Obama Touts 55,000 Auto Jobs Created At Taxpayer Cost Of Only $84.8 BILLION

You can see a union auto worker saying, “My job pays me a ridiculous $73 an hour with bennies, but it cost the taxpayer an even more ridiculous $1,541,818 to “create or save” my job.”

Pretty good deal for America, huh?

Well, it’s Obama’s argument that it’s a good deal for America.

From Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama, in the heart of the U.S. auto industry, told a crowd of workers that the government bailouts of General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC are giving taxpayers a return on their investment.

Heading into a congressional election season in which polls show the public skeptical about the $84.8 billion rescue and anxious about economy, Obama is using the backdrop of Detroit- area plants owned by GM and Chrysler to promote what he says is an industry revival that has saved more than a million jobs.

“The fact that we’re standing in this magnificent factory today is a testament to the decisions we made,” Obama said at a Chrysler factory that recently added a second shift of workers to build the Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Obama told about 1,000 employees at the factory that, if his opponents had been successful in blocking aid for automakers, their jobs might not exist. Their efforts are “proving the naysayers wrong,” he said.

“They said we should just walk away and let those jobs go,” Obama said. “Today, this industry is growing stronger. It’s creating new jobs.”

Voter Skepticism

Voters aren’t persuaded. A Bloomberg National Poll conducted July 9-12 that shows the federal assistance package to automobile companies is becoming less popular: 48 percent say they became less supportive in recent months versus 17 percent who say they have become more supportive.

Steve Rattner, the former head of the president’s automotive task force, said that perception is disappointing.

“It appears that those of us behind it haven’t succeeded in convincing people that it’s worked,” he said in an interview.

Since GM and Chrysler exited bankruptcy a little more than a year ago, the industry — including Ford Motor Co., which didn’t seek federal aid — has re-hired 55,000 workers after shedding 334,000 in the year before.

So $84.8 billion spent, and 55,000 jobs rehired back.

Oh, and the 55,000 jobs that came back counts rehires for Ford, the company that didn’t take any of Obama’s bailouts.  Or Bush’s, for that matter.

One million, five hundred and forty-one thousand, eight hundred and eighteen dollars per job.  And Obama is pitching it as some kind of grand achievement worthy of a messiah.

This gets us back to the trillion dollars stimulus only adding a laughable 260 jobs per state.  This gets us back to the fact that only 6% of Americans – fewer than believed they’d been anal-probed by aliens – believed the stimulus created any jobs.  This gets us back to the fact that economists are saying that the stimulus didn’t help create jobs.  This gets to the fact that Obama’s stimulus actually COST our economy jobs by sucking money out of the private sector and then squandering it.

Unions are happy.  Of course, our children are ultimately going to be chained to giant millstones and forced to pull them in a circle for the rest of their lives.  As will everyone else, including senior citizens – at least until they get “permanently retired” by a death panel.  But unions are happy.  And if you’re not happy, well, screw you, you racist.

And what do we get for our $85 billion besides a payoff to the labor unions that got Obama elected?  Basically, we get a mostly electric clown car called the Chevy Volt that’s going to be “a car for idiots.”  It will have some cache as the car for “for the intellectual elite who want to show what enlightened souls they are.”  Which is tantamount to the central selling principle behind the emperor’s new clothes.

Every single Clown Car GM sells is going to lose money.  But that’s okay.  Because Barry Hussein – courtesy of the American taxpayer – will subsidize every Clown Car that is sold at a loss.

As for Obama’s claim that he’s “saved” a million jobs, that’s the kind of reasoning that only someone idiotic enough to buy a $41,000 clown car to show how superior they are would buy.  How about this: Bush saved fifty million jobs.  If you don’t think he did, you prove he didn’t.  In fact, Bush saved the world.  Because aliens with superior technology would have invaded earth had Bush not been commander-in-chief.  Prove they wouldn’t have.

“One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called ‘jobs saved,'” said Carnegie Mellon University professor Allan Mentzler. “It doesn’t exist for good reason: How can anyone know that his or her job has been saved?”  Which is to say, a purely rhetorical argument that no American president has ever in history had the naked chutzpah to use amounts to the heart of Obama’s economic policy.

Had George Bush used that asinine argument to justify his economic leadership and vision, he would have been laughed right out of the White House by the media.  But Barack Obama is using the asinine argument, so it obviously must be true.

We are about to see why the Soviet Union failed.  The government spent all kinds of money producing crap cars to keep the party proletariat employed.  But they were crap cars.  And nobody bought them.  The same thing applies to Obama’s GM bailout and the Chevy Klown Kar.  And the same with all the boondoggles Obama built with our trillion dollars (actually with what will become our $3.27 trillion, but who’s really counting any more?).

Obama’s boast about the auto industry jobs is a microchosm of the overall stupidity of Obama’s “stimulus.”  We have spent over $534 BILLION (that’s the 62% of the $862 billion stimulus that has been spent so far) in order to create some 599,108 jobs.

Do the math.

That boils down to an average of $892,220 PER JOB.

I mean, that ridiculous figure is less than the even more ridiculous figure of more than $1.5 million for each union auto job.  But then again, some of those nearly 600,000 jobs probably weren’t union, which accounts for the relatively trivial figure of $892,000.

Obama is cheering all this, but the term “Pyrrhic victory” comes to mind.  These victories are going to implode America into a ruin unlike anything that even historians have ever heard of.

What Happens When A Demagogue’s Demagoguery Fails Him?

The Demagogue-in-chief was at it again the other day, telling Charles Gibson on ABC that if his ObamaCare takeover isn’t passed, the country will go bankrupt.  It’s really the other way around, given that this monstrosity will raise costs rather than lowering them, but demagogues don’t need facts – only fear.

Mind you, Demagogue-in-chief Obama has made extensive use of fearmongering to sell his snake oil health care poison all along.

And, of course, it was through naked fearmongering that Obama threatened and rushed his now-failed stimulus through Congress.  As the Wall Street Journal put it:

President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.

Our economy is now actually suffering a higher unemployment than Obama said we’d experience if we didn’t pass his porkulus slush fund.  But, being a tried-and-true demagogue, Obama merely shifts the blame on that failure.

Obama is a man who knows his way around fearmongering, demonization, and intimidation.  It’s the Chicago Way, after all, if only the mainstream media had ever bothered to investigate Obama’s Chicago Way (which shall someday be called “Chicago’s Obama Way”).

Obama demonized the same banks and banking executives his administration was bailing out as he forced them through demagoguery to bow down to his controls.  In private his administration has done even worse, using what amounts to blackmail to cow executives.  Auto investors were forced to give up far more than they legally should have had to do because of naked intimidation.

And the administration that used a taxpayer-funded website to try to collect the names of people who opposed ObamaCare subsequently attacked private insurer Humana for trying to warn their clients about what was happening in a flagrant violation of 1st Amendment free speech rights.

I could go on and on on the demagogic tactics of this administration.  But I think I’ve demonstrated my point.

There’s a single short paragraph in a Hill article that came out yesterday that sums up Obama’s “leadership” style.  Threatening a liberal Democrat who has not always toed the Obama line, we had this unveiled threat:

“Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama told DeFazio during a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, according to members afterward.

It was just a couple of days ago that we heard that Barry Hussein had threatened Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb) with closing Offutt Air Force Base – which not only employs 10,000 people but serves as the strategically vital location for the US Strategic Command – as a naked threat to force Nelson to support ObamaCare.  But incredibly, at the same time the White House was frankly treasonously intimidating a US Senator with a threat against US national security, they were also trying to offer a bribe that would make even Mary Landrieu’s $300 million “Louisiana Purchase” look tame.

We’re now finding out that Ben Nelson is selling his vote, and just one of the goodies he will collect for his supporters is that the federal government will pay for Nebraska’s Medicaid tab — forever.  Which means that the taxes for Medicaid will go up in every single other state — forever.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman in opposing  the current senate version of ObamaCare, with Schwarzenegger saying the unfunded expansion of Medicaid would cost California an additional $3 billion a year when the state is already deep into a budget crisis.  And that is now going to be $3 billion PLUS California’s share in paying for Nebraska’s exempted share.

You’d think that this kind of bribery and sweetheart dealing would be unconstitutional, but we now know that the Constitution means absolutely nothing to the Democrat Party.

And you don’t have to be a powerful Senator to get hundred million dollar bribes to vote “the Obama Way.”  Take a look at virtually unknown Democrat Jim Costas’ sudden good fortune and ask yourself how many other Democrats have had their votes purchased:

To get as far as the bill did so far, it appears the administration might have spread some money around. California Rep. Jim Costa was wavering but told a local newspaper last week that his vote could be contingent on getting some federal money for a new medical school in his district along with help for local hospitals.

When a constituent named Bob Smittcamp e-mailed him to complain about his vote for the House bill, the congressman explained he’d been offered the dollars he was looking for — $128 million in federal money.

“He responded to me by basically saying that he did not like many of the elements there were in the legislation. However, he was able to procure $128m for the University of California medical school in Merced,” Smittcamp told Fox News.

Now we officially learn, according to a study of Obama’s stimulus by George Mason University, that the Democrats are using the stimulus as a slush fund.  The study found no correlation between unemployment rate and stimulus funding; rather, Democrat districts have received DOUBLE the money received by Republican districts as the most partisan president in the history of America proved his true colors again.

Mind you, we’ve pretty much known that all along.  We can go back to July, when Obama directly threatened Arizona to cut off federal stimulus money unless the state’s leadership saw things his way.  So the study merely proved what everybody should already know.  But there is another lesson as well: that the flip side of using taxpayer stimulus money to bribe Democrats is using taxpayer stimulus money to intimidate Republicans.

And of course, that is why Americans should be terrified by this administration: a president who can pay bribes to buy political behavior can take money away to discourage other political behavior.

In any event, we have our answer to the question posed by the title: “What happens when a demagogue’s demagoguery fails him?”  Answer: a ton of naked bribery and insider-politicking using taxpayer stimulus money that was supposed to be used to create jobs, but is instead being used to buy Democrat’s votes for a federal government takeover of the health care system.

Car Sales Fall Back To Historic Lows, Proving Cash-4-Clunkers Was A Clunker

The problem with the liberal-glorified cash-for-clunker program was always obvious to anyone who would but contemplate: the spike in sales merely robbed future sales, or delayed past ones.

My own parents waited for at least a couple months to buy a car for the program to go into effect.  Ultimately they walked away from it due to the massive aggravations of the program (my father is a very patient man unless and until things stop making sense – at which time he starts to lose it) and decided to keep their “clunker” until they needed to buy a new car.

The funny thing is, they very likely would have already bought a new car had it NOT been for the cash-for-clunker program.

September Auto Sales Seen Slumping Post-‘Clunkers’
Published: Monday, 28 Sep 2009
By: Reuters

U.S. auto sales likely fell in September back to the nearly three-decade lows of early 2009 without government incentives to spur buying, leaving in doubt the timing and pace of a recovery for the battered industry.

Nearly 700,000 new cars and trucks were bought by U.S. customers through the government “cash for clunkers” incentive program from late July through the first three weeks of August, a leap from recession-stunted sales earlier in 2009. […]

“There are still a lot of obstacles out there,” she said. “I think we are still going to see the hangover from ‘cash for clunkers’ both in September and almost potentially through the end of the year.”

Sales Drop at All Major Automakers

U.S. auto industry sales rose 1 percent to more than 1.2 million vehicles in August from a year earlier under the “clunkers” program, the first time monthly sales pierced the 1 million mark in a year.

However, none of the largest manufacturers are expected to post sales gains in September, and Edmunds has forecast a 23 percent industry sales decline for the month.

Edmunds expects Ford Motor to post a 9.7 percent sales drop, GM a 46.1 percent drop and Chrysler a 48.7 percent decline among the Detroit automakers.

Edmunds expects Toyota Motor to post a 9.7 percent sales decline, Honda Motor an 8.3 percent drop and Nissan Motor a 1.1 percent drop among Japan-based automakers.

The August sales gain represented a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 14.1 million vehicles, but did little to turn the tide on annual sales. U.S. auto industry sales were down nearly 28 percent through August 2009 versus last year.

Global Insight expects U.S. September auto sales to come in at a 9.33 million seasonally adjusted annualized rate, or well below the 12.5 million unit rate from a year ago when credit markets froze in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse.

The median forecast for U.S. auto industry sales was 9.5 million vehicles from 41 economists surveyed by Reuters, while J.P. Morgan believes the annualized rate could drop to 8.9 million vehicles — the lowest month since December 1981. […]

This comes as no surprise to people who had a clue.  For example, John Quelch predicted in August:

C4C disrupted the even flow of supply and demand. New car buyers held back in advance of the launch of the program; in fact, many prenegotiated with dealers to do so. And, now the promotion is over, expect year-on-year sales to be lower than they would have been because so much consumer demand has been concentrated in the promotion period.

The Daily Plunge predicted:

The auto industry received a short-term “sugar high” at the expense of lower future sales when the program is over. The program apparently boosted sales by about 750,000 cars this year, but that probably means that sales over the next few years will be about 750,000 lower. The program probably further damaged the longer-term prospects of auto dealers and automakers by diverting their attention from market fundamentals in the scramble for federal cash.

And whaddyaknow?  That’s basically exactly what happened.

In addition, the fuel savings came at a very high cost.  In fact, in order to save $815 million in oil via the better mileage of the new cars, the U.S. Treasury had to pay out $2.877 billion.  In other words, for every dollar saved in fuel, the taxpayers lost $3.53 cents.  Some savings.

Poor people – who couldn’t afford to buy a new car with the cash for clunker incentive – will also now lose out on billions of dollars’ worth of used cars that were destroyed under the program.  The price of the cars that would have improved their lives (and their mileage) were shipped to China as scrap metal.  And law of supply and demand guarantees that the price of used cars will go up for the people Democrats always say they’re trying to help.

The cash for clunkers program ought to sound eerily familiar to people who’ve done any reading about the Great Depression, because it was the same kind of program that led to the slaughter of hogs under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (which was intended to raise hog prices but led to famine instead).  The issue here is the same one as back then: the profound arrogance of economic planners who think if they just get enough data, and they turn all the diodes exactly the right way, and if they get all the right memos and all the right forms, that they’re going to be smarter than free market would be.

Big government liberals invariably believe they know how to allocate resources better than markets do — just like the Marxist economic planners did.  And the problem is like that fairy tale about the old woman who swallowed a fly; every single solution they come up with just creates another problem, and then you get this continual snowball effect that just keeps getting more insolvable.

And thus it is with the cash for clunkers thing.  Maybe some of these people who bought a new car didn’t really need a new car; what they really needed was a new refrigerator or a new washing machine – but they got such a great deal on that car!  The government knows better that they needed to buy a new car more than they needed to buy a new refrigerator or a washing machine or a host of other products.  And so the government artificially incentivized people to buy the car that they really didn’t need.  And instead of buying all the things that they really should have bought and WOULD have bought anyway WITHOUT the billions in taxpayer dollars, now people have taxpayer-funded cars they really didn’t need to buy.

So, as an example, were told that “Durable goods orders show unexpected decrease in August,” but it shouldn’t have been “unexpected” at all.  What it was was the opportunity costs due to all the people buying cars instead of other goods.  Like refrigerators and washing machines.

And at the same time, all we’ve really done is rob demand from a couple of years down the road, where these people were almost by definition ultimately going to buy new cars anyway.  Why?  Because they have CLUNKERS, dammit!

Helen Thomas Shows It’s Official: Barack Obama, Fascist

Take a gander at the definition of fascism, and ask yourself how many parts of it Barack Obama has already implemented:

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.

Barack Obama has seized control of the auto industry, in spite of the fact that Americans overwhelmingly thought it was a bad idea (with 59% disapproving).  He has taken Bush measures to control the banks in order to control the scope of the financial crisis to an entirely new levels.  And Obama additionally recently seized “unprecedented powers” over Wall Street:

The plan clearly grants the central bank unprecedented new powers to conduct comprehensive examinations of almost any U.S. financial company, as well as any of that company’s foreign affiliates.  It would also give the central bank oversight of any commercial company that owns a banking charter known as an industrial loan company, according to The Journal.

If all that wasn’t bad enough, Obama has now appointed some twenty czars – who are answerable only to him – in a move that is unprecedented in American history.  Reuters said, “Name a top issue and President Barack Obama has probably got a “czar” responsible for tackling it“).  Even longest-serving Senate Democrat Robert Byrd says that “President Obama’s ‘czar strategy’ is an unprecedented power grab centralizing authority in the White House, outside congressional oversight and in violation of the Constitution.”

So as a matter of definition and fact, it is entirely appropriate to call Barack Obama “a fascist.”  And fascist leaders have never have paid such trivial matters as a “Constitution” much mind.  And this leading of America into fascism by the left shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.

The only thing that anyone could argue was lacking in labeling Barack Obama as “a fascist” has been Obama’s contrived persona as presented in the media.

But that’s been blown away as well.

It’s somewhat surprising who would blow that mask away, but the fact that 40-year liberal White House Press Correspondent Helen Thomas would be the one to do it shows how obviously and how blatantly the Obama administration has sought to manipulate the media in full fascist fashion.

First of all, Helen Thomas has called herself a liberal, as an interview with CBC demonstrates:

Helen Thomas: I’m a liberal, I was born a liberal, I’ll be one ’til I die, what else should a reporter be when you see so much and when we have such great privilege and access to the truth?

CBC Interviewer: Well, you know, it’s interesting because I’m sure that if somebody from the right was sitting here they would say… if you ask the question what should a reporter be they will say, “Oh, I don’t know, How about objective?”

Barack Obama had a much publicized “town hall” which turns out to have been very “tightly controlled,” with a tightly controlled audience and a tightly controlled list of White-House-approved questions.  Barack Obama wants to keep the real tought questions – such as who will pay for the massive government health care, how much will it cost, and will any bureaucrat ever be allowed to get between a patient and his/her physician and make decisions based on statistics rather than medical needs, just to name a few – out of the spotlight.  And so he has an event that is falsely presented as an open forum, but in actuality being controlled by the White House for propaganda purposes.

And Helen Thomas, to her credit, came unglued as White House Press Secretary Gibbs cheerfully presented the false face of propaganda as though nothing was amiss:

Gibbs: “… But, again, let’s–How about we do this?  I promise we will interrupt the AP’s tradition of asking the first question.  I will let you [Chip Reid] ask me a question tomorrow as to whether you thought the questions at the town hall meeting that the President conducted in Annandale—“

Chip Reid: “I’m perfectly happy to—”

Helen Thomas: “That’s not his point.  The point is the control–”

Reid: “Exactly.”

Thomas: “We have never had that in the White House.  And we have had some, but not– This White House.”

Gibbs: “Yes, I was going to say, I’ll let you amend her question.”

Thomas: “I’m amazed.  I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and—”

Gibbs: “Helen, you haven’t even heard the questions.”

Reid: “It doesn’t matter.  It’s the process.”

Thomas: “You have left open—”

Reid: “Even if there’s a tough question, it’s a question coming from somebody who was invited or was screened, or the question was screened.”

Thomas: “It’s shocking.  It’s really shocking.”

Gibbs: “Chip, let’s have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meeting.  How about that?”

Reid: “Okay.”

Gibbs: “I think—“

Thomas: “No, no, no, we’re having it now–”

Gibbs: “Well, I’d be happy to have it now.”

Thomas: “It’s a pattern.”

Gibbs: “Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?”

Thomas: “It’s a pattern.  It isn’t the question—”

Gibbs: “What’s a pattern?”

Thomas: “It’s a pattern of controlling the press.”

Gibbs: “How so?  Is there any evidence currently going on that I’m controlling the press–poorly, I might add.”

Thomas: “Your formal engagements are pre-packaged.”

Gibbs: “How so?”

Reid: “Well, and controlling the public—”

Thomas: “How so?  By calling reporters the night before to tell them they’re going to be called on.  That is shocking.”

Gibbs: “We had this discussion ad nauseam and—”

Thomas: “Of course you would, because you don’t have any answers.”

This event follows a situation in which Barack Obama called upon a Huffington Post “reporter” to ask an obviously pre-screened question about Iran that generated a lot of media controversy.  Reporters were legitimately outraged over an unprecedented situation in which an American president gets to pre-screen questions at a supposed official White House press conference.

This follows ABC “teaming up” with President Obama in what amounted to a free hour-long “infomercial” to allow Obama to sell his health care agenda.  If that isn’t disturbing enough, ABC refused to allow paid ads that were critical of the presidents health care agenda during that infomercial.  This wasn’t a question of apparent bias suggesting an unhealthy White House-media relationship; it was in-your-face obvious bias proving an unhealthy White House-media relationship.

Helen Thomas has been a White House correspondent for more than forty years.  And she has been a doctrinaire liberal who clearly would tend to see things from the perspective of the administration in power.  It should be beyond disturbing to you that such a journalist would say, “We have never had that in the White House.”  That she would say, This is really shocking.”  And it should frighten you that she is “amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency” even as they reveal themselves to be the most manipulating and controlling administration in history.  It’s not just about self-righteous hypocrisy; it goes to Nixonian levels of deceit and lust for power.

An attempt by a president to control the press is bad enough; it’s terrifying when that same president has already grabbed unprecedented control over so many other things.

And it gets downright creepy when you consider that this president who is now trying to control the press has actually recieved the most favorable press coverage of any president (nearly TWICE as much favorable coverage as Bush recieved during the same period even while Bush was virtually as “popular” as Obama was).  It makes one wonder: what psychological defect, what pathological need to control, would need to exercise so much control?

This is no small matter.  We now have a president who seized more power than any president in American history – FDR included.  And we now have a Congress that is dominated by the same party as the president, and now posessing a filibuster-proof majority.  For the media to be in bed (to allude to a joke Obama made about NBC anchor Brian Williams) with the president is beyond dangerous – especially with our economy in such a fragile state.

Democracy is doomed in a nation that allows propaganda to dominate – as America is clearly doing.  Because in a democracy, people are expected to vote their will, and they cannot vote their own will when their opinion is being shaped and controlled by propaganda.

Update, July 3: As further proof that what I am arguing is true, take something that happened just yesterday, following the publication of this article.

The leftist Washington Post cancelled a “salon” event in the wake of an uproar over the sheer raving inappropriateness of such an event.  The Newspaper planned to sell access to reporters and Obama administration officials to lobbyist for sums of up to $250,000.   A quote from the Politico article breaking the story:

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

The newspaper has an incredibly flimsy excuse for this selling of its credibility, but the entire fiasco merely amounts to yet another of the complete abandonment of journalistic ethics and integrity of the mainstream media.

This is a blurring of the White House and the press that is intended to sell policy to the public.  It is dangerous.  It is facsist.

Obama Backlash Beginning: Montana Defies Administration With In-Your-Face Gun Law

The state of Montana has drawn a line in the sand by passing a new gun law that virtually thumbs its nose at the federal government’s encroachment on state and individual rights.  If the tea parties were the first shot across the bow of liberal fascism, this is surely the second – and it’s being done with heavy artillery.

Liberals have been employing “sanctuary cities” across the nation that flouted federal immigration laws.  Now conservatives are taking that same idea to have “sanctuary states” to protect their citizens’ 2nd Amendment rights against liberal tyranny.  And Montana, Utah, and Texas are leading the nation in standing up to the federal government’s unconstitutional laws in direct violation of states’ rights.

Montana Governor Brian D. Schweitzer, for what it’s worth, is a Democrat.

Montana fires a warning shot over states’ rights
State is trying to trigger a battle over gun control — and make a point

updated 4:54 p.m. ET April 29, 2009

HELENA, Mont. – Montana is trying to trigger a battle over gun control — and perhaps make a larger point about what many folks in this ruggedly independent state regard as a meddlesome federal government.

In a bill passed by the Legislature earlier this month, the state is asserting that guns manufactured in Montana and sold in Montana to people who intend to keep their weapons in Montana are exempt from federal gun registration, background check and dealer-licensing rules because no state lines are crossed.

That notion is all but certain to be tested in court.

The immediate effect of the law could be limited, since Montana is home to just a few specialty gun makers, known for high-end hunting rifles and replicas of Old West weapons, and because their out-of-state sales would automatically trigger federal control.

Legal showdown
Still, much bigger prey lies in Montana’s sights: a legal showdown over how far the federal government’s regulatory authority extends.

“It’s a gun bill, but it’s another way of demonstrating the sovereignty of the state of Montana,” said Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who signed the bill.

Carrie DiPirro, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, had no comment on the legislation. But the federal government has generally argued that it has authority under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution to regulate guns because they can so easily be transported across state lines.

Guns and states’ rights both play well in Montana, the birthplace of the right-wing Freemen militia and a participant in the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and ’80s, during which Western states clashed with Washington over grazing and mineral extraction on federal land.

Montana’s leading gun rights organization, more hardcore than the National Rifle Association, boasts it has moved 50 bills through the Legislature over the past 25 years. And lawmakers in the Big Sky State have rebelled against federal control of everything from wetland protection to the national Real ID system.

‘Made in Montana’
Under the new law, guns intended only for Montana would be stamped “Made in Montana.” The drafters of the law hope to set off a legal battle with a simple Montana-made youth-model single-shot, bolt-action .22 rifle. They plan to find a “squeaky clean” Montanan who wants to send a note to the ATF threatening to build and sell about 20 such rifles without federal dealership licensing.

If the ATF tells them it’s illegal, they will sue and take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if they can.

Similar measures have also been introduced in Texas and Alaska.

“I think states have got to stand up or else most of their rights are going to be buffaloed by the administration and by Congress,” said Texas state Rep. Leo Berman.

Critics say exempting guns from federal laws anywhere would undermine efforts to stem gun violence everywhere.

Hot Air has the text of the law, titled:

AN ACT EXEMPTING FROM FEDERAL REGULATION UNDER THE COMMERCE CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES A FIREARM, A FIREARM ACCESSORY, OR AMMUNITION MANUFACTURED AND RETAINED IN MONTANA; AND PROVIDING AN APPLICABILITY DATE. BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MONTANA:

This is defiance as a thing of art:

It is a determination to keep fighting for one’s freedom no matter how hopeless things might look:

And why is this level of defiance necessary? An image worth a thousand curses suffices by way of explanation:

Don’t think this isn’t a direct response to Barack Hussein.

Gun and ammunition sales have soared out of naked fear of Obama.

And for good reason: Obama is pushing a treaty to ban reloading. Liberals are trying to regulate the components of ammunition as explosives and thus restrict ammunition. Liberals in California are nakedly attempting to circumvent the 2nd Amendment by regulating ammunition, hence making guns useless.

And the liberal campaign to deprive Americans of their 2nd Amendment guarantees (even as they discover “penumbras and emanations” in the Constitution that let them kill babies) is only a distant side issue in the massive government takeover of American society. Obama’s massive spending – more than every president from George Washington to George W. Bush COMBINED – will leave this country with an insurmountable national debt that would exceed 82 percent of the overall economy by 2019 and threaten this country’s very survival. We are now on the hook for $12.8 TRILLION dollars in government spending and commitments in the brave new world of the Obama economy.

We’ve got a president who is firing CEOs, stacking boards of directors, changing the rules for the auto manufacturers’ bankruptcy filings in order to favor the unions that supported him over the secured creditors. And if they don’t like it, they are met with frightening threats from the administration and death threats from union members. If that isn’t bad enough, we’ve also got card check on the horizon, which would allow union thugs to intimidate workers into unionizing with the union allowed to know exactly how each worker voted.

We’ve got a president who won’t let banks repay bailout loans (which in many cases were literally forced on them in the first place) so he can continue to impose onerous terms and conditions on them and control what they do and how they do it.

We’ve got a president who is planning to nationalize health care – and the one-sixth of our economy that it represents – even as he moves to impose costly and burdensome cap-and-trade regulations that would (in Obama’s own words) necessarily cause energy prices to soar.

And we’ve got a president who is attempting to nationalize student loans such that private lenders are phased out altogether. If Obama gets his way, the government will loan directly to families and students, making them directly indebted to the federal government. The government will necessarily get to decide which students, which schools, and which academic programs get loans.  An option for students is to repay their loans by means of “national service,” which already precludes any type of religious service whatsoever. The potential of liberal big government harnessing student labor to staff liberal organizations such as ACORN is becoming all-too real.

We have a new administration that moved to criminalize political differences by targeting Bush officials as war criminals, even as returning veterans and pro-life Americans are labeled as “rightwing extremists” in a DHS report sent out to the nation’s law enforcement agencies and police departments.

I’ve been saying something over and over in different ways. What the liberals are doing now will ultimately result in a “rightwing” backlash. What is true in physics is true in politics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Liberals are pushing and pushing and pushing through one new massive spending program and one new policy after another that will change and undermine this country forever afterward.

Under Obama, terrorism is now called an “overseas contingency operation” and terror attacks are now nothing more than “man-caused disasters.”  In attacking the CIA as a means to attack Bush, Obama has created a depressed, sullen, and angry morale which promises to transfer into “cover your ass” caution and bureaucratic gamesmanship.  He has undermined our security to a shocking degree.  If we are attacked, this country will swing so far to the right so fast it will be absolutely unreal.

But even if we are not attacked, our country will likely implode under its own weight: trillions of dollars of reckless spending will have that effect as our dollar devalues and our interest payments on the debt begin to soar when inflation begins to take its toll.  Ultimately our taxes will skyrocket due to all of this spending.  CBS News has an article from March entitled, “If China Stops Lending Us Money, Look Out.”  Well, guess what?  They’re doing exactly that.  They’re canceling our credit card.

In a poll of chief executive officers taken prior to the election, 74 percent of the executives said they feared “that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for the country.”  And some of the CEOs predicted that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.”  And with the Congress in nearly total Democratic control, they ARE being implemented.

When Obama and the Democrats bankrupt the country and undermine our entire social structure with massive spending programs and massive bureaucracies that cannot be undone, which direction will the country turn?  And how complete will that turnaround be?

Liberals are ignoring one ominous warning of popular outrage after another, claiming that conservatism and the Republican Party are dead.  And they will likely ignore what is going on in Montana – which is led by a Democrat governor – as well.  They are doing so to both their party’s and their country’s peril.

Montana, you’ve done a great thing for liberty, which is freedom from the growing tyranny of the smiley-face-fascist nanny state.

The backlash against big government liberal tyranny is beginning.  And it will become larger and hotter as Obama’s policies take their toll.  Let us hope that the spark turns into a fire before – rather than after – Obama has done too much damage to recover from.

Obama: Fool Or Tool, Either Way He is Dangerous

I came across an interesting article via Atlas Shrugs.  I don’t know who Dr. Wheeler is – or if he is actually interacting with an actual French intelligence source (or if that source is being honest if he is) – but the read is interesting and illuminating.

A LAUGHINGSTOCK IN PARIS

Dr. Wheeler has interesting friends in faraway places. He is inside, and always has a fresh skinny inside the beltway and outside — this time, outside the Left Bank. Every once in a while I will run an entire piece of Jack’s, because it’s too juicy not share. But subscribe to his newsletter — worth every penny.

100 DAYS OF BEING A LAUGHINGSTOCK IN PARIS

Paris, France. It is very cool to be a French intel guy. A spectacular meal at a Parisian bistro with $90 entrées and a $200 bottle of Bordeaux? No problem. I’d known this fellow since he got me out of a jam in Sudan years ago. His James Bond days are over, but still, riding a desk for the DGSE — Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (General Directorate for External Security), France’s military intel agency – in Paris has its decided benefits.

One of them is not being infected with Obamamania. “My agency considers him a joke,” he confides. “Every day there is some fresh lunacy that we cannot believe. Mr. Bush would often make us angry. But at this man we just laugh.”

“In truth, it also makes us sad,” he continued. “French resentment towards America is strong, so being able to laugh at your country feels good. But it is such a sad and strange thing to see America – America The Great! – do something so crazy as to elect this ridiculous man.”

“There are many people in America who think he isn’t a legitimate president as he wasn’t born in the US and isn’t a natural citizen. What do you think?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had reason to make an inquiry.”

“There are a lot of people convinced he is a traitor who hates America and is actively determined to destroy it. Any opinion on that?”

He didn’t shrug at this. After a long slow sip of wine, he mused, “I would not go that far. Many of his actions, however, are very puzzling because they are so counter-productive regarding America’s best interests. There seems to be a consistent pattern in that direction.”

“What does Sarkozy think of him?”

“Nothing but contempt.”

After a pause he asked, “And Langley?”

“Well, if you thought the war they waged against Bush was intense, it was nothing compared to how they’re going to screw Obama. He has tried to gut them with the ‘torture memo’ release and slashing their budgets. The morale is depressed, sullen, and enraged. You know what a left-wing outfit Langley is. They thought he was their boy and they feel betrayed. All kinds of damaging stuff on him will be appearing via their media friends.”

He nodded. “And in Tel Aviv City?”

He was referring to the huge underground city complex of Langley’s underneath the US Embassy in the Israeli capital. “That’s an interesting question. You know how vast and deep the relationship is there. Langley is making every effort to overcome the total and massive distrust their Israeli colleagues have for Obama, whom they know is selling them down the Jordan River. So far though this effort is in words. The Israelis are waiting to see what Langley does.”

He said nothing. I smiled. “You guys wouldn’t be Langley’s cutout for thwarting BO regarding Israel, would you? I’d never suspect that…”

He continued to say nothing, gave me only a slight smile in return, and poured me another glass of wine. “The Bordeaux is good, yes?” I nodded.

“You know, the French media worships this man the same as yours in the US. All of this ‘100 days’ talk, it is impossibly stupid. Most anyone in the French elite, the business leaders, Sarko’s people, they all know this. They all think this is some crazy joke of the Americans. But it is a very, very dangerous joke. For 100 days your president has been a laughingstock among the tout le monde No one may be laughing 100 days or 10 months from now.”

He leaned forward. “The world can go – how do you say – sideways with this man very quickly. No one he has working for him knows what they are doing – possibly excepting Mrs. Clinton – and he certainly does not. All of us in our little community are worried – us, our friends in Berlin, London, Tel Aviv, and Langley too as you say. It is not like the barbarians at the gates. It is everythere are no gates. The Somalis, Chavez, Iran, Putin, Beijing, the ‘Norks” as you call them, the list is long and it is growing. We are not sure what to do.”

It took me a moment to respond. “The best thing that has happened now is Obama making Langley his enemy. They will be cooperating with you more, be more a part of your worried community. Working together, you can undermine his efforts more effectively, block and maybe even repair the damage.”

It was my turn to lean forward. “Then again, all together you could be more pro-active. The man is a mystery. Nobody can make public his actual birth certificate, or even the particular hospital he was born in, or his college grades, or how he got into Harvard, or how he made editor of the Harvard Law Review and never wrote a single article for it. It goes on and on. He really is a Zero. I think all of you guys should find all of this out and make it known.”

I added, “The quicker the better, before the laughing stops and the real dangers begin.”

“What is that phrase you use?” he asked. “Something to consider?”

I laughed. “Yes, there is much to consider – and much that you can do. I mean, really, if the Soviet Union could be dismantled, so can this presidency.”

It was a beautiful April afternoon in Paris. He walked me back to my hotel. It could be that the times we live in may get even more interesting.

I added the links to the article.  Whether the French intelligence agent sipping his Bordeaux and disclosing his insider knowledge is genuine or a literary device, the facts and fears presented are nevertheless legitimate facts and fears.

Barack Obama is pursuing so many dangerous and foolish policies at once that it is simply unreal.  The U.S. is on the hook for $12.8 trillion dollars – and counting.  He is taking over the auto industry by way of a foolhardy government-UAW partnership that will produce political correctness at the expense of profits.  He is seeking to nationalize one-sixth of the American economy by taking over health care, which is guaranteed to become a massive boondoggle and a massive failure.  He is attempting to impose cap-and-trade on the energy industry in yet another takeover, which will (in Obama’s own words) necessarily send energy prices skyrocketing.  And he has all but decided to surrender on a war on terror that he refused to even call a war on terror any longer.  And his bowing down before the king of Saudi Arabia and shaking the hand of an America-hating Venezuelan dictator only underscore the massive changes in our foreign policy.

Any one of these policies by themselves would undermine America; Obama is pursuing all of them very nearly at once.  Fear – and the desire of many Americans to feel like the government is “doing something” – have created the perfect storm of imposing radical action in the name of averting the “crisis.”

Is Obama a laughingstock among those in the know?  I’m sure not laughing.  Whether he’s a fool or a tool, Obama is the most dangerous man in the world.

Joe The Plumber Right On Socialism, Soaring Taxes On Small Businesses Under Obama

It’s not like Barrack Obama didn’t promise the American people that he would lead them into socialism.  You might remember the famous encounter with Joe “the plumber”:

Wurzelbacher said he planned to become the owner of a small plumbing business that will take in more than the $250,000 amount at which Obama plans to begin raising tax rates.

“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” the blue-collar worker asked.

After Obama responded that it would, Wurzelbacher continued: “I’ve worked hard . . . I work 10 to 12 hours a day and I’m buying this company and I’m going to continue working that way. I’m getting taxed more and more while fulfilling the American Dream.”

“It’s not that I want to punish your success,” Obama told him. “I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success, too.

Then, Obama explained his trickle-up theory of economics.

“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

“Spread the wealth around,” Obama said.  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Joe the Plumber famously answered, “That sounds like socialism.”

And how the liberals howled.  Pieces like Mc Clatchey Newspapers’ “Obama plan isn’t ‘socialism’; it’s traditional progressive taxation” by David Lightman and William Douglas abounded:

“It wouldn’t qualify as socialism.

“The answer is clearly no, Senator Obama is not a socialist,” said Paul Beck, a professor of political science at Ohio State University. “We’ve had a progressive tax system for some time, and both Republicans and Democrats have bought into it.”

Socialism involves state ownership of the means of economic production and state-directed sharing of the wealth. America’s democratic capitalist system is neither socialist nor pure free market; rather, it mixes the two, and it has at least since the progressive income tax was introduced 95 years ago. Under it, the wealthy pay higher income tax rates than those who are less fortunate do. It’s a form of sharing the wealth.”

Now, of course, I read that last paragraph and I’m just rolling on the floor laughing at how ignorant and dishonest these liberals were – and are.

Let me just say two words:  “Auto industry.”  Let me say two more: “banking industry.”  Let me add a few others: “Obama fires GM CEO.”  And, “Government forcing GM board out,” And, “Obama won’t allow banks to repay bailout loans.”  And, “Government, UAW Own 89% of GM In Restructuring.”  And, “Government Power and Control: The One Trillion Dollar Takeover Of Health Care.”  And, “Obama’s cap-and-trade plan a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”  And, most frightening and revealing of all: “Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion.”

“Let’s move it along, folks.  Move it along.  No socialists to see here.”

Sorry, mainstream media: Obama is as socialist as the sun is hot.  The fact that you were too blatantly dishonest and corrupt and incompetent to do your job during the campaign is just one more case in point that we are now under the thrall of totalitarian propaganda.

As the February 16, 2009 issue of Newseek gleefully trumpeted:

That pretty much makes it official: Obama and the Democratic Party lied to us: they were socialists all along, and too dishonest and too corrupt to honestly and legitimately represent themselves.

I also have to point out the fact that the VERY WORST ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM – right out of the playbook of the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” or the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” – were used to attack Joe Wurzelbacher simply for asking a candidate for president a couple of questions right outside his house.  The media and the Democrat machine went after him with everything they had, including snooping through his private records in a very KGB-like manner in hopes of dredging up dirt on him.

You know, kind of like what Obama and his Democrat lynch mob are doing to Bush administration officials even as we speak in 1) releasing memos selectively targeted to make Bush look like a torturer while refusing to release any memos that would show how Bush’s actions kept America safe; and 2) threatening to prosecute Bush officials for their part in 1) in what would amount to a show trial.  How quintessentially totalitarian of them.

All this said, our socialist – and frankly fascist – president is now about to come after small business owners EXACTLY as Joe Wurzelbacher feared he would to pay for his socialist Statist agenda:

Small Businesses Brace for Tax Battle
Under Obama Plan, Some Entrepreneurs’ Bills Would Soar
By Lori Montgomery and V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 27, 2009

Gail Johnson doesn’t think of herself as wealthy. The former pediatric nurse has spent 20 years building a chain of preschools and after-school programs that accommodate sick children so working parents can keep their jobs.

But, like most small-business owners, Johnson reports her profit on her personal tax return. In a typical year, she and her husband make more than $500,000, according to her accountant, a figure that throws them squarely into the ranks of the richest Americans — and makes them a prime target for the Obama administration’s tax policy.

Since last year’s campaign, President Obama has vowed repeatedly not to increase taxes for families making less than $250,000 a year. That pledge, while politically popular, has left him with just two primary sources of funding for his ambitious social agenda: about 3 million high-earning families and the nation’s businesses.

Johnson, with her company, falls into both categories. If Obama’s tax plans are enacted, her accountant estimates that her federal tax bill — typically, around $120,000 a year — would rise by at least $23,000, a 19 percent increase.

“You hear ‘tax the rich,’ and you think, ‘I don’t make that much money,’ ” said Johnson, whose Rainbow Station programs are headquartered near Richmond. “But then you realize: ‘Oh, if I put my business income with my wages, then, suddenly, I’m there.’ ”

Across the nation, many business owners are watching anxiously as the president undertakes expensive initiatives to overhaul health care and expand educational opportunities, while also reining in runaway budget deficits. Already, Obama has proposed an extra $1.3 trillion in taxes for business and high earners over the next decade. They include new limits on the ability of corporations to automatically defer U.S. taxes on income earned overseas, repeal of a form of inventory accounting that tends to reduce business taxes, and a mandate that investment partnerships pay the regular income tax rate instead of the lower capital gains rate.

‘A Permanent Target’
Business groups say they’re bracing for even more battles with the administration.

“They’re desperate for revenue. And therein lies the concern of the broader business community,” said R. Bruce Josten, chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We’re going to be a permanent target, and we understand that,” added Catherine Schultz, vice president for tax policy at the National Foreign Trade Council. “The way they see it, corporations don’t vote.”

[Read the rest of the article]

Many small business owners file individual income tax returns.  Their “incomes” do not merely go into their pockets; rather, they use their profits to pay their employees and reinvest in their businesses:

Johnson declined to say whether she voted for Obama. But she said she ignored his tax plans until her husband, who handles real estate and construction for the schools, mentioned it one day. “I’ve since talked to my accountant,” she said. “And, oh, my gosh!”

The accountant, Carroll Hurst, said Johnson is unlikely to owe any federal taxes this year due to accounting changes that confer a one-time tax benefit. But in a typical year, he said, Johnson and her husband earn about $515,000 from various entities related to the schools. They claim around $90,000 in deductions — much of it contributions to charity — reducing their taxable income to around $425,000. Johnson said the sum they take home in wages is “substantially less.”

In a typical year, Johnson’s federal tax bill would be about $120,000. But starting in 2011, the higher marginal rates would add about $13,000 a year, Hurst said. Capping the value of itemized deductions at 28 percent would add another $10,000, for a total increase of $23,000.

And Johnson’s tax bill stands to grow dramatically if Obama were to revive a plan to apply Social Security tax to income over $250,000 instead of capping it at the current $106,800. Because Johnson is an employee and an employer, she would have to pay both portions of the tax, Hurst said, tacking another $30,000 onto her bill.

Johnson said such an increase would force her to consider scaling back operations.

“You can try to pass it on to consumers. But if you raise tuition, you put pressure on family budgets,” she said. “For us, we’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

Other business owners are also nervous. Jim Murphy, president of EST Analytical in Fairfield, Ohio, which sells analytical instruments to environmental testing labs and pharmaceuticals, said his company is struggling in the sluggish economy. But if profit returns to pre-recession levels — about $455,000 — Murphy said his accountant estimates that Obama’s proposals could add $60,000 to his $120,000 tax bill.

“The misconception is that guys like me take [our profits] and put it into our pockets,” said Murphy, who employs 47 people. “But the money the company earns in a given year is used to buy additional inventory so we can grow and hire.” A 50 percent tax increase, he said, would be “really painful.”

So let’s review the basic facts: Barack Obama IS a socialist, just as Joe the Plumber intuitively understood even as liberal “intellectuals” loudly howled with all the outrage they could muster.  There’s no question of that fact any longer.  In fact, he is essentially a fascist, just as progressives such as Woodrow Wilson and even FDR were before him.  And Obama IS coming after small businesses and their owners, just as Joe the Plumber rightly feared.  And, furthermore, the Obama White House and the mainstream media alike will apply any tactic to attack and demonize their opponents for political purposes just like the worst socialist regimes in world history.