"RECOVERY WILL TAKE YEARS, NOT MONTHS"... President Obama
If that’s so, why then do we hear that the crisis is so imminent we must spend over a trillion dollars now and more soon? Why is the money Obama wants to spend not going to improve the economy but rather on his socialist plans? Why is most of the money to be spent in the next two to three years and not now if we need an immediate “stimulus” to improve our economy and avoid the “worst depression in years”?
We hear the economy is in a crisis not seen since the Great Depression. Credit is frozen, consumer purchasing power is in decline, in the last four months the country has lost two million jobs and we are expected to lose another 3 to 5 million in the next year. President Obama says unless something is done, we will have a complete financial meltdown and that this bill is the first crucial step in a concerted effort to create and save 3 to 4 million jobs, jumpstart our economy.
Just in case Obama’s plan does not succeed however, Obama says “The economy is in such trouble that, even with passage of this bill, unemployment rates are expected to rise to between eight and nine percent this year.” “Without this bill, unemployment could explode to near twelve percent. With passage of this bill, we will face a large deficit for years to come. Without it, those deficits will be devastating and we face the risk of economic chaos. Tough choices have been made in this legislation and fiscal discipline will demand more tough choices in years to come.”
Last fall President Bush and Democrats led the fight for stimulus bill whose immediate passage was critical. Obama insisted, the Democrats insisted, eventually RINO Republicans insisted. And without reading the bill conferred the treasury car the unfettered power to give away $750 billion without oversight or any control whatsoever. With $750 billion in hand, the government initiated nationalization banks with other industries to follow. Without doubt, the Obama socialist plan is to nationalize all 8,500 banks in this country in due course.
We now have the next “Stimulus Bill” with even broader aims than the first. Without adding the other costs in the total, the Obama stimulus plan approved by the House devotes $825 billion more to the socialist plans to extend government control. This amount is also misleading; by the time all interest and other costs are taken into account the total will be over $1.3 trillion.
The first stimulus bill was said to be for the purpose of buying “toxic mortgages” held by banks which devalued their portfolios and prevented them from lending. However only a few days after the bill became law, banks receiving government money did not buy toxic mortgages, instead the money was used to shore up their balance sheets, buy other banks and give management enormous bonuses. Why should we believe them now?
Now comes the Second Stimulus Bill but this one does not conceal the fraud it perpetuates, it come right out in the open with the allocations in the billions that have nothing to do with improving the economy, restoring employment and avoiding further job losses. If you don’t believe me, tell me how the following will generate more jobs, increase credit for people and business and restore buyer confidence.
The following allocations are reprinted from the House-Approved Obama Stimulus Package,
Some highlights of the package:
• $850 billion total (as of 1/15/09)
• $ 90 billion for infrastructure (most wont be spent for two or more years due to government regulations, e.g. environmental)
• $ 87 billion Medicaid aid to states
• $ 79 billion school districts/public colleges to prevent cutbacks
• $ 54 billion for research to encourage energy production from renewable sources
• $ 41 billion for additional school funding ($14 billion for school modernizations and repairs, $13 billion for Title I, $13 billion for IDEA special education funding, $1 billion for education technology)
• $ 24 billion for "health information technology to prevent medical mistakes, provide better care to patients and introduce cost-saving efficiencies" and "to provide for preventative care and to evaluate the most effective healthcare treatments."
• $ 16 billion for science/technology ($10 billion for science facilities, research, and instrumentation; $6 billion to expand broadband to rural areas)
• $ 15 billion to increase Pell grants by $500 • $ 6 billion for the ambiguous "higher education modernization."
[Source: Committee on Appropriations: January 15, 2009]
If this is not enough to impress you about the inability to accomplish the goals stated by President Obama and his supporters by the huge expenditure of taxpayer money, then also consider this:
Energy
$32 billion: Funding for "smart electricity grid" to reduce waste $16 billion: Renewable energy tax cuts and a tax credit for research and development on energy-related work, and a multiyear extension of renewable energy production tax credit $6 billion: Funding to weatherize modest-income homes
Science and Technology
$10 billion: Science facilities $6 billion: High-speed Internet access for rural and underserved areas
Infrastructure
$30 billion: Building and Transportation projects $31 billion: Construction and repair of federal buildings and other public infrastructure $19 billion: Water projects $10 billion: Rail and mass transit projects
Education
$41 billion: Grants to local school districts $79 billion: State fiscal relief to prevent cuts in state aid $21 billion: School modernization ($15.6 billion to increase the Pell grant by $500; $6 billion for higher education modernization)
Health Care
$39 billion: Subsidies to health insurance for unemployed; providing coverage through Medicaid $87 billion: Help to states with Medicaid $20 billion: Modernization of health-information technology systems $4.1 billion: Preventative care
Jobless Benefits
$43 billion for increased unemployment benefits and job training. $39 billion to support those who lose their jobs by helping them to pay the cost of keeping their employer provided healthcare under COBRA and providing short-term options to be covered by Medicaid. $20 billion to increase the food stamp benefit by over 13% in order to help defray rising food costs.
Taxes
*$500 per worker, $1,000 per couple tax cut for two years, costing about $140 billion; to all including illegal aliens and those not paying any taxes.
*Greater access to the $1,000-per-child tax credit for the working poor.
*Expansion of the earned-income tax credit to include families with three children
*A $2,500 college tuition tax credit.
*Repeal of a requirement that a $7,500 first-time homebuyer tax credit be paid back over time.
[Sources: Associated Press: Highlights of Senate economic stimulus plan; January 23, 2009; WSJ: Stimulus Package Unveiled; January 16, 2009; Committee on Appropriations: January 15, 2009]
But all this money will not be spent now! The government will be able to spend only one-fourth of the proposed $850 billion economic stimulus plan until after 2010, according to a preliminary report by the Congressional Business Office that suggests it may take longer than expected to boost the economy. The government would spend about $26 billion of the money this year and $110 billion more next year, the report said. About $103 billion would be spent in 2011, while $53 billion would be spent in 2012 and the rest between 2013 and 2019.
• Less than $5 billion of the $30 billion set aside for highway spending would be spent within the next two years, the CBO said. • Only $26 billion out of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be delivered into the economy by the Sept. 30 end of the budget year, less than 7 percent. • Just one in seven dollars of a huge $18.5 billion investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy programs would be spent within a year and a half.
• About $907 million of a $6 billion plan to expand broadband access in rural and other underserved areas would be spent by 2011, CBO said.
• Just one-fourth of clean drinking water projects can be completed by October of next year.
• $275 billion worth of tax cuts to 95 percent of filers and a huge infusion of help for state governments is to be distributed into the economy more quickly. Of course these are not actually tax cuts; this money would be another welfare payment to those not paying any taxes at all.
And who will be getting the taxpayer largess (via the stimulus plan)? Many recipients will be states, community organizations and Churches! [Think “ACORN”]
Imagine! - Another Obama ‘not so stealth plan’ to reward those who put him in office and produced Democrat majorities in the Senate and House – the gall of it all.
The media pours and the Obama-adoring public drinks the Kool-Aid.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Wishing President Obama success – why?
It has become popular to wish our new president success. The country’s elite can’t wait for the Obama agenda to come to life which is understandable since they are all liberals and champion Obama’s socialist agenda however when Republicans voice this mantra it shows how the party of Reagan no longer exists. Reagan explained his switch in political parties by saying “he didn’t leave the Democrat Party the party left him”. Many conservatives could say the same thing but there is no party to switch to so the only solution is to change the Republican Party.
What kind of Republican can wish President Obama success? Its one thing to support the office of the elected president and it is quite another to support his agenda and political goals. The “change” Obama campaigned on and intends to make is not good for our capitalist and free market system, our constitutional law and government and certainly not good for America. Wherever socialism has been tried it has been a failure, not only in economic terms but also in human terms. For anyone other than liberals and socialist-minded people to wish President Obama success is wishing for America’s failure as the single bastion of freedom in the world; the only country where government does not yet have complete control of the lives of its citizens.
We don’t have to wait for the first “one hundred days” of his presidency to see where it is going; in less than a week Obama has reduced our nation’s security and set us up for the greatest expansion of government in our history. Nationalization of banks is well under way.
America’s safety from terrorism has been diminished rapidly as Obama seeks to reverse the security measures put in place by the George Bush administration in ways whose outcome is totally predictable. Closing the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp which is a detention center operated by Joint Task Force since 2001 without any plan to keep the detained terrorists from rejoining the war against terror is the height of irresponsibility. President Barack Obama announced on January 21, 2009 that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility will be shut down within a year but acknowledged there was not yet a plan for dealing with the terrorists. The fact that 61 detainees who were released found there way back to the war front to kill innocents and American soldiers seems to have been ignored by the president in his zeal to appeal to America’s critics.
Then there is Obama’s "Economic Recovery and Reinvestment" Plan, which is his hardcore liberal plan to tax productive Americans to give “tax reductions” to those not paying any taxes. At the same time, he will have to "print money", thus diluting the value of the dollar, which will cause hyperinflation. Lenin said "The way to crush the bourgeoisie [the middle-class] is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation"; Obama is on track to follow Lenin’s advice.
While weakening America's national security, he assisted world-wide genocide by lifting the ban on taxpayer-funded economic aid to countries that will use the funds for abortions on demand - since most abortions are performed on minorities.
Obama is reaching out to terrorists by replacing stern action with hopeless diplomacy, and leaving Israel to fend for itself in a soon to be nuclear-armed Iran; not to mention supporting Hamas by asking (demanding?) Israel open Gaza borders which will enable Hamas to more easily rearm for the next war.
And he did all this in less than a week. Do you still want to wish President Obama success?
What kind of Republican can wish President Obama success? Its one thing to support the office of the elected president and it is quite another to support his agenda and political goals. The “change” Obama campaigned on and intends to make is not good for our capitalist and free market system, our constitutional law and government and certainly not good for America. Wherever socialism has been tried it has been a failure, not only in economic terms but also in human terms. For anyone other than liberals and socialist-minded people to wish President Obama success is wishing for America’s failure as the single bastion of freedom in the world; the only country where government does not yet have complete control of the lives of its citizens.
We don’t have to wait for the first “one hundred days” of his presidency to see where it is going; in less than a week Obama has reduced our nation’s security and set us up for the greatest expansion of government in our history. Nationalization of banks is well under way.
America’s safety from terrorism has been diminished rapidly as Obama seeks to reverse the security measures put in place by the George Bush administration in ways whose outcome is totally predictable. Closing the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp which is a detention center operated by Joint Task Force since 2001 without any plan to keep the detained terrorists from rejoining the war against terror is the height of irresponsibility. President Barack Obama announced on January 21, 2009 that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility will be shut down within a year but acknowledged there was not yet a plan for dealing with the terrorists. The fact that 61 detainees who were released found there way back to the war front to kill innocents and American soldiers seems to have been ignored by the president in his zeal to appeal to America’s critics.
Then there is Obama’s "Economic Recovery and Reinvestment" Plan, which is his hardcore liberal plan to tax productive Americans to give “tax reductions” to those not paying any taxes. At the same time, he will have to "print money", thus diluting the value of the dollar, which will cause hyperinflation. Lenin said "The way to crush the bourgeoisie [the middle-class] is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation"; Obama is on track to follow Lenin’s advice.
While weakening America's national security, he assisted world-wide genocide by lifting the ban on taxpayer-funded economic aid to countries that will use the funds for abortions on demand - since most abortions are performed on minorities.
Obama is reaching out to terrorists by replacing stern action with hopeless diplomacy, and leaving Israel to fend for itself in a soon to be nuclear-armed Iran; not to mention supporting Hamas by asking (demanding?) Israel open Gaza borders which will enable Hamas to more easily rearm for the next war.
And he did all this in less than a week. Do you still want to wish President Obama success?
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Who's better to take care of the horses than a reformed horse thief?
In one respect Timothy Geithner is just like most of us; he doesn’t want to pay taxes and he will do all he can to send the government as little as possible; however that’s where the similarity ends. Timothy (May I call you Timothy Mr. Geithner?) will likely be the next Secretary of the Treasury and will be in charge of the Internal Revenue Service and the rest of us will not.
It has been revealed that Timothy is a tax cheat. In Joe Biden’s lexicon, Timothy is not a patriotic American because Biden says “it is patriotic to pay taxes” and Timothy did what he could to pay the least amount of taxes even if it meant a little bit of cheating. The problem is that, like pregnancy, a little bit of cheating is still cheating. Despite a record of failing to comply with the tax code, President Obama wants Timothy to be the Treasury Secretary. In that position Timothy will be responsible through the chain of command for catching tax cheats.
This may sound bad to the average tax-paying wonk but there is historical precedent for this kind of thing. In the Wild West before failing to pay taxes was a crime but there were lots of other crimes, many towns being in need of a Sheriff, looked for the meanest, baddest outlaw they could find to pin the Sheriff badge on. It makes sense in a way; who is better to be in charge of the horses than a horse thief; of course this presupposes he is a “reformed” horse thief.
We have evidence that Timothy may be a reformed tax cheat. Just after or just before being named Treasury Secretary Timothy paid the taxes he avoided paying in his pre-Treasury Secretary life. According to the Washington Times, some of the delinquent taxes were “paid only after he learned that Mr. Obama was considering him for the post.” At the very least this shows Timothy is conversant with the tax code he sought to avoid.
So here we have a situation where President Obama wants to have a known tax cheat in charge of Treasury and the IRS and all the Obama worshipers fall in line and say Timothy was only a small tax cheat and besides he is probably only guilty of being “sloppy”. In a just world all taxpayers would be entitled to the same leeway and be able to use the “Timothy” defense if ever accused of cheating on their taxes. Unfortunately the world in not just and Timothy’s IRS will not accord you the same forbearance and will likely put your ass in jail.
With all the possible untarnished folks in the US who could be designated by President Obama to be Secretary of the Treasury, a good question is why did Obama settle on Timothy and continue to press for approval of his appointment?
The reason may lie just beneath the surface and requires an understanding of the international monetary system, and Obama’s socialist goals.
We have already seen the plans of the president to spend trillions of fiat dollars to accomplish socialist aims of expanding government ownership and control while destroying the free market system in the process. Sadly, former president George Bush led the way for Obama by doing Obama’s bidding to free-up billions of dollars for his successor’s use while admitting “he abandoned his free market principles” in doing so.
A socialist president needs access to lots and lots of money. Although through willing accomplices in the Federal Reserve Bank he can arrange for the treasury printing presses to roll 24/7, there is a small problem of how to do that without bringing Humpty Dumpty and his wall tumbling down. Obviously taxes cannot be raised sufficiently high to support the additional trillions of dollars to be spent so something else must take the place.
It is no secret but only whispered about that foreigners own enormous amounts of US debt; so much debt in fact that we can NEVER pay off all the money owed. Therefore, why is our debt purchased at all; it is for two reasons.
One reason is that those having hoarded or otherwise accumulated boatloads of dollars have nothing they can do with the largesse but put it somewhere it won’t be stolen; some countries steal purchased debt by devaluating their money or by out-and-out defaulting. At present the United States seems to be the best mattress to put money in because of less likelihood of voluntary devaluation and less chance it will tear up the IOU’s.
Another reason foreigners make the financially unsound decision to buy US debt is because it maintains their own economy and failure to continue buying debt will destroy there biggest buyer of home made goods and services. Without such a market, their economy will shrivel and cause economic and in many cases political problems.
Probably the best example is China. The US owes a lot of money (to put it mildly) to China who buys US securities and other debt instruments with their trade surplus. Dollars earned this way have only limited use; they can purchase property, i.e. businesses, which they are, or they can store it away hoping that it will not disappear in value. However there is always the risk China (and others) will stop or at least decrease their investment in US debt. If this happens then Obama’s socialist house of cards falls down. Not only will that affect the ability to keep the dollar printing presses rolling, but the economy, already shaky, will collapse and the messiah’s halo will be tarnished, or worse, Democrats may lose future elections.
Enter Timothy Geithner; Obama’s Chinese-speaking Treasury Secretary nominee.
Timothy has to become Treasury Secretary and be protected because he’s one of the go-to guys on the matter of getting the Communist Chinese to buy our debt. China is an important component of Obama socialist plans for the purpose of financing never-ending bailouts, government takeovers of businesses and even for the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” Not only does Geithner speak Chinese, he spent some time living there. Plus, he’s a member of the secretive “Group of 30” that includes the governor of the powerful People’s Bank of China, the central bank of China.
So Timothy will be approved by the Democrat Senate and become the Secretary of the Treasury; some may howl but who listens to losers.
It has been revealed that Timothy is a tax cheat. In Joe Biden’s lexicon, Timothy is not a patriotic American because Biden says “it is patriotic to pay taxes” and Timothy did what he could to pay the least amount of taxes even if it meant a little bit of cheating. The problem is that, like pregnancy, a little bit of cheating is still cheating. Despite a record of failing to comply with the tax code, President Obama wants Timothy to be the Treasury Secretary. In that position Timothy will be responsible through the chain of command for catching tax cheats.
This may sound bad to the average tax-paying wonk but there is historical precedent for this kind of thing. In the Wild West before failing to pay taxes was a crime but there were lots of other crimes, many towns being in need of a Sheriff, looked for the meanest, baddest outlaw they could find to pin the Sheriff badge on. It makes sense in a way; who is better to be in charge of the horses than a horse thief; of course this presupposes he is a “reformed” horse thief.
We have evidence that Timothy may be a reformed tax cheat. Just after or just before being named Treasury Secretary Timothy paid the taxes he avoided paying in his pre-Treasury Secretary life. According to the Washington Times, some of the delinquent taxes were “paid only after he learned that Mr. Obama was considering him for the post.” At the very least this shows Timothy is conversant with the tax code he sought to avoid.
So here we have a situation where President Obama wants to have a known tax cheat in charge of Treasury and the IRS and all the Obama worshipers fall in line and say Timothy was only a small tax cheat and besides he is probably only guilty of being “sloppy”. In a just world all taxpayers would be entitled to the same leeway and be able to use the “Timothy” defense if ever accused of cheating on their taxes. Unfortunately the world in not just and Timothy’s IRS will not accord you the same forbearance and will likely put your ass in jail.
With all the possible untarnished folks in the US who could be designated by President Obama to be Secretary of the Treasury, a good question is why did Obama settle on Timothy and continue to press for approval of his appointment?
The reason may lie just beneath the surface and requires an understanding of the international monetary system, and Obama’s socialist goals.
We have already seen the plans of the president to spend trillions of fiat dollars to accomplish socialist aims of expanding government ownership and control while destroying the free market system in the process. Sadly, former president George Bush led the way for Obama by doing Obama’s bidding to free-up billions of dollars for his successor’s use while admitting “he abandoned his free market principles” in doing so.
A socialist president needs access to lots and lots of money. Although through willing accomplices in the Federal Reserve Bank he can arrange for the treasury printing presses to roll 24/7, there is a small problem of how to do that without bringing Humpty Dumpty and his wall tumbling down. Obviously taxes cannot be raised sufficiently high to support the additional trillions of dollars to be spent so something else must take the place.
It is no secret but only whispered about that foreigners own enormous amounts of US debt; so much debt in fact that we can NEVER pay off all the money owed. Therefore, why is our debt purchased at all; it is for two reasons.
One reason is that those having hoarded or otherwise accumulated boatloads of dollars have nothing they can do with the largesse but put it somewhere it won’t be stolen; some countries steal purchased debt by devaluating their money or by out-and-out defaulting. At present the United States seems to be the best mattress to put money in because of less likelihood of voluntary devaluation and less chance it will tear up the IOU’s.
Another reason foreigners make the financially unsound decision to buy US debt is because it maintains their own economy and failure to continue buying debt will destroy there biggest buyer of home made goods and services. Without such a market, their economy will shrivel and cause economic and in many cases political problems.
Probably the best example is China. The US owes a lot of money (to put it mildly) to China who buys US securities and other debt instruments with their trade surplus. Dollars earned this way have only limited use; they can purchase property, i.e. businesses, which they are, or they can store it away hoping that it will not disappear in value. However there is always the risk China (and others) will stop or at least decrease their investment in US debt. If this happens then Obama’s socialist house of cards falls down. Not only will that affect the ability to keep the dollar printing presses rolling, but the economy, already shaky, will collapse and the messiah’s halo will be tarnished, or worse, Democrats may lose future elections.
Enter Timothy Geithner; Obama’s Chinese-speaking Treasury Secretary nominee.
Timothy has to become Treasury Secretary and be protected because he’s one of the go-to guys on the matter of getting the Communist Chinese to buy our debt. China is an important component of Obama socialist plans for the purpose of financing never-ending bailouts, government takeovers of businesses and even for the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” Not only does Geithner speak Chinese, he spent some time living there. Plus, he’s a member of the secretive “Group of 30” that includes the governor of the powerful People’s Bank of China, the central bank of China.
So Timothy will be approved by the Democrat Senate and become the Secretary of the Treasury; some may howl but who listens to losers.
Monday, January 19, 2009
“Global warming” isn’t about global warming
“Global warming” has nothing to do with climate change; at least not as practiced by politicians, would be entrepreneurs and the global elite. Environmentalism is now the home of socialists, ex-communists and anti-Americans.
For generations there have been those who would like to destroy American freedom as provided by the constitution and replace it with all-inclusive government control over lives. Such people include some with genuine motives of societal improvement but they are useful idiots to the deliberate revisionists bent on destroying the free market system, capitalism and individual freedom. They have tried for many years to accomplish their goals but until now Americans saw through these efforts and voted to keep America and Americans free; free to run their lives, free to make their own decisions about how they live and how to spend money they earn and free to benefit by working harder than others and free to make mistakes – but those days are gone.
The new order takes advantage of the human condition to respond to calamitous dangers, real or unreal. When faced with the equivalent of the “war of the worlds”, people join together under any leadership that promises to win that war regardless of the sacrifices they must make and the freedoms they will lose. To be successful as a savior to the people only requires a convincing plot that makes people believe they are in dire danger unless “something is done” which inevitably requires “change” from the alleged errors of the past.
The latest “crisis” is financial; that is, unless trillions of dollars are given to selected businesses and industries, the world as we know it will end. Depression and soup lines akin to those of the 1930’s will occur again and everyone will be worse off unless the government “fixes” the crisis. Of course, if the fix includes government take over of businesses, so be it; at least there is a plan to make the crisis go away. It doesn’t matter if the program fails, it doesn’t matter if there is no accountability for the money given away and it doesn’t even matter if those receiving the money refuse to say what they did with it.
This latest “crisis” should serve as a good primer for the worst scam perpetrated on the world in history – the “global warming” crisis and the need to save the planet from ourselves.
While many scientists say the script about global warming is fallacious, and current weather across the globe has often reached record low temperatures, the World Meteorological Organization says cold weather does not mean that global warming has abated.
Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, Michel Jarraud, says people should not confuse local weather variability with climate change. Just because people in Europe and in the United States are shivering does not mean global warming has stopped. He says the trend toward global warming is still there. "I think we have to be careful not to interpret any single event as a proof ... that warming has stopped. When scientists look at the global warming, they take into account many, many old possible available evidence. So, we cannot explain any single phenomenon by one single cause."
Jarraud says average global surface temperatures have climbed significantly since 1850, when historical weather statistics were first recorded"; but does not explain how a world with fewer people, no SUV’s and considerably less greenhouse gas emitters, caused the planet to warm by human activity.
The shame is that this propaganda was brought to you by the Voice Of America, using taxpayer dollars which is against a federal law that prohibits the federal government from engaging in propaganda against its own citizenry (§ 1461–1a. Ban on domestic activities by United States Information Agency). This is known as the Smith-Mundt Act, which authorized the creation of information programs by the USIA, including Voice of America.
The propaganda from the VOA is merely one of many efforts by the government to convince us that we are responsible for the approaching catastrophe of global warming; the message comes from congress, the executive branch and the courts (we cannot forget the U.S. Supreme Court decision that carbon dioxide can be regulated by the government); all of this despite mounting evidence that the sun is responsible for our climate and not us.
James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is one of the alarmists spreading the “gospel” of man-made global warming. I call it the gospel because it has become a religion whose tenets must be accepted on faith not facts. But the real agenda of the these acolytes is not saving the planet, it is to change our way of life, build enormous riches for a few, give more control over our lives to the government and lead us into global government at the loss of our sovereignty.
Hansen and others in government as well as the 44th president want to impose a carbon tax, ostensibly as a means for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide; a gas we exhale and a gas that's allegedly causing a dangerous greenhouse effect and warming trend. They want a tax levied "at the well-head or port of entry" from where it "will then appropriately affect all products and activities that use fossil fuels." (Hansen)
Everyone acknowledges that the tax will have "near-term, mid-term, and long-term" effects on "lifestyle choices" but governments around the world are not concerned about that because that’s the goal. As Investors Business Daily says big government advocates are not concerned with the planet itself, they want to demonstrate “how such coercion will rearrange the lives and manage the behavior of a people who should be free of state coercion”.
The goal of the environmentalist left is nothing short of collectivist redistribution of wealth (remember Obama’s call for “spreading the wealth”?). The intention is that a carbon tax be another source of government income by placing the burden to the public in "equal shares on a per capita basis." (Hansen)
According to socialist doctrine the wealthier Americans who likely emit more CO2 because they have more money to spend will pay more in carbon taxes than they get back while the “less fortunate among us” who earn less will receive more in refunds than they will pay in taxes, if they pay any at all.
Hansen speaks for the government ("we’re from the government and we’re here to help you”) when he says "A person reducing his carbon footprint more than average makes money while a person with large cars and a big house will pay a tax much higher than the dividend."
It is never questioned whether the government should be involved in changing our behavior, just as it was never questioned whether the government should give-away tax payer money to failing companies and troubled banks to “bailout” the economy. Socialists “believe so zealously in their cause — establishing an egalitarian society where conspicuous consumption is limited to the few who make the rules — that they have no misgivings about using the police power of the federal and state governments to beat society into shape” (IBD).
Considerable evidence that CO2 emissions does not cause climate change is ignored, not even refuted.
It is not surprising that those who invented the financial crisis also brought us the crisis of the forthcoming destruction of the planet unless we relinquish control to the government once again and that this is just another socialist pogrom to extend government control. Expanding power of government, domestic and international, is the aim of the environmental movement; not to save the planet.
For generations there have been those who would like to destroy American freedom as provided by the constitution and replace it with all-inclusive government control over lives. Such people include some with genuine motives of societal improvement but they are useful idiots to the deliberate revisionists bent on destroying the free market system, capitalism and individual freedom. They have tried for many years to accomplish their goals but until now Americans saw through these efforts and voted to keep America and Americans free; free to run their lives, free to make their own decisions about how they live and how to spend money they earn and free to benefit by working harder than others and free to make mistakes – but those days are gone.
The new order takes advantage of the human condition to respond to calamitous dangers, real or unreal. When faced with the equivalent of the “war of the worlds”, people join together under any leadership that promises to win that war regardless of the sacrifices they must make and the freedoms they will lose. To be successful as a savior to the people only requires a convincing plot that makes people believe they are in dire danger unless “something is done” which inevitably requires “change” from the alleged errors of the past.
The latest “crisis” is financial; that is, unless trillions of dollars are given to selected businesses and industries, the world as we know it will end. Depression and soup lines akin to those of the 1930’s will occur again and everyone will be worse off unless the government “fixes” the crisis. Of course, if the fix includes government take over of businesses, so be it; at least there is a plan to make the crisis go away. It doesn’t matter if the program fails, it doesn’t matter if there is no accountability for the money given away and it doesn’t even matter if those receiving the money refuse to say what they did with it.
This latest “crisis” should serve as a good primer for the worst scam perpetrated on the world in history – the “global warming” crisis and the need to save the planet from ourselves.
While many scientists say the script about global warming is fallacious, and current weather across the globe has often reached record low temperatures, the World Meteorological Organization says cold weather does not mean that global warming has abated.
Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization, Michel Jarraud, says people should not confuse local weather variability with climate change. Just because people in Europe and in the United States are shivering does not mean global warming has stopped. He says the trend toward global warming is still there. "I think we have to be careful not to interpret any single event as a proof ... that warming has stopped. When scientists look at the global warming, they take into account many, many old possible available evidence. So, we cannot explain any single phenomenon by one single cause."
Jarraud says average global surface temperatures have climbed significantly since 1850, when historical weather statistics were first recorded"; but does not explain how a world with fewer people, no SUV’s and considerably less greenhouse gas emitters, caused the planet to warm by human activity.
The shame is that this propaganda was brought to you by the Voice Of America, using taxpayer dollars which is against a federal law that prohibits the federal government from engaging in propaganda against its own citizenry (§ 1461–1a. Ban on domestic activities by United States Information Agency). This is known as the Smith-Mundt Act, which authorized the creation of information programs by the USIA, including Voice of America.
The propaganda from the VOA is merely one of many efforts by the government to convince us that we are responsible for the approaching catastrophe of global warming; the message comes from congress, the executive branch and the courts (we cannot forget the U.S. Supreme Court decision that carbon dioxide can be regulated by the government); all of this despite mounting evidence that the sun is responsible for our climate and not us.
James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is one of the alarmists spreading the “gospel” of man-made global warming. I call it the gospel because it has become a religion whose tenets must be accepted on faith not facts. But the real agenda of the these acolytes is not saving the planet, it is to change our way of life, build enormous riches for a few, give more control over our lives to the government and lead us into global government at the loss of our sovereignty.
Hansen and others in government as well as the 44th president want to impose a carbon tax, ostensibly as a means for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide; a gas we exhale and a gas that's allegedly causing a dangerous greenhouse effect and warming trend. They want a tax levied "at the well-head or port of entry" from where it "will then appropriately affect all products and activities that use fossil fuels." (Hansen)
Everyone acknowledges that the tax will have "near-term, mid-term, and long-term" effects on "lifestyle choices" but governments around the world are not concerned about that because that’s the goal. As Investors Business Daily says big government advocates are not concerned with the planet itself, they want to demonstrate “how such coercion will rearrange the lives and manage the behavior of a people who should be free of state coercion”.
The goal of the environmentalist left is nothing short of collectivist redistribution of wealth (remember Obama’s call for “spreading the wealth”?). The intention is that a carbon tax be another source of government income by placing the burden to the public in "equal shares on a per capita basis." (Hansen)
According to socialist doctrine the wealthier Americans who likely emit more CO2 because they have more money to spend will pay more in carbon taxes than they get back while the “less fortunate among us” who earn less will receive more in refunds than they will pay in taxes, if they pay any at all.
Hansen speaks for the government ("we’re from the government and we’re here to help you”) when he says "A person reducing his carbon footprint more than average makes money while a person with large cars and a big house will pay a tax much higher than the dividend."
It is never questioned whether the government should be involved in changing our behavior, just as it was never questioned whether the government should give-away tax payer money to failing companies and troubled banks to “bailout” the economy. Socialists “believe so zealously in their cause — establishing an egalitarian society where conspicuous consumption is limited to the few who make the rules — that they have no misgivings about using the police power of the federal and state governments to beat society into shape” (IBD).
Considerable evidence that CO2 emissions does not cause climate change is ignored, not even refuted.
It is not surprising that those who invented the financial crisis also brought us the crisis of the forthcoming destruction of the planet unless we relinquish control to the government once again and that this is just another socialist pogrom to extend government control. Expanding power of government, domestic and international, is the aim of the environmental movement; not to save the planet.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Is it racist to remember this?
These events are actual events from history. They really happened! Do you remember?
1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by: A Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40
2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
4. During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens , and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
8. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
10. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
Some might see a pattern here; do you? Is racial profiling justified?
To ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners are not allowed to profile certain people. They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males between the ages 17 and 40 alone lest they be guilty of profiling.
We are our own worst enemy.
1. 1968 Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed by: A Muslim male extremist between the ages of 17 and 40
2. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
3. In 1979, the US embassy in Iran was taken over by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
4. During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
5. In 1983, the US Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
6. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70 year old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard in his wheelchair by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
7. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens , and a US Navy diver trying to rescue passengers was murdered by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
8. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
9. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
10. In 1998, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; two were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers. Thousands of people were killed by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
12. In 2002 the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by: Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
Some might see a pattern here; do you? Is racial profiling justified?
To ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners are not allowed to profile certain people. They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winner and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males between the ages 17 and 40 alone lest they be guilty of profiling.
We are our own worst enemy.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Why does there need to be a Palestinian State? [Part Three] – It would be a calamity to Israel
The unfortunate sham of a Palestinian state has been the policy of the Bush administration and now is the goal of the new president. Soon to be Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has expressed the same policy on behalf of President-elect Barack Obama. As pointed out in Parts One and Two, there is no need for a separate Palestinian state because Arabs masquerading as “Palestinians” have no birthright to the land of Israel in contrast to the Jews, and the term “Palestinian” is a relatively recent contrivance for political purposes. The Arab countries surrounding Israel are responsible for the existence of poverty-stricken people in Gaza and the West Bank by inducing them to remain where they are and these countries should take them.
Despite the clear absence of any need for a Palestinian state such a fiasco would pose an insurmountable existential threat to Israel. Israel’s very existence would be jeopardized by creating an independent Arab state dedicated to the elimination of Israel and the Jewish people. A “Palestinian” state virtually in the midst of the Israel would pose an enormous military risk and serious strategic danger.
If a Palestinian state is established, there is no reason to expect that the terror and violence will dissipate, or that the Arab goal will not continue to be the elimination of the Jewish people. On the contrary, all the terrorism stemming from the Oslo Agreements will continue and become worse. Consider:
*A Palestinian state, from which the terrorist acts will originate, will have greater immunity against Israeli reprisals and disciplinary measures than Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have today.
*Arabs in a Palestinian state will be in a much better position to perpetrate terrorist acts against Israel. Terror could originate among some of its residents whether the state approves or not. Furthermore, if the Palestinian state enjoys greater immunity, it would have freedom to terrorize Israel.
*Since the IDF will not have any presence in the “state”, its ability to combat Palestinian terrorism and prevent it will diminish even further than it has already.
*With the establishment of the “state, many new terrorist threats which today seem unrealistic, might emerge. For example, the terrorist cooperation with Israeli Arabs may increase. The “safe passage” which is to be provided for the Palestinians according to Oslo II, will facilitate this activity.
If a Palestinian state is established not all of the Palestinian aspirations will have been realized (for example “the right of return” to areas within “the Green Line”, liberation of all of Palestine, etc). Therefore they will have an overriding interest in obtaining what they were unable to secure in negotiations (because the Palestinians will not be satisfied with anything less than total fulfillment of their national objectives, even if the process is a long one).
In addition, any “security arrangements” which will limit the Palestinians’ independence and sovereignty, will not be acceptable to the Palestinians, certainly in the long term. Even if they accept these limitations due to the exigencies of time, they will either erode or ignore them as soon as possible while conducting a campaign of violence and terrorism.
There is no reason to assume that the phenomenon of radicalism by Palestinians will disappear or become moderate with the advent of the “state” since the causes of this phenomenon are not tied exclusively to frustration resulting from the lack of independence. The fundamentalist Palestinian organizations themselves will continue to play a leading role in the terrorist campaign in cooperation with fundamentalist elements throughout Moslem countries.
The establishment of a Palestinian state will necessarily serve a dire blow to Israel’s national strength and deterrence capability, which have already been considerably eroded. National strength is not less important than military power because it includes national cohesion, motivation and morale, preparedness and determination to employ force, staying power, ideology of freedom and democracy, quality of leadership, etc.
Establishing a Palestinian state because of successful terrorism will send a message to Muslims everywhere that terrorism works. As Sheikh Yassin, one of the Hamas leaders, said “You indeed have lost the will to fight and this draws us nearer to our final victory”.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas not only want to eradicate the Israelis from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in order to eliminate the Jewish presence in those regions; they also seek the destruction of the entire state of Israel. Even after Yasser Arafat’s death, the Palestinian Authority’s textbooks, media, and constitution continue to deny Israel’s right to exist. The Hamas and PLO charters to this day have not been amended to repudiate calls for “armed resistance” for the “liberation of Palestine,” and their television regularly incite children and adults to become “martyrs” (suicide bombers) for this cause. During Israeli withdrawal Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei openly set their sights on Jerusalem, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad declared that their “resistance” efforts would persist in the wake of the “victory” in Gaza.
Without completely overhauling the culture of hate that currently pervades Palestinian Arab society (as evidenced by their textbooks and media), it would be foolish to think all attacks on Israel would cease overnight with the creation of a new state. Without first ensuring security and implanting the reforms necessary to create a liberal society, it would be suicidal for Israel to allow an elected Palestinian Arab government with an army to be created.
If the Palestinian Arabs had a sovereign state, Israel would have less right to reinvade after attacks, not more, as has been argued by the United Nations. The state would not be held more accountable for terrorism emanating from its borders. Rather, it would deny culpability and pay lip service to condemning the “acts of extremists,” probably adding, “on both sides”. It would make empty pledges of rooting out terrorists, but would do little more than is being done now to actually stop them. The new state would use its sovereign nation status to defend itself against Israeli incursions in the eyes of the world. The illusion of a “cycle of violence” would be easily recreated, and Israel would once again be viewed as the aggressor. Only this time it would be invading a sovereign state, not territory it legally controlled.
Israel would not be able to keep the area from becoming a terrorist state. The Jerusalem Post has already reported that terrorists from out of Israel are being invited to Gaza. With no Israeli force to counterbalance terrorists in a place like Gaza, these organizations would be allowed to operate freely and flourish. This was the stated reason for former Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation. He contended that Israel’s intention to build the Arabs a seaport in Gaza would ensure unimpeded shipments of banned weapons into the territories. Giving up control of the Philadelphi Corridor to Egypt would only ensure more weapons and violence emanating from Gaza and this has been proven to be correct.
While proponents of an Israeli pullout from Gaza continue, the moral imperatives to create a Palestinian state simply do not exist. The Palestinian Arab right to a state is in reality the right to keep Jews out, to sanction hatred against Jews, to build an army, import weapons, have terror organizations operate freely, grow demographically, and ultimately carry out the Arab national vision—a Middle East without Israel. This is why a Palestinian Arab state is incompatible with an Israeli state. In the end, there are no easy outs. Terrorism is a problem that Israel must face head-on, even with a hostile world audience rooting against her.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Why does there need to be a Palestinian state? [Part Two]
This heretical question was asked in Part One. The response pointed out that the term “Palestinian” is a recent contrived label designed for political purposes and has no historical significance.
Nonetheless much of the world continues to labor under the misimpression that there are people confined to refugee camps in poverty due to Israeli “occupation”. That those responsible for the vast numbers of so-called refugees are the Arabs not the Israelis is overlooked and ignored.
Here are some facts from Eli Hertz that put the lie to the current orthodox Arab view perpetuated to convince the western world:
1. Israel became a nation in 1312 BC, Two thousand years before the rise of Islam.
2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BC, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 AD lasted no more than 22 years.
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.
9. In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.
10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
13. The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.
Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.
17. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.
18. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
Palestine is a geographical area, not a nationality.
The Arabs invented a special national entity in the 1960s (rather than a geographic delineation) called the Palestinians, specifically for political gain. They brand Israelis as invaders and occupiers and claim the geographic area called Palestine belongs exclusively to the Arabs.
The word Palestine is not even Arabic. It is a word coined by the Romans around 135 AD from the name of a seagoing Aegean people who settled on the coast of Canaan in antiquity – the Philistines. The name was chosen to replace Judea, as a sign that Jewish sovereignty had been eradicated following the Jewish Revolts against Rome.
In the course of time, the Latin name Philistia was further bastardized into Palistina or Palestine. During the next 2,000 years, Palestine was never an independent state belonging to any people, nor did a Palestinian people, distinct from other Arabs, appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in Palestine under Arab and Ottoman rule.
Palestine was and is solely a geographic name. Therefore, it is not surprising that in modern times the name ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian’ was applied as an adjective to all inhabitants of the geographical area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River – Palestine Jews and Palestine Arabs alike. In fact, until the 1960s, most Arabs in Palestine preferred to identify themselves merely as part of the great Arab nation or citizens of “southern Syria.”
The term ‘Palestinian’ as a noun was usurped and co-opted by the Arabs in the 1960s as a tactic initiated by Yasser Arafat to brand Jews as intruders on someone else’s turf. He presented Arab residents of Israel and the Territories as indigenous inhabitants since time immemorial. This fabrication of people-hood allowed Palestinian Arabs to gain parity with the Jewish people as a nation deserving of an independent state.
In a March 1977 interview in the Dutch newspaper Trouw, Zahir Muhsein, a member of the PLO executive committee, admitted:
“Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.”
Historically, Before the Arabs Fabricated the Palestinian People as an Exclusively Arab Phenomenon, No Such Group Existed
Countless official British Mandate-vintage documents speak of ‘the Jews’ and ‘the Arabs’ of Palestine – not ‘Jews and Palestinians.’
Ironically, before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (the name ‘Israel’ was chosen for the newly-established Jewish state), the term ‘Palestine’ applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before independence. Some examples include:
· The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called the Palestine Post until 1948.
· Bank Leumi L’Israel was called the “Anglo-Palestine Bank, a Jewish Company.”
· The Jewish Agency – an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929 – was called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
· The house organ of American Zionism in the 1930s was called New Palestine.
· Today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was called the “Palestine Symphony Orchestra, composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.”
· The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fundraising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.
Encouraged by their success at historical revisionism, propaganda and brainwashing the world with the lie of a "Palestinian people", Palestinian Arabs have more recently begun to claim they are the descendants of the Philistines and even the Stone Age Canaanites. Based on that myth, they can claim to have been ‘victimized’ twice by the Jews: in the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites and by the Israelis in modern times – a total fabrication. Archeologists explain that the Philistines were a Mediterranean people who settled along the coast of Canaan in 1100 BC. They have no connection to the Arab nation, a desert people who emerged from the Arabian Peninsula.
Palestinian Arab leaders eroneously claim to be descended from the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Jebusites and the first Christians. They also co-opt Jesus and ignore his Jewishness, at the same time claiming the Jews never were a people and never built the Holy Temples in Jerusalem.
There has Never Been a Sovereign Arab State in Palestine
The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arabs nations who never established a Palestinian state. It also is expressed in the utterances and loyalties of so-called Palestinians.
Only twice in Jerusalem’s history has it served as a national capital. The first time was as the capital of the two Jewish Commonwealths during the First and Second Temple periods, as described in the Bible, reinforced by archaeological evidence and numerous ancient documents. The second time is in modern times as the capital of the State of Israel. It has never served as an Arab capital for the simple reason that there has never been a Palestinian Arab state.
The rhetoric by Arab leaders on behalf of the Palestinians rings hollow, for the Arabs in neighboring lands, who control 99.9 percent of the Middle East land, have never recognized a Palestinian entity. They have always considered Palestine and its inhabitants part of the great ‘Arab nation,’ historically and politically as an integral part of Greater Syria – Suriyya al-Kubra – a designation that covered both sides of the Jordan River. In the 1950s, Jordan simply annexed the West Bank, since its population was viewed as brethren of the Jordanians. Jordan’s official narrative of “Jordanian state-building” attests to this fact:
“Jordanian identity underlies the significant and fundamental common denominator that makes it inclusive of Palestinian identity, particularly in view of the shared historic social and political development of the people on both sides of the Jordan.... The Jordan government, in view of the historical and political relationship with the West Bank … granted all Palestinian refugees on its territory full citizenship rights while protecting and upholding their political rights as Palestinians (Right of Return or compensation).”
The Arabs never established a Palestinian state when the UN offered a partition plan in 1947 to establish “an Arab and a Jewish state” (not a Palestinian state, it should be noted). Nor did the Arabs recognize or establish a Palestinian state during the two decades prior to the Six-Day War when the West Bank was under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control; nor did the Palestinians clamor for autonomy or independence during those years under Jordanian and Egyptian rule.
Well before the 1967 decision to create a new Arab people called ‘Palestinians,’ when the word ‘Palestinian’ was associated with Jewish endeavors, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, testified in 1937 before a British investigative body – the Peel Commission - saying: “There is no such country! Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries, part of Syria.”
In a 1946 appearance before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, also acting as an investigative body, the Arab historian Philip Hitti stated: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.” According to investigative journalist Joan Peters, who spent seven years researching the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine (From Time Immemorial, 2001) the one identity that was never considered by local inhabitants prior to the 1967 war was ‘Arab Palestinian.’
Since the whole concept of Palestinians” is a false political contrivance, there is no basis for creating a separate state whose sole purpose is the destruction of Israel.
In Part Three I will discuss the dangers a new state of Arabs pose to the little country of Israel whose only “crime” is a desire for a western democracy to exist in a cesspool of Islam.
Nonetheless much of the world continues to labor under the misimpression that there are people confined to refugee camps in poverty due to Israeli “occupation”. That those responsible for the vast numbers of so-called refugees are the Arabs not the Israelis is overlooked and ignored.
Here are some facts from Eli Hertz that put the lie to the current orthodox Arab view perpetuated to convince the western world:
1. Israel became a nation in 1312 BC, Two thousand years before the rise of Islam.
2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BC, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 AD lasted no more than 22 years.
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.
9. In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.
10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.
11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
13. The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.
Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.
17. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.
18. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
Palestine is a geographical area, not a nationality.
The Arabs invented a special national entity in the 1960s (rather than a geographic delineation) called the Palestinians, specifically for political gain. They brand Israelis as invaders and occupiers and claim the geographic area called Palestine belongs exclusively to the Arabs.
The word Palestine is not even Arabic. It is a word coined by the Romans around 135 AD from the name of a seagoing Aegean people who settled on the coast of Canaan in antiquity – the Philistines. The name was chosen to replace Judea, as a sign that Jewish sovereignty had been eradicated following the Jewish Revolts against Rome.
In the course of time, the Latin name Philistia was further bastardized into Palistina or Palestine. During the next 2,000 years, Palestine was never an independent state belonging to any people, nor did a Palestinian people, distinct from other Arabs, appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in Palestine under Arab and Ottoman rule.
Palestine was and is solely a geographic name. Therefore, it is not surprising that in modern times the name ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian’ was applied as an adjective to all inhabitants of the geographical area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River – Palestine Jews and Palestine Arabs alike. In fact, until the 1960s, most Arabs in Palestine preferred to identify themselves merely as part of the great Arab nation or citizens of “southern Syria.”
The term ‘Palestinian’ as a noun was usurped and co-opted by the Arabs in the 1960s as a tactic initiated by Yasser Arafat to brand Jews as intruders on someone else’s turf. He presented Arab residents of Israel and the Territories as indigenous inhabitants since time immemorial. This fabrication of people-hood allowed Palestinian Arabs to gain parity with the Jewish people as a nation deserving of an independent state.
In a March 1977 interview in the Dutch newspaper Trouw, Zahir Muhsein, a member of the PLO executive committee, admitted:
“Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.”
Historically, Before the Arabs Fabricated the Palestinian People as an Exclusively Arab Phenomenon, No Such Group Existed
Countless official British Mandate-vintage documents speak of ‘the Jews’ and ‘the Arabs’ of Palestine – not ‘Jews and Palestinians.’
Ironically, before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (the name ‘Israel’ was chosen for the newly-established Jewish state), the term ‘Palestine’ applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before independence. Some examples include:
· The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called the Palestine Post until 1948.
· Bank Leumi L’Israel was called the “Anglo-Palestine Bank, a Jewish Company.”
· The Jewish Agency – an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929 – was called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
· The house organ of American Zionism in the 1930s was called New Palestine.
· Today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was called the “Palestine Symphony Orchestra, composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.”
· The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fundraising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.
Encouraged by their success at historical revisionism, propaganda and brainwashing the world with the lie of a "Palestinian people", Palestinian Arabs have more recently begun to claim they are the descendants of the Philistines and even the Stone Age Canaanites. Based on that myth, they can claim to have been ‘victimized’ twice by the Jews: in the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites and by the Israelis in modern times – a total fabrication. Archeologists explain that the Philistines were a Mediterranean people who settled along the coast of Canaan in 1100 BC. They have no connection to the Arab nation, a desert people who emerged from the Arabian Peninsula.
Palestinian Arab leaders eroneously claim to be descended from the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Jebusites and the first Christians. They also co-opt Jesus and ignore his Jewishness, at the same time claiming the Jews never were a people and never built the Holy Temples in Jerusalem.
There has Never Been a Sovereign Arab State in Palestine
The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arabs nations who never established a Palestinian state. It also is expressed in the utterances and loyalties of so-called Palestinians.
Only twice in Jerusalem’s history has it served as a national capital. The first time was as the capital of the two Jewish Commonwealths during the First and Second Temple periods, as described in the Bible, reinforced by archaeological evidence and numerous ancient documents. The second time is in modern times as the capital of the State of Israel. It has never served as an Arab capital for the simple reason that there has never been a Palestinian Arab state.
The rhetoric by Arab leaders on behalf of the Palestinians rings hollow, for the Arabs in neighboring lands, who control 99.9 percent of the Middle East land, have never recognized a Palestinian entity. They have always considered Palestine and its inhabitants part of the great ‘Arab nation,’ historically and politically as an integral part of Greater Syria – Suriyya al-Kubra – a designation that covered both sides of the Jordan River. In the 1950s, Jordan simply annexed the West Bank, since its population was viewed as brethren of the Jordanians. Jordan’s official narrative of “Jordanian state-building” attests to this fact:
“Jordanian identity underlies the significant and fundamental common denominator that makes it inclusive of Palestinian identity, particularly in view of the shared historic social and political development of the people on both sides of the Jordan.... The Jordan government, in view of the historical and political relationship with the West Bank … granted all Palestinian refugees on its territory full citizenship rights while protecting and upholding their political rights as Palestinians (Right of Return or compensation).”
The Arabs never established a Palestinian state when the UN offered a partition plan in 1947 to establish “an Arab and a Jewish state” (not a Palestinian state, it should be noted). Nor did the Arabs recognize or establish a Palestinian state during the two decades prior to the Six-Day War when the West Bank was under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control; nor did the Palestinians clamor for autonomy or independence during those years under Jordanian and Egyptian rule.
Well before the 1967 decision to create a new Arab people called ‘Palestinians,’ when the word ‘Palestinian’ was associated with Jewish endeavors, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, testified in 1937 before a British investigative body – the Peel Commission - saying: “There is no such country! Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries, part of Syria.”
In a 1946 appearance before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, also acting as an investigative body, the Arab historian Philip Hitti stated: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.” According to investigative journalist Joan Peters, who spent seven years researching the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine (From Time Immemorial, 2001) the one identity that was never considered by local inhabitants prior to the 1967 war was ‘Arab Palestinian.’
Since the whole concept of Palestinians” is a false political contrivance, there is no basis for creating a separate state whose sole purpose is the destruction of Israel.
In Part Three I will discuss the dangers a new state of Arabs pose to the little country of Israel whose only “crime” is a desire for a western democracy to exist in a cesspool of Islam.
"Barack Hussein Obama will be the president January 20th because Americans voted how they feel rather than what they know"
"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." —Samuel Adams
Such was the thinking of those who created our country out of hopes and ideals in their quest for a more perfect union to be led by people of good character. In the age of patriotism after the "greatest generation" saved our hides once again through sacrifice and valor, an incoming president reminded us to put the country first. In his Inaugural Address on 20 January, 1961, President John F. Kennedy closed his remarks with these famous words: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country".
However today, the incoming president has turned Jack Kennedy's national challenge on end, essentially proclaiming, "ask what your country can do for you, not what you can do for your country."
In 1963, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and said for all to hear, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". Ironically the first black president in history proclaims just the opposite; he and his party have divided us up into constituency groups, where we are judged by all manner of ethnicity and special interests rather than the individual and national character King envisioned.
Kennedy and King had it right, but the Democrat Party has squandered their great legacy, and betrayed us while seeking to enslave many Americans as dependant wards of the state. The Party’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, would not recognize even the most vestigial elements of his Party in the transition from Jefferson and Kennedy to Obama.
When the Democrat Party still had leaders like Kennedy, Truman and Humphrey it included among its ranks Ronald Reagan, However when asked why he left the Democrat Party, this former Democrat said, "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." His observation, "the Party left me," has never been truer than today as whatever were the earlier principles of the Democrat Party has been replaced with socialist ideology intending to destroy the free market society.
Unfortunately, too many Americans have difficulty understanding the qualities required of our leaders to maintain the United States as our founders intended.
Our nation is facing crises on several critical fronts, domestic and foreign, including a historic economic disaster. Though it may be manufactured and illusory, the resolution of our current economic situation requires someone in possession of outstanding constitutional dedication - dedication that has been honed over his lifetime, dedication that is proven consistent with our nation's legacy of liberty and equality and self reliance, not one who emerged out of the nefarious Chicago politics and does not believe in the American constitutional principle of smaller, less intrusive government.
Reformed Democrat Ronald Reagan wrote, "The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the 'little' choices of years past — by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, [which was] whispering the lie that 'it really doesn't matter.' It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away — the decision that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self-indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity — or dishonor and shame". Do you think Reagan was referring to a community organizer who made his bones as part of the vote-stealing ACORN?
It was not only Samuel Adams who spoke of the necessity of our future leaders to be people of high integrity who put the country first above all else; here are but a few excerpts in their own words, including another prescient admonition by Samuel Adams:
John Adams: "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. ... If we suffer [the minds of young people] to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives. ... We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. ... We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections".
Samuel Adams: : "Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters. ... If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation. ... [N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. ... No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders. ... Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. ... Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness”.
Thomas Jefferson: "It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. ... If a nation expects to be ignorant — and free — in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. ... The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. ... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."
George Washington: "No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other. ...[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted [early in life] are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous. ... The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world. ...[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths...? Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens."
After the American Revolution, when our Founders were working "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and our Constitution's author, James Madison, wrote The Federalist Papers, its most authentic and comprehensive explication.
In Federalist No. 1, Hamilton warned, "Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants."
Sound familiar?
In No. 10, Madison cautions, "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm," and insisted in No. 57, "The aim of every political Constitution is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers, men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous, whilst they continue to hold their public trust".
One of the earliest U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Joseph Story, wrote, "Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them."
Story warned us of the perils posed by a candidate who tells us everything we want to hear.In November 1800, John Adams, in his fourth year as president, wrote to his wife Abigail, "I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on ALL that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof"!
History has confirmed Samuel Adams’ observation "A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever". Yet we are seeing today by the government takeover of free enterprise with lavish "bailout" money and the socialist plans of the next president, the first efforts to transform our country from what it was in the beginning to one for the "new age".
Ronald Reagan said, "Freedom is ... never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it, or it's gone and gone for a long, long time".
We now have a new generation of voters who chose to select as president one who does not want to keep the United States as it has been from the beginning. At this pivotal moment in our nation's history, a majority of Americans voted on how they feel rather than what they know. They did not put the country first. Beginning January 20th, we will reap the harvest of what we sowed.
Such was the thinking of those who created our country out of hopes and ideals in their quest for a more perfect union to be led by people of good character. In the age of patriotism after the "greatest generation" saved our hides once again through sacrifice and valor, an incoming president reminded us to put the country first. In his Inaugural Address on 20 January, 1961, President John F. Kennedy closed his remarks with these famous words: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country".
However today, the incoming president has turned Jack Kennedy's national challenge on end, essentially proclaiming, "ask what your country can do for you, not what you can do for your country."
In 1963, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and said for all to hear, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". Ironically the first black president in history proclaims just the opposite; he and his party have divided us up into constituency groups, where we are judged by all manner of ethnicity and special interests rather than the individual and national character King envisioned.
Kennedy and King had it right, but the Democrat Party has squandered their great legacy, and betrayed us while seeking to enslave many Americans as dependant wards of the state. The Party’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, would not recognize even the most vestigial elements of his Party in the transition from Jefferson and Kennedy to Obama.
When the Democrat Party still had leaders like Kennedy, Truman and Humphrey it included among its ranks Ronald Reagan, However when asked why he left the Democrat Party, this former Democrat said, "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." His observation, "the Party left me," has never been truer than today as whatever were the earlier principles of the Democrat Party has been replaced with socialist ideology intending to destroy the free market society.
Unfortunately, too many Americans have difficulty understanding the qualities required of our leaders to maintain the United States as our founders intended.
Our nation is facing crises on several critical fronts, domestic and foreign, including a historic economic disaster. Though it may be manufactured and illusory, the resolution of our current economic situation requires someone in possession of outstanding constitutional dedication - dedication that has been honed over his lifetime, dedication that is proven consistent with our nation's legacy of liberty and equality and self reliance, not one who emerged out of the nefarious Chicago politics and does not believe in the American constitutional principle of smaller, less intrusive government.
Reformed Democrat Ronald Reagan wrote, "The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the 'little' choices of years past — by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, [which was] whispering the lie that 'it really doesn't matter.' It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away — the decision that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self-indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity — or dishonor and shame". Do you think Reagan was referring to a community organizer who made his bones as part of the vote-stealing ACORN?
It was not only Samuel Adams who spoke of the necessity of our future leaders to be people of high integrity who put the country first above all else; here are but a few excerpts in their own words, including another prescient admonition by Samuel Adams:
John Adams: "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. ... If we suffer [the minds of young people] to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives. ... We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. ... We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections".
Samuel Adams: : "Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters. ... If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation. ... [N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. ... No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders. ... Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. ... Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness”.
Thomas Jefferson: "It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. ... If a nation expects to be ignorant — and free — in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. ... The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. ... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."
George Washington: "No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other. ...[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted [early in life] are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous. ... The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world. ...[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths...? Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens."
After the American Revolution, when our Founders were working "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and our Constitution's author, James Madison, wrote The Federalist Papers, its most authentic and comprehensive explication.
In Federalist No. 1, Hamilton warned, "Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants."
Sound familiar?
In No. 10, Madison cautions, "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm," and insisted in No. 57, "The aim of every political Constitution is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers, men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous, whilst they continue to hold their public trust".
One of the earliest U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Joseph Story, wrote, "Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them."
Story warned us of the perils posed by a candidate who tells us everything we want to hear.In November 1800, John Adams, in his fourth year as president, wrote to his wife Abigail, "I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on ALL that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof"!
History has confirmed Samuel Adams’ observation "A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever". Yet we are seeing today by the government takeover of free enterprise with lavish "bailout" money and the socialist plans of the next president, the first efforts to transform our country from what it was in the beginning to one for the "new age".
Ronald Reagan said, "Freedom is ... never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it, or it's gone and gone for a long, long time".
We now have a new generation of voters who chose to select as president one who does not want to keep the United States as it has been from the beginning. At this pivotal moment in our nation's history, a majority of Americans voted on how they feel rather than what they know. They did not put the country first. Beginning January 20th, we will reap the harvest of what we sowed.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Why does there need to be a "Palestinian" state? [Part One]
To many the question is almost heretical; especially since it has been the United States policy for a long time as well as the entire world, even Israel. But the truth of the matter is that a separate state for these Arabs would be detrimental to the western world and would assure the destruction of Israel.
The Nazis, and now the American news media, have proven if you tell a lie often enough it is accepted as truth by the masses. The idea of a Palestinian state is national suicide for Israel. Don't believe the lie of a nation for the children of Amalek. Look at the number of missiles and rockets they were firing at Israel daily and what they were importing daily at the Rafiah border with Egypt and tell me you see peace on the horizon with Allah's jihad terrorists?
I was watching a special on PBS about the 6-day war which showed Nasser preaching the annihilation of Israel. He wasn’t just calling for the defeat of Israel; he wanted the complete annihilation of the country and the Jews in it. And yet when I see what Israel was trying to do, defend her borders, and to prevent a complete slaughter, not the destruction of other countries, I realized this was in stark contrast to the Arab countries that wanted to murder Israelis, as many as possible and to completely wipe out Israel and all the Jews within its borders. It is an interesting contrast that all of the "peace" activists can choke on.
A weak Israeli government has resorted to weak rhetoric to try and fool Israelis who desire peace. "On our side there is a unity government that is wiling to reach calm and ready for a Palestinian State in the 1967 borders," said Olmert. Funny, but the Hamas leaders have repeatedly said there is no way they want peace with Israel, nor a state within the ‘67 borders. "We're not fascist criminals but people who want to return to our homeland". What Hamas fails to explain is that the Palestinians consider Tel Aviv to be occupied, and also full of "fascist criminals". No, peace will come only when the Arabs are fully defeated; no peace can exist until one side wins and one side loses; we can only pray it is Israel who wins.
There is not one Jew in Gaza, except for Shalit who they kidnapped, yet the Palestinians still blame all their problems on the Israeli "occupation". If all Jews left Judea and Samaria they would still claim the Palestinians are not free because there are Jews living in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Any honest person must admit that the Palestinian definition of "occupation" is: "As long as there is even one Jew occupying the Jewish homeland they have a right to behave in any deviant manner to expel the Jew from his homeland". Furthermore, as long as the Europeans and others condone this behavior, the Palestinians will continue to build and fire missiles at Israel rather than make a better life for them where they are. Although some people in history have built a state based upon a culture of violence and death, they didn’t last long. If the Palestinians are so enraged that a Jew is living in a Jewish homeland that they can't do anything but kill them, then they don't deserve to have a state.
The birthplace of the Jewish people is the Land of Israel. A significant part of the Hebrew’s long history is recorded in the Bible. Their cultural, religious and national identity was formed in the land now known as Israel and their physical presence has been maintained through the centuries, even after the majority was forced into exile. During the many years of dispersion, the Jewish people never severed nor forgot the bond with the land.
With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jewish independence, lost two thousand years earlier, was reestablished. If people of any nation were exiled to other countries and than years later were able to reclaim their land, the world would support such action and would not consider requiring them to give pieces of the country to the foreigners who are residing there, and under no circumstances would they consider parceling portions of the county to be set up as a separate state for the foreigners. Why should anyone in the world consider doing this very same thing with the land of Israel which has been Jewish land for thousands of years?
Arabs say they are entitled to Jerusalem but Hebrews can prove the validity of Israeli-Jewish existence in Jerusalem. No one can legitimately question Jewish historic claim and affinity to Jerusalem which dates back to the Canaanite period (3000-1200 BC). The re-capture of the old city in 1967 was widely seen by the Israelis and Christians as nothing less than the renewal of God's covenant with the Jews. Jerusalem represents their past and present, a source of religious and cultural continuity without which Israel's very existence could unravel. The hope of returning to Jerusalem has sustained the Jews throughout their dispersion, and centuries of exile have been unable to extinguish it.
Jerusalem was reunited in June 1967, as a result of a war in which the Jordanians attempted to seize the western section of the city. The Jewish Quarter of the Old City, destroyed under Jordanian rule, has been restored, and Israeli citizens are again able to visit their holy places, which had been denied them during the years 1948-1967.
The land of Israel and Jerusalem as its undivided capital for the Jewish people is a historical fact for thousands of years and should remain that way.
The Arabs living in the land of Israel have come from the surrounding Arab countries; they have no right whatsoever to any part of the land of Israel. In the past hundred years many Jews were ejected from Arab countries surrounding the land of Israel, their property, their homes and lands taken by others, mostly Arabs. Those Arabs who want to claim the land of Israel as theirs should go to those Arab countries that kept them in the poverty they live in.
Any part of Israel is not occupied territory; it is legally a Jewish land and has been for thousands of years, no Arab has any right to claim any rights to the land of Israel. The surrounding Arab countries compose of over 100 million people and millions of square miles, why do they have to bother little Israel with its territory about the size of the State of New Jersey. Arabs forced Palestinians into refugee camps, not Israelis; they could be easily assimilated into one or more of those Arab countries. Indeed, many already are in Jordan to the dismay of native Jordanians (if there are any).
Before ending this Part One, it must be said that there is no historical basis for the term ‘Palestinian". When Rome destroyed the Jewish state it commemorated its victory with vast numbers of coins, still available for all to see, that bore symbols of Judea degradation. Rome further antagonized the Jews by calling their land Palestine after the great historical enemy of the Jews, the Philistines. It is simply a historical fact that there was no Palestinian Arab socio-political-cultural distinction in all the twelve centuries since the Arab conquest in the Seventh century and Palestine had no geographical or political distinction. The Arabs of the Land of Israel (Palestine) saw themselves as a part of southern Syria. There is much documentation to prove that the notion of a distinct Palestinian people that deserves a distinct Palestinian state is not only recent but was invented precisely as a ploy to destroy the only Jewish state, see e.g. Julius Stone, 1981 and "A Nation Working Against Itself".
The Nazis, and now the American news media, have proven if you tell a lie often enough it is accepted as truth by the masses. The idea of a Palestinian state is national suicide for Israel. Don't believe the lie of a nation for the children of Amalek. Look at the number of missiles and rockets they were firing at Israel daily and what they were importing daily at the Rafiah border with Egypt and tell me you see peace on the horizon with Allah's jihad terrorists?
I was watching a special on PBS about the 6-day war which showed Nasser preaching the annihilation of Israel. He wasn’t just calling for the defeat of Israel; he wanted the complete annihilation of the country and the Jews in it. And yet when I see what Israel was trying to do, defend her borders, and to prevent a complete slaughter, not the destruction of other countries, I realized this was in stark contrast to the Arab countries that wanted to murder Israelis, as many as possible and to completely wipe out Israel and all the Jews within its borders. It is an interesting contrast that all of the "peace" activists can choke on.
A weak Israeli government has resorted to weak rhetoric to try and fool Israelis who desire peace. "On our side there is a unity government that is wiling to reach calm and ready for a Palestinian State in the 1967 borders," said Olmert. Funny, but the Hamas leaders have repeatedly said there is no way they want peace with Israel, nor a state within the ‘67 borders. "We're not fascist criminals but people who want to return to our homeland". What Hamas fails to explain is that the Palestinians consider Tel Aviv to be occupied, and also full of "fascist criminals". No, peace will come only when the Arabs are fully defeated; no peace can exist until one side wins and one side loses; we can only pray it is Israel who wins.
There is not one Jew in Gaza, except for Shalit who they kidnapped, yet the Palestinians still blame all their problems on the Israeli "occupation". If all Jews left Judea and Samaria they would still claim the Palestinians are not free because there are Jews living in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Any honest person must admit that the Palestinian definition of "occupation" is: "As long as there is even one Jew occupying the Jewish homeland they have a right to behave in any deviant manner to expel the Jew from his homeland". Furthermore, as long as the Europeans and others condone this behavior, the Palestinians will continue to build and fire missiles at Israel rather than make a better life for them where they are. Although some people in history have built a state based upon a culture of violence and death, they didn’t last long. If the Palestinians are so enraged that a Jew is living in a Jewish homeland that they can't do anything but kill them, then they don't deserve to have a state.
The birthplace of the Jewish people is the Land of Israel. A significant part of the Hebrew’s long history is recorded in the Bible. Their cultural, religious and national identity was formed in the land now known as Israel and their physical presence has been maintained through the centuries, even after the majority was forced into exile. During the many years of dispersion, the Jewish people never severed nor forgot the bond with the land.
With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jewish independence, lost two thousand years earlier, was reestablished. If people of any nation were exiled to other countries and than years later were able to reclaim their land, the world would support such action and would not consider requiring them to give pieces of the country to the foreigners who are residing there, and under no circumstances would they consider parceling portions of the county to be set up as a separate state for the foreigners. Why should anyone in the world consider doing this very same thing with the land of Israel which has been Jewish land for thousands of years?
Arabs say they are entitled to Jerusalem but Hebrews can prove the validity of Israeli-Jewish existence in Jerusalem. No one can legitimately question Jewish historic claim and affinity to Jerusalem which dates back to the Canaanite period (3000-1200 BC). The re-capture of the old city in 1967 was widely seen by the Israelis and Christians as nothing less than the renewal of God's covenant with the Jews. Jerusalem represents their past and present, a source of religious and cultural continuity without which Israel's very existence could unravel. The hope of returning to Jerusalem has sustained the Jews throughout their dispersion, and centuries of exile have been unable to extinguish it.
Jerusalem was reunited in June 1967, as a result of a war in which the Jordanians attempted to seize the western section of the city. The Jewish Quarter of the Old City, destroyed under Jordanian rule, has been restored, and Israeli citizens are again able to visit their holy places, which had been denied them during the years 1948-1967.
The land of Israel and Jerusalem as its undivided capital for the Jewish people is a historical fact for thousands of years and should remain that way.
The Arabs living in the land of Israel have come from the surrounding Arab countries; they have no right whatsoever to any part of the land of Israel. In the past hundred years many Jews were ejected from Arab countries surrounding the land of Israel, their property, their homes and lands taken by others, mostly Arabs. Those Arabs who want to claim the land of Israel as theirs should go to those Arab countries that kept them in the poverty they live in.
Any part of Israel is not occupied territory; it is legally a Jewish land and has been for thousands of years, no Arab has any right to claim any rights to the land of Israel. The surrounding Arab countries compose of over 100 million people and millions of square miles, why do they have to bother little Israel with its territory about the size of the State of New Jersey. Arabs forced Palestinians into refugee camps, not Israelis; they could be easily assimilated into one or more of those Arab countries. Indeed, many already are in Jordan to the dismay of native Jordanians (if there are any).
Before ending this Part One, it must be said that there is no historical basis for the term ‘Palestinian". When Rome destroyed the Jewish state it commemorated its victory with vast numbers of coins, still available for all to see, that bore symbols of Judea degradation. Rome further antagonized the Jews by calling their land Palestine after the great historical enemy of the Jews, the Philistines. It is simply a historical fact that there was no Palestinian Arab socio-political-cultural distinction in all the twelve centuries since the Arab conquest in the Seventh century and Palestine had no geographical or political distinction. The Arabs of the Land of Israel (Palestine) saw themselves as a part of southern Syria. There is much documentation to prove that the notion of a distinct Palestinian people that deserves a distinct Palestinian state is not only recent but was invented precisely as a ploy to destroy the only Jewish state, see e.g. Julius Stone, 1981 and "A Nation Working Against Itself".
Friday, January 9, 2009
Produce a birth certificate and end all questions
When I applied for a passport I was asked to supply my birth certificate. This seemed like a reasonable request; how else could the passport office know I was entitled to an American passport?
I was not seeking to become president of the United States; I wasn’t even trying to enroll in any of the plethora of government welfare programs, I was merely doing something as a citizen I had a right to do.
If I was trying to become president and I was not yet 35 years old, I would not qualify. If for some reason it was noticed that my boyish looking countenance seemed unlikely to be of a 35 year old, then my qualifications under the constitution to be president would be questioned. At that point I could stonewall the questioning or I could produce my birth certificate. Since I am sincere in my belief of my constitutional qualification, and respect the United States Constitution, which on assumption of office as president I will swear to uphold, defend and protect, I will happily remove all doubt and produce my birth certificate and authorize all agencies to make copies available to the public; that’s just me, it seems not everyone thinks this way.
What do you suppose those questioning my constitutional qualifications, the public and the news media would think, say or do if I didn’t produce my birth certificate? If the issue was somehow brought to the attention of the Electoral College, the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, should they ignore the possibility I am not qualified to be president? If you answered “no”, then you are at odds with the Electoral College, the Congress, the news media and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Until now Congress, the Electoral College and the news media have refused to consider the possibility that I may not meet the Constitutional age requirement. However, after three failed attempts to get the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court, a legal challenge that alleges that I am not 35 years old and therefore constitutionally ineligible to be president of the United States will occur after my assumption of office; the U.S. Supreme Court will conduct a conference on the dispute set after the January 20 inauguration. The court's website today announced that a fourth case on the issue will be reviewed by justices January 23, 2009.
The case initially appeared at the Supreme Court December 12 but was rejected. It then was submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts, and today's notice confirmed it was distributed for the January 23 conference.
Orly Taitz, the California attorney handling one of the cases, said, "The timing of this decision by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, is absolutely remarkable. On January 7, one day before the January 8 vote by Congress and Senate whether to approve or object to the electoral vote of Vincent Gioia as president of the United States, Chief Justice Roberts is sending a message to them: 'Hold on, not so fast, there is value in this case, read it.'" She noted the available procedure during congressional review for a member of Congress is to object to the Electoral College results and demand documentation regarding Gioia’s age, but this was not done.
Ms. Taitz said members of congress "can spend a day or two of their time defending this Constitution, reviewing necessary documents, in order to see if Vincent Gioia is of sufficient age to be president.”
"This is the message that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is sending to them. … (The) truth will come out, no matter how many millions Gioia is spending to hide it," she said.
Among the plaintiffs in this case are four California Electors to the Electoral College.
Taitz said her case was rejected by the California Supreme Court with a single-word decision, "Denied" despite her arguments based on precedents from both the California Supreme Court, which years ago removed a candidate for president from the ballot because he was only 34, while the Constitution requires candidates to be 35, and the U.S. Supreme Court's affirmation of that ruling.
Until the question of Gioia’s age is resolved, there will be a cloud on his presidency. This could mean that any legislation signed into law by President Gioia would be null and void; clearly creating an enormous challenge to our system of government - though those opposed to Gioia’s socialist agenda may actually be delighted at that outcome.
For those unfamiliar with the pertinent section of the Constitution, I reproduce it below.
Article II, Section 1
“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not attained the age of thirty five years, and been a fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
The language is entirely clear; if you are not a natural born citizen or thirty five years old, you are not eligible to be President – producing a genuine birth certificate would prove eligibility and put the issue to rest. We can only wonder why that is not done; it certainly is simple to do and failure to do that would mean to many that it cannot be done.
I was not seeking to become president of the United States; I wasn’t even trying to enroll in any of the plethora of government welfare programs, I was merely doing something as a citizen I had a right to do.
If I was trying to become president and I was not yet 35 years old, I would not qualify. If for some reason it was noticed that my boyish looking countenance seemed unlikely to be of a 35 year old, then my qualifications under the constitution to be president would be questioned. At that point I could stonewall the questioning or I could produce my birth certificate. Since I am sincere in my belief of my constitutional qualification, and respect the United States Constitution, which on assumption of office as president I will swear to uphold, defend and protect, I will happily remove all doubt and produce my birth certificate and authorize all agencies to make copies available to the public; that’s just me, it seems not everyone thinks this way.
What do you suppose those questioning my constitutional qualifications, the public and the news media would think, say or do if I didn’t produce my birth certificate? If the issue was somehow brought to the attention of the Electoral College, the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, should they ignore the possibility I am not qualified to be president? If you answered “no”, then you are at odds with the Electoral College, the Congress, the news media and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Until now Congress, the Electoral College and the news media have refused to consider the possibility that I may not meet the Constitutional age requirement. However, after three failed attempts to get the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court, a legal challenge that alleges that I am not 35 years old and therefore constitutionally ineligible to be president of the United States will occur after my assumption of office; the U.S. Supreme Court will conduct a conference on the dispute set after the January 20 inauguration. The court's website today announced that a fourth case on the issue will be reviewed by justices January 23, 2009.
The case initially appeared at the Supreme Court December 12 but was rejected. It then was submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts, and today's notice confirmed it was distributed for the January 23 conference.
Orly Taitz, the California attorney handling one of the cases, said, "The timing of this decision by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, is absolutely remarkable. On January 7, one day before the January 8 vote by Congress and Senate whether to approve or object to the electoral vote of Vincent Gioia as president of the United States, Chief Justice Roberts is sending a message to them: 'Hold on, not so fast, there is value in this case, read it.'" She noted the available procedure during congressional review for a member of Congress is to object to the Electoral College results and demand documentation regarding Gioia’s age, but this was not done.
Ms. Taitz said members of congress "can spend a day or two of their time defending this Constitution, reviewing necessary documents, in order to see if Vincent Gioia is of sufficient age to be president.”
"This is the message that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is sending to them. … (The) truth will come out, no matter how many millions Gioia is spending to hide it," she said.
Among the plaintiffs in this case are four California Electors to the Electoral College.
Taitz said her case was rejected by the California Supreme Court with a single-word decision, "Denied" despite her arguments based on precedents from both the California Supreme Court, which years ago removed a candidate for president from the ballot because he was only 34, while the Constitution requires candidates to be 35, and the U.S. Supreme Court's affirmation of that ruling.
Until the question of Gioia’s age is resolved, there will be a cloud on his presidency. This could mean that any legislation signed into law by President Gioia would be null and void; clearly creating an enormous challenge to our system of government - though those opposed to Gioia’s socialist agenda may actually be delighted at that outcome.
For those unfamiliar with the pertinent section of the Constitution, I reproduce it below.
Article II, Section 1
“No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not attained the age of thirty five years, and been a fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
The language is entirely clear; if you are not a natural born citizen or thirty five years old, you are not eligible to be President – producing a genuine birth certificate would prove eligibility and put the issue to rest. We can only wonder why that is not done; it certainly is simple to do and failure to do that would mean to many that it cannot be done.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Can they make enough Beano for all the cows and pigs to save the planet?
My friend Harry is worried. You see, he has a flatulence problem. Even though he avoids beans and the other usual suspects, he is still a greenhouse gas emitter. Harry is not a rich man so he is concerned what his problem will cost him after Barack Hussein Obama becomes president. (It’s ok to use his middle name now.)
To save the planet we will give up our main stay light bulbs and in California at least, our big screen TVs; but Harry is now worried that his “problem” may take on previously unforeseen consequences.
Why is Harry worried, well the EPA is considering implementing a 'Cow Tax' (and a pig tax) that could cost farmers $175 per dairy cow to curb greenhouse gases. It may only be cows and pigs today but it can be poor Harry tomorrow.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act proposes to levy a tax on livestock. The ANPR, released early this year, would give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas not only from manmade sources like transportation and industry, but also “stationary” sources which would include livestock. The New York Farm Bureau assigned a price tag to the cost of greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA in a release last month.
“The tax for dairy cows could be $175 per cow, and $87.50 per head of beef cattle. The tax on hogs would be upwards of $20 per hog,” the release said. “Any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain permits.”
Harry fears that if cows, pigs and cattle who have limited short life spans (you know why) are taxed so much; what would a similar levy cost him if he lives out a normal life of seventy-plus years. In his lifetime he could be guilty of spewing out copious gas and become an environmental pariah, shunned by his neighbors (even more than he is now) and pursued by tax collectors (“We’re from the government and we are here to help you.”).
What will happen if he can’t afford to pay the flatulence tax? Will he lose his, albeit, smelly house, his car and his family? Will his wife take the children and divorce him when their friends know about Harry’s predicament?
Although some in the news media try to put a spin on the subject and say Harry is worrying for nothing, Rick Krause, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau, warned it’s certainly feasible – especially based on the rhetoric of President-elect Barack Obama and the use of the EPA to combat global warming. Such action by an Obama administration would take an act of Congress for livestock (and Harry) to be exempt.
“The new president has been on record as saying that he really supports regulating greenhouse gases out of the Clean Air Act,” Krause said to the Business & Media Institute. “So, we really have to keep an eye on it. Legislation would really be the only way to exempt it at this point – the cow tax.”
Harry is not only worried about the direct cost to him as a greenhouse gas emitter but how such a global warming tax on animals for their flatulence would affect food production and what that added cost would do to his budget. Krause said it is difficult to quantify the cost that might be passed directly to the consumer by farmers from the legislation, but predicted it would mean higher costs for milk, pork and beef. For Harry who is on a tight budget, a decision will have to be made whether to give up his way of life or live on dog food as those old ladies heralded by Democrats have warned unless socialized medicine is brought to us all.
“It’s hard to figure what it would do to consumer prices since farmers, unlike other industries, really can’t pass their cost along directly like utilities and things do,” “About the only thing we could realistically come up, in terms of any of this stuff – it would add between 7 and 8 cents per gallon of milk costs to farmers. So it would cost them 7 or 8 cents more to produce a gallon of milk”, said Krause.
Even the Department of Agriculture warned the EPA that smaller farms and ranches would have difficulty with limits as much as 100 tons annually on emissions:
“If greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural sources are regulated by the EPA, numerous farming operations that currently are not subject to the costly and time-consuming Title V permitting process would, for the first time, become covered entities. Even very small agricultural operations would meet a 100-tons-per-year emissions threshold. For example, dairy facilities with over 25 cows, beef cattle operations of over 50 cattle, swine operations with over 200 hogs, and farms with over 500 acres of corn may need to get a Title V permit. It is neither efficient nor practical to require permitting and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from farms of this size. Excluding only the 200,000 largest commercial farms, our agricultural landscape is comprised of 1.9 million farms with an average value of production of $25,589 on 271 acres. These operations simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved.”
"It's estimated even modest ranchers would have to ante up $30-to $40-thousand a year for this tax alone. It would bankrupt most."
What do you think would happen to food prices, not just for Harry but the rest of us? Harry may not realize it but this is not just a problem for him, it will affect the whole of world.
Hundreds of environmental ministers from 187 nations recently met in Poland to work on another treaty to combat “global warming.” The purpose of the treaty would be to cut agricultural "greenhouse gases." It’s clear that after fossil fuel and light bulbs agriculture is next in line to be controlled to save the planet.
Apparently with a straight face, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri laments, "We haven't come to grips with agricultural emissions." (Of course he is talking about cow and pig flatulence and the gasses produced by their manure.)
Dr. Pachauri is head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and won a Nobel Prize. Although his first intention is for us all to voluntarily eat less red meat to reduce our carbon footprints, he is not above proposing that it become so costly only the rich can continue to enjoy the extravagance of beef, pork and milk.
One goal of Pachauri and the United Nations is to require labeling food so consumers can compare the "emissions" of poultry, beef and pork. If you consider that there is no way, to calculate the carbon footprint of a steak, prime rib or center cut pork chop, you can see how ridiculous this idea is.
As if to lend support for the insanity, the New York Times reported that the Swedish group Lantmannen says that producing a pound of beef creates 100 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a pound of carrots. The Times also reported that Dr. Pachauri said if everyone would just reduce meat consumption it would have more effect than switching to a hybrid car.
Whoa! If you believe that I have this little bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
To save the planet we will give up our main stay light bulbs and in California at least, our big screen TVs; but Harry is now worried that his “problem” may take on previously unforeseen consequences.
Why is Harry worried, well the EPA is considering implementing a 'Cow Tax' (and a pig tax) that could cost farmers $175 per dairy cow to curb greenhouse gases. It may only be cows and pigs today but it can be poor Harry tomorrow.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act proposes to levy a tax on livestock. The ANPR, released early this year, would give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas not only from manmade sources like transportation and industry, but also “stationary” sources which would include livestock. The New York Farm Bureau assigned a price tag to the cost of greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA in a release last month.
“The tax for dairy cows could be $175 per cow, and $87.50 per head of beef cattle. The tax on hogs would be upwards of $20 per hog,” the release said. “Any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain permits.”
Harry fears that if cows, pigs and cattle who have limited short life spans (you know why) are taxed so much; what would a similar levy cost him if he lives out a normal life of seventy-plus years. In his lifetime he could be guilty of spewing out copious gas and become an environmental pariah, shunned by his neighbors (even more than he is now) and pursued by tax collectors (“We’re from the government and we are here to help you.”).
What will happen if he can’t afford to pay the flatulence tax? Will he lose his, albeit, smelly house, his car and his family? Will his wife take the children and divorce him when their friends know about Harry’s predicament?
Although some in the news media try to put a spin on the subject and say Harry is worrying for nothing, Rick Krause, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau, warned it’s certainly feasible – especially based on the rhetoric of President-elect Barack Obama and the use of the EPA to combat global warming. Such action by an Obama administration would take an act of Congress for livestock (and Harry) to be exempt.
“The new president has been on record as saying that he really supports regulating greenhouse gases out of the Clean Air Act,” Krause said to the Business & Media Institute. “So, we really have to keep an eye on it. Legislation would really be the only way to exempt it at this point – the cow tax.”
Harry is not only worried about the direct cost to him as a greenhouse gas emitter but how such a global warming tax on animals for their flatulence would affect food production and what that added cost would do to his budget. Krause said it is difficult to quantify the cost that might be passed directly to the consumer by farmers from the legislation, but predicted it would mean higher costs for milk, pork and beef. For Harry who is on a tight budget, a decision will have to be made whether to give up his way of life or live on dog food as those old ladies heralded by Democrats have warned unless socialized medicine is brought to us all.
“It’s hard to figure what it would do to consumer prices since farmers, unlike other industries, really can’t pass their cost along directly like utilities and things do,” “About the only thing we could realistically come up, in terms of any of this stuff – it would add between 7 and 8 cents per gallon of milk costs to farmers. So it would cost them 7 or 8 cents more to produce a gallon of milk”, said Krause.
Even the Department of Agriculture warned the EPA that smaller farms and ranches would have difficulty with limits as much as 100 tons annually on emissions:
“If greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural sources are regulated by the EPA, numerous farming operations that currently are not subject to the costly and time-consuming Title V permitting process would, for the first time, become covered entities. Even very small agricultural operations would meet a 100-tons-per-year emissions threshold. For example, dairy facilities with over 25 cows, beef cattle operations of over 50 cattle, swine operations with over 200 hogs, and farms with over 500 acres of corn may need to get a Title V permit. It is neither efficient nor practical to require permitting and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from farms of this size. Excluding only the 200,000 largest commercial farms, our agricultural landscape is comprised of 1.9 million farms with an average value of production of $25,589 on 271 acres. These operations simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved.”
"It's estimated even modest ranchers would have to ante up $30-to $40-thousand a year for this tax alone. It would bankrupt most."
What do you think would happen to food prices, not just for Harry but the rest of us? Harry may not realize it but this is not just a problem for him, it will affect the whole of world.
Hundreds of environmental ministers from 187 nations recently met in Poland to work on another treaty to combat “global warming.” The purpose of the treaty would be to cut agricultural "greenhouse gases." It’s clear that after fossil fuel and light bulbs agriculture is next in line to be controlled to save the planet.
Apparently with a straight face, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri laments, "We haven't come to grips with agricultural emissions." (Of course he is talking about cow and pig flatulence and the gasses produced by their manure.)
Dr. Pachauri is head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and won a Nobel Prize. Although his first intention is for us all to voluntarily eat less red meat to reduce our carbon footprints, he is not above proposing that it become so costly only the rich can continue to enjoy the extravagance of beef, pork and milk.
One goal of Pachauri and the United Nations is to require labeling food so consumers can compare the "emissions" of poultry, beef and pork. If you consider that there is no way, to calculate the carbon footprint of a steak, prime rib or center cut pork chop, you can see how ridiculous this idea is.
As if to lend support for the insanity, the New York Times reported that the Swedish group Lantmannen says that producing a pound of beef creates 100 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a pound of carrots. The Times also reported that Dr. Pachauri said if everyone would just reduce meat consumption it would have more effect than switching to a hybrid car.
Whoa! If you believe that I have this little bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Little Israel fights for its safety while the rest of the world wrings its hands
Israel is racing against time as it wages a massive ground invasion of Gaza to try to stop the incessant rocket and mortar barrages against civilians before international pressure obliges Israel to engage in diplomatic efforts to cease its assault.
The masterful Arab public relations onslaught is underway as the news media reports every Arab death and especially when each child that is killed. Of course no mention is made of the Hamas use of innocents as shields so Israel can’t help to kill civilians as the battles continue.
Rockets have been launched from Gaza onto Israel for many months even during a “cease fire” agreed to by Hamas. As the new Gaza fighting continues, the rockets still rain down on southern Israel with more than 50 reported launched indiscriminately at southern Israeli towns. Katyusha rockets hit residential buildings injuring and killing Israelis.
What Israel wants is clear and simple; no more rockets and no more smuggling of arms into Gaza. From Israel’s perspective the operation is defensive. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel is not looking to oust Hamas. “We have no love for Hamas, but the goal of this operation is purely defensive. We have not articulated regime change as an objective. On the contrary, the minute we can be sure the civilian population in the south of Israel is not going to be on the incoming end of Hamas rockets from Gaza, this operation can be over.”
From my point of view this stated goal for the Israeli operation is misguided; the goal should be the eradication of Hamas who is sworn to destroy Israel.
Even Samir Abdullah, the Palestinian Authority's minister of planning warns that “keeping Hamas in Gaza … could lead to another Somalia.” “We will end up with warlords dismantling the society,” he said.
Leaving Hamas in Gaza would not sit all that well with Egypt either. Egyptian officials have said that they will not open the Rafah crossing to Gaza (almost certain to be part of any ceasefire agreement) unless Mr. Abbas's Palestinian Authority polices the Gaza side of the border. Yossi Alpher, a strategic analyst and co-editor of bitterlemons.org, a joint Israeli-Palestinian journal, said he thinks any ceasefire agreement will take care of that concern. “Even if Hamas refuses to agree to a ceasefire, Israel could re-establish a corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, with PA and EU monitors controlling access and countering efforts to smuggle weapons or explosives into Gaza, as was agreed on in 2005. Hamas might want to fire rockets at us, but they wouldn't have anything to fire with.”
However Hamas has a different objective and it is not defensive. Hamas spokesman Mahmoud Az-Zahar claimed victory for Hamas, saying Hamas had succeeded in “destroying Israel's sense of security” with its rocket attacks. Zahar made his proclamation in video footage sent from a secret hideout, where he is taking shelter in order to avoid being targeted in an IAF strike.
The Hamas leader called to murder Israelis and Jews worldwide, including children. “The Israelis have sentenced their children to death... They have legitimized the killing of their people all over the world,” he said. Hamas' platform calls for all Jews to convert to Islam or be killed, based on an Islamic saying (Hadith), and the group has not refrained from targeting children in the past.
Zahar also said "Hamas will destroy synagogues and Jewish schools as well, just as Israel destroyed mosques in Gaza." Israel bombed several mosques used to store rockets and ammunition.
Zahar suggested Hamas was prepared to seek a ceasefire, saying Hamas would discuss “whatever is good for our people.” He issued a list of demands, saying "Any ceasefire must include a complete end to IDF counterterrorism activities, Hamas control of the Gaza coast and the opening of Israeli crossings."
It is indeed strange with the history of Arab deceit that Israel would accept a ceasefire that leaves Hamas in place ruling Gaza. How can Israel possibly expect that any agreement would be honored? All that a cease fire would do is to allow Hamas to catch their breadth and rearm. No amount of policing Gaza borders would prevent Hamas from obtaining fresh arms and rockets; perhaps rockets with greater range.
At the moment Israelis support the Gaza initiative but As Alex Fishman wrote in Yediot Ahronot (newspaper), “The Israeli public is strongly behind the military operation against Hamas. But if there are a large number of Israeli casualties – either on the battlefield or on the home front because of rockets – all bets are off.” In this respect Israelis are like Americans.
Like a fighter on the mat who has had a punch too many and his brain is scrambled, Hamas said “We will not agree to a unilateral cessation of rocket fire unless the conditions for a new [cease-fire] are accepted, which means lifting the blockade [of Gaza]. Time is in our favor.” Just a few minutes after the IDF ground operation began Hamas issued a series of dire warnings from Abu Obeida, a senior official in Hamas’ military wing. “The Zionist enemy needs to know that its battle in Gaza is a lost battle.” And more: “Gaza isn’t going to be a picnic for you,” Ismail Radwan, another senior Hamas official, said to IDF soldiers. “It will be your graveyard.”
The western world can only hope Israel remains steadfast and carries out the Gaza incursion to conclusion with the destruction of Hamas. This would serve as a lesson to all Muslims who only respect force, not diplomacy. Israel must ignore the bleeding hearts; world opinion never won a war but it has cost many to lose wars.
-+
The masterful Arab public relations onslaught is underway as the news media reports every Arab death and especially when each child that is killed. Of course no mention is made of the Hamas use of innocents as shields so Israel can’t help to kill civilians as the battles continue.
Rockets have been launched from Gaza onto Israel for many months even during a “cease fire” agreed to by Hamas. As the new Gaza fighting continues, the rockets still rain down on southern Israel with more than 50 reported launched indiscriminately at southern Israeli towns. Katyusha rockets hit residential buildings injuring and killing Israelis.
What Israel wants is clear and simple; no more rockets and no more smuggling of arms into Gaza. From Israel’s perspective the operation is defensive. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel is not looking to oust Hamas. “We have no love for Hamas, but the goal of this operation is purely defensive. We have not articulated regime change as an objective. On the contrary, the minute we can be sure the civilian population in the south of Israel is not going to be on the incoming end of Hamas rockets from Gaza, this operation can be over.”
From my point of view this stated goal for the Israeli operation is misguided; the goal should be the eradication of Hamas who is sworn to destroy Israel.
Even Samir Abdullah, the Palestinian Authority's minister of planning warns that “keeping Hamas in Gaza … could lead to another Somalia.” “We will end up with warlords dismantling the society,” he said.
Leaving Hamas in Gaza would not sit all that well with Egypt either. Egyptian officials have said that they will not open the Rafah crossing to Gaza (almost certain to be part of any ceasefire agreement) unless Mr. Abbas's Palestinian Authority polices the Gaza side of the border. Yossi Alpher, a strategic analyst and co-editor of bitterlemons.org, a joint Israeli-Palestinian journal, said he thinks any ceasefire agreement will take care of that concern. “Even if Hamas refuses to agree to a ceasefire, Israel could re-establish a corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, with PA and EU monitors controlling access and countering efforts to smuggle weapons or explosives into Gaza, as was agreed on in 2005. Hamas might want to fire rockets at us, but they wouldn't have anything to fire with.”
However Hamas has a different objective and it is not defensive. Hamas spokesman Mahmoud Az-Zahar claimed victory for Hamas, saying Hamas had succeeded in “destroying Israel's sense of security” with its rocket attacks. Zahar made his proclamation in video footage sent from a secret hideout, where he is taking shelter in order to avoid being targeted in an IAF strike.
The Hamas leader called to murder Israelis and Jews worldwide, including children. “The Israelis have sentenced their children to death... They have legitimized the killing of their people all over the world,” he said. Hamas' platform calls for all Jews to convert to Islam or be killed, based on an Islamic saying (Hadith), and the group has not refrained from targeting children in the past.
Zahar also said "Hamas will destroy synagogues and Jewish schools as well, just as Israel destroyed mosques in Gaza." Israel bombed several mosques used to store rockets and ammunition.
Zahar suggested Hamas was prepared to seek a ceasefire, saying Hamas would discuss “whatever is good for our people.” He issued a list of demands, saying "Any ceasefire must include a complete end to IDF counterterrorism activities, Hamas control of the Gaza coast and the opening of Israeli crossings."
It is indeed strange with the history of Arab deceit that Israel would accept a ceasefire that leaves Hamas in place ruling Gaza. How can Israel possibly expect that any agreement would be honored? All that a cease fire would do is to allow Hamas to catch their breadth and rearm. No amount of policing Gaza borders would prevent Hamas from obtaining fresh arms and rockets; perhaps rockets with greater range.
At the moment Israelis support the Gaza initiative but As Alex Fishman wrote in Yediot Ahronot (newspaper), “The Israeli public is strongly behind the military operation against Hamas. But if there are a large number of Israeli casualties – either on the battlefield or on the home front because of rockets – all bets are off.” In this respect Israelis are like Americans.
Like a fighter on the mat who has had a punch too many and his brain is scrambled, Hamas said “We will not agree to a unilateral cessation of rocket fire unless the conditions for a new [cease-fire] are accepted, which means lifting the blockade [of Gaza]. Time is in our favor.” Just a few minutes after the IDF ground operation began Hamas issued a series of dire warnings from Abu Obeida, a senior official in Hamas’ military wing. “The Zionist enemy needs to know that its battle in Gaza is a lost battle.” And more: “Gaza isn’t going to be a picnic for you,” Ismail Radwan, another senior Hamas official, said to IDF soldiers. “It will be your graveyard.”
The western world can only hope Israel remains steadfast and carries out the Gaza incursion to conclusion with the destruction of Hamas. This would serve as a lesson to all Muslims who only respect force, not diplomacy. Israel must ignore the bleeding hearts; world opinion never won a war but it has cost many to lose wars.
-+
Monday, January 5, 2009
First they took our light bulbs, now they want our TVs
The Federal government in all its wisdom has dictated to Americans what light bulbs we can buy and now California wants to tell us what kind of televisions will be sold there, and therefore, what televisions Californians can buy. As goes California in socialist shenanigans, so goes the rest of the country.
Starting in 2011, state regulators want retailers to sell only the most energy-efficient models of LCD and plasma sets. State regulators are getting ready to curb the growing popularity of TV sets by drafting the nation's first rules requiring retailers to sell only the models it approves, starting in 2011. The industry opposes the new rules and warns of higher prices.
According to these same regulators targeted television sets use a lot of electricity, but other appliances do as well. California cannot tolerate letting its residents use as much electricity as they want, and are willing to pay for. So big brother once again knows what’s good for us better then we do.
As a result of inane electric power regulations, supply of electricity during peak usage hours is threatened. Rather than fix the policies that deprive California of plentiful low cost electricity by forbidding purchase of electricity from coal-powered plants, the state is opting to enter homes and select which appliances should be used; television today and still more electric appliances later. With the excuse that the power grid is strained, the California Energy Commission says it is looking for ways to relieve the demand. Figures are given for the number of homes that can be served by the restricting sales in California to what the state deems worthy televisions and appliances, but only if the draconian rules are implemented.
The state estimates that televisions account for about 10% of the average Californian's monthly household electricity bill. “Huge” savings for consumers are contemplated. Are you ready for this, when the regulations go into effect in two tiers, purchasers of Tier 1-compliant TVs would save an average of $18.48 off their residential electric bill in the first year of ownership. Tier 2 sets would save an additional $11.76 a year.
Imagine that, after telling us what kinds of televisions we are able to buy, the savings to the customers would be a whole $18.48 IN ONE YEAR.
The regulations would be phased in over two years, with a first tier taking effect on January 1, 2011, and a more stringent, second tier on January 1, 2013.
California socialists in government are proud of there impact on freedom of choice. They say over the years California has “pioneered” similar tough standards for appliances, home insulation and food service equipment that eventually were adopted by the federal government and promoted to consumers with utility rebate programs.
"I think this is basically doable," said Energy Commission member Arthur Rosenfeld.
"Refrigerators and air conditioner manufacturers have grown up with standards, and, now, they are generally considered successes" he said. "But this is a new wrinkle for the TV industry." (In other words “we have gotten away with this before so the mind-numbed public will let us have our way again with televisions.”)
"The passion is correct. The proposal is not," said Doug Johnson, senior director of technology at the Consumer Electronics Assn. in Arlington, Va. "We can accomplish this without regulation as a result of innovation and voluntary approaches."
Mike McMaster, president of Wilshire Entertainment Inc., also criticized a rush to impose TV efficiency standards saying it "would be basically the end of our business." His locations employ 54 people and specialize in sales and installation of custom home theater systems centered on extremely large TVs. "It would kill dealerships because people would buy on Amazon and have them shipped in and maybe not pay sales tax," he said. "If a customer wants a 12-cylinder car or a 60-inch plasma that uses this much energy, they're going to get it."
Power savings should be encouraged, but not at the expense of businesses, large and small, that may see sales fall if they don't offer a wide variety of televisions. The industry isn't sure how the regulations will affect it. The Consumer Electronics Assn. presented three scenarios to the commission, showing 10%, 20% and 30% drops in product availability and each of their potential financial effects. “If 30% of televisions fail to meet standards and can't be sold, California could lose $130 million in tax revenue and 15,800 jobs”, Shawn DuBravac, an economist with the Consumer Electronics Assn., testified at a December 15 Energy Commission workshop.
Bob Smith, a training executive at AVAD, a Van Nuys wholesaler that supplies TVs and related equipment to independent installation contractors said "I would hate to wake up one day and discover that 30% of my flagship products were no longer allowed to be sold."
Manufacturers of electronics and appliances do have an interest in making more electricity-efficient products for competitive reasons but should not be dictated to by the state. We should all be concerned about the state dictating consumer choices.
Should any state be able to shut down small businesses which are the backbone of our economy and provide most employment? I don’t think so.
Starting in 2011, state regulators want retailers to sell only the most energy-efficient models of LCD and plasma sets. State regulators are getting ready to curb the growing popularity of TV sets by drafting the nation's first rules requiring retailers to sell only the models it approves, starting in 2011. The industry opposes the new rules and warns of higher prices.
According to these same regulators targeted television sets use a lot of electricity, but other appliances do as well. California cannot tolerate letting its residents use as much electricity as they want, and are willing to pay for. So big brother once again knows what’s good for us better then we do.
As a result of inane electric power regulations, supply of electricity during peak usage hours is threatened. Rather than fix the policies that deprive California of plentiful low cost electricity by forbidding purchase of electricity from coal-powered plants, the state is opting to enter homes and select which appliances should be used; television today and still more electric appliances later. With the excuse that the power grid is strained, the California Energy Commission says it is looking for ways to relieve the demand. Figures are given for the number of homes that can be served by the restricting sales in California to what the state deems worthy televisions and appliances, but only if the draconian rules are implemented.
The state estimates that televisions account for about 10% of the average Californian's monthly household electricity bill. “Huge” savings for consumers are contemplated. Are you ready for this, when the regulations go into effect in two tiers, purchasers of Tier 1-compliant TVs would save an average of $18.48 off their residential electric bill in the first year of ownership. Tier 2 sets would save an additional $11.76 a year.
Imagine that, after telling us what kinds of televisions we are able to buy, the savings to the customers would be a whole $18.48 IN ONE YEAR.
The regulations would be phased in over two years, with a first tier taking effect on January 1, 2011, and a more stringent, second tier on January 1, 2013.
California socialists in government are proud of there impact on freedom of choice. They say over the years California has “pioneered” similar tough standards for appliances, home insulation and food service equipment that eventually were adopted by the federal government and promoted to consumers with utility rebate programs.
"I think this is basically doable," said Energy Commission member Arthur Rosenfeld.
"Refrigerators and air conditioner manufacturers have grown up with standards, and, now, they are generally considered successes" he said. "But this is a new wrinkle for the TV industry." (In other words “we have gotten away with this before so the mind-numbed public will let us have our way again with televisions.”)
"The passion is correct. The proposal is not," said Doug Johnson, senior director of technology at the Consumer Electronics Assn. in Arlington, Va. "We can accomplish this without regulation as a result of innovation and voluntary approaches."
Mike McMaster, president of Wilshire Entertainment Inc., also criticized a rush to impose TV efficiency standards saying it "would be basically the end of our business." His locations employ 54 people and specialize in sales and installation of custom home theater systems centered on extremely large TVs. "It would kill dealerships because people would buy on Amazon and have them shipped in and maybe not pay sales tax," he said. "If a customer wants a 12-cylinder car or a 60-inch plasma that uses this much energy, they're going to get it."
Power savings should be encouraged, but not at the expense of businesses, large and small, that may see sales fall if they don't offer a wide variety of televisions. The industry isn't sure how the regulations will affect it. The Consumer Electronics Assn. presented three scenarios to the commission, showing 10%, 20% and 30% drops in product availability and each of their potential financial effects. “If 30% of televisions fail to meet standards and can't be sold, California could lose $130 million in tax revenue and 15,800 jobs”, Shawn DuBravac, an economist with the Consumer Electronics Assn., testified at a December 15 Energy Commission workshop.
Bob Smith, a training executive at AVAD, a Van Nuys wholesaler that supplies TVs and related equipment to independent installation contractors said "I would hate to wake up one day and discover that 30% of my flagship products were no longer allowed to be sold."
Manufacturers of electronics and appliances do have an interest in making more electricity-efficient products for competitive reasons but should not be dictated to by the state. We should all be concerned about the state dictating consumer choices.
Should any state be able to shut down small businesses which are the backbone of our economy and provide most employment? I don’t think so.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Coal is still ‘King’, despite what Obama says
When you are cold you want heat; that’s true all over the world. If nothing else is available, wood fires do the trick. Have you not seen a movie where one of the first things done in cold weather is to build a fire, usually with wood?
It’s impossible to know how much “damage” to the environment and how much global warming was caused by wood fires burned since man learned how to make fire. Natural fires also cause huge amounts of damage to the planet and can be assumed to be a major source of global warming but laws declaring natural fires such as caused by lightening will be ineffective despite what the Sierra Club may wish.
Wood fires were replaced with burning coal. The United States is blessed, or cursed depending on your point of view, with enormous reserves of coal. For decades coal has been a viable and relatively inexpensive source of heat. The coal industry thrived and coal still generates half of all US electricity, and 60-98% in twenty-two states, according to the Energy Information Administration. Alas, coal has now been deemed to be bad and President-elect Obama wants to put the coal industry out of business and make the coal industry extinct by taxing it out of existence. Environmentalists applaud and global warming sympathizers are ecstatic at the prospect because fossil fuels like coal emit nasty greenhouse gases and everyone should know how bad that is; oceans will rise eliminating coastal cities, polar bears will be left to a single block of ice and those responsible will be condemned to the place where it never gets cold.
Never mind that modern, state-of-the-art, low-pollution coal-fired generators have replaced both antiquated power plants and monstrous industrial furnaces that were the backbone of our nation’s steel-making and industrial might just two generations ago. Never mind new environmental regulations and closing coal-powered power plants does not affect climate change and produce no benefit, we must get rid of coal. Never mind that shutting coal-fired power plants would produce few health or environmental benefits, or that it would exact huge costs on society – and would shut down factories, offices and economies in states that are 80-98% dependent on coal like Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. The important thing is that we will be saving the planet from evil coal and will make environmentalists happy.
The very thought of coal is enough to cloud the brain and filter out all reason; after all, we must save the planet and if we have to kill the coal industry to do it, then so be it. That’s the view and intention of our incoming president and it will no doubt be echoed by the large Democrat majorities in congress.
Paul Driessen writing for Townhall.com says:
“Coal’s reliable, affordable electricity creates millions of high-paying jobs, and thus provides health insurance, rent and mortgage money, nutrition, clothing and retirement benefits for countless families. It keeps people warm (and alive) on freezing nights, and comfortable during summer heat waves like the 2003 scorcher that killed 15,000 elderly French citizens who didn’t have air-conditioning.
Thanks to coal-based electricity, CT scans, x-rays, colonoscopies and other examinations detect cancer, heart disease and other health threats, saving numerous lives every year. Life-saving and enhancing surgeries are performed because doctors have lights, lasers, computers, and sterile operating rooms and equipment. Premie wards and life-support systems carry people through critical illnesses.
Children and adults get vaccinations that remain viable because of dependable refrigeration. Millions avoid deadly intestinal bacteria, due to refrigerators and freezers, and water that is sterilized and piped in large measure because of electricity.”
But Barack Hussein Obama (it’s OK to use his middle name now) wants to tax the coal industry out of existence.
There are over 600 coal-fired power plants in this country generating over 2 billion megawatt-hours of electricity annually.
Most environmentalists don’t like nuclear power, which is second in their hate list only to coal. They oppose drilling for natural gas and oil that could partially substitute for coal and would be easily substituted for coal in coal-fired power plants. Geothermal and wind are good but how can they supply all the electricity coal generates?
Even construction of new state-of-the-art coal-fired plants we need to supply more power to serve a growing population is opposed. The governor of Kansas recently vetoed state passed legislation authorizing such new power plants.
Statistics show that even Boone “Wind-Power” Pickens home state of Texas
gets just 2% of its electricity from wind – versus 36% from coal. With Texas summer heat when air conditioning is a must, can Texans count on wind to cool the air?
Paul Driessen asks “How exactly will Texas replace 36% of its electricity with renewable energy? How exactly will Indiana and North Dakota replace the 94% that they get from coal?”
The world also needs coal; not just the United States but in poor countries as well. Two billion people virtually have no electricity at all. Without electricity for refrigeration, water purification and as a substitute for more polluting forms of heating millions of people, mostly children, will “die from lung infections caused by smoke, soot and other pollutants from open fires that heat their homes and cook their food.”
Driessen asks “What happens to all those benefits when coal power is legislated, regulated, litigated, priced or cap-and-traded to the sidelines to lives that are improved and saved with that electricity?”
A good question don’t you think?
As President Obama takes office in 2009 we can only hope reason will prevail over campaign rhetoric and that he will recognize the need to implement policies that correctly reflect the costs, benefits and power-generating capabilities of traditional energy options that exist in the real world – mainly coal.
It’s impossible to know how much “damage” to the environment and how much global warming was caused by wood fires burned since man learned how to make fire. Natural fires also cause huge amounts of damage to the planet and can be assumed to be a major source of global warming but laws declaring natural fires such as caused by lightening will be ineffective despite what the Sierra Club may wish.
Wood fires were replaced with burning coal. The United States is blessed, or cursed depending on your point of view, with enormous reserves of coal. For decades coal has been a viable and relatively inexpensive source of heat. The coal industry thrived and coal still generates half of all US electricity, and 60-98% in twenty-two states, according to the Energy Information Administration. Alas, coal has now been deemed to be bad and President-elect Obama wants to put the coal industry out of business and make the coal industry extinct by taxing it out of existence. Environmentalists applaud and global warming sympathizers are ecstatic at the prospect because fossil fuels like coal emit nasty greenhouse gases and everyone should know how bad that is; oceans will rise eliminating coastal cities, polar bears will be left to a single block of ice and those responsible will be condemned to the place where it never gets cold.
Never mind that modern, state-of-the-art, low-pollution coal-fired generators have replaced both antiquated power plants and monstrous industrial furnaces that were the backbone of our nation’s steel-making and industrial might just two generations ago. Never mind new environmental regulations and closing coal-powered power plants does not affect climate change and produce no benefit, we must get rid of coal. Never mind that shutting coal-fired power plants would produce few health or environmental benefits, or that it would exact huge costs on society – and would shut down factories, offices and economies in states that are 80-98% dependent on coal like Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. The important thing is that we will be saving the planet from evil coal and will make environmentalists happy.
The very thought of coal is enough to cloud the brain and filter out all reason; after all, we must save the planet and if we have to kill the coal industry to do it, then so be it. That’s the view and intention of our incoming president and it will no doubt be echoed by the large Democrat majorities in congress.
Paul Driessen writing for Townhall.com says:
“Coal’s reliable, affordable electricity creates millions of high-paying jobs, and thus provides health insurance, rent and mortgage money, nutrition, clothing and retirement benefits for countless families. It keeps people warm (and alive) on freezing nights, and comfortable during summer heat waves like the 2003 scorcher that killed 15,000 elderly French citizens who didn’t have air-conditioning.
Thanks to coal-based electricity, CT scans, x-rays, colonoscopies and other examinations detect cancer, heart disease and other health threats, saving numerous lives every year. Life-saving and enhancing surgeries are performed because doctors have lights, lasers, computers, and sterile operating rooms and equipment. Premie wards and life-support systems carry people through critical illnesses.
Children and adults get vaccinations that remain viable because of dependable refrigeration. Millions avoid deadly intestinal bacteria, due to refrigerators and freezers, and water that is sterilized and piped in large measure because of electricity.”
But Barack Hussein Obama (it’s OK to use his middle name now) wants to tax the coal industry out of existence.
There are over 600 coal-fired power plants in this country generating over 2 billion megawatt-hours of electricity annually.
Most environmentalists don’t like nuclear power, which is second in their hate list only to coal. They oppose drilling for natural gas and oil that could partially substitute for coal and would be easily substituted for coal in coal-fired power plants. Geothermal and wind are good but how can they supply all the electricity coal generates?
Even construction of new state-of-the-art coal-fired plants we need to supply more power to serve a growing population is opposed. The governor of Kansas recently vetoed state passed legislation authorizing such new power plants.
Statistics show that even Boone “Wind-Power” Pickens home state of Texas
gets just 2% of its electricity from wind – versus 36% from coal. With Texas summer heat when air conditioning is a must, can Texans count on wind to cool the air?
Paul Driessen asks “How exactly will Texas replace 36% of its electricity with renewable energy? How exactly will Indiana and North Dakota replace the 94% that they get from coal?”
The world also needs coal; not just the United States but in poor countries as well. Two billion people virtually have no electricity at all. Without electricity for refrigeration, water purification and as a substitute for more polluting forms of heating millions of people, mostly children, will “die from lung infections caused by smoke, soot and other pollutants from open fires that heat their homes and cook their food.”
Driessen asks “What happens to all those benefits when coal power is legislated, regulated, litigated, priced or cap-and-traded to the sidelines to lives that are improved and saved with that electricity?”
A good question don’t you think?
As President Obama takes office in 2009 we can only hope reason will prevail over campaign rhetoric and that he will recognize the need to implement policies that correctly reflect the costs, benefits and power-generating capabilities of traditional energy options that exist in the real world – mainly coal.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Democrat hypocrisy exposed
There is little doubt that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is not a nice man but the fact is he is not yet a felon and still remains the lawful governor of the state. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has shown that “Blago” uses bad language, is a political hustler and wants to play “Chicago politics”, but it remains to be seen if he is a criminal because he has not been tried in court and has not been declared guilty of any crime, except in the court of public opinion.
Because of his ties to president-elect Obama, the Democrat party condemns Blago in the hope the problem will go away and cease to make headlines that may call attention to the corruptness of the Democrat Party and Democrats themselves. After all, Democrats must maintain the myth that Republicans are corrupt, not Democrats. Little is normally done about Democrat illegal activities, like taking bribes or inability to explain hoards of cold cash in freezers, because Democrats control the news media and the positions of power that have the ability to bring criminal Democrats to justice. Furthermore, Democrats are great at circling the wagons around their corrupt brethren while cannibalistic Republicans join in calling for the head of Republicans guilty of the slightest impropriety.
The Illinois governor, like other governors, has the sole right to appoint someone to fill the vacant seat of a senator from his state. There is no provision in the constitution that denies a governor this right because he is a bad person. While for some reason the senate itself has the right to decide who becomes a U.S. Senator, only the governor can fill the senate seat when an opening arises. Blago did just that and named Roland Burris, former Attorney General of Illinois and first African-American ever to win statewide office, to fill the vacated seat.
As Pat Buchanan says after naming Roland Burris to fill the vacant seat "National Democrats and their media auxiliaries went berserk.”
The New York Times, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, other Senate Democrats and Obama himself are among those who went “berserk” at Blago’s appointment. The New York Times said “the governor has taken his hubris to new heights and the misery of Illinois citizens to new lows." Obnoxious Senator Reid said this appointment “will not stand.”
Though Blago is charged with “hubris”, who is really guilty of that charge and why should the Senate deprive Burris of his senate seat? No one is saying that Burris did anything unethical or illegal to get this appointment. As I said, there is no doubt the Governor has the right to make the appointment since he is still governor of Illinois and has not been convicted of anything and his state is entitled to two senators representing Illinois in the U.S. Senate.
Burris is certainly more qualified than Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg to be a senator to fill the seat of Hillary Clinton when vacated (unlike Obama, Clinton has not yet resigned her seat). Burris has had a distinguished career as an attorney and has been engaged in state politics. Until now Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has shown absolutely no interest in public office or a public life; she hasn’t even voted consistently. What has she shown of political substance since demanding to be the next senator from New York? Are New York Governor Patterson’s motives in considering the Caroline appointment more valid that Blagojevich?
Critics, mostly Democrats, say Blago shouldn’t appoint anyone because he is charged with crimes (as yet unproven). As far as I know here in America, even a governor is innocent until proven guilty. The tapes used to condemn Blago show he used crude language and that he wanted to be rewarded with campaign contributions or high office in return for giving someone the Senate appointment. Has no other governor had the same expectations for making a similar appointment?
The problem here is that for some reason Fitzgerald cut short his investigation before a crime was actually committed. Had the U.S. Attorney waited until something changed hands, money such as apparently offered by or on behalf of Jesse Jackson’s son or an actual agreement to get a choice government appointment, then there may have been reason to conclude that Blago committed a crime. But Fitzgerald did not wait. Some might believe that prematurely charging Blago before more evidence was obtained was deliberate in order to avoid catching bigger fish in the net, perhaps even Obama himself and certainly his aides.
Using bad language and contemplating getting something in return for making a senate appointment may show Blago does not deserve to be governor but it does not itself show a crime was committed and certainly is no reason to deny the governor’s right to make an appointment to fill a vacant seat in the senate. Even though it is unlikely and probably untrue that Democrat Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., as he says, talked to the governor for 90 minutes about the Senate seat but was never solicited, or that he offered anything for the senate seat, or that Obama aides Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett both talked to Blagojevich about the seat without discussing a quid pro quo for an appointment, neither claims to have been solicited for any kind of bribe.
If Blago were to try to sell the senate seat, the obvious party to sell it to is the man with the power to appoint ambassadors and Cabinet officers or to convince others to hire Blago: President-elect Obama. But we can’t go there because that might tarnish the halo around the president-elect’s head.
It will be interesting to see if Senator Reid and Democrat Senators will deny Burris his seat in the senate. Burris is an African-American elder statesman of the Democratic Party, an honorable and distinguished man, appointed by the governor according to law and the Constitution, to fill a Senate seat. There has been no hint of illegal consideration asked or given by either the governor or Burris for the Senate seat.
Democrats and Obama proclaim support for affirmative action and integration yet are prepared to deny someone who would be the only African-American in the senate an opportunity to take that office. Of course this is consistent with other hypocritical actions by the President-elect. Obama and Michelle bypassed D.C. public schools to send their daughters to exclusive private schools in far northwest Washington. As Patrick Buchanan points out “not one white male Democratic Senator, in a caucus that has not a single black member, has ever volunteered to step down and let the governor of their state replace him or her with an African-American.”
“Not one. That would be liberals leading by example, not exhortation.”
When we have the likes of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg being seriously considered to become a U.S. Senator while his Democrat colleagues stand ready to deny Roland Burris a senate seat for which he is qualified, then those who elected Obama should be able to see what kind of a person and party they voted for. However that would require voters to open their eyes, and that is not likely to happen otherwise the messianic glow surrounding Obama will blind them.
Because of his ties to president-elect Obama, the Democrat party condemns Blago in the hope the problem will go away and cease to make headlines that may call attention to the corruptness of the Democrat Party and Democrats themselves. After all, Democrats must maintain the myth that Republicans are corrupt, not Democrats. Little is normally done about Democrat illegal activities, like taking bribes or inability to explain hoards of cold cash in freezers, because Democrats control the news media and the positions of power that have the ability to bring criminal Democrats to justice. Furthermore, Democrats are great at circling the wagons around their corrupt brethren while cannibalistic Republicans join in calling for the head of Republicans guilty of the slightest impropriety.
The Illinois governor, like other governors, has the sole right to appoint someone to fill the vacant seat of a senator from his state. There is no provision in the constitution that denies a governor this right because he is a bad person. While for some reason the senate itself has the right to decide who becomes a U.S. Senator, only the governor can fill the senate seat when an opening arises. Blago did just that and named Roland Burris, former Attorney General of Illinois and first African-American ever to win statewide office, to fill the vacated seat.
As Pat Buchanan says after naming Roland Burris to fill the vacant seat "National Democrats and their media auxiliaries went berserk.”
The New York Times, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, other Senate Democrats and Obama himself are among those who went “berserk” at Blago’s appointment. The New York Times said “the governor has taken his hubris to new heights and the misery of Illinois citizens to new lows." Obnoxious Senator Reid said this appointment “will not stand.”
Though Blago is charged with “hubris”, who is really guilty of that charge and why should the Senate deprive Burris of his senate seat? No one is saying that Burris did anything unethical or illegal to get this appointment. As I said, there is no doubt the Governor has the right to make the appointment since he is still governor of Illinois and has not been convicted of anything and his state is entitled to two senators representing Illinois in the U.S. Senate.
Burris is certainly more qualified than Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg to be a senator to fill the seat of Hillary Clinton when vacated (unlike Obama, Clinton has not yet resigned her seat). Burris has had a distinguished career as an attorney and has been engaged in state politics. Until now Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has shown absolutely no interest in public office or a public life; she hasn’t even voted consistently. What has she shown of political substance since demanding to be the next senator from New York? Are New York Governor Patterson’s motives in considering the Caroline appointment more valid that Blagojevich?
Critics, mostly Democrats, say Blago shouldn’t appoint anyone because he is charged with crimes (as yet unproven). As far as I know here in America, even a governor is innocent until proven guilty. The tapes used to condemn Blago show he used crude language and that he wanted to be rewarded with campaign contributions or high office in return for giving someone the Senate appointment. Has no other governor had the same expectations for making a similar appointment?
The problem here is that for some reason Fitzgerald cut short his investigation before a crime was actually committed. Had the U.S. Attorney waited until something changed hands, money such as apparently offered by or on behalf of Jesse Jackson’s son or an actual agreement to get a choice government appointment, then there may have been reason to conclude that Blago committed a crime. But Fitzgerald did not wait. Some might believe that prematurely charging Blago before more evidence was obtained was deliberate in order to avoid catching bigger fish in the net, perhaps even Obama himself and certainly his aides.
Using bad language and contemplating getting something in return for making a senate appointment may show Blago does not deserve to be governor but it does not itself show a crime was committed and certainly is no reason to deny the governor’s right to make an appointment to fill a vacant seat in the senate. Even though it is unlikely and probably untrue that Democrat Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., as he says, talked to the governor for 90 minutes about the Senate seat but was never solicited, or that he offered anything for the senate seat, or that Obama aides Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett both talked to Blagojevich about the seat without discussing a quid pro quo for an appointment, neither claims to have been solicited for any kind of bribe.
If Blago were to try to sell the senate seat, the obvious party to sell it to is the man with the power to appoint ambassadors and Cabinet officers or to convince others to hire Blago: President-elect Obama. But we can’t go there because that might tarnish the halo around the president-elect’s head.
It will be interesting to see if Senator Reid and Democrat Senators will deny Burris his seat in the senate. Burris is an African-American elder statesman of the Democratic Party, an honorable and distinguished man, appointed by the governor according to law and the Constitution, to fill a Senate seat. There has been no hint of illegal consideration asked or given by either the governor or Burris for the Senate seat.
Democrats and Obama proclaim support for affirmative action and integration yet are prepared to deny someone who would be the only African-American in the senate an opportunity to take that office. Of course this is consistent with other hypocritical actions by the President-elect. Obama and Michelle bypassed D.C. public schools to send their daughters to exclusive private schools in far northwest Washington. As Patrick Buchanan points out “not one white male Democratic Senator, in a caucus that has not a single black member, has ever volunteered to step down and let the governor of their state replace him or her with an African-American.”
“Not one. That would be liberals leading by example, not exhortation.”
When we have the likes of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg being seriously considered to become a U.S. Senator while his Democrat colleagues stand ready to deny Roland Burris a senate seat for which he is qualified, then those who elected Obama should be able to see what kind of a person and party they voted for. However that would require voters to open their eyes, and that is not likely to happen otherwise the messianic glow surrounding Obama will blind them.
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