson of a committee to plan and execute this celebration.
3) Property value re-evaluations- This subject generated a great deal of discussion. Everyone, Commissioners and staff, seemed to agree that the County should not wait 8 more years to have a re-evaluation. Several board members cited complaints that citizens did not believe the last one was done fairly. They also expressed concerns that in this market of rapidly falling property values, the citizens will not be taxed fairly because the changes in property values have been different for expensive properties and more modest properties with the most expensive ones taking the worst hits. Commissioner Tyson was very insightful in this discussion. He observed that some more modest properties have actually increased in value as buyers were more likely to seek lower priced housing while waterfront and other prime properties have dropped in valued dramatically as fewer people are willing to buy them and lending institutions are more reluctant to finance them. One of the staff members pointed out that if the property values are lowered across the board, the tax rate would have to be increased. Does it never occur to some people that maybe cuts should be made in the budget and taxes simply lowered?
4) Water rates- Careful study was given this subject. There was consensus that rates should discourage the use of more water than 9,000 gal per month. So the Board is considering a scaled rate structure that will increase the costs for those customers who consume more than that. I don’t like the idea of soaking the wealthy again so that less fortunate citizens have an easier ride, but that is obviously going to happen. Some money will have to be raised to provide for switching to another aquifer and treating the water, as it will not be as pure as the present source. There is also a storage facility that must be built. The increased charges proposed seemed modest to me in light of all that.
5) Drawing district lines within Craven County for Commissioners-The districts are supposed to be drawn to have each one contain about the same number of citizens. That would be about 14,300 or so for each one now. District 1- Tom Mark has 17,300, District 2-Jeff Taylor has 18,200, District 3-Johnnie Sampson has 21,800, District 4-Scott Dacey has 14,000, District 5-Theron McCabe has 10,000, District 6-Lee K. Allen has 11,000, and District 7 Steve Tyson has 21,800. So you can see adjustments will likely be made. The Board authorized the staff to move forward with a proposal by Marshall Hurley PLLC, Attorney, to act as consultant for the county on re-drawing the districts.
County Manager, Howard Blizzard, distributed copies of the Commissioners Bylaws (I got a copy) and said that the following subjects would be taken up after Commissioners have had time to review them:
1) Commissioner’s Travel
2) Appoints (term limits, procedures revisited)
3) Agenda Preparation and Adoption (deadlines, requests for proclamations/resolutions)
4) Protocol for engaging County Attorney (associated cost)
Please attend the sessions if you can. (And wear your CCTA Badge!)
What’s Ahead?
We should continue to keep up with the activities of our Board of Commissioners. They need our support to have anything like a conservative direction in philosophy of government. Our new representatives to the North Carolina General Assembly have done an excellent job and likewise need our support, but we can trust that they will continue to take the state in a more conservative direction. Some good legislation that passed this last session are:
1) Removed cap on the number of charter schools.
2) Tort Reform for Business and Citizens. Protects against frivolous lawsuits.
3) Annexation Reform Laws.
4) Amended Environmental Laws.
5) Repealed Land Transfer Tax.
6) A business exemption for the first $50,000 in business income.
7) Medical malpractice reform.
8) Regulatory reform. Simplifies some confusing and outdated regulations. Coordinates the regulations of different state agencies.
Several of these new laws required a veto override to become law.
However, the federal government is another story. We need to ride herd on our elected representative to Washington. So I took several issues that we at CCTA are concerned about due to our conservative philosophy of government and researched how the three elected representatives from our area have done at to supporting the conservative view on them. Here are my conclusions:
1) Right to Bear Arms- All three have done well on this one.
2) The Food Safety Act- Burr and Hagan voted for it and Jones did not.
3) Increase the Debt Limit-Burr and Hagen voted yes, Jones no.
4) The Balanced Budget Amendment- Burr and Hagan against it. Jones for it.
5) Repealing Obama Care- Burr and Jones yes, Hagan no.
We need to make our voices heard by all three of these elected representatives.
The Congressional Super Committee (unconstitutional) is shaped in favor of the left (only 1 strong conservative has been appointed). We are approaching the end of the government’s fiscal year, still without a budget.
Americans for Prosperity is sponsoring a bus trip from New Bern to Washington on 4 & 5 Nov 2011. It’s called Defending the Dream Summit. The program hasn’t been set but last year’s speakers included Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and George Will. Nancy and Don attended and said it was fantastic. I believe we can get a group rate if we have a group of from 6 to 10. Let’s try to get 2 groups. Raynor and I, Nancy and Don plan to go. Let us know if you can go. I’ve attached the information I have on it.
Hal James
CCTA Watchdog and Issues Committees Chairman
Monday, May 23, 2011
Support the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" -- Raleigh on Wednesday, May 25
I want to urge everyone to meet in Raleigh on Wednesday, May 25th at 10:00 am in Rm. 327 of the Legislative Bldg (across from Museum of Natural Science) to support House Bill, H.B. 188 - A Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
House Bill, H.B. 188 - Taxpayer Bill of Rights - H.B. 188 would amend the state constitution to create a General Fund Expenditure Limit. This amendment would tie future increases in the general fund budget to inflation and population growth. If this bill passed, legislators would no longer be able to make reckless increases in the budget. If they wanted to increase the budget beyond inflation and population growth, it would take an affirmative vote of 2/3 of the legislators of each house of the General Assembly.
Dear Activists,
In the last email I left out the room # for the Legislature Building for Wednesday’s hearing at 10 am on the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. That room number is 1327 of the main building at the General Assembly. Please let me know if you are able to come. Hope to see you there.
A Taxpayer Bill of Rights would amend the state constitution to create a General Fund Expenditure Limit. This amendment would tie future increases in the general fund budget to inflation and population growth. If this bill passed, legislators would no longer be able to make reckless increases in the budget. If they wanted to increase the budget beyond inflation and population growth, it would take an affirmative vote of 2/3 of the legislators of each house of the General Assembly.
Would you be willing to come to Raleigh on Wednesday, May 25 to stand in support of this bill? Would you spread the word to others in your various organizations? You would not need to speak at the hearing but simply be there to support it.
House Bill 188 hearing 10 am Legislative Building Room 1327 (This is in the Main Bldg. of the GA).
Chris Marie Farr
State Grassroots Director
Americans for Prosperity-NC
Office: 919-839-1011 x: 1
Fax: 919-839-1012
200 West Morgan Street, Suite 100
Raleigh, NC 27601
Chris.Farr@afphq.org
http://www.afpnc.org/
* Save the Date - Join Americans for Prosperity Foundation this summer for the 4th annual RightOnline® Conference in Minneapolis, MN at the Minneapolis Hilton Downtown on June 17-18. For more information and to REGISTER TODAY please visit www.rightonline.com!
House Bill, H.B. 188 - Taxpayer Bill of Rights - H.B. 188 would amend the state constitution to create a General Fund Expenditure Limit. This amendment would tie future increases in the general fund budget to inflation and population growth. If this bill passed, legislators would no longer be able to make reckless increases in the budget. If they wanted to increase the budget beyond inflation and population growth, it would take an affirmative vote of 2/3 of the legislators of each house of the General Assembly.
Dear Activists,
In the last email I left out the room # for the Legislature Building for Wednesday’s hearing at 10 am on the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. That room number is 1327 of the main building at the General Assembly. Please let me know if you are able to come. Hope to see you there.
A Taxpayer Bill of Rights would amend the state constitution to create a General Fund Expenditure Limit. This amendment would tie future increases in the general fund budget to inflation and population growth. If this bill passed, legislators would no longer be able to make reckless increases in the budget. If they wanted to increase the budget beyond inflation and population growth, it would take an affirmative vote of 2/3 of the legislators of each house of the General Assembly.
Would you be willing to come to Raleigh on Wednesday, May 25 to stand in support of this bill? Would you spread the word to others in your various organizations? You would not need to speak at the hearing but simply be there to support it.
House Bill 188 hearing 10 am Legislative Building Room 1327 (This is in the Main Bldg. of the GA).
Chris Marie Farr
State Grassroots Director
Americans for Prosperity-NC
Office: 919-839-1011 x: 1
Fax: 919-839-1012
200 West Morgan Street, Suite 100
Raleigh, NC 27601
Chris.Farr@afphq.org
http://www.afpnc.org/
* Save the Date - Join Americans for Prosperity Foundation this summer for the 4th annual RightOnline® Conference in Minneapolis, MN at the Minneapolis Hilton Downtown on June 17-18. For more information and to REGISTER TODAY please visit www.rightonline.com!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
From Red Hat to Red Chinese: Looking for Friends in All the Wrong Places
Making “Crony Capitalism” Work
Governor Bev Perdue started 2010 by donning a red hat and announcing almost $20 million in taxpayer money being given in the form of “incentives” to software maker Red Hat.[i] By early April she was no longer wearing a red hat, but getting help from the “Red Chinese” in her effort to raise taxes to support higher spending.
READ THE ARTICLE: http://www.nccivitas.org/2011/from-red-hat-to-red-chinese-gov-perdue-goes-looking-for-friends-in-all-the-wrong-places/
Governor Bev Perdue started 2010 by donning a red hat and announcing almost $20 million in taxpayer money being given in the form of “incentives” to software maker Red Hat.[i] By early April she was no longer wearing a red hat, but getting help from the “Red Chinese” in her effort to raise taxes to support higher spending.
READ THE ARTICLE: http://www.nccivitas.org/2011/from-red-hat-to-red-chinese-gov-perdue-goes-looking-for-friends-in-all-the-wrong-places/
Monday, January 17, 2011
The Great "Climate Change" Taxpayer Rip-Off of 2011
Mon, January 17, 2011
The Great "Climate Change" Taxpayer Rip-Off of 2011 By Alan Caruba
Unless I am seriously mistaken or misinformed, the rate of unemployment in the U.S. remains high and the foreclosure rate on homes is approaching the level of the Depression years. Two major bond rating companies, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s just warned that, if the federal government doesn’t stop spending and borrowing, America’s Triple-A highest ranking will be down-graded.
Along with all the other things in the federal budget wish list for 2011 are millions to be spent on climate change.
It helps to understand how obscene this is if you pause to consider (1) there is not one damn thing anyone can do about climate change, (2) climate change has been researched and studied since the late 1980s, enough to fill an entire wing of the Congressional Library to hold all the reports, and (3) the only climate change Americans really need to know about is what the weather will be tomorrow.
With a tip of the hat to Climatequotes.com and the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) report on “research development, fiscal year 2011”, let me share just a few of the ways the Obama administration intends to squander your money.
The magic number is $2,481,000 and it represents specific amounts devoted to "climate change" research or other programs requested for the 2011 budgets by an alphabet soup of federal agencies that include the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, Department of Energy (DOE), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of the Interior (DOI), and the Department of Agriculture (DOA).
The figures cited all come from chapter 15 of the AAAS report and you can access it via Climatequotes.com
NOAA’s total budget request is for $5.6 billion, an increase of 17%. It intends to devote $437 million for climate research funding, an increase of $77 million over last year.
Over at the National Science Foundation (NSF), its budget of $7.4 billion (that’s a lot of science!) includes a request for $480 million for Atmospheric and Earth Sciences, $765.5 million for NSF’s Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability program and $19 million for a joint program with DOE “to promote education in clean energy research. An additional $10 million would fund “Climate Change Education” in the nation’s schools. It’s not education, it’s indoctrination.
The Department of Energy which currently is projecting that permits for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be forthcoming until, maybe, June. DOE seems oblivious to the fact that the price of oil is set to hit $100 a barrel and higher costs will hit everyone driving anything using gasoline or diesel fuel. Fuel oil prices will rise and any business that uses oil or anything made with oil will be forced to raise its prices. In short, everything.
DOE, however, is in no hurry and, of course, the Obama administration is dead set against ANWR or off-shore exploration and extraction of the BILLIONS of barrels of crude oil projected to exist.
However, DOE is set to receive $28.4 billion in 2011 and that includes $4.6 billion for research and development in its Office of Science and $2.4 billion for energy research and development. Its Office of Biological and Environmental Research is devoted to atmospheric science, including “climate modeling”, which would be allocated $627 million. Last time I checked, oil, coal, and natural gas were not found in the “atmosphere”, but rather were extracted from deep within the Earth.
The entire global warming hoax was and is based on “climate modeling”, all of which consistently found that the Earth was warming at an alarming rate. Except that the Earth is NOT warming. It has been cooling since 1998. And DOE intends to waste $627 million on more modeling. It is worth noting that the most sophisticated models of the National Weather Bureau still cannot predict with any confidence what the weather—not the climate—will be next week.
The Environmental Protection Agency, gearing up to regulate all utilities that produce carbon dioxide and all other industries that do the same, has zero authorization to do so under the Clean Air Act. It is CO2 that is designated by the warmists as the chief culprit for the global warming that is NOT happening.
Despite this, EPA has requested $169 million “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, with $43.5 million in new funding for “regulatory efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” through the Clean Air Act. And it wants $22 million for its Global Change Research Program. It is time to shut down this rogue agency before it totally destroys the economy.
Even the Department of Agriculture wants $159 million for “climate change research”, an increase of 42% and $179 million for renewable energy, to “help farmers.” Farmers are heavy users of fossil fuels to operate the machinery needed to till, plant, and harvest crops. They need reliable energy, not "renewable" energy.
The Recovery Act of 2009 has managed to blow more than $600 million on climate change research and billions on greenhouse gas mitigation.
This is just the tip of the ‘climate change’ rip-off in terms of billions wasted or soon to be wasted on “research” that can only be deemed an obscene diversion of taxpayer money that will not benefit a single taxpayer, generate any new jobs except for those in government agencies, and further bankrupt a bankrupted nation about to have its credit rating reduced.
The “scientists”, “regulators”, and “administrators” feasting off this federal largess should be handed a shovel to earn a living on one of those “shovel ready” projects we were told about.
Beyond that, if Congress was really intent on cutting back on spending, they could begin by defunding or shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and all the other federal grifters with their snouts rooting around in the climate change trough.
© Alan Caruba, 2011
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/article/great-climate-change-taxpayer-rip-2011
The Great "Climate Change" Taxpayer Rip-Off of 2011 By Alan Caruba
Unless I am seriously mistaken or misinformed, the rate of unemployment in the U.S. remains high and the foreclosure rate on homes is approaching the level of the Depression years. Two major bond rating companies, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s just warned that, if the federal government doesn’t stop spending and borrowing, America’s Triple-A highest ranking will be down-graded.
Along with all the other things in the federal budget wish list for 2011 are millions to be spent on climate change.
It helps to understand how obscene this is if you pause to consider (1) there is not one damn thing anyone can do about climate change, (2) climate change has been researched and studied since the late 1980s, enough to fill an entire wing of the Congressional Library to hold all the reports, and (3) the only climate change Americans really need to know about is what the weather will be tomorrow.
With a tip of the hat to Climatequotes.com and the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) report on “research development, fiscal year 2011”, let me share just a few of the ways the Obama administration intends to squander your money.
The magic number is $2,481,000 and it represents specific amounts devoted to "climate change" research or other programs requested for the 2011 budgets by an alphabet soup of federal agencies that include the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, Department of Energy (DOE), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of the Interior (DOI), and the Department of Agriculture (DOA).
The figures cited all come from chapter 15 of the AAAS report and you can access it via Climatequotes.com
NOAA’s total budget request is for $5.6 billion, an increase of 17%. It intends to devote $437 million for climate research funding, an increase of $77 million over last year.
Over at the National Science Foundation (NSF), its budget of $7.4 billion (that’s a lot of science!) includes a request for $480 million for Atmospheric and Earth Sciences, $765.5 million for NSF’s Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability program and $19 million for a joint program with DOE “to promote education in clean energy research. An additional $10 million would fund “Climate Change Education” in the nation’s schools. It’s not education, it’s indoctrination.
The Department of Energy which currently is projecting that permits for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be forthcoming until, maybe, June. DOE seems oblivious to the fact that the price of oil is set to hit $100 a barrel and higher costs will hit everyone driving anything using gasoline or diesel fuel. Fuel oil prices will rise and any business that uses oil or anything made with oil will be forced to raise its prices. In short, everything.
DOE, however, is in no hurry and, of course, the Obama administration is dead set against ANWR or off-shore exploration and extraction of the BILLIONS of barrels of crude oil projected to exist.
However, DOE is set to receive $28.4 billion in 2011 and that includes $4.6 billion for research and development in its Office of Science and $2.4 billion for energy research and development. Its Office of Biological and Environmental Research is devoted to atmospheric science, including “climate modeling”, which would be allocated $627 million. Last time I checked, oil, coal, and natural gas were not found in the “atmosphere”, but rather were extracted from deep within the Earth.
The entire global warming hoax was and is based on “climate modeling”, all of which consistently found that the Earth was warming at an alarming rate. Except that the Earth is NOT warming. It has been cooling since 1998. And DOE intends to waste $627 million on more modeling. It is worth noting that the most sophisticated models of the National Weather Bureau still cannot predict with any confidence what the weather—not the climate—will be next week.
The Environmental Protection Agency, gearing up to regulate all utilities that produce carbon dioxide and all other industries that do the same, has zero authorization to do so under the Clean Air Act. It is CO2 that is designated by the warmists as the chief culprit for the global warming that is NOT happening.
Despite this, EPA has requested $169 million “to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, with $43.5 million in new funding for “regulatory efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” through the Clean Air Act. And it wants $22 million for its Global Change Research Program. It is time to shut down this rogue agency before it totally destroys the economy.
Even the Department of Agriculture wants $159 million for “climate change research”, an increase of 42% and $179 million for renewable energy, to “help farmers.” Farmers are heavy users of fossil fuels to operate the machinery needed to till, plant, and harvest crops. They need reliable energy, not "renewable" energy.
The Recovery Act of 2009 has managed to blow more than $600 million on climate change research and billions on greenhouse gas mitigation.
This is just the tip of the ‘climate change’ rip-off in terms of billions wasted or soon to be wasted on “research” that can only be deemed an obscene diversion of taxpayer money that will not benefit a single taxpayer, generate any new jobs except for those in government agencies, and further bankrupt a bankrupted nation about to have its credit rating reduced.
The “scientists”, “regulators”, and “administrators” feasting off this federal largess should be handed a shovel to earn a living on one of those “shovel ready” projects we were told about.
Beyond that, if Congress was really intent on cutting back on spending, they could begin by defunding or shutting down the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and all the other federal grifters with their snouts rooting around in the climate change trough.
© Alan Caruba, 2011
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/article/great-climate-change-taxpayer-rip-2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
FAIR TAX FRIDAY--BUILD YOUR OWN TAX CODE!
Fri, January 14, 2011
The beauty of tax reform is that it starts with a belief everyone shares: The current system is horrible. Monstrously complex, unfair and inefficient, the code has fewer friends in Washington than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. - Eric Schurenberg
Weekly Feature
As we speed toward tax day in April, let’s imagine ‘we the people’ could recommend a new tax code to Congress. Research shows Americans want their taxes to have certain characteristics. Would you pick any of these as your favorites? Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/fairtax.org.
Fairness: Did you claim that loophole? Probably not because the tax code undergoes hundreds of changes every year including nearly 600 in 2010 alone. The IRS estimates that most tax evasion is done because people feel slighted by the tax code and this raises everyone’s tax rates by about $2,500!
- The FairTax treats you the same as the next guy. One flat sales tax rate above the poverty line on new goods and services for everyone.
Simplicity: According to the IRS our current tax code now has 3.8 million words, which would fill 11,045 single-spaced pages! And if you were one of the 100 million calls to the IRS this year hopefully you weren’t the one in four calls they never even answered. Does anyone understand our tax code? Not many Americans because about 90% of use pay for tax assistance! It costs citizens and businesses about $300 million every year to figure out our taxes!
- The FairTax legislation is only 131 double spaced pages and it’s as easy as buying a candy bar now. 98% of Americans pay sales taxes with no professional help on April 15th – or any day.
Transparency: Find your phone bill and look at all the extra fees and taxes. Don’t you wish you always knew when you were paying for tax costs? In fact your phone bill doesn’t even include corporate income and payroll taxes that are often embedded in product prices and passed on to you.
- The FairTax only taxes end consumption so everyone can see the cost of government. Prices no longer have taxes embedded in them and politicians have one less place to play tax games.
Pro-growth: Have you ever got a raise and realized even more taxes would be sent to the government? This directly effects the economy as worker productivity falls with disillusionment. But as for the tax code itself, it takes individuals and businesses 6.1 billion hours to comply with tax requirements which the IRS estimates amounts to be more than 3 million full-time workers! That’s more Americans performing a necessary evil for the government than are employed by Walmart, IBM, and UPS combined! The tax code further harms our economy by penalizing products that are Made in America.
- With the FairTax you can work as hard as you want with no penalty; keep the fruits of your labors. Research shows that over the short and long term the FairTax increases personal income, GDP and even charitable giving. Fortune 500 companies were surveyed and upon passage of the FairTax, 400 would build new manufacturing plants in America and 100 would move their entire company to our shores!
Control: Do you want to pay less to the government? Your choices now are to plan your financial life around the tax code and hire a good accountant or just make less money. Right now the government gets part of your paycheck before you even see it; hardly the American Dream.
- The FairTax is truly pay-as-you-go. If you’d like to save more – no taxes. If you chose to purchase used items or invest your money– no taxes. If you want a new ball glove or yacht – taxes.
FairTax in the News
A Vision of a New System – Daytona Beach News-Journal
This is to address the concerns and opinions about our country's economic woes and wasteful government spending. Imagine trillions of dollars in offshore deposits returning to the United States, with no income tax liability. Imagine being hired at a wage of $500 per week, or any amount, and on payday receiving a check for $500. Imagine foreign manufacturers now paying 50-70 percent of their incomes in corporate income taxes, moving here, setting up shop, hiring people and keeping what they earn. Imagine the tremendous job opportunities created by this influx of capital. These imagined scenarios can be real with the FairTax...
---Robert E Rennie, Deland, FL
Survey shows that companies would create jobs in US if Fair Tax was instituted – Examiner.com
It is no fallacy that regulations and draconian tax codes by the Federal government have pushed US companies to move overseas, and keep their revenues offshore. America's tax rate on corporations is one of the highest in the industrial world, even surpassing most socialist European countries.
So why would a corporation build, hire, and operate in the US under these rules? The short answer is, they wouldn't and they don't. NAFTA has made it easier for companies to not only operate overseas and with cheaper labor, but they also can keep their revenues offshore and away from the IRS. So much so that over $14 Trillion dollars is kept offshore, and that is a staggering amount of money that could be used as capital for hiring instead of doing what we have done over the past three years... borrow from China and accomplish nothing.
Fortunately, there appears to be a solution, and one that is a benefit to the American people, business, and even the Federal government. That solution is the Fair Tax...
Understanding the FairTax Webinar
With Special Topic: Why the FairTax is beneficial to low income borrowers
When: Thursday, January 27, 2011
Time: 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain, 5 p.m. Pacific
Where: At your personal computer wherever you are.
Why: To provide an interactive forum for people who cannot get to local meetings to learn about the FairTax and to present special topics that are frequently misunderstood or not generally discussed. Education is our weapon and with elections over, we must concentrate on getting FairTax supporters to push our congressmen and U.S. Senators to co-sponsor our legislation.
Who: Join Marc Manieri, Americans for Fair Taxation Community Coordinator in the Greater Orlando, Florida area. In their second year now, Marc’s webinars draw national participation from seasoned FairTax supporters as well as those just getting introduced to the FairTax.
Join: To participate, register here. https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/226872979
You will receive a confirmation email with instructions for signing in at the time of the webinar and be asked to download GoToWebinar software. For more information contact Larry Walters at repeal_16@earthlink.net.
Ways to Engage:
- Send Congress an e-fax
- Contact the media
- Stay updated and engage on Facebook
- Follow us on Twitter
- Find a local leader
- Get FairTax gear
- Send an e-card
- Control your taxes, calculate your rate
- Get FairTax graphics
- Understand the basics
- Fund grassroots efforts
Americans for Fair Taxation, Essex Lane Suite #328, Houston, Texas 77027
1-877-FAIRTAX (324-7829)
Paid for by Americans for Fair Taxation
Americans For Fair Taxation is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization. One provision in the 65,000+ pages of the federal tax code makes investments in your non-profit FairTax organization non-deductible. http://www.fairtax.org/
The beauty of tax reform is that it starts with a belief everyone shares: The current system is horrible. Monstrously complex, unfair and inefficient, the code has fewer friends in Washington than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. - Eric Schurenberg
Weekly Feature
As we speed toward tax day in April, let’s imagine ‘we the people’ could recommend a new tax code to Congress. Research shows Americans want their taxes to have certain characteristics. Would you pick any of these as your favorites? Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/fairtax.org.
Fairness: Did you claim that loophole? Probably not because the tax code undergoes hundreds of changes every year including nearly 600 in 2010 alone. The IRS estimates that most tax evasion is done because people feel slighted by the tax code and this raises everyone’s tax rates by about $2,500!
- The FairTax treats you the same as the next guy. One flat sales tax rate above the poverty line on new goods and services for everyone.
Simplicity: According to the IRS our current tax code now has 3.8 million words, which would fill 11,045 single-spaced pages! And if you were one of the 100 million calls to the IRS this year hopefully you weren’t the one in four calls they never even answered. Does anyone understand our tax code? Not many Americans because about 90% of use pay for tax assistance! It costs citizens and businesses about $300 million every year to figure out our taxes!
- The FairTax legislation is only 131 double spaced pages and it’s as easy as buying a candy bar now. 98% of Americans pay sales taxes with no professional help on April 15th – or any day.
Transparency: Find your phone bill and look at all the extra fees and taxes. Don’t you wish you always knew when you were paying for tax costs? In fact your phone bill doesn’t even include corporate income and payroll taxes that are often embedded in product prices and passed on to you.
- The FairTax only taxes end consumption so everyone can see the cost of government. Prices no longer have taxes embedded in them and politicians have one less place to play tax games.
Pro-growth: Have you ever got a raise and realized even more taxes would be sent to the government? This directly effects the economy as worker productivity falls with disillusionment. But as for the tax code itself, it takes individuals and businesses 6.1 billion hours to comply with tax requirements which the IRS estimates amounts to be more than 3 million full-time workers! That’s more Americans performing a necessary evil for the government than are employed by Walmart, IBM, and UPS combined! The tax code further harms our economy by penalizing products that are Made in America.
- With the FairTax you can work as hard as you want with no penalty; keep the fruits of your labors. Research shows that over the short and long term the FairTax increases personal income, GDP and even charitable giving. Fortune 500 companies were surveyed and upon passage of the FairTax, 400 would build new manufacturing plants in America and 100 would move their entire company to our shores!
Control: Do you want to pay less to the government? Your choices now are to plan your financial life around the tax code and hire a good accountant or just make less money. Right now the government gets part of your paycheck before you even see it; hardly the American Dream.
- The FairTax is truly pay-as-you-go. If you’d like to save more – no taxes. If you chose to purchase used items or invest your money– no taxes. If you want a new ball glove or yacht – taxes.
FairTax in the News
A Vision of a New System – Daytona Beach News-Journal
This is to address the concerns and opinions about our country's economic woes and wasteful government spending. Imagine trillions of dollars in offshore deposits returning to the United States, with no income tax liability. Imagine being hired at a wage of $500 per week, or any amount, and on payday receiving a check for $500. Imagine foreign manufacturers now paying 50-70 percent of their incomes in corporate income taxes, moving here, setting up shop, hiring people and keeping what they earn. Imagine the tremendous job opportunities created by this influx of capital. These imagined scenarios can be real with the FairTax...
---Robert E Rennie, Deland, FL
Survey shows that companies would create jobs in US if Fair Tax was instituted – Examiner.com
It is no fallacy that regulations and draconian tax codes by the Federal government have pushed US companies to move overseas, and keep their revenues offshore. America's tax rate on corporations is one of the highest in the industrial world, even surpassing most socialist European countries.
So why would a corporation build, hire, and operate in the US under these rules? The short answer is, they wouldn't and they don't. NAFTA has made it easier for companies to not only operate overseas and with cheaper labor, but they also can keep their revenues offshore and away from the IRS. So much so that over $14 Trillion dollars is kept offshore, and that is a staggering amount of money that could be used as capital for hiring instead of doing what we have done over the past three years... borrow from China and accomplish nothing.
Fortunately, there appears to be a solution, and one that is a benefit to the American people, business, and even the Federal government. That solution is the Fair Tax...
Understanding the FairTax Webinar
With Special Topic: Why the FairTax is beneficial to low income borrowers
When: Thursday, January 27, 2011
Time: 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain, 5 p.m. Pacific
Where: At your personal computer wherever you are.
Why: To provide an interactive forum for people who cannot get to local meetings to learn about the FairTax and to present special topics that are frequently misunderstood or not generally discussed. Education is our weapon and with elections over, we must concentrate on getting FairTax supporters to push our congressmen and U.S. Senators to co-sponsor our legislation.
Who: Join Marc Manieri, Americans for Fair Taxation Community Coordinator in the Greater Orlando, Florida area. In their second year now, Marc’s webinars draw national participation from seasoned FairTax supporters as well as those just getting introduced to the FairTax.
Join: To participate, register here. https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/226872979
You will receive a confirmation email with instructions for signing in at the time of the webinar and be asked to download GoToWebinar software. For more information contact Larry Walters at repeal_16@earthlink.net.
Ways to Engage:
- Send Congress an e-fax
- Contact the media
- Stay updated and engage on Facebook
- Follow us on Twitter
- Find a local leader
- Get FairTax gear
- Send an e-card
- Control your taxes, calculate your rate
- Get FairTax graphics
- Understand the basics
- Fund grassroots efforts
Americans for Fair Taxation, Essex Lane Suite #328, Houston, Texas 77027
1-877-FAIRTAX (324-7829)
Paid for by Americans for Fair Taxation
Americans For Fair Taxation is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization. One provision in the 65,000+ pages of the federal tax code makes investments in your non-profit FairTax organization non-deductible. http://www.fairtax.org/
Friday, October 22, 2010
Sun Journal Letter to the Editor, New Bern, NC
Sun Journal
Letter to the Editor
BEWARE the Lame Duck
Perhaps the most dangerous time ahead for our Nation will occur when Congress reconvenes after November 2nd.
Democrats in the Senate, in early October, held a recess hearing covering a taxpayer bailout of union pensions and a plan to seize private 401(k) plans to more "fairly" distribute taxpayer-funded pensions to everyone.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee heard from hand-picked witnesses advocating the infamous "Guaranteed Retirement Account" (GRA).
In a nutshell, under the GRA system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a "fair" pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions. This would, of course, be a sister government ponzi scheme working in tandem with Social Security, the primary purpose being to give big government politicians additional taxpayer funds to raid to pay for their out-of-control spending.
We can also expect a renewal of the Dream (Amnesty) Act (S-729) which was defeated when it was attached to the Defense Authorization Bill.
The DREAM Act has two major components:
(1) it grants amnesty to illegal aliens who entered the country as children and have met minimal educational requirements; and
(2) it reverses current law to allow states to provide taxpayer subsidized in-state tuition to illegal aliens.
When S-729 first failed, Senators Reid and Durbin took to the Senate floor to angrily denounce the Senators who voted no. They accused their colleagues of not having the courage to bring the DREAM Act to a vote and vowed that this would not end the fight to pass this amnesty legislation. Amnesty is a big part of the progressive agenda; it is also a recruitment tool for the Socialists in the Democratic Party.
If any of this doesn’t sound like a government you grew up with, it’s not. It is the new order of things for Americans and it is Americans who can stop this a few weeks from now. First we must vote out the progressive liberals who are flirting with Socialism. After their removal we must unite under a common cause; the destruction of Socialism on our shores.
When Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Conservatives come together, there is nothing they cannot achieve. Isn’t it time we stand together?
Louis Call, CCTA Member
Letter to the Editor
BEWARE the Lame Duck
Perhaps the most dangerous time ahead for our Nation will occur when Congress reconvenes after November 2nd.
Democrats in the Senate, in early October, held a recess hearing covering a taxpayer bailout of union pensions and a plan to seize private 401(k) plans to more "fairly" distribute taxpayer-funded pensions to everyone.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee heard from hand-picked witnesses advocating the infamous "Guaranteed Retirement Account" (GRA).
In a nutshell, under the GRA system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a "fair" pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions. This would, of course, be a sister government ponzi scheme working in tandem with Social Security, the primary purpose being to give big government politicians additional taxpayer funds to raid to pay for their out-of-control spending.
We can also expect a renewal of the Dream (Amnesty) Act (S-729) which was defeated when it was attached to the Defense Authorization Bill.
The DREAM Act has two major components:
(1) it grants amnesty to illegal aliens who entered the country as children and have met minimal educational requirements; and
(2) it reverses current law to allow states to provide taxpayer subsidized in-state tuition to illegal aliens.
When S-729 first failed, Senators Reid and Durbin took to the Senate floor to angrily denounce the Senators who voted no. They accused their colleagues of not having the courage to bring the DREAM Act to a vote and vowed that this would not end the fight to pass this amnesty legislation. Amnesty is a big part of the progressive agenda; it is also a recruitment tool for the Socialists in the Democratic Party.
If any of this doesn’t sound like a government you grew up with, it’s not. It is the new order of things for Americans and it is Americans who can stop this a few weeks from now. First we must vote out the progressive liberals who are flirting with Socialism. After their removal we must unite under a common cause; the destruction of Socialism on our shores.
When Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Conservatives come together, there is nothing they cannot achieve. Isn’t it time we stand together?
Louis Call, CCTA Member
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Forbes.com
How Obama Thinks
Dinesh D'Souza, 09.09.10, 05:40 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated September 27, 2010
The President isn't exactly a socialist. So what's driving his hostility to private enterprise? Look to his roots.
Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.
The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.
More strange behavior: Obama's June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil but have less than 2% of the world's resources." Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world's resources?
The oddities go on and on. Obama's Administration has declared that even banks that want to repay their bailout money may be refused permission to do so. Only after the Obama team cleared a bank through the Fed's "stress test" was it eligible to give taxpayers their money back. Even then, declared Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Administration might force banks to keep the money.
The President continues to push for stimulus even though hundreds of billions of dollars in such funds seem to have done little. The unemployment rate when Obama took office in January 2009 was 7.7%; now it is 9.5%. Yet he wants to spend even more and is determined to foist the entire bill on Americans making $250,000 a year or more. The rich, Obama insists, aren't paying their "fair share." This by itself seems odd given that the top 1% of Americans pay 40% of all federal income taxes; the next 9% of income earners pay another 30%. So the top 10% pays 70% of the taxes; the bottom 40% pays close to nothing. This does indeed seem unfair--to the rich.
Obama's foreign policy is no less strange. He supports a $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero.
Recently the London Times reported that the Obama Administration supported the conditional release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber convicted in connection with the deaths of 270 people, mostly Americans. This was an eye-opener because when Scotland released Megrahi from prison and sent him home to Libya in August 2009, the Obama Administration publicly and appropriately complained. The Times, however, obtained a letter the Obama Administration sent to Scotland a week before the event in which it said that releasing Megrahi on "compassionate grounds" was acceptable as long as he was kept in Scotland and would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya. Scottish officials interpreted this to mean that U.S. objections to Megrahi's release were "half-hearted." They released him to his home country, where he lives today as a free man.
One more anomaly: A few months ago nasa Chief Charles Bolden announced that from now on the primary mission of America's space agency would be to improve relations with the Muslim world. Come again? Bolden said he got the word directly from the President. "He wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." Bolden added that the International Space Station was a model for nasa's future, since it was not just a U.S. operation but included the Russians and the Chinese. Obama's redirection of the agency caused consternation among former astronauts like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and even among the President's supporters: Most people think of nasa's job as one of landing on the moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations. Sure, we are for Islamic self-esteem, but what on earth was Obama up to here?
Theories abound to explain the President's goals and actions. Critics in the business community--including some Obama voters who now have buyer's remorse--tend to focus on two main themes. The first is that Obama is clueless about business. The second is that Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist, with a penchant for leveling and government redistribution.
These theories aren't wrong so much as they are inadequate. Even if they could account for Obama's domestic policy, they cannot explain his foreign policy. The real problem with Obama is worse--much worse. But we have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.
A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or something else?
It is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They believed the nation was a "new order for the ages." A half-century later Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind." This is known as American exceptionalism. But when asked at a 2009 press conference whether he believed in this ideal, Obama said no. America, he suggested, is no more unique or exceptional than Britain or Greece or any other country.
Perhaps, then, Obama shares Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. The President has benefited from that dream; he campaigned as a nonracial candidate, and many Americans voted for him because he represents the color-blind ideal. Even so, King's dream is not Obama's: The President never champions the idea of color-blindness or race-neutrality. This inaction is not merely tactical; the race issue simply isn't what drives Obama.
What then is Obama's dream? We don't have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to Obama, his dream is his father's dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father.
So who was Barack Obama Sr.? He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has accused him of abuse and wife-beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk at a bar in Nairobi and drove into a tree, killing himself.
An odd choice, certainly, as an inspirational hero. But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. Obama Sr. grew up during Africa's struggle to be free of European rule, and he was one of the early generation of Africans chosen to study in America and then to shape his country's future.
I know a great deal about anticolonialism, because I am a native of Mumbai, India. I am part of the first Indian generation to be born after my country's independence from the British. Anticolonialism was the rallying cry of Third World politics for much of the second half of the 20th century. To most Americans, however, anticolonialism is an unfamiliar idea, so let me explain it.
Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, "The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races."
Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909--72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India.
Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called "Problems Facing Our Socialism." Obama Sr. wasn't a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. "Is it the African who owns this country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country?"
As he put it, "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."
Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House.
While the senior Obama called for Africa to free itself from the neocolonial influence of Europe and specifically Britain, he knew when he came to America in 1959 that the global balance of power was shifting. Even then, he recognized what has become a new tenet of anticolonialist ideology: Today's neocolonial leader is not Europe but America. As the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said--who was one of Obama's teachers at Columbia University--wrote in Culture and Imperialism, "The United States has replaced the earlier great empires and is the dominant outside force."
From the anticolonial perspective, American imperialism is on a rampage. For a while, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union, but since the end of the Cold War, America has been the sole superpower. Moreover, 9/11 provided the occasion for America to invade and occupy two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and also to seek political and economic domination in the same way the French and the British empires once did. So in the anticolonial view, America is now the rogue elephant that subjugates and tramples the people of the world.
It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.
For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.
Why support oil drilling off the coast of Brazil but not in America? Obama believes that the West uses a disproportionate share of the world's energy resources, so he wants neocolonial America to have less and the former colonized countries to have more. More broadly, his proposal for carbon taxes has little to do with whether the planet is getting warmer or colder; it is simply a way to penalize, and therefore reduce, America's carbon consumption. Both as a U.S. Senator and in his speech, as President, to the United Nations, Obama has proposed that the West massively subsidize energy production in the developing world.
Rejecting the socialist formula, Obama has shown no intention to nationalize the investment banks or the health sector. Rather, he seeks to decolonize these institutions, and this means bringing them under the government's leash. That's why Obama retains the right to refuse bailout paybacks--so that he can maintain his control. For Obama, health insurance companies on their own are oppressive racketeers, but once they submitted to federal oversight he was happy to do business with them. He even promised them expanded business as a result of his law forcing every American to buy health insurance.
If Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income in overall taxes to pay even more. The anticolonialist believes that since the rich have prospered at the expense of others, their wealth doesn't really belong to them; therefore whatever can be extracted from them is automatically just. Recall what Obama Sr. said in his 1965 paper: There is no tax rate too high, and even a 100% rate is justified under certain circumstances.
Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S. imperialism. Certainly that is the way the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi portrayed himself at his trial. Obama's perception of him as an anticolonial resister would explain why he gave tacit approval for this murderer of hundreds of Americans to be released from captivity.
Finally, nasa. No explanation other than anticolonialism makes sense of Obama's curious mandate to convert a space agency into a Muslim and international outreach. We can see how well our theory works by recalling the moon landing of Apollo 11 in 1969. "One small step for man," Neil Armstrong said. "One giant leap for mankind."
But that's not how the rest of the world saw it. I was 8 years old at the time and living in my native India. I remember my grandfather telling me about the great race between America and Russia to put a man on the moon. Clearly America had won, and this was one giant leap not for mankind but for the U.S. If Obama shares this view, it's no wonder he wants to blunt nasa's space program, to divert it from a symbol of American greatness into a more modest public relations program.
Clearly the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. And we can be doubly sure about his father's influence because those who know Obama well testify to it. His "granny" Sarah Obama (not his real grandmother but one of his grandfather's other wives) told Newsweek, "I look at him and I see all the same things--he has taken everything from his father. The son is realizing everything the father wanted. The dreams of the father are still alive in the son."
In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"
The climax of Obama's narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his father's grave. It is riveting: "When my tears were finally spent," he writes, "I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father's pain."
In an eerie conclusion, Obama writes that "I sat at my father's grave and spoke to him through Africa's red soil." In a sense, through the earth itself, he communes with his father and receives his father's spirit. Obama takes on his father's struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause. He decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.'s hatred of the colonial system becomes Obama Jr.'s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world right defines his son's objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the family tomb, the father's struggle becomes the son's birthright.
Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment.
But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.
Dinesh D'Souza, the president of the King's College in New York City, is the author of the forthcoming book The Roots of Obama's Rage (Regnery Publishing).
Dinesh D'Souza, 09.09.10, 05:40 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated September 27, 2010
The President isn't exactly a socialist. So what's driving his hostility to private enterprise? Look to his roots.
Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.
The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.
More strange behavior: Obama's June 15, 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill focused not on cleanup strategies but rather on the fact that Americans "consume more than 20% of the world's oil but have less than 2% of the world's resources." Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill? Would the calamity have been less of a problem if America consumed a mere 10% of the world's resources?
The oddities go on and on. Obama's Administration has declared that even banks that want to repay their bailout money may be refused permission to do so. Only after the Obama team cleared a bank through the Fed's "stress test" was it eligible to give taxpayers their money back. Even then, declared Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Administration might force banks to keep the money.
The President continues to push for stimulus even though hundreds of billions of dollars in such funds seem to have done little. The unemployment rate when Obama took office in January 2009 was 7.7%; now it is 9.5%. Yet he wants to spend even more and is determined to foist the entire bill on Americans making $250,000 a year or more. The rich, Obama insists, aren't paying their "fair share." This by itself seems odd given that the top 1% of Americans pay 40% of all federal income taxes; the next 9% of income earners pay another 30%. So the top 10% pays 70% of the taxes; the bottom 40% pays close to nothing. This does indeed seem unfair--to the rich.
Obama's foreign policy is no less strange. He supports a $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center. Obama's rationale, that "our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable," seems utterly irrelevant to the issue of why the proposed Cordoba House should be constructed at Ground Zero.
Recently the London Times reported that the Obama Administration supported the conditional release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber convicted in connection with the deaths of 270 people, mostly Americans. This was an eye-opener because when Scotland released Megrahi from prison and sent him home to Libya in August 2009, the Obama Administration publicly and appropriately complained. The Times, however, obtained a letter the Obama Administration sent to Scotland a week before the event in which it said that releasing Megrahi on "compassionate grounds" was acceptable as long as he was kept in Scotland and would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya. Scottish officials interpreted this to mean that U.S. objections to Megrahi's release were "half-hearted." They released him to his home country, where he lives today as a free man.
One more anomaly: A few months ago nasa Chief Charles Bolden announced that from now on the primary mission of America's space agency would be to improve relations with the Muslim world. Come again? Bolden said he got the word directly from the President. "He wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." Bolden added that the International Space Station was a model for nasa's future, since it was not just a U.S. operation but included the Russians and the Chinese. Obama's redirection of the agency caused consternation among former astronauts like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, and even among the President's supporters: Most people think of nasa's job as one of landing on the moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations. Sure, we are for Islamic self-esteem, but what on earth was Obama up to here?
Theories abound to explain the President's goals and actions. Critics in the business community--including some Obama voters who now have buyer's remorse--tend to focus on two main themes. The first is that Obama is clueless about business. The second is that Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist, with a penchant for leveling and government redistribution.
These theories aren't wrong so much as they are inadequate. Even if they could account for Obama's domestic policy, they cannot explain his foreign policy. The real problem with Obama is worse--much worse. But we have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.
A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or something else?
It is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They believed the nation was a "new order for the ages." A half-century later Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind." This is known as American exceptionalism. But when asked at a 2009 press conference whether he believed in this ideal, Obama said no. America, he suggested, is no more unique or exceptional than Britain or Greece or any other country.
Perhaps, then, Obama shares Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society. The President has benefited from that dream; he campaigned as a nonracial candidate, and many Americans voted for him because he represents the color-blind ideal. Even so, King's dream is not Obama's: The President never champions the idea of color-blindness or race-neutrality. This inaction is not merely tactical; the race issue simply isn't what drives Obama.
What then is Obama's dream? We don't have to speculate because the President tells us himself in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father. According to Obama, his dream is his father's dream. Notice that his title is not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. Obama isn't writing about his father's dreams; he is writing about the dreams he received from his father.
So who was Barack Obama Sr.? He was a Luo tribesman who grew up in Kenya and studied at Harvard. He was a polygamist who had, over the course of his lifetime, four wives and eight children. One of his sons, Mark Obama, has accused him of abuse and wife-beating. He was also a regular drunk driver who got into numerous accidents, killing a man in one and causing his own legs to be amputated due to injury in another. In 1982 he got drunk at a bar in Nairobi and drove into a tree, killing himself.
An odd choice, certainly, as an inspirational hero. But to his son, the elder Obama represented a great and noble cause, the cause of anticolonialism. Obama Sr. grew up during Africa's struggle to be free of European rule, and he was one of the early generation of Africans chosen to study in America and then to shape his country's future.
I know a great deal about anticolonialism, because I am a native of Mumbai, India. I am part of the first Indian generation to be born after my country's independence from the British. Anticolonialism was the rallying cry of Third World politics for much of the second half of the 20th century. To most Americans, however, anticolonialism is an unfamiliar idea, so let me explain it.
Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, "The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races."
Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909--72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India.
Obama Sr. was an economist, and in 1965 he published an important article in the East Africa Journal called "Problems Facing Our Socialism." Obama Sr. wasn't a doctrinaire socialist; rather, he saw state appropriation of wealth as a necessary means to achieve the anticolonial objective of taking resources away from the foreign looters and restoring them to the people of Africa. For Obama Sr. this was an issue of national autonomy. "Is it the African who owns this country? If he does, then why should he not control the economic means of growth in this country?"
As he put it, "We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now." The senior Obama proposed that the state confiscate private land and raise taxes with no upper limit. In fact, he insisted that "theoretically there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."
Remarkably, President Obama, who knows his father's history very well, has never mentioned his father's article. Even more remarkably, there has been virtually no reporting on a document that seems directly relevant to what the junior Obama is doing in the White House.
While the senior Obama called for Africa to free itself from the neocolonial influence of Europe and specifically Britain, he knew when he came to America in 1959 that the global balance of power was shifting. Even then, he recognized what has become a new tenet of anticolonialist ideology: Today's neocolonial leader is not Europe but America. As the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said--who was one of Obama's teachers at Columbia University--wrote in Culture and Imperialism, "The United States has replaced the earlier great empires and is the dominant outside force."
From the anticolonial perspective, American imperialism is on a rampage. For a while, U.S. power was checked by the Soviet Union, but since the end of the Cold War, America has been the sole superpower. Moreover, 9/11 provided the occasion for America to invade and occupy two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, and also to seek political and economic domination in the same way the French and the British empires once did. So in the anticolonial view, America is now the rogue elephant that subjugates and tramples the people of the world.
It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.
For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.
Why support oil drilling off the coast of Brazil but not in America? Obama believes that the West uses a disproportionate share of the world's energy resources, so he wants neocolonial America to have less and the former colonized countries to have more. More broadly, his proposal for carbon taxes has little to do with whether the planet is getting warmer or colder; it is simply a way to penalize, and therefore reduce, America's carbon consumption. Both as a U.S. Senator and in his speech, as President, to the United Nations, Obama has proposed that the West massively subsidize energy production in the developing world.
Rejecting the socialist formula, Obama has shown no intention to nationalize the investment banks or the health sector. Rather, he seeks to decolonize these institutions, and this means bringing them under the government's leash. That's why Obama retains the right to refuse bailout paybacks--so that he can maintain his control. For Obama, health insurance companies on their own are oppressive racketeers, but once they submitted to federal oversight he was happy to do business with them. He even promised them expanded business as a result of his law forcing every American to buy health insurance.
If Obama shares his father's anticolonial crusade, that would explain why he wants people who are already paying close to 50% of their income in overall taxes to pay even more. The anticolonialist believes that since the rich have prospered at the expense of others, their wealth doesn't really belong to them; therefore whatever can be extracted from them is automatically just. Recall what Obama Sr. said in his 1965 paper: There is no tax rate too high, and even a 100% rate is justified under certain circumstances.
Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S. imperialism. Certainly that is the way the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi portrayed himself at his trial. Obama's perception of him as an anticolonial resister would explain why he gave tacit approval for this murderer of hundreds of Americans to be released from captivity.
Finally, nasa. No explanation other than anticolonialism makes sense of Obama's curious mandate to convert a space agency into a Muslim and international outreach. We can see how well our theory works by recalling the moon landing of Apollo 11 in 1969. "One small step for man," Neil Armstrong said. "One giant leap for mankind."
But that's not how the rest of the world saw it. I was 8 years old at the time and living in my native India. I remember my grandfather telling me about the great race between America and Russia to put a man on the moon. Clearly America had won, and this was one giant leap not for mankind but for the U.S. If Obama shares this view, it's no wonder he wants to blunt nasa's space program, to divert it from a symbol of American greatness into a more modest public relations program.
Clearly the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. And we can be doubly sure about his father's influence because those who know Obama well testify to it. His "granny" Sarah Obama (not his real grandmother but one of his grandfather's other wives) told Newsweek, "I look at him and I see all the same things--he has taken everything from his father. The son is realizing everything the father wanted. The dreams of the father are still alive in the son."
In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"
The climax of Obama's narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his father's grave. It is riveting: "When my tears were finally spent," he writes, "I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father's pain."
In an eerie conclusion, Obama writes that "I sat at my father's grave and spoke to him through Africa's red soil." In a sense, through the earth itself, he communes with his father and receives his father's spirit. Obama takes on his father's struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause. He decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.'s hatred of the colonial system becomes Obama Jr.'s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world right defines his son's objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the family tomb, the father's struggle becomes the son's birthright.
Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment.
But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.
Dinesh D'Souza, the president of the King's College in New York City, is the author of the forthcoming book The Roots of Obama's Rage (Regnery Publishing).
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Butterfield Faces Ethics Probe Over Foreign Travel
CAROLINA JOURNAL: Stipends subject of probe; Butterfield says he’ll cooperate
By David N. Bass
September 03, 2010
RALEIGH — North Carolina Congressman G.K. Butterfield is one of a half-dozen federal lawmakers facing an ethics probe for allegedly pocketing portions of his taxpayer-funded travel stipend.
The investigation comes on the heels of calls for Butterfield, a Democrat representing the state’s 1st Congressional District, to return $4,000 in campaign donations from a political action committee of embattled Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y. Butterfield has declined to do so or recuse himself from an investigation by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (aka the ethics committee) of Rangel. Butterfield is one of 10 members of that committee.
Congressmen receive daily allotments, called a per diem, for overseas travel. Because “foreign officials or U.S. ambassadors” often pick up the tab for federal lawmakers, members sometimes keep the difference, according to a report published Aug. 31 in The Wall Street Journal.
“Lawmakers routinely keep the extra funds or spend it on gifts, shopping or to cover their spouses’ travel expenses, according to dozens of current and former lawmakers,” the newspaper reported.
No system exists for lawmakers to return excess per diem funds to the government, the Journal reported, and investigators might conclude the standards need to be clarified.
E-mails to Butterfield’s press secretary were not returned this week, but the three-term Democrat told The Daily Reflector of Greenville that he would cooperate with the investigation.
“I have complied with the requests of [the Office of Congressional Ethics] and will comply with any other request from the ethics committee,” he said.
In January, Butterfield faced criticism for spending $4,406 for food and lodging at a five-star hotel while attending climate-change talks in Denmark. Butterfield said that lawmakers weren’t aware of the costs prior to the trip and that House leaders made the travel arrangements.
In response to the ethics investigation, Butterfield’s Republican opponent, Ashley Woolard, called on the congressman to resign.
“Citizens of the First District need honest leadership that will help our struggling economy, not another greedy politician feeding at the public trough as our economy burns,” Woolard said in a statement.
Also this week, a House panel dismissed ethics allegations against Butterfield’s fellow Democrat, Rep. Mel Watt of the 12th Congressional District. Investigators had questioned the timing of a fundraiser Watt held shortly before the House voted on financial regulatory reform legislation last year.
David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.
http://www.carolinajournal.com/articles/display_story.html?id=6816
By David N. Bass
September 03, 2010
RALEIGH — North Carolina Congressman G.K. Butterfield is one of a half-dozen federal lawmakers facing an ethics probe for allegedly pocketing portions of his taxpayer-funded travel stipend.
The investigation comes on the heels of calls for Butterfield, a Democrat representing the state’s 1st Congressional District, to return $4,000 in campaign donations from a political action committee of embattled Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y. Butterfield has declined to do so or recuse himself from an investigation by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (aka the ethics committee) of Rangel. Butterfield is one of 10 members of that committee.
Congressmen receive daily allotments, called a per diem, for overseas travel. Because “foreign officials or U.S. ambassadors” often pick up the tab for federal lawmakers, members sometimes keep the difference, according to a report published Aug. 31 in The Wall Street Journal.
“Lawmakers routinely keep the extra funds or spend it on gifts, shopping or to cover their spouses’ travel expenses, according to dozens of current and former lawmakers,” the newspaper reported.
No system exists for lawmakers to return excess per diem funds to the government, the Journal reported, and investigators might conclude the standards need to be clarified.
E-mails to Butterfield’s press secretary were not returned this week, but the three-term Democrat told The Daily Reflector of Greenville that he would cooperate with the investigation.
“I have complied with the requests of [the Office of Congressional Ethics] and will comply with any other request from the ethics committee,” he said.
In January, Butterfield faced criticism for spending $4,406 for food and lodging at a five-star hotel while attending climate-change talks in Denmark. Butterfield said that lawmakers weren’t aware of the costs prior to the trip and that House leaders made the travel arrangements.
In response to the ethics investigation, Butterfield’s Republican opponent, Ashley Woolard, called on the congressman to resign.
“Citizens of the First District need honest leadership that will help our struggling economy, not another greedy politician feeding at the public trough as our economy burns,” Woolard said in a statement.
Also this week, a House panel dismissed ethics allegations against Butterfield’s fellow Democrat, Rep. Mel Watt of the 12th Congressional District. Investigators had questioned the timing of a fundraiser Watt held shortly before the House voted on financial regulatory reform legislation last year.
David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.
http://www.carolinajournal.com/articles/display_story.html?id=6816
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
President charged with illegally using taxpayer money to manipulate public
Scathing Congress report slams Obama's 'covert, criminal activity'
President charged with illegally using taxpayer money to manipulate public
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: August 16, 2010
12:01 am Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, issued a scathing staff report today charging that the White House has "used the machinery of the Obama campaign to tout the president's agenda through inappropriate and sometimes unlawful public relations and propaganda initiatives."
An advance pre-publication copy of the report, shared by Issa's Washington office with WND, accuses the White House of nothing short of criminal activity. It charges the Obama administration with violating federal laws to advance what the Government Accounting Office has characterized as an unlawful "covert campaign," using federal resources "to activate a sophisticated propaganda and lobbying campaign."
Pulling no punches, the Oversight Republican Report accuses the Obama White House of "violating federal law prohibiting the use of appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda purposes."
"The White house has failed to transition from campaign mode to leadership mode and is now inappropriately leveraging those campaign-trail relationships to unlawfully generate support for the president's agenda," the report concludes.
Read in its entirety, the Oversight Republican Report charges the Obama administration with the type of callous, unethical and possibly criminal manipulation of public opinion that is reminiscent of Watergate and the illegal campaign activities engineered by Donald Segretti on behalf of the Committee to Re-Elect the President during Richard Nixon's presidential election campaign of 1972.
In 1974, Donald Segretti pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal campaign materials, for which he served in federal prison four months of a six-month term.
The Obama administration's abuses alleged in the Oversight Republican Report can be summed up under the term "astro-turfing," a fraudulent public relations activity in which "the White House and the agency whose resources it is co-opting attempt to create the impression that grassroots support for a particular policy exists when in fact it has been fabricated using taxpayer dollars."
The report points to several instances of alleged, unlawful abuses:
The National Endowment for the Arts
On Aug. 6, 2009, on behalf of the White House Office of Public Engagement, NEA Director Yosi Sergent invited a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, marketers and other influencers of the arts to participate in a conference call designed to encourage involvement in President Obama's United We Serve program.
Nell Abernathy, director of outreach for United We Serve and Buffy Wicks, deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, identified the goal of the NEA program was to recruit artists to create art to support the president's agenda "with the same enthusiasm and with the same energy that we all saw in each other during the campaign."
The Oversight Republican Report, however, contends the initiative was illegal.
"The use of taxpayer dollars and federal employees to create an alliance whereby the NEA becomes the de facto strategic communications arm of the White House is unlawful," the report alleges. "Using a government e-mail account and government personnel and resources to host a call using artists and arts group to support the president's agenda is a clear violation of federal law."
The report stresses that it was inappropriate for representatives of the White House and the NEA to formally ask artists and entertainers to use their talents to support the president's agenda "because many of these people rely on NEA grants to subsidize their livelihoods."
The Department of Justice
In October 2008, the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs added Tracy Russo, the chief blogger and deputy director for online communications for Sen. John Edwards' presidential campaign, to direct the Department's "new media efforts."
The Oversight Republican Report documents that Russo covertly attempted to shape public opinion by posting comments on the Internet anonymously, or through the use of a pseudonym, attacking authors or contents viewed as critical of the president, in an effort to shape debate online.
The report concludes, "The deployment of Justice Department resources to generate clandestine comments on message boards and blogs is a highly improper use of the Department's resources."
The report cites GAO rulings stating that covert propaganda violates Title 5 U.S.C. Section 3107 of federal law, which prohibits the use of publicity experts unless specifically appropriated for that purpose.
Office of Education
The Oversight Republican Report details that beginning on the morning of April 24, 2009, U.S. Department of Education Deputy Assistant Secretary for External Affairs and Outreach Massie Ritsch launched an e-mail campaign in coordination with the White House to promote President Obama's plan to begin a federal takeover of student loans.
The report again charges criminal abuses: "The intent of the e-mail is clearly to create grassroots support for the president's education agenda by inappropriately leveraging Ritsch's position as a Department of Education employee. Because it was drafted or intended to influence members of Congress while they consider the president's federal student loan plan, it is unlawful."
Federal workforce
The Oversight Republican Report charges that in March 2010, White House Office for Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle sent "overtly partisan, unsolicited health-reform e-mails to career civil servants in executive branch offices, suggesting to recipients that they were being officially instructed by the White House to support the president's health-care reform proposals."
Again, the report charges the Obama White House with illegal activity: "Criminal statutes prohibit executive branch officials from using appropriated funds to influence the legislative process. Title 18 of the United States Code, section 1913, prohibits federal employees from engaging in the very activities DeParle urges."
Department of Health and Human Resources
The Oversight Republican Report charges that the Department of Health and Human Resources contracted with Jonathan Gruber, a health-care economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to provide "technical assistance" to support President Obama's health care reform proposals.
For this, Gruber was paid $297,600, plus another $95,000 for a second HHS job.
The Obama administration then relied upon and distributed Gruber's commentary and views to publications including Time, The Washington Post, the New York Times and the New Republic without revealing that Gruber was a paid HHS consultant.
"Using HHS appropriations to contract a highly visible health-care expert to advocate on behalf of administration policies under the guise of providing 'technical assistance' is inappropriate," the Oversight Republican Report concludes, while further alleging that the administration's failure to disclose Gruber's status while touting his work violates GAO's policy prohibiting covert propaganda.
Other abuses
Among the additional abuses, the Oversight Republican Report cites a cable television ad featuring 84-year-old Andy Griffith promoting Medicare and the Obama administration's health-care reform bill.
The Department of Health and Human Services paid $700,000 to make the cable television ad buy, and the report alleges the commercial – run in July 2010 – gave the appearance that it was "designed to affect general elections by convincing seniors to support one of the Democrat's major legislative initiatives."
The report further charges the White House of posting "fictitious and misleading" information about jobs "saved and created" on the White House-maintained website Recovery.gov.
Also criticized are signs the Federal Highway Administration has encouraged the states to post, announcing that new federal highway projects were being funded by stimulus dollars.
David Axelrod
Axelrod and astro-turfing
The practice of using covert propaganda to push political opinion is familiar to at least one administration official, Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod.
Prior to joining then-Sen. Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, Axelrod was a partner in AKP&D Message & Media, a Chicago-based media and public relations firm that listed among its corporate clients Cablevision and AT&T.
According to a Business Week report published in 2008, AKP&D set up front organizations for corporations that wanted to run public issue ads without having the ads identified as having been paid for by the corporations.
Business Week cited as an example a television commercial Axelrod's firm created for Commonwealth Edison, the largest electric utility in Illinois. The ad warned a ComEd bankruptcy and blackouts could occur unless a rate hike was approved. The ad was sponsored by CORE, which described itself as "a coalition of individuals, businesses and organizations."
After a complaint was filed with state regulators, ComEd was forced to admit it had bankrolled the entire $15-million effort.
President charged with illegally using taxpayer money to manipulate public
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: August 16, 2010
12:01 am Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, issued a scathing staff report today charging that the White House has "used the machinery of the Obama campaign to tout the president's agenda through inappropriate and sometimes unlawful public relations and propaganda initiatives."
An advance pre-publication copy of the report, shared by Issa's Washington office with WND, accuses the White House of nothing short of criminal activity. It charges the Obama administration with violating federal laws to advance what the Government Accounting Office has characterized as an unlawful "covert campaign," using federal resources "to activate a sophisticated propaganda and lobbying campaign."
Pulling no punches, the Oversight Republican Report accuses the Obama White House of "violating federal law prohibiting the use of appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda purposes."
"The White house has failed to transition from campaign mode to leadership mode and is now inappropriately leveraging those campaign-trail relationships to unlawfully generate support for the president's agenda," the report concludes.
Read in its entirety, the Oversight Republican Report charges the Obama administration with the type of callous, unethical and possibly criminal manipulation of public opinion that is reminiscent of Watergate and the illegal campaign activities engineered by Donald Segretti on behalf of the Committee to Re-Elect the President during Richard Nixon's presidential election campaign of 1972.
In 1974, Donald Segretti pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal campaign materials, for which he served in federal prison four months of a six-month term.
The Obama administration's abuses alleged in the Oversight Republican Report can be summed up under the term "astro-turfing," a fraudulent public relations activity in which "the White House and the agency whose resources it is co-opting attempt to create the impression that grassroots support for a particular policy exists when in fact it has been fabricated using taxpayer dollars."
The report points to several instances of alleged, unlawful abuses:
The National Endowment for the Arts
On Aug. 6, 2009, on behalf of the White House Office of Public Engagement, NEA Director Yosi Sergent invited a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, marketers and other influencers of the arts to participate in a conference call designed to encourage involvement in President Obama's United We Serve program.
Nell Abernathy, director of outreach for United We Serve and Buffy Wicks, deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, identified the goal of the NEA program was to recruit artists to create art to support the president's agenda "with the same enthusiasm and with the same energy that we all saw in each other during the campaign."
The Oversight Republican Report, however, contends the initiative was illegal.
"The use of taxpayer dollars and federal employees to create an alliance whereby the NEA becomes the de facto strategic communications arm of the White House is unlawful," the report alleges. "Using a government e-mail account and government personnel and resources to host a call using artists and arts group to support the president's agenda is a clear violation of federal law."
The report stresses that it was inappropriate for representatives of the White House and the NEA to formally ask artists and entertainers to use their talents to support the president's agenda "because many of these people rely on NEA grants to subsidize their livelihoods."
The Department of Justice
In October 2008, the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs added Tracy Russo, the chief blogger and deputy director for online communications for Sen. John Edwards' presidential campaign, to direct the Department's "new media efforts."
The Oversight Republican Report documents that Russo covertly attempted to shape public opinion by posting comments on the Internet anonymously, or through the use of a pseudonym, attacking authors or contents viewed as critical of the president, in an effort to shape debate online.
The report concludes, "The deployment of Justice Department resources to generate clandestine comments on message boards and blogs is a highly improper use of the Department's resources."
The report cites GAO rulings stating that covert propaganda violates Title 5 U.S.C. Section 3107 of federal law, which prohibits the use of publicity experts unless specifically appropriated for that purpose.
Office of Education
The Oversight Republican Report details that beginning on the morning of April 24, 2009, U.S. Department of Education Deputy Assistant Secretary for External Affairs and Outreach Massie Ritsch launched an e-mail campaign in coordination with the White House to promote President Obama's plan to begin a federal takeover of student loans.
The report again charges criminal abuses: "The intent of the e-mail is clearly to create grassroots support for the president's education agenda by inappropriately leveraging Ritsch's position as a Department of Education employee. Because it was drafted or intended to influence members of Congress while they consider the president's federal student loan plan, it is unlawful."
Federal workforce
The Oversight Republican Report charges that in March 2010, White House Office for Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle sent "overtly partisan, unsolicited health-reform e-mails to career civil servants in executive branch offices, suggesting to recipients that they were being officially instructed by the White House to support the president's health-care reform proposals."
Again, the report charges the Obama White House with illegal activity: "Criminal statutes prohibit executive branch officials from using appropriated funds to influence the legislative process. Title 18 of the United States Code, section 1913, prohibits federal employees from engaging in the very activities DeParle urges."
Department of Health and Human Resources
The Oversight Republican Report charges that the Department of Health and Human Resources contracted with Jonathan Gruber, a health-care economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to provide "technical assistance" to support President Obama's health care reform proposals.
For this, Gruber was paid $297,600, plus another $95,000 for a second HHS job.
The Obama administration then relied upon and distributed Gruber's commentary and views to publications including Time, The Washington Post, the New York Times and the New Republic without revealing that Gruber was a paid HHS consultant.
"Using HHS appropriations to contract a highly visible health-care expert to advocate on behalf of administration policies under the guise of providing 'technical assistance' is inappropriate," the Oversight Republican Report concludes, while further alleging that the administration's failure to disclose Gruber's status while touting his work violates GAO's policy prohibiting covert propaganda.
Other abuses
Among the additional abuses, the Oversight Republican Report cites a cable television ad featuring 84-year-old Andy Griffith promoting Medicare and the Obama administration's health-care reform bill.
The Department of Health and Human Services paid $700,000 to make the cable television ad buy, and the report alleges the commercial – run in July 2010 – gave the appearance that it was "designed to affect general elections by convincing seniors to support one of the Democrat's major legislative initiatives."
The report further charges the White House of posting "fictitious and misleading" information about jobs "saved and created" on the White House-maintained website Recovery.gov.
Also criticized are signs the Federal Highway Administration has encouraged the states to post, announcing that new federal highway projects were being funded by stimulus dollars.
David Axelrod
Axelrod and astro-turfing
The practice of using covert propaganda to push political opinion is familiar to at least one administration official, Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod.
Prior to joining then-Sen. Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, Axelrod was a partner in AKP&D Message & Media, a Chicago-based media and public relations firm that listed among its corporate clients Cablevision and AT&T.
According to a Business Week report published in 2008, AKP&D set up front organizations for corporations that wanted to run public issue ads without having the ads identified as having been paid for by the corporations.
Business Week cited as an example a television commercial Axelrod's firm created for Commonwealth Edison, the largest electric utility in Illinois. The ad warned a ComEd bankruptcy and blackouts could occur unless a rate hike was approved. The ad was sponsored by CORE, which described itself as "a coalition of individuals, businesses and organizations."
After a complaint was filed with state regulators, ComEd was forced to admit it had bankrolled the entire $15-million effort.
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