Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
When Charles Schumer’s caucus gives marching orders, Charles Schumer knows exactly how to proceed: “Jawohl, mein Fuhrer!”
Even the New York Times of all sources affirms this was an incredibly stupid display. But it is an incredibly stupid act that reveals that the Democrats are strickly a Big Brother-style operation. And that Republicans are their Immanuel Goldstein.
Moments before a conference call with reporters was scheduled to get underway on Tuesday morning, Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, apparently unaware that many of the reporters were already on the line, began to instruct his fellow senators on how to talk to reporters about the contentious budget process.
After thanking his colleagues — Barbara Boxer of California, Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — for doing the budget bidding for the Senate Democrats, who are facing off against the House Republicans over how to cut spending for the rest of the fiscal year, Mr. Schumer told them to portray John A. Boehner of Ohio, the speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. “I always use the word extreme,” Mr. Schumer said. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”
A minute or two into the talking-points tutorial, though, someone apparently figured out that reporters were listening, and silence fell.
Then the conference call began in earnest, with the Democrats right on message.
“We are urging Mr. Boehner to abandon the extreme right wing,” said Ms. Boxer, urging the House to compromise on the scale of spending cuts and to drop proposed amendments that would deny federal financing for Planned Parenthood and for government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency.
Mr. Carper continued with the theme, referring to some House Republicans’ “right-wing extremist friends.” Mr. Cardin decried Mr. Boehner’s giving into “extremes of his party.” Mr. Blumenthal closed by speaking of the “relatively small extreme group of ideologues” who are “an anchor” dragging down the budget negotiation process.
How news is made . . .
Update: Later in the day, Mr. Schumer’s spokesman, Brian Fallon, issued this statement about the senator’s remarks: “There’s nothing wrong with reporters overhearing him calling the House Republicans’ [position] extreme, because that’s what it is. He had just given a speech on the Senate floor saying the same thing. The sooner Speaker Boehner abandons the Tea Party’s extreme demands, the sooner there can be a bipartisan deal on the budget.”
So’kay, Republicans are “extreme right wing.” But you guys are nothing more than a bunch of Nazis, goose stepping to your fuhrers’ marching orders.
The “relatively small extreme group of ideologues” just won the largest landslide election in 70 years, while Democrats – the “mainstream” in their warped view – just LOST the largest landslide election in 70 years. What is wrong with this picture?
The Republican House is trying to fulfill the campaign pledge that won them victory in that landslide. The are trying to cut a MERE $61 billion out of a $1.65 TRILLION deficit. Democrats falsely and deceitfully claim they want to reduce the deficit when literally everything the Republicans propose to do so is “extremist.”
Let’s talk “extremist”: When Democrats took over, Republicans had left them with a deficit of $161 billion (the deficit in the Republican-passed FY-2007 Budget). The very next budget, and the first budget passed by Democrats (FY-2008), contained a $459 billion deficit – nearly three times larger than the previous year’s GOP budget. If that seems crazy, consider their next budget, the FY-2009 budget that had a $1.4 TRILLION deficit – which again virtually tripled their previous tripling of the deficit. Then there was the Democrats’ FY-2010 budget with a deficit of $1.6 trillion. And even with total control over the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, Democrats – caught like cockroaches with the kitchen lights turned on – couldn’t pass a budget at all prior to the election that threw them out of that total control.
Thanks to the Democrats, the United States is adding $4 billion to the deficit every single day this year.
Now, you need to decide that either THAT is “extreme,” or Republicans trying to cut just a tiny fraction – just 1.5% – of that deficit, is “extremist.”
Republicans are the extremists? Again, what is wrong with this picture???
Let us see who has used this tactic of unrelenting blame in the past:
Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf. He blamed the Jews for pretty much everything that was wrong with Germany.
Hitler seized power after blaming the Reichstag fire on a communist conspiracy.
Who destroyed the economy in 2008? Democrats say it was Bush. Why? Well, because he was president, that’s why.
Why – when applying the same logic – Barack Obama STILL isn’t responsible for any of his economic mess fully two years after George W. Bush left office is anybody’s guess.
But stop and think. The primary cause for the 2008 economic meltdown was a downturn in the housing market and the underlying mortgage market.
At the core of that meltdown was GSEs (that’s “Government Sponsored Enterprises” to you) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has always been that it was – and remains – a social welfare institution masquerading as a financial institution. And they have made beyond-godawful “financial” decisions because their true loyalty has always been with socialist policies rather than financial ones.
Let’s look at Fannie and Freddie’s current picture:
Fannie, Freddie’s $685B fix
Bloomberg
Last Updated: 11:54 PM, November 4, 2010
Posted: 11:54 PM, November 4, 2010
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage firms operating under federal conservatorship, may cost taxpayers as much as $685 billion as the US covers losses and overhauls the housing-finance system, Standard & Poor’s said.
Costs for resolving the two government-sponsored entities could reach $280 billion, including $148 billion already delivered under a US Treasury Department promise of unlimited support, New York-based S&P said yesterday in a research report. The government may spend an additional $405 billion to capitalize a replacement for the two companies, which own or insure more than half the US mortgage market.
“It appears unlikely in our view that housing and mortgage markets will be able to operate normally without continuing and substantial government involvement,” S&P said, citing the GSEs’ growing portfolio of unsold homes, a sluggish economy, high unemployment, the prospect of rising foreclosures and billions in legacy losses.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has said there is a strong case to be made for continued US involvement, has promised to deliver the Obama administration’s plan to overhaul the housing-finance system by the end of January. Republican lawmakers, who will take control of the House of Representatives in January, have called for the government to end its support for Washington-based Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, of McLean, Va.
“Although federal authorities have taken no concrete public steps toward sponsoring a GSE alternative, Standard & Poor’s believes that it’s a useful exercise to consider how much such a recapitalization might cost taxpayers,” the report said.
$685 BILLION. That’s quite a mess.
Did it just happen? Hardly. This was going on for years. This was what caused the subprime crisis that destroyed our economy in 2008.
Let’s survey the record. According to record provided by The New York Times, Fannie and Freddie were in huge trouble PRIOR TO the economic collapse. And their holdings were so massive that there is simply no reasonable way that one can maintain that their crisis didn’t directly contribute to the greater crisis to be revealed. Read the article dated July 11, 2008:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so big — they own or guarantee roughly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market — that the thought that they might falter once seemed unimaginable. But now a trickle of worries about the companies, which has been slowly building for years, has suddenly become a torrent.
A timeline of the subprime loan crisis of 2008 clearly reveals that it was Fannie Mae’s collapse that started the entire mess rolling downhill. From Wikipedia:
September 7: Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which at that point owned or guaranteed about half of the U.S.’s $12 trillion mortgage market, effectively nationalizing them. This causes panic because almost every home mortgage lender and Wall Street bank relied on them to facilitate the mortgage market and investors worldwide owned $5.2 trillion of debt securities backed by them.[151][152]
September 16: Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s downgrade ratings on AIG‘s credit on concerns over continuing losses to mortgage-backed securities, sending the company into fears of insolvency.[155][156] In addition, the Reserve Primary Fund “breaks the buck” leading to a run on the money market funds. Over $140 billion is withdrawn vs. $7 billion the week prior. This leads to problems for the commercial paper market, a key source of funding for corporations, which suddenly could not get funds or had to pay much higher interest rates.[157]
September 18: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke meet with key legislators to propose a $700 billion emergency bailout through the purchase of toxic assets. Bernanke tells them: “If we don’t do this, we may not have an economy on Monday.”[158]
Democrats who bother to offer any reason at all why “Republicans got us into this mess” claim that the Republicans refused to regulate and reform the economic sector.
Well, let’s dig a little further. Was it George Bush who refused to regulate or reform?
Seventeen. That’s how many times, according to this White House statement (hat tip Gateway Pundit), that the Bush administration has called for tighter regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
That’s right. George Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform and regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the agencies at the epicenter of the economic crisis.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980′s.
”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”
What do we have, even in the pages of the New York Times? A prediction that as soon as the economy cooled off, the mortgage market would explode like a depth charge and the government would have to step in to prevent a catastrophe. And from a Clinton program, at that.
The same man – Peter Wallison – who had predicted the disaster from 1999 wrote a September 23, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess.”
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10— The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
So Bush WANTED to regulate and reform the industry that would destroy the economy five years later, again, in contradiction to a blatantly dishonest and ideologically liberal and biased media. Bush didn’t “refuse to regulate.” Bush TRIED to provide the necessary regulatory steps that could have averted disaster.
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.
Congress chartered Fannie and Freddie to provide access to home financing by maintaining liquidity in the secondary mortgage market. Today, almost half of all mortgages in the U.S. are owned or guaranteed by these GSEs. They are mammoth financial institutions with almost $1.5 Trillion of debt outstanding between them. With the fiscal challenges facing us today (deficits, entitlements, pensions and flood insurance), Congress must ask itself who would actually pay this debt if Fannie or Freddie could not?
And it came to pass exactly as John McCain warned.
Because of Democrats. Who were virtually entirely to blame for the disaster that ensued as a result of their blocking of reform and regulation.
What did Democrats do with the mainstream media’s culpability? They falsely dropped the crisis at the feet of “greedy” Wall Street. But while examples of Wall Street greed abound, the liberal intelligentsia deliberately overlooked the central and preceding role of Democrat-dominated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Here’s how the mess actually happened:
The New York Times acknowledged that Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “buy mortgages from lenders and repackage them as securities or hold them in their own portfolios.”
Lenders also have opened the door wider to minorities because of new initiatives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–the giant federally chartered corporations that play critical, if obscure, roles in the home finance system. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and bundle them into securities; that provides lenders the funds to lend more. . . .
In a nutshell, Fannie and Freddie, in their role as Government Sponsored Enterprises, bought tens of millions of mortgages, and then repackaged them into huge mortgage-backed securities that giant private entities such as Bear Stearns, AIG and Lehman Brothers purchased. What made these securities particularly attractive to the private banking entities was that these securities were essentially being sold – and had the backing – of the United States government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, again, are Government Sponsored Enterprises.
The Role of the GSEs is to provide liquidity and stability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. Step 1 Banks lend money to Households to purchase and refinance home mortgages Step 2 The GSEs purchase these mortgage from the banks Step 3 GSEs bundle the mortgages into mortgage-backed securities Step 4 GSEs sell mortgage-backed and debt securities to domestic and international capital investors Step 5 Investors pay GSEs for purchase of debt and securities Step 6 GSEs return funds to banks to lend out again for the issuance of new mortgage loans.
Now, any intelligent observer should note a primary conflict that amounts to a fundamental hypocritical contradiction: the GSE’s role was to “provide stability,” and yet at the same time they were taking on “significantly more risk” in the final year of the Clinton presidency. What’s wrong with this picture?
The GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were designed to bundle up the mortgages into mortgage backed securities and then sell them to the private market.
Fannie Mae is exempt from SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] regulation. Which screams why Bush wanted to regulate them. This allowed Fannie Mae to bundle up mortgages, which were then rated AAA with no requirement to make clear what is in the bundle. Which screams why Bush wanted to regulate them.
This is what allowed the toxic instruments that have been sold across the world to proliferate. And then to explode. It also created a situation where money institutions did not know and could not find out whether potential inter-bank business partners were holding these “boiled babies on their books, complete with a golden stamp on the wrapping,” rather than safe instruments. This then inclined banks to a natural caution, to be wary of lending good money to other banks against these ‘assets’. And thus banks refused to lend to one another.
And it was Democrats, not Bush, and not Republicans, who were all over this disaster that destroyed our economy in 2008.
We were led by a pathologically dishonest media to believe that Republicans had created this mess, when it fact it had been Democrats. And so we gave the very fools who destroyed our economy total power.
Aircraft manufacturer Boeing Comany is the latest mega employer claiming the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) is part of why its employees will have to pay more for their medical benefits next year. In a letter mailed to employees late last week, Boeing said deductibles and copayments are going up significantly for some 90,000 non-union workers due in part to the effects of the new law. (source)Continued…
President Obama and his fellow Democrats who pushed the unpopular legislation through Congress have stated repeatedly that the law would bring down individuals’ costs for health insurance. Meanwhile the debate over the obscenely expensive bill raged on with Republican lawmakers and the majority of the American people speaking out against the far-reaching government power grab disguised as reform. Announcements like Boeing’s are proving the opposition right.
Boeing joins other companies like 3M which earlier this month announced it will stop offering its health insurance plan to their 23,000 retirees in response to Obamacare’s passage. (source)
While Boeing cited two additional reasons for the cost shift including untamed health care inflation and lifestyle issues such as being overweight, company spokeswoman Karen Forte said the company is concerned that its relatively generous plan will get hit with a new tax under the law in 2018.
Democrats are moral idiots who think, “Someone else will be paying for it, so it must be the right thing to do.”
For the record, $6.25 trillion amounts to a very large poison pill to have to swallow.
Businesses, and even the basically communist labor unions that worked so hard to get ObamaCare passed, are pleading to be exempted from the law by the hundreds.
Businesses are raising the costs employees will have to pay, or else they are simply dropping coverage altogether. And those businesses and most every single other business are holding back on hiring because of ObamaCare, massive and unnecessary regulations, taxes, and basically Barack Obama and the Democrat Party in general.
This whole ObamaCare thing is just working out great.
Democrats are refusing to talk about the massive boondoggle they cursed America with. Don’t you forget that curse when you vote in two weeks.
Particularly if you live in California, you have seen repeated coverage of the incredibly despicable corruption and violation of the public trust demonstrated by politicians in Bell, California.
Today, eight city council members were arrested in Bell, California for what Los Angeles County District Attorney labeled “corruption on steroids.” Thus far, every major news outlet that has reported on the story has omitted the fact that all eight individuals arrested are Democrats.
These glaring omissions come only weeks after NewsBusters reported that of the 351 stories on the then-brewing controversy, 350 had omitted party affiliations, and one had mentioned they were Democrats only in apologizing for not doing so sooner.
One commenter at CNN’s online story got it spot on: “I notice there is no mention of the party affiliation of the accused. I can find no mention of it in any story on the internet. This must mean they were all Democrats.”
Give the man a cigar.
Together, the eight city officials “misappropriated” $5.5 million in municipal funds. Robert Rizzo, the chief culprit, was arrested on 53 counts of various brands of corruption.
Before the scandal came to light, Rizzo had been making roughly $1.5 million per year, even though the per capita income in Bell is roughly half the national average.
Pedro Carillo, Bell’s interim city manager, released a statement on the arrests today:
Given the sheer volume of charges levied against former Bell Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo and former Assistant CAO Angela Spaccia by the district attorney, it is clear that Rizzo and Spaccia were at the root of the cancer that has afflicted the City of Bell. Also, it is a sad day for Bell that four current and two former members of the council also have been arrested. I am prepared to double down our efforts to continue to restore order, establish good government reforms, and to ensure that Bell is providing needed services to its residents.
Despite arrests in one of the most massive cases of municipal corruption in recent memory, no media outlet could bring itself to mention the officials’ party affiliations, a fact that has been widely reported since the scandal entered the national spotlight.
There was basically ONE acknowledgment that the corrupt politicians who filched MILLIONS of dollars for themselves in the form of insanely lucrative salaries and pensions – all at the courtesy of taxpayers, of course – were all in fact DEMOCRATS. That came from The Orange County Register. And even then, that admission only resulted from the fact that knowledgeable readers complained about the omission:
In the wake of the Bell salary scandal, our readers noticed one part of the story has been left out by virtually all media sources, including our related editorials and columns: the political party affiliations of the five city council members who not only failed to protect city coffers, but participated in what amounts to shameless, if apparently legal, self-dealing.
All five council members are members of the Democratic Party.
Jack Abramoff wasn’t even a Republican official, but by the time the mainstream media got through with the story, there was naught an American who didn’t know that Republicans were evil as a result of their reporting of the 2005-2006 story. And the fact that a number of prominent Democrats were involved, too, somehow got little mention, of course.
This has been going on for so long, and it’s so sickening.
Now, the media could have made a similar example out of Democrat Tim Mahoney, who replaced Mark Foley in the very same West Palm Beach, Florida district. In terms of breaking the law and being a slimeball, Mahoney did far worse than anything Foley did – and just in time to be the poster boy for Democrat malfeasance in advance of the 2008 elections. But the same media that turned Mark Foley into a household name were nowhere to be found.
And, as I predicted, two years later and nobody knows who Tim Mahoney was anymore.
Tim Mahoney spent $121,000 of taxpayer money to keep an aide with whom he was sexually involved with from talking after she threatened to sue him. He threatened his tax-dollar-funded mistress and said to her, “You work at my pleasure. Do you understand what that means?”
Mahoney self-righteously claimed he would be better than Mark Foley. He was actually the guy the Democrats tasked to lead the way in the Democrats’ ethics reform package. And yet the mainstream media couldn’t seem to find a hitch to hang a story about the guy.
Journalists couldn’t bring themselves to harm Democrats. Because they are partisan and biased. And they don’t report the facts, they slant them.
No wonder Obama is so favorable toward CNN; they have the same attitude toward “them Jews” that his reverend and spiritual adviser for 23 years had. Just saying.
CNN joined MSNBC in “quoting” Rush Limbaugh to effect that he is a racist. And as a result of these “bigoted remarks,” Rush Limbaugh was thrown out of an ownership package to purchase the St. Louis Rams.
CNN anchor Rick Sanchez read a disputed racist quote attributed to Rush Limbaugh about antebellum slavery on Monday’s Newsroom: “Limbaugh’s perceived racist diatribes are too many to name. Here’s a sample- he once declared that ‘slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.’”
And that certainly wasn’t all that Rick Sanchez said. Go to the link for more, and for the embedded video of the “reporting.”
You want to talk about the racist calling the kettle “racist”?
Rush Limbaugh never said any of the things that Rick Sanchez claimed. It was a terrible, biased, ideological, serial slandering by someone who professed himself to be an “objective journalist.”
I want you to understand. Clearly, Rick Sanchez didn’t go after Rush Limbaugh because Rush Limbaugh is racist. It’s RICK who is racist, not RUSH. No, Rick Sanchez targeted Rush Limbaugh because, like most of his fellow “journalists,” Rick Sanchez is a partisan, biased, ideologue propagandist.
If the media were to report the facts fairly, accurately and honestly, the Republicans would have dominated the political landscape since FDR nearly destroyed America with the same policies that Obama is using to destroy the country today.
Prior to Obama’s being elected president, the “story” was all about how Republicans had exploded the economy. So it should come as no surprise that 57.4% of Obama voters were unaware of the fact that DEMOCRATS had been in control of Congress for the preceding two years. It didn’t make any sense how the Republicans could be entirely to blame for the economy collapsing if it was actually DEMOCRATS who controlled both the House of Representatives and the US Senate. So we had one of those cases in which “if the facts got in the way of the reporting, so much the worse for the facts.”
In 2006, and again in 2008, Democrats – with the help of the mainstream media – made Republican corruption a primary issue.
And those eight Bell, California Democrats are basically using the same “pension enhancement” techniques that their fellow liberal public officials in the public employee unions have relied upon to rack up some $3.35 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities.
Which is to say that Democrats have been accusing Republicans of corruption, even as they were out literally bankrupting America with their own corruption.
If you’re like me, you never heard of this evil event that was reported in an Los Angeles Times editorial below. It has been hidden from you, just as the truth about so much history has been hidden by the teachers and historians who were supposed to teach the truth, but instead have fed us on propaganda and lies.
As terrible, and as evil, as the following event was, which has been deliberately omitted from virtually everyone’s history books, it represents only one of many evil and ugly incidents in the history of labor unions.
The blast that rocked labor: The bombing of the Times Building 100 years ago set off a chain of events that devastated America’s unions.
by Lew Irwin
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Page A27, Los Angeles Times
Shortly after 1 A.M. on Oct. 1, 1910, 100 years ago Friday, a time bomb constructed of 16 sticks of 80% dynamite connected to a cheap windup alarm clock exploded in an alley next to the Los Angeles Times. It detonated with such violence that for blocks around, people ran panic-stricken into the streets, believing that an intense earthquake had hit the city.
The explosion destroyed the Times building, taking the lives of 20 employees, including the night editor and the principle telegraph operator, and maiming dozens of others. Two other time bombs – intended to kill Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the publisher of the newspaper, and Felix J. Zeehandelaar, the head of a Los Angeles business organization – were discovered later that morning hidden in the bushes next to their homes. Their mechanisms had jammed.
Eventually two brothers, J.B. McNamara, who planted the bombs, and J.J. McNamara, an official of the International Assn. of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers union who ordered the attacks, were arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.
In it’s day, The Times bombing was equivalent to the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. It was called “the crime of the century,” and it remains the deadliest crime to go to trial in California history. It would lead to investigations, arrests and trials of union leaders across the country who, it turned out, funded hundreds of terrorist bombings at mostly nonunion construction projects between 1907 and 1911. They included officials of the California Building Trades Council in San Fransisco, the ironworkers union and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters in Indianapolis, the Machinists Union in Syracuse, N.Y., and the Building Trades Council in Detroit. Hirelings of the union involved in executing the bombings were also brought to trial – 46 members of the ironworkers union alone. In addition to the McNamaras, who were sentenced in 1911, 39 men were convicted and sent to prison in 1912; five others received suspended sentences.
The testimony during their trials and their convictions devastated the American labor movement, virtually paralyzing it until the New Deal. […]
The terrorism that gripped America 100 years ago is barely mentioned in California history books today…. The bombing is now regarded as an embarrassment to organized labor, which has never gotten around to an unequivocal denunciation of it.
A 1996 history of the Ironworkers Union says that … “The international officers stretched the limits of zeal in a righteous cause.” […]
Former President Theodore Roosevelt reacted against those “foolish sentimentalists” who urged that the McNamaras be regarded with sympathy because they were struggling in a war on behalf of their class, pointed out that all of their victims had been “laboring people.” “Murder,” Roosevelt said succinctly, “is murder.”
“Bomb.” “Violence.” “Murder.” “The equivalent to the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center.” The “the crime of the century.” “The deadliest crime to go to trial in California history” to this very day. Labor unions. All of those words and phrases go hand in hand together.
A century of evil. That’s the legacy of labor unions.
Interestingly, the article points out that the American labor movement was virtually paralyzed until the New Deal. So let’s pick up with the New Deal. From “Why Did FDR’s New Deal Harm Blacks?“:
By giving labor unions the monopoly power to exclusively represent employees in a workplace, the Wagner Act had the effect of excluding blacks, since the dominant unions discriminated against blacks. The Wagner Act had originally been drafted with a provision prohibiting racial discrimination. But the American Federation of Labor successfully lobbied against it, and it was dropped. AFL unions used their new power, granted by the Wagner Act, to exclude blacks on a large scale. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Marcus Garvey were all critical of compulsory unionism.
From violent terrorist bomber murders who committed the crime of the century equivalent of the 9/11 terrorist attack to racists who hurt poor blacks.
Thirty years later, the unions got a second chance. And they were still genuinely evil.
Let’s also point out that while labor unions were being violent racists in America, they were in the process of being the source of the greatest evil in human history in Europe. It was the labor unions that formed the core of Lenin’s violent communist movement. The Marxists started out in 1898 by forming the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Just as labor unions formed the core of Hitler’s National Socialist German WORKERS Party.
“A Socialist Workers’ Government has achieved a workers revolution in Germany without resorting to, tho in some respects it approximates, Communism. Adolf Hitler has done it by wiping out all class privileges and class distinction, but the economics foundation of property rights and private capital has been left almost intact – for the present time.”
“The Third Reich, under Hitler, has wiped out corporate trade-unionism by forcing all workers to join one great government union, the National Socialist Union of Employers and Workers…”
While American labor unions were basking in the light of FDR’s pork barrel political favoritism and doing everything they could to keep poor blacks down, their European counterparts were at work preparing to set the world on fire.
So far, I can’t say I’d be proud to be a member of a labor union.
“…we need to fundamentally restructure our economy and re-establish popular control over the private corporations which have distorted our economy and hijacked our government. That’s a long-term job, but one we should start now.
I Hate the Media points out the scary parallels to the ugly history of the past:
“Re-establish”? Wouldn’t that imply that there had once been popular control over private corporations?
Richard. Mr. Trumka. Sir. Pardon our impertinence, but we believe that what you’re talking about here is National Socialism.
As in Adolf Trumka.
Meanwhile, while AFL-CIO head Trumka was flirting with National Socialism, recently retired SEIU president Andy Stern was kissing up to socialism’s more famous sister, communism, saying:
“Workers of the world unite – it’s not just a slogan anymore. It’s the way we’re gonna have to do our work.”
On the orders of the United Mine Workers (UMW), 16,000 miners went on strike in 1993. One subcontractor, Eddie York (who was not a UMW member), decided it was important to support his wife and three children and crossed picket lines to get to his job. He was shot in the head as he left the job site to go home. UMW President Richard Trumka (now Secretary-Treasurer at the AFL-CIO) told The Washington Times that “if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger.” UMW strike captain Jerry Dale Lowe was found guilty of weapons charges and conspiracy in York’s death, and York’s widow Wanda sued the union for her husband’s wrongful death. The UMW fought the lawsuit for four years, but settled with Wanda York only two days after federal prosecutors announced that they would share evidence from the criminal trial with York’s attorneys.
As head of the United Mine Workers, Trumka ordered a nationwide strike against Peabody Coal in 1993. On July 22, a non-union worker, Eddie York, was shot in the back of the head and killed as he attempted to pass striking coal workers. Picketers continued to throw rocks after York was shot, preventing his would be rescuers from assisting him.[14]. Trumka and other United Mine Workers officials settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Mr. York’s widow out of court in 1997.
And it was following that vicious display of supremely ugly violence that Richard Trumka delivered his “he got just what he deserved” remark.
Labor groups will be invited to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to talk about an alarming shortfall in state employee pension plans that some believe could lead to a new government bailout.
Randy Johnson, the Chamber’s senior vice president for Labor, Immigration and Employee Benefits, told The Hill the total shortfall for state pension funds could run as high as $3 trillion.
And when the system can’t pay the unions, there will be blood. We’ll see the kind of violence and outright anarchy that has been gripping Europe in recent months. Only we’ve got a lot more guns in America.
Labor unions have destroyed every single industry they have ever been allowed to contaminate. From manufacturing (airline, auto, steel, textile, etc.) to teaching. And Superman aint coming, because labor unions are the strength-sapping, lethal Kryptonite.
Labor unions have represented genuine evil for more than a century. And if we don’t vote out the Democrats who use public money to keep their voter-turnout apparatus going in a sick game of political patronage, they will murder this country.
Are you sick of Obama and the left unrelentingly blaming Bush for everything that is happening going on two years after he left office? Do you think that Obama will ever man-up and actually become responsible for his presidency?
Me too, and me neither, respectively.
I went more than a little off on a liberal who dredged up this demagogic rhetorical garbage:
In Europe people laugh at us leaving in false dreams, wall streets spending false money, Bush starting a false war etc.
America is the land of dreams, how come? Idiots like George Bush can get elected to president. If he can Become president, then what can the smart people do? Jump to pluto?.
Do you really expect Obama to fix the worst recession in 80 years in a bit more than 18 months? Which was created by 8 years of Reagan, 4 years by bush, Clinton’s last period and 8 years by Bush? What is he some kind of god?
I didn’t vote for Obama but I expect him to put us in the right direction in this 6 years (he most likely) has left. in 2007-2008 they estimated that the recession will peak in 2012, so there is still a lot left. Just imagine how it would be with Palin/McCain. McCain who wanted to keep Bush’s politics moving and Palin who thought Africa was a country.
Here was my response:
First of all, I must pause to mock you for making Europe the gold standard of measurement. I guess if you like Nazism, fascism, Marxism, socialism, and genocide up the wazoo, Europe must be the coolest place on earth. I can see why you lefties love it so much.
What was it that Jefferson said? “The comparison of our governments with those of Europe, is like a comparison of heaven and hell.” Not that you give a damn what Jefferson said about anything.
Let me assure you that the Iraq War – which 60% of Democrat Senators voted to authorize (just for the record) – was a REAL war indeed.
Here’s a record of how Democrats were for that war before they were against it:
Now, you want to see a REAL idiot in action? How about a guy running for president who thinks there are 58 states? This is a man who is so fundamentally ignorant he doesn’t even know jack squat about his own country.
“It is wonderful to be back in Oregon,” Obama said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it.”
So let’s talk about what a total and absolute ideologue you are to condemn Sarah Palin for a bogus fabricated quote that she didn’t even say, and to then defend a guy who is on video saying something about 20 times as stupid. Because that’s how the Democrat Party operates, in a nutshell.
For the factual record, Obama actually called Europe a country. How is that not just as stupid as calling Africa a country?
“One of the things that is a huge advantage for America compared to countries like Europe is, actually, we’re constantly replenishing ourselves with hungry, driven people who are coming here, and they want to work, and they start a business, and our population is younger and more dynamic, and that’s a good thing!”
Which is to say that Obama is unfit to be president by your own deceitful example.
And as for Bush being an idiot, at least he didn’t need a pair of damn teleprompters to say his name right. Maybe Bush would have sounded more “intelligent” to you if he read absolutely everything he said at every venue he went to off his teleprompters.
Which is why he needs to bring one everywhere – even to sixth grade classrooms – to not sound like the gibbering idiot he truly is.
So, oh, yeah, the country is much better off with its “Genius-in-chief,” isn’t it?
You don’t give one damn about the truth; you live in your own self-created reality in which Sarah Palin is stupid for something that she never said, while Barack Obama who said something stupider than Sarah Palin ever said in her life is still brilliant.
You would be completely ashamed of yourself, if you were capable of that attribute of moral character.
I write an article that shows how BY THE DEMOCRATS VERY OWN STANDARD OF MEASUREMENT Obama is the worst president in American history. And you’ve got nothing to say about that. Nothing but more “blame Bush.”
Another demonstration of your rabid leftist ideology that will NOT be fair: the economy goes into an absolute TOILET under Obama, but he’s not responsible for any of his policies.
Why is it that you refuse to hold Obama to any kind of standard at all – even the standard he set for himself? The Obama administration said this was a terrible economy, but he had the solution, that his stimulus would keep unemployment from going over 8%. And by his own administration’s standard did he not utterly fail? Wasn’t he elected to make the economy better, instead of far worse?
And what do we say about the fact that unemployment is going up, rather than down? Wasn’t Obama supposed to make things better rather than worse?
WASHINGTON – Employers appear to be laying off workers again as the economic recovery weakens. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits reached the half-million mark last week for the first time since November.
It was the third straight week that first-time jobless claims rose. The upward trend suggests the private sector may report a net loss of jobs in August for the first time this year.
Initial claims rose by 12,000 last week to 500,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Construction firms are letting go of more workers as the housing sector slumps and federal stimulus spending on public works projects winds down. State and local governments are also cutting jobs to close large budget gaps.
The layoffs add to growing fears that the economic recovery is slowing and the country could slip back into a recession.
Isn’t Obama kind of going the wrong way, Mr. “Blame Bush”???
We’ve got all kinds of measures showing that things are far worse than they ever were under Bush. But you, total rabid fundamentalist leftist ideologue that you are – can only shout “blame Bush!” all the louder.
With consumers and businesses keeping a lid on expenses, more and more small and mid-size restaurants are throwing in their dish towels and closing up shop. […]
Nationwide, the number of restaurants dropped in 2010 for the first time in more than a decade, according to NPD, falling 5,202 to 579,416.
So, wow. That means that things haven’t been this bad since Bill Clinton was president and the Dot-com bubble he created blew up. That means that things were NEVER this bad under George Bush.
Bush inherited a terrible economic situation, too. First of all, the Dot-com bubble that Clinton passed to Bush created huge economic upheaval – to the tune of Nasdaq losing 78% of its value. Trillions of dollars of Clinton economic growth were just blown away like a fart in a hurricane. The mainstream media didn’t report the facts of Clinton’s recession because they are shockingly biased liberal propagandists. Which is why so few Americans trust them anymore. Clinton took all the credit for the Dot-com build-up; Bush got all the pain when it blew up, suffering a huge recession that was all on Clinton’s tab. Then you add to that the 9/11 attack, which crippled the airline and tourism industry for months, and you should understand how bad Bush had it. But he didn’t blame Clinton a gazillion times; he manned up and solved the problem. He took an economic lemon and made 52 consecutive months of job growth. In contrast, Obama hasn’t solved anything. All he’s done is blame and demonize.
In the wake of news about a spike in new applications for unemployment benefits comes another potentially troubling sign: A record number of workers made hardship withdrawals from their retirement accounts in the second quarter.
What’s more, the number of workers borrowing from their accounts reached a 10-year high, according to a report issued Friday by Fidelity Investments.
Wow. Again, things haven’t been so bad since the last time a Democrat was president. Again, it was NEVER this bad under George Bush’s presidency.
WASHINGTON: The US trade deficit widened in September by an unexpectedly large 18.2 per cent, the most in more than 10 years, as oil prices rose for the seventh straight month and imports from China bounded higher, a US government report showed on Friday.
Hey, again, things weren’t so bad since a Democrat president last ran things. And it was never so bad under George Bush.
How about all the foreclosures? Surely Obama has made that better? Oops. Again, things were NEVER this bad under Bush’s presidency:
Foreclosure crisis doesn’t seem to be loosening its hold on the housing sector. After declining for the last three consecutive months, foreclosure activity is back up in the United States.
As per the ‘Foreclosure Market Report’ released by RealtyTrac, an online marketplace, giving insights into foreclosures, 325,229 houses received foreclosure filings in the nation, 4 percent up from June.
Not only there has been a jump in the number of houses receiving filings, the foreclosures have exceeded 300000 for the 17th straight month. One in every 397 houses received foreclosure notice from the lenders in July.
Hmmm. Obama’s been president for all of those 17 months. And Bush was president for none of them. But it’s all Bush’s fault, anyway, isn’t it? At least if you’re a hypocrite liberal, it is.
Under Obama, and ONLY under Obama, foreclosures are up 75% in the major metropolitan areas:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Foreclosures rose in 3 of every four large U.S. metro areas in this year’s first half, likely ruling out sustained home price gains until 2013, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday [in its midyear 2010 metropolitan foreclosure report].
Unemployment was the main culprit driving foreclosure actions on more than 1.6 million properties, the company said.
“We’re not going to see meaningful, sustainable home price appreciation while we’re seeing 75 percent of the markets have increases in foreclosures,” RealtyTrac senior vice president Rick Sharga said in an interview.
Has Obama done anything to solve this problem – which was why our economy blew up in the first place? Absolutely not.
Obama failed – because he is a failure, and failing is what he does:
WASHINGTON – Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.
The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday’s report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, economists say.
More than 2.3 million homes have been repossessed by lenders since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year.
“The government program as currently structured is petering out. It is taking in fewer homeowners, more are dropping out and fewer people are ending up in permanent modifications,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
There’s “hope and change” for you. A failed president with failed policies.
As an update (August 24), I add the following headline:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sales of previously owned U.S. homes dropped in July to their lowest pace in 15 years, implying further loss of momentum in the economic recovery.
Existing home sales dropped by a massive 27% in July. And, again, omigosh. We haven’t seen terrible numbers like this since the last time a Democrat was president. We NEVER saw anything like this during the Bush era.
How about budget deficits? Bush never had a trillion dollar deficit in his entire presidency, and the Democrats still blamed him for his spending; but the CBO now says that Obama will run a trillion-plus dollar defict next year, making it three years in a row. And we will have massive trillion-plus dollar deficits for as long as the eye can see because of Obama’s reckless unsustainable spending programs and the debt they will create. How about this? Obama’s deficit for July alone was more than Bush’s entire 2007-year deficit! And how about this one? Obama outspent Bush’s entire eight-year presidency’s deficit in just 20 months – after demonizing Bush for his spending!!!
From The Wall Street Journal, which, unlike the New York Slimes, the LA Slimes, the Chicago Tribune, and other major liberal papers, ISN’T actually financially and morally bankrupt:
Mr. Obama cannot dismiss critics by pointing to President George W. Bush’s decision to run $2.9 trillion in deficits while fighting two wars and dealing with 9/11 and Katrina. Mr. Obama will surpass Mr. Bush’s eight-year total in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt. If America “cannot and will not sustain” deficits like Mr. Bush’s, as Mr. Obama said during the campaign, how can Mr. Obama sustain the geometrically larger ones he’s flogging?
Bush’s deficits were 2-3% of GDP. Obama’s are at 12.8% of GDP – which is five to six times higher and bringing us closer and closer every day to the point of collapse.
Are the people better off under Obama than they were under Bush? I don’t think so:
How about bank failures? We kind of need banks for a healthy economy unless we want to go back to the barter system, you know:
Banks are failing at double the rate of last year. During 2009, which the government claims was the peak of the recession, the total number of bank failures at this point in the year was 40. It is already 83 for this year.
For the record, only 25 banks failed under Bush in 2008. That number soared to 140 banks under Obama’s watch in 2009. And now we’re already past 118 bank failures this year in 2010 with four more months to go.
Do I want to go back to Bush’s “failed policies” when unemployment never got above 7.6% and averaged 5.2% for his presidency? As opposed to “moving forward” with Obama and his 10%-and-rising level? Pardon me, but I’ll take Bush.
Democrats are currently saying, “Do you want to go back to the way things were when Republicans were in control?”
So, yeah. I WOULD like to go back to the way things were when Bush and Republicans were in control. And I frankly want to know what idiot wouldn’t?
As for your question as to whether Obama is some kind of a god, I can’t help but point out that it wasn’t conservatives who kept putting the halo on Obama’s head:
A funny video provides a giant montage of Obama halos.
The pretzel president. That’s Barry Hussein. He’ll say one thing, then say another thing that completely contradicts the first thing. Then he’ll enact a policy which contradicts both positions. And then he’ll brazenly tell you, “As I’ve said all along” as though you are some kind of drooling imbecile who can’t remember anything from two minutes ago.
Of course, that last description apparently suits the mainstream media quite well. At least it does most of the time.
Fortunately, it doesn’t ALWAYS. Once in a very great while, someone in the mainstream media actually holds the Obamaland rhetoric to account.
From the MSNBC transcript with senior Obama adviser David Axelrod:
GUTHRIE: So let’s start with the news, the federal judge striking down the ban on same-sex marriage that California voters passed in 2008. I think the American public could be forgiven if they’re a little confused about where the president stands on all of this. He has said he opposes same-sex marriage. He has said during the campaign he didn’t mind what California voters were trying to do, trying to ban Prop 8. Yesterday, though, the White House comes out and says, well, the president has spoken out against Prop 8 in the past. He said he would work to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act, but that the Justice Department, since he’s been president, has actually litigated on behalf of that law. So let’s just forget all of that in the past and ask you, where does the president stand today? Does he still opposed same-sex marriage?
AXELROD: Well, Savannah, let me just correct something in your rather lengthy litany of events there.
The president opposed Proposition 8 at the time. He felt that it was divisive. He felt that it was mean-spirited, and he opposed it at the time. So we reiterated that position yesterday. The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control. He’s supports civil unions, and that’s been his position throughout. So nothing has changed.
GUTHRIE: But David, can I just say, I’m looking at an interview right here that Jake Tapper of ABC did back in June of 2008, where Tapper asks him, “Does it bother you what California’s doing?” And the president responds, “No.”
AXELROD: Well, Savannah, I’m at a loss here, because I’m just sitting on a set, but I’d be happy to ship you the statements that the president made on — specifically on Proposition 8 and his opposition to it at the time. So you’re working off of incomplete information there.
How DAREyou correct your messiah, Savannah. It doesn’t matter if he’s a dirtbag liar. If Barry Hussein says two and two make five, then two and two make five. If Obama lies, then his lie becomes your truth. Understand?
TAPPER: OK, last one, and that is same-sex marriage is now going on in California.
OBAMA: Right.
TAPPER: You oppose same-sex marriage.
OBAMA: Yes.
TAPPER: Do you think that the fact that this is now going on in California, does that cause you to re-think your pledge to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act?
OBAMA: No. I still think that these are decisions that need to be made at a state and local level. I’m a strong supporter of civil unions. And I think that, you know, we’re involved in a national conversation about this issue.
You know, I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, but I also think that same-sex partners should be able to visit each other in hospitals, they should be able to transfer property, they should be able to get the same federal rights and benefits that are conferred onto married couples.
And so, you know, as president, my job is to make sure that the federal government is not discriminating and that we maintain the federal government’s historic role in not meddling with what states are doing when it comes to marriage law. That’s what I’ll do as president.
TAPPER: Does it bother you, what California’s doing?
And if you don’t think so, it’s only because you’re a racist.
For the official record, this is NOT David Axelrod “misspeaking.” This is David Axelrod, senior Obama official, continuing to enact the “official” White House position. Let’s go back to the spot that Axelrod said:
“… and he opposed it at the time. So we reiterated that position yesterday.”
Now who is this “we”? Do you think that it was just David Axelrod and the snake he always keeps in his pocket? No. The White House came out and lied. They came out and tried to correct the factual record, and whitewash what Obama had said so it would jive with his current line of crap. Just like they always do.
It was a coordinated, preplanned Obama administration lie.
Why did Obama say he opposed gay marriage? Because he’s a lying weasel who understands that if he were honest with the American people, they never would have elected him. And why is Obama trying to whitewash that previous dishonest denial? Because more and more Americans – especially independents – are abandoning him, and he has to build the support of his core base.
If Obama truly opposed same-sex marriage, as he has said, then why has he now appointed not one but two Supreme Court Justices who will – mark my words – vote for same-sex marriage when the case comes before the Supreme Court? Obama told the nation a lie to get votes because he knew his actual views would never allow him into the Oval Office.
MR. RUSSERT: Before you go, you know there’s been enormous speculation about your political future. Will you serve your full six-year term as U.S. senator from Illinois?
SEN.-ELECT OBAMA: Absolutely.
These aren’t just lies; they are massive lies straight from the pit of hell. They are the lies of a fundamentally and profoundly dishonest man. Not only are the mandates a tax increase on the backs of middle class Americans, but it is in fact the largest tax increase in the history of not only America but of the entire human race.
It’s not a question as to whether Obama has lied. It’s a question as to whether the man has ever told the truth.
At some point, if you have any capacity of honesty whatsoever in your being, you’ve got to get sick of Obama’s lies, and his incredibly cowardly weakness.
Barack Obama is widely seen as a complete failure. Businesses large and small are turning on him and his incredibly harmful economic policies. Even former staunch allies such as US News & World Report owner Mortimer Zuckerman and GE CEO Jeff Immelt have turned on him.
WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama sought on Wednesday to lift sagging confidence in his economic stewardship by enlisting the help of predecessor Bill Clinton, as a leading business group issued a scathing critique of the administration’s policies.
Clinton, who presided over the 1990s economic boom, joined Obama at a closed-door White House meeting with business leaders to encourage job creation and investment, including in clean energy.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a top business group, issued a rebuke of Obama’s economic agenda, accusing him and his Democrats in Congress of neglecting job creation and hampering growth with burdensome regulatory and tax policies.
What this country needs is a return to “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
All that matters in the mainstream media propagandist cesspool is that – while Barack Obama is increasingly recognized to be a complete economic failure and fraud – Bill Clinton is an economic hero who can therefore temporarily restore confidence in Obama and his failed policies until after the November election.
As usual, the media isn’t telling the full truth about Clinton. Or what happened to create the healthy economy of the 1990s.
The mainstream media is remarkably consistent: you can count upon them to never give Democrats the blame they deserve, and you can count upon them to never give Republicans the credit they deserve, about anything.
Bill Clinton is widely hailed for presiding over a great economy that featured a budget surplus.
If you took a quiz on government and were asked who writes the national budget, would you answer “The President” or “The Congress”?
The correct answer is “The Congress.”
The U.S. Constitution says that power belongs to Congress. All through our history, the Congress has exercised that power. The president cannot spend one thin dime that has not been approved by Congress.
What we don’t get told very was that Bill Clinton did such a miserable job running the country for his first two years in office that he suffered the largest (at least until this coming November) political defeat in American history when the Republicans swept into power over both the House and the Senate. We’re not told that Republicans continued to be the majority party in both the House and Senate during the years that the media assigned Clinton all the credit.
It was those Republicans who were most responsible for the good times that resulted. They are most certainly responsible for the budget surpluses that Democrats have congratulated themselves for ever since. The very first item on the Republicans’ agenda was the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
One quick example of these Republican changes was welfare reform. In his 1996 State of the Union, after losing even more fights, Bill Clinton was famously forced to admit, “The era of big government is over.” And Republicans were making that statement true by passing welfare reform legislation and an avalanche of other cost-cutting measures that made a budget surplus possible.
Two welfare reform bills were passed by the Republican Congress, which Clinton vetoed. Then a third bill was passed by the Republicans, which Clinton finally signed. The National Organization for Women noted:
“There is little difference between the welfare bill (H.R.4) which the president vetoed in January and the new plan H.R. 3734/S 1795.”
“In fact, President Clinton vetoed two largely similar prior versions of the bill.”
All rhetoric aside, Bill Clinton was FORCED to sign welfare reform into law by the Republican Congress. Just as he was FORCED into a balanced budget, and any subsequent budget surplus.
That said, we can also point out that “the Clinton budget surplus” also had a lot to do with budgetary smoke and mirrors.
And like I said, the same media that will never give Republicans credit for something good will never give Democrats blame for something bad.
Consider the last three plus years’ worth of reckless spending. The Bush administration has been blamed for much of this reckless spending, but it was actually a Democrat Congress that swept into power in 2006 (largely due to what we can now readily see was hypocritical demagoguery over the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina rather than any economic issue) which proceeded to spend America into the stratosphere:
For the record, the last budget from a Republican President AND a Republican Congress – FY-2007 (passed in 2006) – resulted in a$161 billion deficit at a time when unemployment was 4.6%. That’s what happened the last time the GOP was in control.
What happened when the Democrats took control in January 2007? Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi passed a FY-2008 budget that had a $459 billion deficit – nearly three times the deficit in the immediately previous Republican-passed budget. Three times. And this before the financial crisis that somehow “necessitated” all this massive spending.
Now, that’s a pretty crazy increase under Democrat control. But you aint seen nothin’ yet.
The Democrats passed a FY-2009 budget with a staggering, mind-boggling, totally reckless $1.42 TRILLION deficit.
The FY-2010 budget approved by Reid and Pelosi and signed by Obama had an estimated $1.6 TRILLION deficit.
The deficit has increased from $161 billion in the last budget before Democrats took control of the Congress (FY 2007) to $1.42 trillion in the most recent fiscal year (FY 2009)—an increase of $1.26 trillion or 782%.
We also suffered a budget shortfall of $94 billion in the month of June, which marks the first June in more than ten years (read, “encompassing the entire Bush presidency”). Bush’s success in raising revenues is bookended by two Democrat presidents who failed.
In the 12 years that Republicans controlled the House, the average deficit was $104 billion (average of final deficit/surplus FY1996-FY2007 data taken from Table F-1 below). In just 3 years under Democrats, the average deficit is now almost $1.1 trillion (average of final deficit/surplus FY2008 and 2009 data taken from Table F-1; FY2010 data taken from Table 1-3). Source: CBO January 2010 Budget and Economic Outlook
“If you look at the kind of deficit that we’ve incurred over the last three years that the Democrats have been in control of Congress, 60% of the overall deficit from the last ten years has occurred in that period. And frankly with the incurrence of the debt, we’ve seen very little result. That’s why we think we ought to choose another way.”
And yet the media falsely blame BUSH and Republicans for that spending, rather than Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the Democrat-controlled House and Senate, even though factually speaking the Democrats were ENTIRELY to blame for every single penny that was spent from January 2007 on. Because our Constitution forbids a president from spending; it is CONGRESS that spends.
I also point out in that article (and many others such as this one) that Democrats were primarily responsible for the disastrous policies that led to the 2008 collapse. They were basically completely responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their reckless policies, and then utterly refused to allow any reforms that would have averted the ensuing disaster.
In an honest world, Bill Clinton wouldn’t get anywhere near as much credit as he does for the strong economy of the 1990s. And Republicans wouldn’t get anywhere near as much blame as they received for the 2008 collapse.
The problem is, our mainstream media advances one outright lie after another. And the lies become “truth” through sheer repetition.
Obama isn’t calling upon Bill Clinton to actually offer advice on how to turn the economy around; he’s calling Clinton in as a prop. Bill Clinton was forced to change his failed policies when the Republicans swept into power. Hopefully, that is exactly what will happen beginning this November.
Are we taxed enough as Americans? Should we be outraged over the level of taxation? Read this and tell me why you shouldn’t be. And explain to me why the Democrats are right in confiscating more and more of Americans’ property, and Republicans are wrong in trying to allow citizens to hold on to more of what they earn:
Here is the scenario: A musical composer applied for a job with a theatrical production company to write the music and lyrics for a new stage production. The arrangement was, lyrics and music and all artistic rights in return for a compensation package of $100,000. The composer agreed, thinking this would give him an opportunity to purchase that very special collector’s automobile he had been dreaming about for years and is now available for $95,000.
At the end of his contract the production company was happy with the composer’s work and wrote the promised check to the composer’s financial manager. Upon the manager’s presentation of the composer’s paycheck, the composer became very angry and retorted “They promised me $100,000 and this check is for only $49,560 what happened to the rest of the money.”
The financial manager replied, “The rest of the money went for taxes. Your government has determined they are entitled to share in the fruits of your labors. You were paid $100,000 and that placed you in the federal 28% tax bracket so that left you with $72,000. Then we had to withhold federal self-employment FICA taxes of 12.4% and medicare taxes of 5.8% and those taxes totaled another 18.2% or $18,200 so that left you with $53,800. And, the State of Arizona’s share of your labors is another 4.24% or $4,240 so that left you with $49,560. Here’s your check, go spend it wisely.”
Well, there goes my dream of the special collector’s car so I guess I will have to settle for a new Cadillac that I can purchase in these troubled times for $45,000 and I will have nearly $5,000 left over which will be enough for my wife and me to drive from Phoenix to San Diego in our brand-new car and purchase a cruise on the Mexican Riviera. Wine, dine and sunshine. Life is good.
Off to the Cadillac dealer and after selecting the model and options and negotiating the price to $45,000 the composer said “I’ll take it. Hooray!”
The dealer handed the bill to the composer for $49,503. The composer shouted “What? We agreed on $45,000. There goes my cruise” The Cadillac dealer said “Arizona is entitled to share in the fruits of your labors and their share of your purchase is State, County and City sales taxes of 8.3%, or $3,735 and Registration and License fees of $768 for a total Arizona share of $4,503 and the dealer charges $50 as a documentation fee bringing the total purchase price to $49,553. Here is a check for $7.00 as change for the $49,560 check you gave us. Go spend it wisely.”
This might be a true story. Somewhere in this vast country a similar scenario has happened.
Now, let’s look at the big picture. A man worked and earned $100,000 and governments took $50,440 right off the top leaving the worker with $49,560 to spend. When he spent it, governments grabbed another $4,503 in additional taxes. This is a total of $54,947 (or 55%) of this worker’s earnings. Plus, do not forget, to have $4.500 left over to pay the state governments their share of his purchase, the worker had to earn $9,000 BEFORE income taxes. Should you wish to purchase a $45,000 automobile, you must earn $100,000 to do so.
Your governments tax you when you earn money and tax you when you spend money. And, if you do not spend it, they will tax your estate when you die. When the George Bush tax cuts expire next year and the Death Tax returns to 55%, your government will have taxed the first 50% when you earned it, and then grab the remaining 50% when you die.
And the Obama Democrats want more!
It never occurs to the government to stop spending.
New Jersey residents paid 11.8%, topping the charts. New Yorkers were close behind, paying 11.7%, and Connecticut was third at 11.1%. The top 10 were rounded out by Maryland (10.8%), Hawaii (10.6%), California (10.5%), Ohio (10.4%). Vermont (10.3%), Wisconsin (10.2%) and Rhode Island (10.2%).
How do liberals define stealing? If the government seizes my property, just because it has the power to do so, how is that not stealing? How is it not stealing when the welfare-wanting masses vote to seize the assets of people who obtained their wealth through hard work and sound investment while they were sitting on the couch in front of the boob tube and pissing their money away with compulsive buying?
It’s simply amazing how false promises and demagogic accusations have managed to sway people to vote against their values – and for people who will undermine those values.
Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” In voting for Democrat total control, the American people essentially decided to send the United States crashing down.
As much as Democrats shrilly demagogued the Bush spending (which actually WAS outrageous), they are now entirely responsible for spending which utterly dwarfs anything Bush ever dreamed of imposing.
Consider that Obama spent more in just 20 months in office than Bush did in his entire 8 years.
Mr. Obama cannot dismiss critics by pointing to President George W. Bush’s decision to run $2.9 trillion in deficits while fighting two wars and dealing with 9/11 and Katrina. Mr. Obama will surpass Mr. Bush’s eight-year total in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt. If America “cannot and will not sustain” deficits like Mr. Bush’s, as Mr. Obama said during the campaign, how can Mr. Obama sustain the geometrically larger ones he’s flogging?
Incredibly, I routinely continue to hear Democrat politicians blame Bush for his spending – which is tantamount to these Democrats admitting that they are hypocrites, liars, and absolute demagogues.
And where does it end?
With the American experiment in a democratic republic going the way of the Dodo bird.
We voted to destroy ourselves by spending ourselves into bankruptcy and economy collapse. And Obama has been hard at work bringing that “hope and change” about. And all it takes to understand WHY this outcome is actually “hope and change” is the realization that a great many liberal “intellectuals” have yearned for the destruction of the United States of America for decades.
What will be the result of all this insane spending, and not very far off? A quote from a CNS News story should awaken anyone who thinks the future will be rosy:
By 2019, the CBO said, a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will go to pay down the national debt. This means that in future years, the government could owe its creditors more than the goods and services that the entire economy can produce.
Which is why Rep. Eric Cantor was right when he said:
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Minority Whip) on ABC’s “This Week”: “If you look at the kind of deficit that we’ve incurred over the last three years that the Democrats have been in control of Congress, 60% of the overall deficit from the last ten years has occurred in that period. And frankly with the incurrence of the debt, we’ve seen very little result. That’s why we think we ought to choose another way.”
But we didn’t go the Republican way: we went the Democrats’ way. And it should be rather obvious by now that it was the WRONG WAY.
And so the day is soon coming when Americans will be called upon to support massive tax increases such that the United States has never seen in its entire history, or else go completely broke and go the way of Greece. But of course it will have been high government taxation and even higher government spending that broke us to begin with.
Liberals are going to continue to steal from the classes that they demonize – as befits the “from-each-according-to-his-ability-to-each-according-to-his-need” communists they quintessentially are – and they will continue to steal from generations yet unborn (at least those whom they haven’t murdered in their abortion mills) until there is nothing left of this nation but a hollowed-out shell.
That’s right, craven average American liberal. Pretty soon, the Democrats won’t be taxing the other guy; they’re going to come after YOU. Not only because Democrats have spent too much to count on the wealthy to pay the load, but because the same argument that justified stealing the wealth of the rich in America is the identical same argument that will justify stealing YOUR wealth from YOU. Just as the rich have far more than the average American, the average American has FAR more than the average Zimbabwean, who lives on less than $100 a year. And the day is coming when you’re going to be taxed up the wazoo according to your own morally idiotic argument that you used to seize the wealth of your fellow Americans.
It will mean the destruction of American in every way, shape, and form, but at least I’d be able to see the look on the faces of all the people who thought that it was fair to force the top 50% of taxpayers to pay more than 97% of the taxes so that the other half can get off completely free and live like parasites.
I want to see the look on your faces when “the President of the world” starts going after what you’ve saved for yourselves and your children. And many of you will have to demonstrate what collocate hypocrites you’ve been all along when you try to protect your assets from a government seizure of wealth that finally went too far for your comfort by going after you.
CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.
Last week, President Obama signed historic health care reform legislation into law — but his legislative success doesn’t seem to have helped his image with the American public.
The latest CBS News Poll, conducted between March 29 and April 1, found Americans unhappier than ever with Mr. Obama’s handling of health care – and still worried about the state of the economy.
President Obama’s overall job approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 44 percent, down five points from late March, just before the health bill’s passage in the House of Representatives. It’s down 24 points since his all-time high last April. Forty-one percent of those polled said they disapproved of the president’s performance.
More results from this CBS News Poll will be released in Friday’s broadcast of the Evening News with Katie Couric, which airs at 6:30 p.m. Eastern.
When it comes to health care, the President’s approval rating is even lower — and is also a new all-time low. Only 34 percent approved, while 55 percent said they disapproved.
Americans are still worried about the economy, with 84 percent telling CBS they thought it was still in bad condition. However, even that high number represents an improvement: nine in ten thought the economy was bad during the last half of 2008 and at the beginning of 2009, when Mr. Obama assumed the Presidency.
Concern about job loss remains high; slightly more Americans now (35 percent) than in February (31 percent) were “very concerned” that someone in their household would lose a job. Nearly six in ten Americans said they were at least “somewhat concerned” about a job loss.
As has often been the case, lower-income Americans tend to be the most concerned about job loss.
This concern is reflected in yet another low approval rating — this time for the President’s handling of the economy. Just 42 percent said they approved of how President Obama is handling the economy, only one point above January’s all-time low. Half of the public disapproves.
It gets even better as we learn how truly outraged independents are over the incredibly polarizing and partisan tactics this incredibly dishonest, cynical weasel has used to “fundamentally transform” a free market economy into socialism. From the Washington Times:
President Obama and congressional Democrats face an uphill climb to reclaim the support of independent voters who vaulted them to the White House and huge majorities in Congress in 2008.
At the end of the bitter, intensely partisan battle to pass Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul plan, independent voters, once captivated by hopeful campaign promises, are feeling burned and appear eager to oust Democrats in November’s midterm elections.
This is the time that we need to take a page from both Barack Obama AND Sarah Palin.
First we need to get “Fired up, ready to go.” And then we need to RELOAD before getting fired up again. And again. And again. And again, until the worst and most radical and most unAmerican president in history is long gone to go along with the Democrat disaster in Congress.
Obama and the Democrats KNEW that ObamaCare was reviled by the American people; and then they usurped the will of the people and used every parliamentary trick in the book to impose it anyway.
Then we learned that thousands of companies were going to be forced to take billions of dollars in writedowns forced upon them by ObamaCare. The tally so far:
Company Charge
AT&T $1B
Verizon $970M
John Deere $150M
Boeing $150M
Prudential $100M
Caterpillar $100M
Lockheed Martin $96M
3M $85M
Exelon Corp. $65M
AK Steel $31M
Eaton $25M
IL Tool Works $22M
Xcel Energy $17M
Valero $15M
Honeywell $13M
Goodrich $10M
Allegheny Technologies $5M
The above is a gift that is going to keep giving – or rather keep taking profits away from businesses and jobs away from citizens.
Then we saw that ObamaCare had prompted a massive sell-off of US Treasuries:
Sell-off in US Treasuries raises sovereign debt fears Investors are braced for a further sell-off in US Treasuries after dramatic moves last week raised fears that the surfeit of US government debt is starting to saturate bond markets.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 9:06PM BST 28 Mar 2010
The yield on 10-year Treasuries – the benchmark price of global capital – surged 30 basis points in just two days last week to over 3.9pc, the highest level since the Lehman crisis. Alan Greenspan, ex-head of the US Federal Reserve, said the abrupt move may be “the canary in the coal mine”, a warning to Washington that it can no longer borrow with impunity. He said there is a “huge overhang of federal debt, which we have never seen before”.
David Rosenberg at Gluskin Sheff said Treasury yields have ratcheted up 90 basis points since December in a “destabilising fashion”, for the wrong reasons. Growth has not been strong enough to revive fears of inflation. Commodity prices peaked in January and US home sales have fallen for the last three months, pointing to a double-dip in the housing market.
And why is this?
The trigger for last week’s sell-off was poor demand at Treasury auctions, linked to the passage of the Obama health care reform. Critics say it will add $1 trillion (£670bn) to America’s debt over the next decade, a claim disputed fiercely by Democrats.
Dispute away, you loathsome liars. But the facts are on the table.
What we are seeing is Thelma & Louise policies. Those are the kind of policies that see us insanely driving off a cliff at top speed.
Democrats own all of this now. They can’t blame anybody but themselves, because they were the only ones who voted for it, and who polarized the country to ram it down our throats.
The unemployment rate “is still terribly high and is going to stay unacceptably high for a very long time,” Geithner said.
Of course, if unemployment is going to stay “unacceptably high” for “a very long time,” you’re pretty much accepting it, aren’t you?
You can accept an “unacceptably” awful one-party rule that is destroying the American way of life chunk by chunk, or you can refuse to accept the “unacceptable” and vote these radicals out of office in seven months.
Democrats are betting that you are too stupid and too short-sighted to hold them accountable.
Start Thinking Right 