The bill the US Senate agreed to bring to the floor for debate sometime this week is a boondoggle, a scam, by the Obama Regime and republicans ought to stand as one against the bill and vote it down.

It is being sold to the public as an extension of the Bush tax cuts. Yes, an extension IS in the bill – but there is so much more that the total cost of the bill will hit US taxpayers for approximately 855 billion dollars. And not one red cent of it is paid for! Not one penny!

What we have here is a stealth stimulus package and it ought to be shot down right now!

The GOP should stop this monstrosity right now, today, and then introduce a clean bill extending the Bush tax cuts as their first order of business in the new Congress in January and make that bill retroactive to December 31^st, 2010. That would solve the tax cut extension problem without all the “sub rosa” stimulus garbage the Senate has hung onto the current bill.

LISTEN UP, PEOPLE! WE ARE BEING HAD AGAIN! This “stealth stimulus bill” is way bigger than the first one!

Charles Krauthammer, noted columnist, has said this: “Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 – and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did. In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package. It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years – which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election. This is a defeat?” (SOURCE)

Krauthammer is right! He went on to say: “If Obama had asked for a second stimulus directly, he would have been laughed out of town. Stimulus I was so reviled that the Democrats banished the word from their lexicon throughout the 2010 campaign. And yet, despite a very weak post-election hand, Obama got the Republicans to offer to increase spending and cut taxes by $990 billion over two years – $630 billion of it above and beyond extension of the Bush tax cuts.” (SOURCE)

As Krauthammer says: “Stimulus II will still blow another near-$1 trillion hole in the budget.” He continues: “At great cost that will have to be paid after this newest free lunch, the package will add as much as 1 percent to GDP and lower the unemployment rate by about 1.5 percentage points. That could easily be the difference between victory and defeat in 2012.” (SOURCE)

In our opinion, the Republicans ought to step back from this bill, take a deep breath, take careful aim, and blast it out of the sky!

This thing has been “stuck in my craw” all of last weekend and the first few days of this week. If this is the way the GOP plans to take charge of the current godawful economy of the US, then we are in deeper trouble than I had thought. All this is – is throwing more taxpayer money into a bottomless pit. It is sort of like bailing a flooding and sinking boat by tossing water INTO the BOAT!

Has our national legislature lost all connection to sanity? I mean, come on, folks, on top of continued profligate sending, this time by republicans, it is giving aid and comfort to the reelection campaign of Barack Obama! Can they not see that?

I’m just an ole country boy, down in the swamps of North Carolina. I mean that literally. “Swamp Loggers” TV show are my neighbors — and one is even a fellow church member.) I am not an expert on economics, and I am certainly not versed in the ways and wiles of national and/or international finance. But I am no dummy, either. (The stars of the

Over the seven decades of my existence on this planet, I have learned a fair amount about swindles, and scams, and boondoggles. THIS is one of the biggest I have ever seen. With the help of my parents, I taught myself to read before reporting to first grade with the then “Charlotte News” (afternoon edition) newspaper. So, I have watched the US government from the FDR Administration to the Obama Regime. My family was staunch democrats — but learning what I had learnt from my study of the news coming out of Washington, I decided early on with which political party my personal political philosophy could best be expressed. Upon attaining the age of 21 years, I could not wait to get to the Board of Elections office in my (then) South Carolina county to register as a republican.

I have seen the Democratic Party morph, slowly, into a socialist party. I have seen the Republican Party slowly assume the political position abandoned by the democrats. (That is why so much of the southern populous, with familial roots in the Democratic Party, found it so easy to switch to the Republican Party in the middle of the past century.) As Ronald Reagan once said: (paraphrasing now) “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me!”

Imagine my consternation as I watch the GOP become a willing accomplice to the Obama Regime in one of the largest “bait and switch” scams ever perpetrated on the American taxpayer.

Obama is desperately attempting to tack toward the center in order to win back those independent voters who have been abandoning him in droves. His promotion of this “stealth stimulus” package, as an extension of the Bush Tax cuts, is nothing more than a political ploy designed to do just that. And many have already fallen for it.

The GOP, by supporting this Obama Bait and Switch, may have just shot an arrow into the heart of any chance they had of recapturing the White House in 2012. Obama, himself, publicly told us it was a part of “the long game” aimed at his reelection.

Americans, especially conservative republicans, should be rattling cages in Washington and demanding their GOP senators back away from this Obama Reelection Assistance Bill – for that, dear reader,is what it really is.

J. D. Longstreet blogs daily at INSIGHT on Freedom at: http://www.csadispatch.blogspot.com/

 

WesternFront America

Between the time that George Washington took the first oath of office as president and when Barack Obama did—1789 to 2009, the United States had borrowed nine trillion dollars. Since Obama took office, it has borrowed or imposed nearly three trillion more debt. Tell me he is not deliberately seeking to bankrupt the nation.

In an August 28 Wall Street Journal editorial it noted that “To no one’s surprise except Vice President Joe Biden’s, second quarter economic growth was revised down yesterday to 1.6% from the prior estimate of growth of 2.4% which was down from first quarter growth of 3.7%, which was down from the 2009 fourth quarter’s 5%. Economic recoveries are supposed to go in the other direction.”

I was born during the Great Depression of the 1930s and have lived long enough now to find myself in a new one. There are similarities between the two, but the first one led to the creation of a variety of government regulatory entities and programs that should have avoided or at least were expected put the brakes on the current one.

At the heart of the current Depression is the government’s intrusion into the nation’s housing market via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government “entities” that functioned to purchase the mortgages provided by banks and lending companies that, by law, were required to make “sub-prime” bad loans. They have since been seized and billions remain at risk until such time as they are removed from distorting the housing market.

The mortgages were then bundled and resold to banking and investment firms. When the housing “bubble” failed, it threatened the financial structure of the nation. It was a classic asset bubble as people used their homes as piggy banks, taking second mortgages to pay for lifestyles that often did not include saving money for a rainy day. If this sounds like infantile behavior, it is.

Despite the multi-billion dollar bank bailouts initiated in 2008 at the end of the second Bush term and “stimulus” bailouts continued by the Obama administration, the recession has grown longer and there is talk of a “second recession.” This is like saying the family drunk or druggie has a “consumption problem.”

Despite zero interest rates for banks borrowing from the Federal Reserve justifiable fears have slowed lending. Consumers have held off spending. Home sales reached a 15-year low in June.

If the Obama administration and Congress allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, it will deepen the current crisis. In 1932 President Hoover persuaded Congress to raise taxes and we know this led to a decade of a severe economic Depression.

Poor monetary policy drove the Great Depression and is being repeated in this one. Government does not create jobs. Its highest priority is to protect the U.S. dollar so that investment and growth can be maintained.

E. Ralph Hostetter, publisher of American Farm Publications, recently noted that “The federal government has been in control of the U.S. dollar since 1913 when the Federal Reserve Banking System was established.”

“The 130 years prior to 1913, going back to 1783, was the longest period of currency stability in U.S. history. Since the dollar came under control of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, it has lost 90 percent of its original value. Eighty percent of that loss has occurred since President Richard Nixon took the United States off the gold standard in 1971.”

As Gerald P. O’Driscall Jr. recently wrote in a Wall Street Journal essay, “The solution lies in restoring balance sheets. For financial firms that means raising capital. For consumers and businesses alike, that means saving more of their reduced incomes.” He warned that “Low interest rates slow the process…by keeping asset prices artificially inflated.” The current Federal Reserve interest rate is zero.

The entire governmental and economic system depends on trust and the Obama administration has squandered that by constantly telling Americans that things were getting better when it was obvious to everyone they were not.

Claims that “shovel ready” projects would turn around the economy were false. Only 3.3% of the $814 billion stimulus was allocated to the Federal Highway Administration for highway and bridge projects. The bulk of the funds expended were directed at retaining civil service jobs of teachers and funds for police and firefighters. Union contracts, fat with pension and health benefits, have bankrupted many States.

In early August first-time claims for unemployment hit a nine-month high. Since the stimulus passed, 2.6 million Americans have lost their jobs and 1.2 million have given up trying to find a new one. Despite the 9.6% figure the government cites, the actual levels of unemployment are far closer to 20%.

During the Great Depression, unemployment was 25% and wages fell 42%.

The nation has reached a point where well-respected economists are now openly using the “Depression” word. David Rosenberg, writing in his daily briefing to investors, warned against interpreting the occasional blips of Gross Domestic Product and stock market gains as signs of recovery. Other economists from major investment and banking institutions are reducing their GDP predictions for 2010 to an anemic range of 1.5% to 2%.

The United States is not in “a summer of recovery” and is not likely to see any recovery if taxes increase. Massive “reform” of Medicare will drive up insurance and healthcare costs. Massive infusions of taxpayer money to keep states afloat to pay for Medicaid and other mandated costs are temporary at best.

Social Security, insolvent because successive Congresses have raped its so-called trust fund, will require a major overhaul to protect those who have paid into it and free new generations from its requirements.

Tax “holidays” are needed to allow businesses and consumers to keep their money instead of handing it over to a profligate federal government and to States that have failed to exercise fiscal sanity.

Get used to the word “Depression.” That’s what we’re in and the first step to get out of it will be to send people to Congress who will address these problems.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

 

WesternFront America

By: Daniel Sargis

From the Bizarro World come daily panic updates about the escalating H1N1 “Swine Flu” pandemic.

Half of the sane people in the country are becoming anxious over escalating pandemic risks and the other half of the sane population believes that this so-called pandemic is another Obamian subterfuge. The crazy people are sitting it out in Washington DC.

Nobody can be certain where the truth lies and {{ruffles & flourishes}}…it’s all Obama’s fault.

Obama (probably) didn’t create the H1N1 virus. And he (probably) would want to insulate the US population from the devastating effects of a pandemic.

But Obama and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcast of Liars have amassed a negative credibility function in record Beltway time.

About half of the US population doesn’t believe a thing coming out either Obama or his administration and the blame for that lies at Obama’s door.

This lack of credibility translates into a failing of leadership and could lead to a national disaster.

It’s no different from what happened to the color coded terror threat level scale of the Bush years.

As liberal “journalist” Michael Isikoff remarked, “It doesn’t mean that there weren’t genuine security fears…There were…But because of the highly politicized atmosphere, because of the track record the Bush administration had demonstrated…there were widespread suspicions as to whether or not these constant terror threat alerts were, indeed, genuine or whether they were influenced by politics.”

Just as the liberals pooh-poohed and ignored the warnings of any increase in the terror threat level as more Bush politics, Conservatives are justifyingly pooh-poohing pandemic warnings as more Obamian omnipotence.

That we have national leadership, at all levels, that can allow, or even create, such a distrust in the government of, by and for the People is an indignity to the United States and just purely dangerous.

The threat of a pandemic, just like the threat of a terrorist attack, is nothing to be politicized and nothing to be taken lightly.

We certainly don’t remember the 1918 pandemic but we do remember September 11, 2001.

The 3000 lives lost on 911 are a drop in the bucket compared to the 30,000 lives lost to a normal flu season.

But the 30,000 lives lost (from a population of over 305 million people) to a normal flu season are a drop in the bucket compared to the over 500,000 US lives claimed (from a population of 103 million) by the 1918 pandemic.

It might be comforting to reassure oneself that a 1918-variety pandemic was unique and could never happen again but that is nonsense. A pandemic, influenza-based or otherwise, will someday ravage the world again.

But “someday” is no reason to lie awake in a cold, panic-stricken sweat.

The What, Where and When of “someday” is why we pay taxes to our government and why that government spends so lavishly on creations like the Centers for Disease Control, The Department of Health and Human Services, The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology…you get the point.

It is the responsibility of the government to marshal the resources needed to accurately anticipate probable threats and credibly deal with them.

And credible is the operative word.

On January 9, 2009 Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers hyped a report (“The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan”) projecting that the stimulus plan proposed by Obama would create between three and four million jobs by the end of 2010 and also predicting unemployment rates without the stimulus would reach about 8.5 percent in 2009 and then continue rising to a peak of about 9 percent in 2010. With the stimulus, the Obama team and leading Democrats predicted the unemployment rate would peak at just under 8 percent in 2009.

Remember…the Obama team stampeded US taxpayer into believing that we had to “immediately” spend about a $Trillion or unemployment would rise above 8%.

Today, about 9 months and more than $Trillion later, unemployment is at 9.8% and climbing.

And how is President Obama credibly explaining this to the electorate?

For your $Trillion and the highest unemployment rate in 26 years, the Obama administration crowed that, “its economic stimulus had saved or created 250,000 education jobs”. In fact, Vice President Biden boasted that the stimulus was “helping soften the blow of tough times, by keeping educators on the job and teachers in the classroom.”

Excuse me but I thought that we already paid taxes for “education jobs” and that the stimulus was supposed to create new jobs.

Where is the credibility?

On August 17, 2009, in a speech before the veterans of Foreign Wars, Obama asserted that the war in Afghanistan, “…is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity…So this is not only a war worth fighting…this is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

In that same speech, Obama promised that he would, “…equip our forces with the assets and technologies they need to fight and win….”

Today, Obama, to the dismay of his generals and their troops, still has no strategy for Afghanistan and is indecisive on providing our forces “with the asset and technologies they need to fight and win.”

Where is the credibility on these life and death issues?

And then, in April 2009, the H1N1 virus crossed the Rio Grande and entered the United States.

In fact, in April 2009, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, first declared the H1N1 virus a public health emergency.

So, what did Obama’s administration do?

The New York Times reported that, “…the Obama administration left little to chance. It built a new Web site…It staged role-playing exercises for public health officials and members of the news media…It commissioned public service announcements, featuring the fuzzy Sesame Street characters Elmo and Rosita singing in English and Spanish about ‘the right way to sneeze’…and (Obama) appeared in the Rose Garden to urge Americans to wash their hands.”

But where’s the beef? The above response is very nice but it’s all show and no go…if we are facing a real pandemic.

Between May and July of 2009, the US government ordered 250 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine and promptly pledged to donate 10% 0r 25 million doses to “poor” nations. So for a country with a population in excess of 305 million people, the government planned on 225 million does of vaccine to combat the H1N1 “pandemic”.

At the end of September 2004, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said there “will be plenty of vaccine for everyone who wants it…250 million doses have been purchased, and that will be plenty.” She omitted the fact that the US was only retaining 225 million does. But don’t fret.

As recently as late summer of 2009, the government “predicted that up to 100 million doses would be available this month (October) and then later cut that estimate to 40 million before slashing it again…to 28 million.”

As of today, the government has received 22.4 million doses of vaccine.

So what went wrong?

On October 21, 2009, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed that, “…federal officials had assumed there would be a lag in vaccine availability (and) are not surprised that H1N1 has spiked at a time when there is not enough vaccine available.”

Yet, on October 23, 2009, Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that “We are no where near where we thought we’d be now”.

Well, which is it?

And speaking of credibility….

Secretary Sebelius said, on October 21, 2009 that, “…government health officials anticipate a spike in both seasonal and H1N1 cases going forward, not a drop off…meaning that the vaccine will not reach the majority of Americans too late.”

Now I’m confused.

On August 24, 2009, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a report (Report To The President On U.S. Preparations For 2009-H1N1 Influenza) which the White House couldn’t stop crowing about.

On page 35 of that report, PCAST strongly advised an accelerated schedule for the H1N1 vaccine because, “plans announced in July by the HHS Secretary (Sebelius) would provide the first significant quantities of 2009-H1N1 vaccine in mid-October; an effective immune response would take another 2 to 4 weeks to develop after vaccination. Under the model scenario described in Chapter 3, the resurgence of the epidemic would start in September and peak in mid-October. If this model is approximately correct with respect to timing, a vaccination campaign would not begin to protect vaccinees until well after the epidemic had peaked.”

Pardon me, but…who the hell is telling the truth?

This is just a very small sampling of the kinds of half-truths and inconsistencies the Obama administration has represented to the US electorate in regard to the H1N1 virus that Obama himself declared on October 24, 2009 to be a “national emergency”.

Who can blame a very confused citizenry for being very confused when the leadership of this nation is, at best, very confused?

Bad government has always been a matter of lies and coercion and good government has always been a matter of truth and trust.

Perhaps Washington will realize this before there is a real national emergency and the citizenry is numb to leaders who are constantly crying wolf and telling other fables.

“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”

 

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