Obama’s Healthcare Pitch to Congress

TheNewAmericancomWednesday March 16 2022

Copyright copy 2022 TheNewAmericancom

Can We Trust the CBOrsquos Healthcare Figureswritten by Raven Clabough

House Majority Whip James Clyburn and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were positively giddy on Thursdaymorning when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released preliminary estimates of the financialimpact of the House reconciliation package on national healthcare The package is said to mirror theproposal President Obama outlined in February as a compromise between the bills passed in the Houseand Senate last year

Because the Democrats were unwilling to share the actual reconciliation language prior to the release ofthe estimates the CBOrsquos estimates were based on what they were told to expect in the package Sincethen the language has been posted online providing little time for the CBO to produce more accuratefigures

According to the CBO the bill is expected to cost $940 billion over the next 10 years mdash and reduce theprojected budget deficit by $130 billion over the same period ($12 trillion over the second decade) via taxincreases and a reduction in projected Medicare spending by more than $400 billion

Ross Kaminsky of Human Events raises some serious questions about the supposed savings ldquoMuch of thesavings and tax revenue which Democrats are counting on to fund their government takeover of healthcare will never be realizedrdquo

modulepos inner_text_ad

Alex Wayne of Congressional Quarterly explains that the deficit reductions are contingent upon two futurepolicy changes which may or may not happen The changes involve growth in federal subsidies and anexcise tax on high-cost insurance plans

Democrats propose indexing to inflation only rather than inflation plus one percentage point thethreshold at which high-cost ldquoCadillacrdquo health insurance plans would trigger an excise tax Thatmeans the taxrsquos scope would grow even faster than in the Senate bill because health insurancepremiums tend to rise faster than inflation The bill would create state-based exchanges or



marketplaces where individuals without employer-provided insurance could buy health coverage Federal subsidies would be available to help cover the cost for many purchases But in 2019 theypropose to suddenly reduce the rate of growth of the subsidies to something closer to that of theSenate bill

The subsidies would start at $5200 per person in 2015 and rise anywhere from $100 to $300 per yearuntil it rests at a growth of $200 in 2019 However the Democrats expect future Congresses to decreasethe number of new subsidies to help people buy insurance in 2019

At the same time premium costs would ldquotrigger the excise tax by the rate of inflation plus one percentagepoint in 2019rdquo By 2020 however it would grow at the general inflation rate causing the reach of the taxto expand faster When this happens future Congresses would more than likely be pressured to increasesubsidies and slow the growth of the tax once again

The bill delays the tax for all plans until 2018 which was originally intended to begin sooner and thedelay results in reduction of savings from $148 billion to $39 billion in the first 10 years To compensatefor that loss the legislation enacts an additional 9 percent payroll tax on individuals who earn $200000and married couples earning more than $250000 per year to begin in 2013

In addition to the income tax the bill includes a 38 percent tax on ldquounearned incomerdquo including interestcapital gains dividends etc on the same taxpayers

Skeptics like Republican Representative Tom Price of Georgia believe that the odds of a reduction inprojected Medicare spending coupled with the two policy changes are slim to none Likewise Republicanshave targeted the tax increases in the bill indicating that the increases will discourage investments

Additionally the billrsquos plans to slow the growth of payments to healthcare providers while cuttingpayments to insurers for those who participate in the Medicare Advantage program is expected to ldquocausemassive disruption for the million seniors enrolled in the planrdquo says the insurance industryrsquos tradeassociation

The question of the accuracy of the CBOrsquos estimates remains Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute assertsthat the CBO has a reputation for making mistakes ldquoin part because there is no attempt to measure how abigger burden of government has negative macroeconomic effects but also because the numbercrunchers do a poor job of measuring the degree to which people (recipients health care providers stateand local politicians etc) will modify their behavior to become eligible for other peoplersquos moneyrdquoMitchell adds that this issue is ldquocompounded by similar mistakes for revenue estimates from theCommittee on Taxationrdquo who also overlooks macroeconomic effects and behavioral changes

Likewise Mitchell asserts that all of the estimates are incorrect specifically that new spending will bemore than predicted the tax increases wonrsquot generate as much as expected and future restraints inspending are highly unlikely

Mitchell also explains that if there is indeed a phase-out of subsidies in 2019 taxpayers with modestincomes will face marginal tax rates of nearly 70 percent

Overall the government is inept at predicting healthcare spending When Medicare was created in 1965the government estimated that the cost of the program would be $12 billion by the year 1990 In actualitythe program cost $110 billion in 1990 and to date costs $500 billion Also in 1965 Medicaid was created



and was expected to cost $1 billion annually but has developed into a $250 billion program

If the CBO estimates are as inaccurate as predicted and this legislation is enacted the stability of theAmerican economy faces irreparable damage

GOP Bigwigs Resort to Lies to Stop Rand Paulwritten by Thomas R Eddlem

The Establishment neo-conservative wing of the Republican Party has a problem in Kentucky Theiranointed US Senate candidate Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson is losing According to aMarch 7 SurveyUSA poll Dr Rand Paul would defeat Grayson 42-27 percent if the May 18 primary wereheld now ldquoPaul an eye surgeon political activist and son of Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul isahead among all demographic groups and in all parts of the staterdquo SurveyUSA reported

So Grayson and establishment Republicans have come up with a solution to bolster their lacklustercampaign Lie about Paul

Graysonrsquos latest television ad touts ldquofactsrdquo about Rand Paul that are patent lies and a little more than acursory look at Graysonrsquos websites reveals them to be obvious lies Graysonrsquos television ad states


We shouldnrsquot put our security at risk by ldquocutting what wersquore doing militarilyrdquo or by releasingterrorists held at Guantanamo back into battle against our troops in Afghanistan as my opponenthas advocated

A related YouTubecom video posted by the Grayson campaign claims that Rand Paul wants to ldquowants toclose Guantanamo release terroristsrdquo The video then quotes Dr Paul out of context claiming that hewould do the following to hardened terrorists held at Guantanamo



Yeah thatrsquos a tough one I donrsquot know what you do with them I think they should mostly be sentback to their country of origin Or to tell you the truth Irsquod drop them back off into battle If yoursquorenot going to convict them and you canrsquot convict them and yoursquore unclear drop lsquoem off back intoAfghanistan itrsquoll take them awhile to get back over here

Grayson says this is proof that Paul advocates ldquoreleasing the terrorists held there back into battle againstour troopsrdquo It would indeed be troubling if Dr Paul favored setting hardened terrorists free to attackAmerican soldiers in the field Despite the fact that the above was a completely accurate quote it was a liebecause Paul wasnrsquot talking about terrorists at all Rather he was talking about innocent people held atGuantanamo The very next sentences (ironically also posted in small type at Graysonrsquos website) of DrPaulrsquos words in the very same radio interview explain the context

Itrsquos complicated though I read something the other day of 779 people at Gitmo 90 were capturedby foreign fighters not by us So some of them are turned in you know Afghanistan has had rivalwarlord for hundreds of years One guy was a governor and was under Karzai and he was a fan ofthe US Hersquos now in Gitmo hersquos been there for a couple years but he was turned in by a rival clanwho said he was corrupt and working for the Taliban

Because Graysonrsquos campaign website included the entire context of the quote mdash albeit in small type andnot in the video mdash he canrsquot claim to be ignorant of the fact that Dr Paul was talking about innocentsrather than terrorists Thus his statement that Paul advocates ldquoreleasing the terrorists held there backinto battle against our troopsrdquo is a bold-faced lie In the latter half of the quote Dr Paul was specificallyreferring to the ground-breaking work by Seton Hall Law School Professor Mark Denbeaux whose use ofUS government public releases on Guantanamo detainees disproved claims by Vice President DickCheney the Guantanamo detainees ldquoare people we picked up on the battlefield primarily in AfghanistanTheyrsquore terroristsrdquo

But Denbeaux proved mdash using the US governmentrsquos own statistics mdash that more than 90 percent were notpicked up by US or coalition forces on the battlefield (He also has exploded the inflated myths about thenumbers of those released who have ldquoreturned to the fightrdquo noting that the Bush administration regardedthree innocent British detainees who were released as having returned to the battlefield because theysubsequently granted an interview to a British documentary team) Many detainees have indeed beenproven to be innocent such as the 17 Uighurs of China Maher Arar Khalid el-Masri Omar Deghayes theTipton Three and others

The real questions in the Kentucky Senate campaign are Why is Trey Grayson lying about Dr Rand PaulMoreover why is Grayson criticizing Rand Paul for suggesting that innocent people should be releasedfrom prison What kind of human being would object to releasing innocent detainees who our intelligenceagencies concluded are cases of mistaken identity Does Grayson really believe innocents should beimprisoned

The motivation behind the smear is a drive by neo-conservatives to put a stake in the heart of the TeaParty movement According to a March 17 article on Politicocom a Rand Paul primary victory ldquowouldrepresent the first true electoral success of the tea party movement Equally important it wouldembarrass Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell whose political organization is running Graysonrsquoscampaign thrust onto the national stage a Republican with foreign policy views out of the conservativemainstream and strategists in both parties believe imperil the GOPrsquos hold on the seat now held byretiring Sen Jim Bunningrdquo



As a result neocons are calling out the big guns to try to defeat Dr Rand Paul ldquoRecognizing the threat awell-connected former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convened a conference call last week betweenGrayson and a group of leading national security conservatives to sound the alarm about Paulrdquo Politicoadded That aide is former Vice President Dick Cheneyrsquos Domestic Policy Advisor Cesar Conda founder ofthe lobbyist firm Navigators Global LLC and a lifelong Washington DC beltway insider

Graysonrsquos latest atrocity against the truth is fitting a nasty new pattern in the demeanor in the campaignWhile Rand Paul has taken a principled issue-based campaign and avoided name-calling Graysonrsquoswebsite focuses upon ad hominem attacks on Paul for obscure statements by a former campaign stafferand tries to paint Dr Rand Paul as an out-of-stater The Grayson website even touts the fact that Dr Paulattended the prestigious mdash but out-of-state mdash Duke Medical School in a campaign bumper sticker ldquoDefeatDuke Vote Graysonrdquo (Note Graysonrsquos undergraduate degree is from Harvard University inMassachusetts)

The Grayson website emphasizes that much of Rand Paulrsquos campaign contributions come from small out-of-state donors But Grayson fails to mention that his campaign has been funded by $250000 in politicalaction committee special interest money or that most of his fundraising has been organized byWashington DC insiders

The Grayson campaignrsquos current key initiative seems to be that Rand Paul is not electable and would notbe an effective legislator in Washington bolstered by the following Rand Paul quote repeated on theldquoRand Paul Strange Ideasrdquo website funded by the Grayson campaign

I personally have made the pledge that I will not vote for any budget thatrsquos not balanced Republicanor Democrat Some people say thatrsquos impractical you wonrsquot be an effective legislator I donrsquot wantto be an effective legislator

Politico explains a related issue ldquoEstablishment Republicans have also begun pressing an electabilitymessage making the case that a Paul primary win could hand the Democrats the seat in Novemberrdquo Butsuch arguments should fall on deaf ears as neoconservatives have had their way with the Republicanprimaries in the last two disastrous electoral cycles for the party Moreover Dr Rand Paulrsquos moderateviews on some issues mdash on many issues he leans libertarian mdash will have substantial appeal to Democratsand independents in a general election in contrast to a down-the-line rubber-stamp GOP candidate likeGrayson

Photo of Dr Rand Paul AP Images

Obamarsquos Debt Commission Means More SpendingDebt and Deceptionwritten by William F Jasper



By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States ofAmerica hellip there is established within the Executive Office of the President the National Commission onFiscal Responsibility and Reform Thus begins the Executive Order signed by President Barack Obama onFebruary 18 creating what is being called the Debt Commission

In his February 18 press conference announcing the new commission President Obama stressed the needfor such a body owing to the severe fiscal crisis brought on by years of bad habits in Washington It isimperative he insisted that we address the long-term quandary of a government that routinely andextravagantly spends more than it takes in


Without action the President said the accumulated weight hellip of ever-increasing debt will hobble oureconomy it will cloud our future and it will saddle every child in America with an intolerable burdenIncredibly the President made these statements with a straight face as though fully expecting hisaudience to believe that it is he alone who is standing against the bad habits of extravagant spending inWashington

Stephen Moore at the Wall Street Journal was one of the few in the press who noted the patent absurdityof the Debt Commission announcement observing that on that very same day President Obama called foranother $50 billion to $100 billion stimulus plan (and concomitant increase in the deficit)

It says a lot about Washington that almost no one got the irony of those paired announcements Mooreremarked The reality of course is that plenty of folks in Washington mdash in the political realm as well as inthe media mdash got what Moore refers to as irony (but which is really blatant mendacity and deception)The truth is that President Obama like many previous occupants of the White House as well as most ofhis former colleagues in the Congress mdash both Democrat and Republican mdash knows that itrsquos become anobligatory ritual for politicians to declaim and denounce budget deficits and to profess concern aboutindenturing our childrenrsquos children with ever greater debt burdens while continuing merrily on theirspendthrift ways piling more debt on top of debt In the Washington Wonderland they inhabit words donot have any relationship to actions This is so because the Washington press corps and their nationalcounterparts aid and abet this deception both by failing to point out the incongruity between thepoliticiansrsquo words and actions as well by actively promoting the ever-proliferating government programs



that are being financed by ever-larger deficits

The Presidentrsquos Executive Order contains the following mission statement for the new entity

The Commission is charged with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the mediumterm and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run Specifically the Commission shallpropose recommendations designed to balance the budget excluding interest payments on the debtby 2015 This result is projected to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio at an acceptable level once theeconomy recovers

President Obamarsquos wersquoll-balance-the-books-sometime-in-the-sweet-bye-and-bye (perhaps by 2015) isstandard fare in Washington It is more of the well-known and well-worn Wimpie economics that hasbedeviled our national leaders for generations You no doubt recall the always-ravenous Popeye cartooncharacter Wimpie who would famously propose Irsquoll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today

Like Wimpiersquos consumption the governmentrsquos ravenous spendingborrowing must always be satisfiedimmediately but the promise of paying back the loan is soon forgotten In fact only a couple weeks afterPresident Obama launched his new Debt Commission the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported(see the original CBO report here) that far from balancing the budget by 2015 the Obama spendingproposals would lead to deficits of nearly $1 trillion per year for the next decade Annual deficits underObamarsquos budget plan would be about $976 billion from 2011 through 2020 according to a CBO analysisThe Hill reported on March 5 However even the CBO numbers are likely to be rosy compared to the realdeficit numbers we would likely see if Obamanomics proceed apace As The Hill noted the CBOrsquosdeficits are based on the expectation that the economy will grow at about 44 percent annually during thelast half of this decade while the administration expects annual growth to range from 53 percent to 43percent from 2015 to 2020 But what if economic growth is a point or two lower than the CBO projects mdashor even worse Then better plan on adding another zero (or more) to the deficit numbers

Assessing the Commissioners

President Obama was joined at his February 18 press conference with the two men he named to co-chairthe new Debt Commission former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and formerRepublican Senate Whip Alan Simpson Alan Simpson is a flinty Wyoming truth-teller the President saidThrough nearly two decades in the United States Senate he earned a reputation for putting commonsense and the peoplersquos welfare ahead of petty politics

Then he turned to co-chair Bowles Erskine Bowles understands the importance of managing moneyresponsibly in the public sector where he ran the Small Business Administration and served as PresidentClintonrsquos chief of staff he said In that capacity he brokered the 1997 budget agreement withRepublicans that helped produce the first balanced budget in nearly 30 years

One is a good Republican the other a good Democrat President Obama said of his new Dynamic DuoBut above all both are patriotic Americans who are answering their countryrsquos call to free our future fromthe stranglehold of debt

However if these are the saviors we can be sure the American economy will soon expire from stranglingAlan Simpson may have started out in the Senate with many believing he was a fiscal conservative but hegradually proved he had grown in office mdash a term the liberal commentariat applies to conservative



politicians who shed their aversions to big government and begin moving leftward on economic and socialissues By the time he left office in 1996 Sen Simpsonrsquos rating by the National Taxpayers Union haddropped to 68 percent three points below the average for Republicans in Congress due to hisincreasingly spendthrift voting habits But what has really endeared him to the liberals is his support forabortion homosexual rights and foreign aid He also scored major points for authoring and successfullypushing the disastrous 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) which grantedamnesty to millions of illegal aliens and encouraged widespread immigration fraud and new waves ofillegal aliens The current effort to grant another amnesty to additional millions of aliens who have comehere illegally is testimony to Simpsonrsquos IRCA legacy

Like Republican Senators John McCain Olympia Snowe Lindsey Graham and Arlen Specter (nowofficially a Democrat) Simpson has won praise for being independent for being a maverick and forcrossing the aisle to embrace liberal programs and policies Typical of the accolades heaped on Simpsonby the left-leaning establishment press is this bouquet from the Washington Post on February 17

Simpson 78 represented Wyoming in the US Senate from 1979 to 1997 rising to the post ofRepublican whip and gaining a reputation as an independent thinker willing to break from partisanorthodoxy Since his retirement he has taught at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government andserved on the bipartisan Iraq Study Group a congressional panel created to recommend changes toUS policy in Iraq

Though long out of office Simpson is still widely respected among the GOP rank and file and Democratshope his involvement will spur Republican leaders to cooperate in the politically delicate task ofreordering the nationrsquos fiscal priorities

The Post bestowed similar laurels on Bowles Adopting President Obamarsquos wording almost verbatim thePost praised him for crafting a package of tax hikes entitlement cuts and budget controls that helpedgenerate the first balanced budgets in nearly 30 years

The myth of balanced budgets and surpluses during the Clinton years has now been repeated so often inthe press that it is accepted as fact by many of the media mavens and much of the public However aseminent free-market economist Hans F Sennholz pointed out in his November 2000 essay The SurplusHoax President Clintonrsquos surpluses were examples of the art of fiscal legerdemain which turns a taxinto a benefit and a deficit into a surplus

The federal budget surpluses since 1998 said Professor Sennholz hellipobscure significant federalexpenditures through bookkeeping gimmickry such as borrowing new money to pay off old loans andcalling it lsquodebt reductionrsquo

Erskine Bowles was a leader of the Clinton brain trust that came up with the accounting gimmickry DrSennholz explained how it works

The federal government spends Social Security money and other trust funds which constituteobligations to present and future recipients It consumes them and thereby incurs obligations asbinding as those to the owners of savings bonds Yet the Treasury treats them as revenue and hailsthem for generating surpluses If a private banker were to treat trust fund deposits as income andprofit he would face criminal charges



Instead of facing criminal charges Bowles is being put in charge of an 18-member commission that mayend up having tremendous influence over our nationrsquos economic destiny And that influence is not likely tobe a healthy one Indeed there is every reason to suspect that it will perpetrate the same kind ofaccounting chicanery Professor Sennholz exposed while providing cover for continually expandingbudgets heavier taxes mdash and greater deficits to boot

President Obama appointed four additional commissioners with the remaining 12 to be named by theDemocratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate The four additional Obama appointees are

Dave M Cote since 2002 chairman and CEO of Honeywell International a diversified technology andmanufacturing conglomerate Previously he was chairman chief executive officer and president of TRWwhich he joined after serving 25 years in various positions at General Electric

Ann Fudge former chairman and CEO of advertising giant Young amp Rubicam Brands has also served onthe boards of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation the Rockefeller Foundation and the Council onForeign Relations

Alice Rivlin economist and founding director of the Congressional Budget Office is a former vicechairman of the Federal Reserve and currently a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at theBrookings Institution and visiting professor at Georgetown University

Andy Stern president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) represents 22 millionhealthcare workers janitors security officers and public employees

The three Democratic Senators named by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are hardly paragons of fiscalvirtue In fact they are among the biggest deficit spenders in Congress

They are

Sen Richard Durbin of Illinois who earned a pitiful 4 percent rating on the National Taxpayers Unionrsquos(NTU) scorecard for 111th Congress and an even worse 0 percent on The New Americanrsquos FreedomIndex (FI) for the 111th Congress The American Conservative Union (ACU) gave him a cumulative scoreof 612 percent

Sen Max Baucus of Montana ndash NTU 7 percent FI 10 percent ACU 1421 percent

Sen Kent Conrad of North Dakota -NTU 10 percent FI 5 percent ACU 1928 percent

The three Republican Senators named by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have considerablybetter voting records on fiscal issues than their Democratic counterparts They are

Sen Judd Gregg of New Hampshire ndash NTU 80 percent FI 50 percent and ACU 78S68 percent

Sen Tom Coburn of Oklahoma ndash NTU 97 percent FI 100 percent and ACU 98 percent

Sen Mike Crapo of Idaho ndash NTU 86 percent 2009 FI 75 percent and ACU 9227 percent

The three Republicans named by House Minority Leader John Boehner are likewise fairly solid on fiscalissues They are



Rep Paul Ryan of Wisconsin ndash NTU 90 percent FI 95 percent and ACU 9236 percent

Rep Jeb Hensarling of Texas ndash NTU 95 percent FI 95 percent ACU 9881 percent

Rep Dave Camp of Michigan ndash NTU 76 percent FI 75 percent and ACU 6986 percent

By March 18 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had still not named her three appointments but it is probablysafe to predict that they will not be spending- or deficit-averse Regardless of who she names this much issure the commission will be heavily tilted toward port side with little inclination to cut governmentspending It is true that Congress must still vote on any of the commissionrsquos recommendations for them togo into effect but Obama and the power elite promoting this process know that the commission willprovide a powerful bully pulpit to push for even more government spending taxes and debt Thecommission is tasked with delivering its report and its recommendations by December 1 of this yearwhich is convenient for a number of reasons First it is after the November elections thus allowingMembers of Congress to talk tough on cutting spending and debt while on the campaign stump deferringaction until later during the lame-duck session of Congress

Then things are likely to get very nasty making the arm twisting bribery and extortion employed forObamacare mild by comparison This is where Alan Simpson is expected to come in very handy inwhipping reluctant Republicans into line His off-hand comment in an interview with National Public Radioappears to have been made to send a chilling message And there are a lot of bitchers and whiners andsnorters out there he told NPR and we intend to listen to them all and then crush them

It may have been this instinct of Alan The Crusher Simpson that caused the Wall Street Journalrsquos Stephen Moore to comment that for Mr Obamarsquos purposes Alan Simpson is a master stroke since hersquoslikely to commit Republicans to being the tax collectors for Obamanomics Moore continued

Some are even calling it the VAT Commission because liberals want a bipartisan agreement toimplement a European-style value-added tax that will raise federal revenues by about fivepercentage points of GDP Thatrsquos the amount federal spending has risen under President ObamaSince 2007 federal spending is up by nearly 25

The Tax-and-spend Power Elite

The value-added tax or VAT is but one of the many features of Obamanomics that the new commissioncan be expected to push mdash with important assistance from influential allies in the media think tanks andsome of Wall Streetrsquos biggest firms And of those none is more influential than Peter G Peterson theinsiderrsquos insider of finance and politics In fact it is not a stretch to say that Obamarsquos Debt Commissioncould actually be called the Peterson Commission since Peterson has been the moving force behind theidea for at least the past couple years Best known today as the billionaire co-founder of the fabulouslywealthy Blackstone Group private equity and asset management firm the 84-year-old Peterson has been aglobal mover and shaker for decades A former Secretary of Commerce (under President Nixon) Petersonwas chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (from 2000-2004) the most important andpowerful branch of the Fed Two of his most important power bases have been the Council on ForeignRelations (CFR) and the Institute for International Economics (IIE)

The CFR has dominated American politics like no other organization its members frequently occupyingthe White House and the top positions in both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as most of



the top Cabinet and policy posts in every administration since Franklin Delano Roosevelt Historian ArthurM Schlesinger Jr (a CFR member) has called the CFR a front organization [for] the heart of theAmerican Establishment while Richard Rovere editor and columnist for the New Yorker (and also a CFRmember) described it as a sort of Presidium for that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny asa nation Roverersquos choice of the word Presidium was telling referring to the ultra-secret and dictatorialinner circle of Communist Party elites that ran the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union

Peterson mentored under banking titan David Rockefeller who served as CFR chairman from 1970-1985Peterson succeeded Rockefeller as CFR chairman serving in that capacity for 22 years (1985-2007)longer than any other CFR chairman He currently holds the position of chairman emeritus whileRockefeller continues as honorary chairman Of Obamarsquos new National Commission on FiscalResponsibility and Reform Erskine Bowles Alice Rivlin and Ann Fudge are CFR members

Peterson was founding chairman of the Institute for International Economics (IIE) which according toMartin Walker of the London Observer may be the most influential think-tank on the planet with anextraordinary record in turning ideas into effective policy Much of the IIErsquos extraordinary influencecomes from its close ties to the CFR And no one exemplified those ties more than Peterson In fact theIIE is now officially known as the Peter G Peterson Institute for International Economics

Peterson is also a co-founder of the Concord Coalition where he currently serves as co-chairman andpresident It is principally through the Concord Coalition that he has been pushing for the establishmentof the independent commission the primary purpose of which the public is told is drawing attention toand halting Americarsquos runaway deficit spending Like many of his cronies at Goldman Sachs MorganStanley JPMorgan Chase and other Wall Street Insider firms Peterson has been able to join the ranks ofthe super-rich thanks largely to that government spending and the mountains of debt that the FederalReserve and its coterie of elite private bankers have encouraged for decades Although Peterson and hisConcord Coalition colleagues inveigh against deficit spending out of one side of their mouths they cheer iton out of the other as we see in a recent Christian Science Monitor article in which Concord providesconservative support for Obamarsquos stimulus spending In a February 1 article the Monitor reported

President Obamarsquos proposed $383 trillion 2011 budget is intended to hit a centrist fiscal sweetspot It is meant to contain enough spending to cushion high unemployment and enough fiscal rigorto reduce long-term federal deficitshellip

It is true that there is an inherent tension in trying to rein in budget deficits during a recession say somefiscal experts But there is nothing inconsistent about combining short-term stimulus with long-term fiscalrigor says Diane Lim Rogers chief economist for The Concord Coalition a group which supports effortsto reduce the federal deficit

Such an apparently contradictory combination is precisely what current circumstances call forsays Ms Rogers A contrary strategy mdash concentrating on stimulus or deficit reduction alonewithout regard to timing mdash would carry a higher risk for the economy

Petersonrsquos real passion is not about drastically cutting the size and cost of government mdash which is whatwe desperately need mdash but convincing the public that we must close the deficit by paying more taxesSince the 1980s Peterson has been lobbying for a 25-cent-a-gallon federal tax on gasoline as well as aEuropean-style value-added tax or consumption tax that would add a tax to goods and services at everystage of production



Another pet project of Peterson and the Concord Coalition is promoting federal legislation for mandatorysupplemental individual savings accounts that would be deducted from payroll just as Social Securityand income taxes are already deducted This is necessary says Peterson because Americans areconsuming too much and not saving enough Of course Peterson views consumption differently when it ishimself and his fellow moguls who are doing the consuming He is not likely to give up his own lifestylesof the rich and famous any time soon and he didnrsquot seem to mind the ultra-conspicuous ostentation of hisclose friend (and Blackstone Group chairman) Stephen Schwarzman when he threw the birthday party ofthe century a couple of years ago

The theme of a consumption tax and government-mandated savings was sounded again recently in theCFR journal Foreign Affairs by C Fred Bergsten director and chief economist at Petersonrsquos IIE Themandatory savings scheme would of course provide the government with even more trust funds to raidjust as they have done with Social Security funds to finance their unending binges Bergsten (a CFRmember) also argued in the same NovemberDecember 2009 Foreign Affairs article in favor of a broadercarbon tax that would limit energy usage and have the additional benefit of helping control globalwarming allowing the Federal Reserve to run a relatively easy monetary policy and encouraging theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) to issue a trillion dollars in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) over thenext five years The recommendations for the Fed and the IMF are of course prescriptions for wildgovernment spending which Peterson and the Concord Coalition claim to oppose All of therecommendations fit with the globalist world-government agenda of Peterson Bergsten and the CFR-IIEelite The proposals are completely in line with their longstanding support for empowering the UnitedNations IMF World Trade Organization and other UN-related organizations with global taxing spendingregulating and governing powers And the same proposals are completely at odds with their professedaims of fiscal responsibility

All propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding the real purpose of the Obama-Peterson DebtCommission is not to bring about fiscal responsibility but to ramp up political support for massive newtax spend and borrow policies

Related content

IOUSA How Much

Obamarsquos ldquoPay As You Gordquo Deception

Confronting the National Debt

Picture of (from left to right) President Obama Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson AP Images

Senators Push Biometric ID Cardwritten by Jack Kenny



Two prominent US Senators are promoting national ID cards as a means of mending the nationrsquos badlybroken immigration system Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have saidthey will co-sponsor legislation to require all workers in the US citizens as well as aliens to have abiometric Social Security cards with a unique personal identifier such as a fingerprint or eye scan inorder to work

Prospective employers would be required to swipe the card through a machine to verify a worker orapplicantrsquos identity and immigration status Employers who refused to swipe the card or who otherwiseknowingly hired unauthorized workers would face stiff fines and for repeat offenses prison sentencesthe Senators said in an op ed entered Thursday on the Washington Post web site

The new cards would be a high-tech fraud proof improvement of the Social Security cards peoplealready have they said Each cardrsquos unique biometric identifier would be stored only on the card nogovernment database would house everyonersquos information The cards would not contain any privateinformation medical information or tracking devices


Yet a few paragraphs later they propose among the other steps for fixing the immigration system anentry-exit system that tracks people who enter the United States on legal visas and reports those whooverstay their visas to law enforcement databases That raises questions about whether the biometriccards they propose would really contain no tracking devices And how would it work if it not connectedto a government data bank to confirm that the fingerprint or image on the card truly matches theidentity of the person presenting it

The biometric plan is one of four pillars the senators propose for immigration reform They also proposestrengthening border security and enforcement of immigration laws creating a process for admittingtemporary workers and in what is likely to be the most controversial feature implementing a tough butfair path to legalization for those already here Illegal immigrants whom Schumer and Graham numberat 11 million would be required to admit they broke the law and to pay their debt to society byperforming community service and paying fines and back taxes These people would be required to passbackground checks and be proficient in English before going to the back of the line of prospectiveimmigrants to earn the opportunity to work toward lawful permanent residence



The features of the plan are similar to the immigration reform proposed by President George W Bush in2006 and 2007 That effort prompted a widespread backlash against what opponents called amnesty forthe illegals and many of its supporters in Congress including 2008 GOP presidential candidate JohnMcCain backed away from it as the election year approached President Obama in a statement releasedfrom the White House on Thursday pledged to do everything in my power to forge a bipartisanconsensus on this important issues so we can continue to move forward on comprehensive immigrationreform

But at a time when the President and Congress are still in a deadlock over health care reform theimmigration issue is not at the top of the White House agenda Obamarsquos press secretary Robert Gibbssaid the administrationrsquos next two priorities are financial regulatory reform and the campaign financereform the President called for in this yearrsquos State of the Union address when he criticized the SupremeCourt over a ruling allowing corporations and unions to spend money on ads supporting or opposingcandidates

The issue may also become entangled with the health care reform effort as Graham warned thatRepublicans will not support immigration reform if Democrats pass the health care bill through aparliamentary maneuver such as a reconciliation motion rather than a straight up or down vote on thelegislation itself

The Schumer-Graham proposal would award green cards to immigrants who receive a PhD or masterrsquosdegree in science technology engineering or math from a US university It makes no sense to educatethe worldrsquos future inventors and entrepreneurs and then force them to leave when they are able tocontribute to our economy they said They would also allow workers to come into the country for short-term employment when employers are unable to recruit Americans to fill the positions They promise azero tolerance policy for those who commit felonies after coming here legally

The senators gave no date as to when they would present a bill Their editorial seems timed to coincidewith a march on Washington on Sunday as Latino groups and other activists are expected to press theircase for the kind of immigration reform legislation Obama promised he would champion when hecampaigned for President

On the web site at the libertarian Cato Institute Jim Hoffman has zeroed in on the potential dangers ofusing a biometric Social Security card as a means of controlling illegal immigration

It would also subject every employment decision to the federal governmentrsquos approval Hoffman wroteIt would make surveillance of law-abiding citizens easier It would allow the government to control accessto health care It would facilitate gun control It would cost $100 billion dollars or more It would drawbribery and corruption into the Social Security Administration It would promote the development ofsophisticated biometric identity fraud Addressing Graham in particular Hoffman told the South CarolinaRepublican Your saying that bigger government is the solution not smaller government

Many European countries require both citizens and non-citizens to carry an ID card The idea gained sometemporary popularity in the US after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 A Pew research pollconducted between September 13 and 17th of that year showed 70 percent in favor of requiring allcitizens to carry one The following week 56 percent in a New York TimesCBS poll said they would acceptmandatory national electronic identification cards A TimeCNN poll found half of those surveyed were infavor of requiring Arab-Americans to carry federal ID cards A Week in Review article in the New York



Times of October 7 2001 offered a picture of what might be in store if a national ID requirement isenacted by Congress

Imagine you were moving to a new state and the government required you to register at the localprecinct Or that before the hospital let Mom leave with hr newborn Dad had to register the newlyarrived citizen at a central office Or that the police could stop you and demand to see your paperswhile you stepped out for a quart of milk

Most Europeans are already living under such regulations the Times said

Photo Jamie Court of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights holds an enlarged version ofPresident Bushrsquos Social Security card in 2003 AP Images

Free Markets Deregulation and Blamewritten by Bob Adelmann

Free markets in the full sense of the phrase exist only in the minds and imaginations of free-marketeconomists from the Austrian School such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard

The classic definition is simply a market without intervention or regulation by government In truthcommerce in any developed country is always controlled to some extent by government A free marketrequires the right to own property which means that the wages earnings profits and gains obtained byproviding products and services to others belongs to the individual generating them The assumption isthat an individual with this kind of freedom would only make an exchange that gained him a benefit

A simple example involves junior high-school students who are just about to get their driverrsquos licenses andpurchase their first automobiles The car dealer has an inventory of cars he would like to sell at a profit Astudent has a fixed amount of money to spend (financing is ignored to keep things simple) Once thestudent has found the car he wants to buy in his price range he pays up and drives away Question Who



benefits from this transaction A student from a government school nearly always answers ldquothe cardealerrdquo He wouldnrsquot sell the car unless he made a profit Sometimes the studentrsquos answer is couched interms such as ldquoexcessiverdquo profit or ldquounreasonablerdquo profit When the question is pressed Who elsebenefits there can only be one answer as (in this simplistic case) there is only one other party thepurchaser And it is at this moment in time when the ldquolightrdquo goes on the ldquomoment of clarityrdquo arrives andthe student realizes perhaps for the first time that he also benefits or else why would he buy the car Hewould rather have the car than the money he paid for it


And this is the core of the private free-enterprise economy property rights with the freedom to makevoluntary -exchanges

Framing the Free-market Debate

When America was first discovered the land mass was barely able to sustain a few hundred tribes ofnative huntergatherers Today 300 million people live lifestyles that exceed those of kings just a hundredyears ago Though imperfect at the start and becoming increasingly imperfect the free market has beenunderappreciated misunderstood and attacked mercilessly almost from the beginning mdash despite itssuccesses in generating prosperity

Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations said the free market emerged not by design but by behavior Hesaid the individual who

intends only his own gain is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of hisintention Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of it By pursuing his own interest[the individual] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intendsto promote it

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner but fromtheir regard to their own self interest [Emphasis added] We address ourselves not to their humanity butto their self-love and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages

But man is imperfect and so referees are needed to make sure that everyone plays fair mdash eg thatcontracts are not violated or the competition not eliminated through violence The first effort to ensurefairness in America was adoption of the Articles of Confederation which was later replaced with theConstitution In the Constitution the dangers of sovereign citizens giving up some essential rights togovernment were recognized through limitations on government mdash spelled out and agreed to in advanceThese limitations were crafted by what many consider to be the most remarkable gathering of wise andinformed individuals in the history of mankind

President John F Kennedy acknowledged that fact when hosting a dinner at the White House attended byevery living American Nobel laureate saying ldquoThere has never been a greater concentration ofintellectual power here at the White House since Thomas Jefferson dined here alonerdquo

Very simplistically the not-quite-so-free market worked better than any other economic system at anytime in recorded history Ronald Reagan said ldquoEntrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsiblefor almost all the economic growth in the United Statesrdquo



Striving to Socialize Markets

The first major attempts to override the limitations of the Constitution occurred in the middle of the 19thcentury President Lincoln clearly and deliberately ignored constitutional limitations during the Civil WarThe creation of the national park system beginning with Yellowstone National Park was hotly debated byconstitutionalists defending the issue of the proper role of government And in 1887 the InterstateCommerce Act created the first agency (the Interstate Commerce Commission) under a newunconstitutional ldquofourthrdquo branch of government That ldquofourthrdquo branch now includes hundreds of agencieswith powers only permitted by the Constitution to either the executive legislative or judicial branch

From there the history of intervention regulation antitrust laws and other interferences is replete withexamples of government involvement in the free market making it much less free than before

Such interventions are so numerous as not only to exceed the pages available for review of them here butthe patience of the dear reader as well

One classic example however will suffice before moving on to more current attempts to regulatederegulate and reregulate the market ldquofor the greater good of the greater numberrdquo In his monumentalbook Power and Market Murray Rothbard cites intervention in the American farm market

In 1929 the government began to support artificially the prices of some farm commodities abovetheir market price This of course brought about unsold surpluses of these commodities surplusesaggravated by the fact that farmers shifted production out of other lines to enter the now guaranteedhigh-price fields Thus the consumer paid four ways once in taxes to subsidize the farmers a secondtime in the higher prices of farm products a third time in the wasted surpluses and a fourth time inthe dep-rivation of forgone products in the unsupported lines of production

All of this was done of course to keep prices higher in order to help the farmers But Rothbardcontinues

The farm program could have been repealed but such a course would hardly have been compatiblewith the statist doctrines that had brought about the support program in the first place So the nextstep was to clamp maximum production controls on the farmers who produced the supportedproducts The controls had to be set up as quotas for each farm grounded on production in some pastbase-period which of course cast farm production in a rapidly obsolescing mold The quota systembolstered the inefficient farmers and shackled the efficient ones Paid in effect not to producecertain products hellip the farmers naturally shifted to producing other products The lower prices of thenonsupported products set up the same clamor for support there The next plan again a consequenceof statist logic at work was to avoid these embarrassing shifts of production by creating a ldquosoil bankrdquowhereby the government paid the farmer to make sure that the land remained completely idle Thispolicy deprived the consumers of even the substitute farm products The result of the soil bank wasreadily predictable Farmers put into the soil bank their poorest lands and tilled the remaining onesmore intensively thus greatly increasing their output on the better lands and continuing the surplusproblem as much as ever The main difference was that the farmers then received government checksfor not producing anything [Emphasis added]

There is no need to multiply examples they can be found in all phases of government intervention Thepoint is that the free-market economy forms a kind of natural order so that any interventionary disruption



creates not only disorder but the necessity [either] for repeal [of the disruptive laws] or for [additional]cumulative disorder in attempting to combat it [Emphasis in the original]

Such efforts to repeal the disruptive laws responsible for the ldquodisorderrdquo have been few and far betweenbut are based upon the reality that such repeal would make markets freer and more competitive withhigher productivity more innovation greater efficiencies resulting in lower prices and a higher standardof living for everyone involved

But you ask what about banks and deregulation Arenrsquot our countryrsquos present financial troubles theresult of bank deregulation

Money Manipulation

A close look at the financial system reveals very much a ldquomixed marketrdquo with interventions andmanipulations dating back 100 years to the creation of the Federal Reserve System The recent financialcrisis has revived much interest in the concept of regulation and consequently much blame has beendirected to three minor attempts at deregulation in that industry

These minor attempts at deregulation are 1) the Depository Institutions Deregulation and MonetaryControl Act of 1980 2) the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 and 3) the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 We can dispense with the first two attempts quickly The first act repealedldquoRegulation Q ceilingsrdquo that limited the amount of interest consumers could earn from their savings andchecking accounts The second act allowed banks to compete with money-market funds and slightlyloosened restrictions on issuing real-estate mortgages

The third attempt the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB) repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which waspassed during a flurry of anti-free-market legislation under the Roosevelt administration This act hadkept deposit-bearing banks and investment banks from competing with each other for over 65 years

According to the JulyAugust 2009 Cato Policy Report ldquoThe deregulation critique posits that onceCongress cleared the way for investment and commercial banks to merge the investment banks weregiven the incentive to take greater risks while reducing the amount of equity they are required to holdagainst any given dollar of assetsrdquo

The problems with this criticism are first that investment banks were already allowed to trade and holdmortgage-backed securities (MBS) derivatives credit-default swaps (CDS) and collateralized debtobligations (CDO) before GLB was passed Secondly very few financial holding companies decided tocombine their investment and commercial banking activities after GLB Even President Clinton said

I donrsquot see that signing that bill [GLB] had anything to do with the current crisis Indeed one of thethings that has helped stabilize the current situation as much as it has is the purchase of MerrillLynch by Bank of America which was much smoother than it would have been if I hadnrsquot signed thatbill

The Cato report went on to point out that GLB ldquohad little impact on the trading activities of investmentbanks The off-balance sheet activities of Bear [Stearns] and Lehman [Brothers] were allowed prior to theactrsquos passage Nor did these trading activities undermine any affiliated commercial banks as Bear andLehman did not have affiliated commercial banksrdquo (Emphasis added)



Another criticism of the alleged deregulation that caused the crisis is of the increase in leverage allowedby the Securities and Exchange Commission for investment banks Leverage allows banks to add debt totheir original investment to maximize their potential returns However this increase in leverage camewith a cost According to SEC spokesman John Heine ldquoThe commissionrsquos hellip rule [also] strengthenedoversight of the securities marketsrdquo which gave the SEC much broader powers of supervision over thesebanks So a fair assessment is that this ldquoderegulationrdquo was simply more regulation under cover

Some have criticized the credit-rating agencies for failure to warn of the pending implosion of supposedlyhigh-rated low-risk investments offered for sale by the investment banks However once again the SECcreated a situation of self-serving because of its attempt to avoid self-serving The concern was that ratingagencies would ldquosell outrdquo to those it was regulating by offering more favorable ratings than werewarranted And so the SEC determined that only those credit rating agencies that were affiliated with theNationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (NRSRO) would have their ratings recognized bythe SEC Such determination neatly excluded any new entrants to that industry while grandfathering theexisting firms like Moodyrsquos and Standard and Poorrsquos thus guaranteeing little competition and securingtheir place at the SEC table for their ratings As Cato put it ldquoThe SEC succeeded in creating a realproblem an entrenched oligopoly in the credit ratings industryrdquo Such an oligopoly would otherwise beimpossible without those restrictions put in place by the SEC This is further proof if any is needed thatthe more restrictions that are put on the market the more likely are disasters to occur such as the currentfinancial crisis

ldquoToo Big to Failrdquo

One more issue needs to be addressed however that of a financial institution being ldquotoo big to failrdquo In afree market failure is one of the guarantees of progress Not all efforts will succeed Mistakes will bemade Investments will be lost Bad decisions will be rewarded with failure But if any business is ldquotoo bigto failrdquo several questions arise Who determines who is too big When Lehman Brothers was allowed tofail it had a balance sheet in excess of $700 million and 26000 employees And yet others were bailedout Who decides How do they decide And most importantly who does the bailing

William D Cohen in his book House of Cards revealed a conversation between Bear Stearns CEO AlanSchwartz and CFO Sam Molinaro as they met with Wall Street lawyer Rodgin Cohen to discussalternatives to the pending threat of bankruptcy facing the company

They batted around different ideas about what could be done to help Bear Stearns includingconsidering whether private equity firms or commercial banks might be able to put together asolution quickly But soon enough they concluded there was just one answer ldquoThe only people whocan do anything about this are the Fed [Federal Reserve System]rdquo Cohen recalled saying to Schwartzand Molinaro ldquoSo thatrsquos when I did call Tim Geithner [President of the Federal Reserve Bank of NewYork at the time] about it very late at nightrdquo

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan spoke about the ldquotoo big to failrdquo (TBTF) mentality in2009 when he said such thinking ldquoinsidiously impairs the efficiency of finance and the allocation of capitalTBTF freezes obsolescent capital in place and impairs creative destruction mdash the primary means by whichoutput per hour and standards of living are raisedrdquo

Such close ties between regulators and the regulated invites behaviors that are almost inconceivablyimmoral and destructive Matt Taibbirsquos article ldquoWall Streetrsquos Bailout Hustlerdquo in Rolling Stone magazine



provides a nearly obscene description of the behaviors of those who have nothing to lose because theAmerican taxpayer will bail them out In explicit and unsettling detail Taibbi describes the activities ofGoldman Sachs and other investment banks during the financial crisis He describes these activities asldquoconsrdquo played ultimately on the American taxpayer 1) the Swoop and Squat 2) the Dollar Store 3)the Pig in the Poke 4) the Rumanian Box 5) the Big Mitt 6) the Wire and 7) the Reload

As Taibbi explains in another article ldquoThe Big Takeoverrdquo ldquoWall Street has used the crisis to effect ahistoric revolutionary change in our political system mdash transforming a democracy [sic] into a two-tieredstate one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers belowrdquo

Itrsquos most certainly not ldquoderegulationrdquo that was at the root of the current financial crisis It was regulationrun amok

The Meaning of the Second Amendmentwritten by Dennis Behreandt

Commenting on their trip to a local grocery store while so armed Mardell writes ldquoTherersquos a revolver amidthe ravioli an automatic among the avocados Like cowboys out of Westerns the couple carry handgunson holsters on their hips She has a Smith and Wesson 38 special with a cute pink grip that makes it lookalmost like a toy He has a rather more chunky Glockrdquo

The story though is not so much to be found in the BBCrsquos coverage of open carry but in the readerreactions to the story The comments posted by readers almost uniformly demonstrate a lack ofunderstanding of the Second Amendment

For instance the first commentator writes ldquoAmerica would be a much nicer place if their constitutioninsisted on the right to arm bears insteadrdquo Another says the problem in America is that the right to beararms is written ldquoin their constitutionrdquo and suggests that gun ownership in America is frightening Thereare many other similar comments but even some of those defending gun ownership seem to miss the



point referring to hunting or the danger presented by wild animals as justification for gun ownership

So really why was the Second Amendment drafted and what might it mean

Americarsquos Founding Fathers operated from an understanding of the Natural Law They argued andbelieved as Jefferson summarized in the Declaration of Independence in the natural rights of mankindie the rights to life liberty and property If one has a right to life that can not be abridged by anotherthen it follows that one has a right to defend onersquos life from attempted abridgment Ergo a person maychoose to trade the product of some of his labor in other words his property for a weapon be that aknife sword ax or firearm Thus the Second Amendment guarantees but does not grant a right to keepand bear arms The right is a corollary of the natural right to life and therefore preexists the drafting ofthe Constitution and the adoption of the Bill of Rights

As to the idea that only members of the militia have their right to bear arms guaranteed under the SecondAmendment that is a misreading of the textrsquos intent The Founding Fathers understood that Americarsquosindependence might be threatened on occasion and viewed the militia as a bulwark against aggressionThey thus referenced the fact that it will be easier to staff the militia in times of need if the people wereable to provide their own arms as well as knowledge of their proper use To that end we have thewording of the Second Amendment ldquoA well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a freeState the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringedrdquo

The operative question then becomes who are ldquothe peoplerdquo The answer is obvious that the term refers tothe citizens of the several states Despite being obvious this has been disputed nonetheless but proof iseasily found in an analysis of the Preamble to the Constitution On this Joseph Story in his commentary onthe Constitution notes that that document ldquois an act of the people and not of the states in their politicalcapacities It is an ordinance or establishment of government and not a compact hellip and it binds as afundamental law promulgated by the sovereign authority and not as a compact or treaty entered into andin fieri between each and all the citizens of the United States as distinct parties The language is lsquoWe thepeople of the United Statesrsquo not We the states lsquodo ordain and establishrsquo not do contract and enter into atreaty with each other lsquothis constitution for the United States of Americarsquo not this treaty between theseveral statesrdquo [emphasis added]

The framers of the Constitution being one and the same as the framers of the Second Amendment cannot be said to have had in mind a different definition of the term ldquothe peoplerdquo in the Preamble as opposedto the same term when utilized in the Bill of Rights The right of the people as identified as the individualcitizens to keep and bear arms is therefore established

As to why the Founding Fathers may have insisted on reference to a militia in the Second Amendmentfurther clarification also comes from Joseph Story

It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standingarmies in time of peace both from the enormous expenses with which they are attended and thefacile means which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers to subvert the government ortrample upon the rights of the people The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly beenconsidered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic since it offers a strong moral check againstthe usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers and will generally even if these are successful in thefirst instance enable the people to resist and triumph over them



While this may sound like Story is a modern anti-government extremist the truth is he served on theSupreme Court of the United States from 1811 to 1845 In fact he was nominated for that post by then-President James Madison It is unlikely that Madison credited as the ldquoFather of the Constitutionrdquo for hissignal contribution to its creation would have nominated a man for the Supreme Court who did notproperly understand that Constitution

As for the final authority on the matter perhaps its worth considering Madison himself since he was theauthor of the Second Amendment As he brought it to the floor of the House on June 8 1789 his proposedamendment read ldquoThe right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed a well armed andwell regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous ofbearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in personrdquo

Thatrsquos a fairly clear construction and should I think be considered the last word on the subject

Dennis Behreandt is a contributor to The New American magazine Visit his blog and archives here

German Austerity Draws Irewritten by Bruce Walker

Germany which has a higher rate of savings and a lower government debt than other nations in theEuropean Union is being criticized by officials in nations like Greece Spain and Portugal for a ldquodeficitfetishrdquo The government debt and government spending in a number of European nations have beenspiraling out of control Unions and political pressure have driven up costs and there is no strong politicalwill in those nations to undertake steps to control debt or spending

The long creeping socialism of European nations is beginning to come home to roost Demographic trendsshow an increasingly aging native population of Europeans all eager to retire early and enjoy the benefitsof a welfare state The only growing parts of the population are relatively uneducated immigrantsparticularly from Muslim nations who are unlikely to be able to support a huge population of aged



affluent Europeans

No government in Europe really embraces limited government low taxes reduced spending and stablecurrency This has little to do with historical party politics in Europe Italy has what is deemed byEuropean standards a ldquoright of centerrdquo government and yet Italy is one of the failing European nationsThe unfolding debacle in Greece is happening with the primary socialist party in power France has aldquocenter-rightrdquo government under Sarkozy but France has hardly taken the lead in reducing governmentor demanding that other European Union nations reduce government

Surely the European Union has moved a long way from its earliest days when six nations in the middle ofWestern Europe formed the Common Market The abandonment of national sovereignty and the rise of awhole bureaucracy of European Union officials has reduced accountability for actual policy decisions evenfurther from the voters The Parliament of the European Union is a nebulous creature whose actualpowers also remain a mystery

What will happen in Europe The virtual bankruptcy of nations like Iceland which were once consideredresponsible and stable will almost inevitably affect the other nations of Europe The apparent impotenceof the Greek government a nation at the other end of Europe to stop strikes and riots also affects thethinking of every serious investor or businessman

And as Angela Merkel the Chancellor of Germany is finding out no one really wants to act responsibly inthis crisis The governments of Europe are inhabited by politicians and politicians who are willing to spendand to borrow until there are no options left and then to grumble when people propose serious solutionsIt seems that the crisis in Europe is going to get much worse

Photo of Brandenburg Gate Thomas Wolf

Protestors in Cuba Dragged Off by Policewritten by Raven Clabough



Members of a Cuban opposition group known as the ldquoLadies in Whiterdquo were hauled away by Cubanpolice on Wednesday after they staged a peaceful protest march to oppose the 2003 arrest of theirhusbands and sons

This week marks the seventh anniversary of ldquoBlack Springrdquo a term given to the 2003 governmentcrackdown of political ldquodissidentsrdquo or human rights defenders in Cuba Seventy-five activists throughoutCuba were arrested tried and sentenced to as many as 28 years in prison Currently 54 remain in jailmany suffering from severe illnesses as a result of poor prison conditions

To pay homage to the Black Spring prisoners the wives sisters and daughters of the prisoners formedthe Damas de Blanco Ladies in White who march every Sunday through Havana to protest the arrestsand promote human rights

The Ladies in White regularly hold religious services peaceful marches and assemblies in front ofgovernment offices to mark the anniversary of the arrests but their events are usually interrupted bygovernment-organized mobs

At Wednesdayrsquos protest the Ladies in White were armed with flowers and chanted ldquoFreedomrdquo andldquoZapata livesrdquo Orlando Zapata Tarnayo was an imprisoned dissident who died after an 85-day hungerstrike which helped to inspire the recent bout of marches Zapata was one of many dissidents who used ahunger strike to protest the regime Others include Guillermo Farinas currently hospitalized aftercollapsing on Thursday and Orlando Fundora a former political prisoner

Two hundred government supporters heckled the 30 or so peaceful protestors with shouts of ldquoWorms getout of here Viva Fidel Viva Raulrdquo

Witnesses say the women resisted but were dragged onto a bus by their legs arms and hair by Cubanpolice They were taken to the home of Laura Pollan a group leader

Cubarsquos arrest of 200 political prisoners and treatment of the hunger-strikers has prompted condemnationfrom the United States and Europe

Cuban leaders contest that the dissidents are enemies working for the United States government with theintent to subvert the government They assert that international pressure will not prompt any changes inthe way they treat their opposition

Fidel Castro ceded control of Cuba to his brother Raul in 2008 but any hopes that this move meantchange were quelled when Raul announced that Fidel would serve as ldquocommander in chiefrdquo and continueto be consulted in important matters

Fidelrsquos strong hold in Cuba remains evident In response to the protest house-wife Odalys Puente assertsldquoThey are invading Cuban territory This street belongs to Fidelrdquo

Wednesdayrsquos march was the third of the week and despite the harsh treatment of the police officers thewomen intend to march today as well

Berta Soler member of Ladies in White says ldquoWhen a wild animal is penned up it does this and muchmore We are ready for everything We have no fearrdquo



In a 2008 report to the UN Human Rights Council the Cuban government claimed that all Cubans ldquofullyand universally enjoy all human rightsrdquo Michael Moore might believe that but the rest of us knowbetter

Heading for Home or hellip Amnestywritten by John F McManus

Herersquos a question many Members of Congress prefer to ignore How many times do you have to be toldldquoNo amnesty for illegal immigrantsrdquo

In 1986 Congress approved and President Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act that awarded 27million illegal border crossers legal status and a path to citizenship It was amnesty plain and simpleSupporters of the 1986 measure repeatedly assured fellow legislators and skeptical Americans that theirnew law would put an end to the growing numbers entering our nation illegally But just the oppositeoccurred and border crossing into the United States increased dramatically As the time-worn adagestates ldquoCrime unpunished is crime rewardedrdquo In fact the crime was rewarded with six smaller amnestiessince 1986 that added three million more illegal immigrants to our citizenry according to NumbersUSAPartisans for amnesty refused to admit that the pardon they had given to some lawbreakers amounted toan invitation to others to follow in their wake Millions acted on the reward gained by their -predecessors


As the number of illegals grew their cost accelerated Costs in the billions of dollars were borne by statesimpacted because of the invasion More proposals to deal with the problem appeared One estimate pegs



the number of illegal entrants between 12 and 20 million and their cost at $26 trillion by way of foodstamps healthcare housing incarceration of criminals etc over the next decade

Early in 2006 parades and demonstrations disrupted traffic in many cities across the United StatesMillions of immigrants mdash some legally here but most lawbreaking border crossers mdash took to the streets todemand amnesty continued benefits and the acquisition by Mexico of several southwestern states Theyflew Mexican flags heaped scorn on Old Glory chanted anti-American slogans and gained the attentionof the nationrsquos mass media The events produced an angry response from ordinary Americans

So President George W Bush took to the airwaves and promised to fix the problems caused by illegalimmigration He said there would be an electronic fence erected 6000 National Guard personnel wouldbe sent to our southern border efforts would be made to confront drug trafficking and other crimes andthere would be no amnesty

The fence has been an almost laughable failure mdash little of it was funded Some National Guard personnelwere sent to the border region for a time but not placed along the border itself drug trafficking hasincreased and Bush urged Congress to pass the Kennedy-McCain comprehensive immigration bill A newimmigration measure with an amnesty provision gained passage in both houses of Congress but it diedwhen objections raised in a House-Senate conference committee led to its demise In 2007 Senators TedKennedy and John McCain introduced S 1639 the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 Theword ldquocomprehensiverdquo in this and subsequent proposals customarily means ldquoamnestyrdquo a word thepromoters of this destructiveness always seek to hide With key support from President George W BushS 1639 appeared to have sufficient momentum to become law But like its predecessor this bipartisanmonster died when needed Senate backing could not be mustered Protests from numerous anti-amnestygroups and similarly inclined voters across the nation helped to kill these Bush-era bills

Present Predicament

Here we are now in 2010 We have a new President who is deeply committed to solving the immigrationproblem by making it worse While campaigning for the nationrsquos highest office Barack Obama delivered aspeech to the militantly pro-amnesty group known as the National Council of La Raza on July 13 2008 Hepandered to his adoring audience ldquoI will be a President who stands with you and fights for you andwalks with you every step of the wayhellip I fought with you in the Senate for comprehensive immigrationreform and I will make it a top priority in my first year as Presidentrdquo

Pledging to ldquobring those 12 million people out of the shadowsrdquo (thereby admitting that there are indeed atleast 12 million illegally here in the United States) Obama translated the term La Raza as ldquothe peoplerdquoNo Mr Obama the term translates to ldquothe racerdquo

The cohorts of the La Raza organization should be designated as anti-American racists Should any groupof ethnically identified American citizens announce opposition to an amnesty proposal they would surelybe labeled racists and denounced for injecting ethnicity as a consideration But the clearly racist La Razaorganization and others like it not only get a pass from the media and from numerous political figures theman who became President of the United States showered them with praise and delivered a deceitfulcoverup of their proud racism

Currently both the House and Senate are lopsidedly Democratic Many of these elected officials alongwith some Republicans derisively labeled ldquoRepublicans in Name Only (RINOs)rdquo by GOP stalwarts want an



amnesty proposal enacted during the current session But the American people are stirring and leftists inCongress are feeling more heat from back home than they ever expected

New amnesty bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress One major House proposaldesignated HR 4321 is entitled ldquoComprehensive Immigration Reform for Americarsquos Security andProsperityrdquo (CIR ASAP) The use of the words ldquosecurityrdquo and ldquoprosperityrdquo in the title were obviouslychosen to persuade Americans who wonrsquot ever read the bill that it has something to do with protecting thenation from terrorism and ending the recession It will do neither

Introduced by Representatives Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill) and Solomon Ortiz (D-Texas) CIR ASAP immediatelygained 92 cosponsors The bill admits that there are 11-12 million ldquoundocumentedrdquo aliens a figure thatsome believe should be 18-20 million Gutierrez said the bill ldquowill be progressive it will be expansive itwill be compassionate and it will be comprehensiverdquo What he didnrsquot have the honesty to say is that it willgrant amnesty to the millions who are here illegally

Will CIR ASAP become law President Obama indicated he wants ldquocomprehensive immigration reformrdquoBut he has already run into some brick walls regarding healthcare and climate-control proposals and hispopularity has plummeted dramatically both among the public and among elected officials leery of tyingthemselves to him and his controversial proposals The fate of the Gutierrez-Ortiz amnesty proposal willdepend in great measure on the amount of protest against it from the American people

CIR ASAP contains enticing provisions such as beefed-up border control and workplace enforcementsections designed to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants but just as with present immigrationlaws these will never be enforced Its use of the term ldquocomprehensiverdquo is a dead giveaway for generalamnesty Seeking to gain more support Congressman Gutierrez insists ldquoWe cannot get on the road tofinancial recovery and growth without enacting comprehensive immigration reformrdquo But even he has toknow that legalizing millions who will have a claim on a decreasing number of jobs will hardly beeconomically sound His assurance that the measure ldquowill get us back on track economicallyrdquo is nothingbut a gross absurdity when one considers that more than four million Americans lost jobs in 2009 aloneand these newly out-of-work Americans join 15 million others already unsuccessfully seeking work

Similarly Texas Congressman Ortiz claims that CIR ASAP will be ldquotough on enforcement will be fair totaxpayers and will end illegal immigrationrdquo He blames the current failure of laws against hiring illegalimmigrants on ldquobureaucracy in the governmentrsquos data basesrdquo He too claims that the measure will solvethe nationrsquos economic downturn

CIR ASAP also calls for establishing a commission to revamp the current system whereby H-1B and H-2Bvisas are granted to overseas skilled workers With these visas many individuals in the electronics andother industries are brought here from India Pakistan and elsewhere Because they are perfectly willingto accept reduced pay scales they take jobs away from Americans California Republican CongressmanDana Rohrabacher a strong opponent of loose immigration policies recounted the anguish of aconstituent who lost his $80000 job to an immigrant with a H-1B visa Seeking to be rehired the manrsquosformer employer told him that he would be welcomed back at $50000 the approximate scale being paidto H-1B visa holders The man told Rohrabacher that the reduced salary in his area of Southern Californiameant ldquonever owning your own homerdquo But he was a lucky one many skilled Americans who have losthigh-paying jobs to immigrants with these visas havenrsquot found work anywhere

The promise of changing the visa system that invites foreigners to come here for the jobs Americans want



and need is no more a guarantee that justice will prevail than that amnesty will put an end to bordercrossing Yet the US Chamber of Commerce huge labor unions and numerous religious leaders(Catholic Protestant Jewish and others) stand behind reforming the immigration laws by making themworse The Chamber of Commerce fronts for its corporate members who want lower payrolls The unionsback amnesty because it would mean more members And the religious leaders support immigration out ofa tragically mistaken sense of social justice and maybe even a hope that some amnestied individuals andnewly arrived foreigners will fill their pews

It now looks as though even President Obama knows that an amnesty measure wonrsquot succeed His scantmention of ldquoimmigration reformrdquo in his 2010 State of the Union speech (a mere 38 words out of thespeechrsquos 7300) angered Gutierrez who expected the President to push hard for his pet measure

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) who boasts of his support for ldquocomprehensiverdquo immigrationproposals in 2006 and 2007 has introduced S 9 in his chamber The Reid bill claims it will ldquostrengthenthe United States economy provide for more effective border and employment enforcement and for otherpurposesrdquo Other purposes Would you guess amnesty The bill names as one of its goals ldquoreforming andrationalizing avenues for legal immigrationrdquo While these politicians deceitfully avoid using the wordldquoamnestyrdquo what they surely mean is exactly that Late in 2009 Reid announced ldquoWe hope to considercomprehensive immigration reform hellip in the first half of next yearrdquo

Several other bills have been introduced in the Senate and more are likely especially from SenatorCharles Schumer (D-NY) who seems to be waiting to learn whether any proposal calling for amnesty willhave sufficient support for him to stick his neck out and champion it

When Harry Reid said that his S 9 measure had ldquoother purposesrdquo was he referring to a desire to swellthe voting rolls with newly amnestied and newly enfranchised former illegals There are already instanceswhere illegal immigrants have voted In 2008 career State Department foreign service officer DavidSimcox released a report claiming that at least 18 million and possibly 27 million noncitizens voted in2006 States most heavily affected by this fraudulent voting were California Florida Texas New YorkIllinois New Jersey and Arizona

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform Illinois pays out over $35 billion per yearfor Illegal Immigration ldquoAnalysis based on current estimates of the illegal alien population residing inIllinois indicates that population costs the statersquos taxpayers more than $35 billion per year for educationmedical care and incarceration That annual tax burden amounts to about $695 per Illinois householdheaded by a native-born resident Even if the estimated $465 million in sales income and property taxescollected from illegal immigrants are subtracted from the fiscal outlays net costs still amount to morethan $3 billion per yearrdquo

Amnesty rallies frequently include signs stating ldquoToday We March Tomorrow We Voterdquo Occasionallychildren of illegal immigrants show up at these demonstrations wearing shirts proclaiming that they areldquoFuture Votersrdquo The latest issue of Whistleblower magazine features several articles pointing to thethreat of millions of new voters from the ranks of illegal immigrants Under the overall title ldquoHow to Stayin Powerrdquo the magazine quotes Eliseo Medina an executive vice president of the Service EmployeesInternational Union (SEIU) as follows ldquoCan you imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issuesand will be voting We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term not just for an electioncyclerdquo



Medina himself a proud immigrant from Mexico is not only an official of SEIU he is also an honorarychairman of the Democratic Socialists of America the US branch of the Socialist International Andtodayrsquos Socialist International can trace its roots back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and then toVladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin

Illegal immigrants use Matricula Consular Identification cards which are Mexico-issued identificationdocuments that were legitimized by then-President George W Bush to obtain driverrsquos licenses open bankaccounts and in some instances where scrutiny is lax register to vote Amnesty would surely swell therolls of voters And it is quite likely that Senator Reid had this in mind when he mentioned ldquootherpurposesrdquo

The census taken every 10 years counts everyone even noncitizens Apportionment for House seats isdetermined by the numbers living in a district Itrsquos bad enough that noncitizens are figured in these veryimportant totals But if the radicals have their way the noncitizens will also be voting

Duty Undone

The American people donrsquot want several southwestern states transferred to Mexico a demand frommilitant Hispanics and their organizations They donrsquot want millions of illegal immigrants (most of whomare Mexican) declared legal and given a speedy path both to citizenship and to the US ballot box Andthey want to terminate the forced shouldering of enormous costs associated with providing medical careeducation food stamps housing and other forms of welfare given to people who have broken our laws bybreaking into our country If all of these ldquofreebiesrdquo were cancelled most of the illegal entrants wouldleave And those who desire legal entry to our country could follow the path toward legal status taken bymany millions over the years

But what the people donrsquot want seems to matter little to our nationrsquos elitists According to a recentlyconducted Zogby poll the peoplersquos preferences against amnesty are not shared by the top leaders ofcorporate America and large labor unions The polling firm contends that this is especially the case amonglobbyists for large firms such as those holding membership in the US Chamber of Commerce It is weshould add also the dominant attitude among the kingpins of the monster tax-exempt foundations (FordRockefeller Carnegie et al)

Elected members of Congress swear an oath to abide by the provisions of the US Constitution But whatabout the immigration problem Does the Constitution say anything about this vexing issue The answer isan emphatic Yes Article IV Section 4 reads ldquoThe United States shall guarantee to every State in thisUnion a republican form of government and shall protect each of them against invasionrdquo (Emphasisadded) If 10-20 million persons illegally enter the United States is that not an invasion Note that theConstitution didnrsquot specify that the invasion had to be military in nature it just said invasion According tothe Constitution therefore it is the solemn duty of ldquothe United Statesrdquo to protect each of the states fromwhat has already occurred and continues to occur mdash an invasion by outsiders Our federal government hasfailed miserably to meet its constitutional obligation

Immigration History

It is true that approximately 88 percent of todayrsquos Americans were born here And it is correct to note thatour nation is made up almost entirely of immigrants and their descendants In the past new arrivals to ourshores came here legally They didnrsquot sneak across the border They didnrsquot come for handouts They left



everything abroad and came for the freedom to work and keep the fruits of their labor Once here theygot in line learned the language adopted the American culture and soon joyfully passed a test thatawarded them US citizenship A considerable number came from Mexico and their contributions to ournation are many This is the proper way to become an American citizen

The United States still welcomes more than a million legal immigrants every year more than the rest ofthe world combined But illegal immigration is different mdash and should be treated differently Itrsquos aproblem that should be solved by the federal government Yet our leaders havenrsquot dealt with it properlyfor a long time

As far back as 1981 then-Attorney General William French Smith pointed to a growing influx of illegalimmigrants when he told a congressional panel ldquoWe have lost control of our bordersrdquo Losing that controldidnrsquot happen overnight

Sensible immigration policies had been in place in our nation for as many as 100 years When travel fromafar became more easily accomplished and increasing numbers sought entry into the United StatesCongress enacted several immigration statutes in the 1920s After World War II when relocating to theUnited States became even more desirable Congress passed the 1952 McCarran-Walter Immigration andNationality Act Overwhelmingly supported throughout the nation it required careful physicalexamination of all entrants while establishing country-by-country quotas as to how many people couldlegally immigrate to the United States The quotas were intended to avoid a shift in the United Statesrsquoethnic mix via immigration

Several amendments to the 1952 law began eroding McCarran-Walterrsquos provisions and this chippingaway led to an increasing number of immigrants By 1980 a new Refugee Act authored by the lateSenator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) seriously undermined McCarran-Walter by adopting a UN-createdcategory of refugees who could come to America The Kennedy measure also authorized providingvarious social services and financial aid for the refugees One of the first to take advantage of thisremarkable relaxation of our nationrsquos immigration policies was Fidel Castro who dumped many thousandsof his undesirables into the United States through the Cuban port at Mariel

During the late 1970s even prior to the enactment of Kennedyrsquos Refugee Act the trickle of immigrantshad swelled to such an extent that Congress created a commission whose task was to recommendappropriate action to deal with immigration policies In the 1980s that panel urged increased borderenforcement and sanctions for firms knowingly employing illegals and its recommendations led to theSimpson-Mazzoli law As noted above politicians who pushed this bill through to enactment assured thewary that there would be no more persons crossing the border Just the opposite happened And SenatorKennedy along with many others claimed that this measure would be the last one ever needed to addressthe immigration problem

In time the border enforcement provision of this bill was essentially ignored and the government alsolargely overlooked the requirement that it punish those who hired illegal immigrants But as predicted bymany amnesty and the opportunity for welfare spurred even more to cross our border The trickle soonbecame a flood

After enactment of the 1986 bill strains on the social welfare system grew enormously Also the hiring ofillegal immigrants at reduced wage levels impacted the wages that could be earned by entry-levelAmerican workers Nor do most of the illegal immigrants pay any taxes while legal citizens do But



numerous additional consequences were pointed to by an Immigration and Naturalization Service officialwho noted in 1987

Illegal aliens are involved in one-third of the rapes and murders and one-fourth of the burglaries inSan Diego County In Orange County they account for over half the hom-icideshellip Aliens areresponsible for about 90 percent of the narcotics traffichellip Four hundred illegal aliens a month areadded to the California prison system for various crimes

That was 1987 These problems remain with us today So greatly have they impacted California that in1994 citizens overwhelmingly approved Proposition 187 a measure designed to terminate welfareeducation and non-emergency health benefits for illegal immigrants The thinking was clear If thefreebies were eliminated most of the illegal invaders would go home When opponents of the measureparaded with Mexican flags and shouts of ldquoViva La Razardquo Californians stormed to the polls to put a stopto being forced to subsidize law-breakers It didnrsquot take long however for Federal District Judge MarianaPfaelzer to block implementation of Proposition 187 with the predictable result that border crossingmushroomed

The problems associated with illegal immigration have impacted many other states and communitiesFrom coast to coast governments at various levels have been forced to cope with enormous financialdrains overburdened hospitals inundated schools prisons bursting at the seams increased drugtrafficking gangs that terrorize communities and fraudulent voting mdash all caused in large part by illegalimmigrants

Recent Developments

Today the Gutierrez-Ortiz CIR ASAP measure (HR 4321) must be opposed Likewise the Americanpeople must block Harry Reidrsquos S 9 from enactment and any similar piece of legislation claiming that it isldquocomprehensiverdquo

Immigration research specialist Robert Rector concludes that if current laws were enforced there wouldbe millions of jobs for legal citizens and all thatrsquos needed is for the federal government to adherefaithfully to laws that already exist Doing so would solve not only the illegal immigration problem butmuch of the unemployment problem as well

mdash Photo AP Images

The list of revolutionary and racist groups should also include MEChA MALDEF HACR and LULAC

It is ironic that Senator Pat McCarran the coauthor of the carefully written and eminently sensible 1952 immigration bill represented Nevadaas does Senator Harry Reid today

Will Obama Support Pro-amnesty Washington Rallywritten by Joe Wolverton II JD



The pro-amnesty activists at La Raza and Reform Immigration for America are cautiously optimistic thatPresident Obama is on the verge of obliterating current immigration restrictions and caving to thepressure of his left-wing Latino supporters The leadership of these two radical organizations must beslavering over the chance to catch President Obama at the height of his platform-promoting zeal Surelythey are figuring that if the President can pull off the passage of healthcare ldquoreformrdquo then there must benothing he canrsquot do hellip including enactment of some equally odious immigration package

To evince his commitment to the overhaul of Americarsquos immigration policies President Obama sentinvitations to Senators Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) to meet with him at theOval Office to discuss the matter and to try and hammer out an agreement that would satisfy both sides ofthe debate

Graham and Schumer were the honored guests of the President because of their collaboration on a planfor the comprehensive overhaul of current immigration laws and policies This structure would form theskeleton upon which the flesh of immigration legislation would grow


For his part Senator Graham was not impressed by the Presidentrsquos hospitality Graham accuses thePresident of ldquolip servicerdquo solely aimed at bolstering his own temporary political agenda Graham criticizedPresident Obama for ldquohastilyrdquo convening last weekrsquos meeting only to demonstrate his claim ofldquounwavering commitmentrdquo to immigration in advance of next weekrsquos rally

The aforementioned Reform Immigration for America is sponsoring a massive rally in Washington DCon March 21 2010 Protestors plan to boisterously (though peacefully) communicate their advocacy ofldquodemocracyrdquo and their belief that ldquoour democracy is betrayed by having 12 million people who work paytaxes and are part of our communities but are excluded from the full American familyrdquo What they fail tomention is that these 12 million people have excluded themselves from the American mainstream byillegally entering the United States Criminals by definition are exempted from benefiting from theprivileges enjoyed by the law-abiding

The roster of co-sponsors of the so-called ldquoMarch for Americardquo reads like a ldquoWhorsquos Whordquo of leftist groupsInfamous organizations such as the National Council of La Raza and the League of United American



Citizens (LULAC) are among the illustrious names of sponsors proud to support the efforts of the marchorganizers to provide instant legal status to millions of people whose disregard for the law put them intheir lamentable predicament

On the whitehousegov website President Obama praises the efforts of Senators Graham and Schumerand proclaims his alliance with ldquothe growing coalitionrdquo of community organizations (such as those listedabove) whose ldquoefforts will contribute to a favorable climate toward moving forwardrdquo

That plan sounds audacious enough but the question remains moving forward toward what It isnrsquotprogress unless one is aware of the destination In this case the destination seems to be the granting oflegal immigration status to the millions of undocumented immigrants currently residing illegally withinthe porous borders of the United States

Several key grassroots leaders met with the President last Thursday as well To a man they praisedPresident Obama for his ldquoleadership for comprehensive immigration legislationrdquo Clarissa Martinez deCastro director of immigration and national campaigns for La Raza said she anticipates a legislativeblueprint to be ready in time for the rally scheduled for next week in the nationrsquos capitol

ldquoConsidering he is in the final stretch on health care reform itrsquos extremely significant hellip that he carvedout timerdquo to discuss the immigration issue she remarked

Ms de Castrorsquos hopes may be soon dashed however by a Congress that has repeatedly demonstrated areluctance to spend valuable political capital in furtherance of similar legislation proposed in 2006 and2007 In the midst of a bitter partisan battle over healthcare and the promise of electoral repercussionsfor lawmakers who support the Presidentrsquos plan legislators may not have the stomach for sticking theirnecks out for illegal immigrants

Of all the provisions contained in the bipartisan blueprint being drawn by Graham and Schumer none ismore baneful than the ldquomandatory biometric identificationrdquo which would be issued to all workers so as toldquostem the flow of illegal workersrdquo in the future There is no provision in the senatorsrsquo proposal for theexemption of American citizens from this national worker ID mandate

Besides is there any such thing as an ldquoillegal workerrdquo when the laws are constantly in flux and he whowas once a criminal is instantly pardoned by the stroke of the presidentrsquos pen

Notwithstanding the controversy and the toxic political climate there are those committed leftists whowill live in hope even if they die in despair Deepak Bhargava executive director of the ambiguouslynamed Center for Community Change told reporters after the meeting at the White House ldquoWe walkaway from this very productive meeting optimistic that if the White House follows through on itscommitments comprehensive reform can be achieved this yearrdquo

Another attendee added that he expects the President to fulfill his promise to fix the ldquobrokenrdquo immigrationstructure

The only structure that is broken is the border of the United States The protections against invasion alongour southern border are woeful The obstacles separating the United States from Mexico are laughablypregnable and such is proven by hundreds of violators on a daily basis

As The New American has reported it should be no surprise that President Obama would side with those



who ultimate goal is the absolute dismantling of all immigration barriers The President has nominatedmembers of these radical organizations to important roles in his administration including ambassador toEl Salvador (Maria del Carmen Aponte) and White House adviser (Cecilia Munoz) both of whom areformer officials of the National Council of La Raza

Contrary to the picture painted by Senator Graham President Obama is not a newcomer to this issue Hisgenuine commitment to fulfill the promises he has made to these groups has been demonstrated since thebeginning of his administration One of Obamarsquos earliest acts upon sitting down behind the desk in theOval Office was the nomination of Ms Munoz a former senior vice president at NCLR to the occupy thepost of Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Remarkably Munoz described those organizations formedto stem the tide of illegal immigrants over Americarsquos southern border as hate groups motivated byldquobigotryrdquo against the Latin race

And the most recent award stowed in the Presidentrsquos trophy case of tyranny there was his historicalnomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court Sotomayor has proudly proclaimed hermembership in the NCLR

In light of last weekrsquos confab it is evident that President Obamarsquos devotion to the treacherous andpotentially treasonous design of Reform Immigration for America La Raza and scores of other likemindedgroups is neither new nor diminished

Photo of pro-amnesty march in Los Angeles AP Images

Latino Clerics Urge Non-Compliance With Censuswritten by Bruce Walker

The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders has taken the position that illegalimmigrants (who are overwhelmingly Hispanic) should not fill out the census forms arriving in the mailThe rationale for this position said Reverend Miguel Rivera the chairman of the coalition is to create



pressure for a process which would allow illegal immigrants to become citizens

Article I Section 2 of the Constitution requires an actual counting of persons mdash the decennial census mdashand what this Latino coalition is advocating is an organized violation of the law There are legitimatequestions about how to count illegal immigrants in the census Although all people are to be countedNative Americans not taxed are excluded in the census all free people are counted as a whole person andldquoall other personsrdquo are counted as three-fifths of a person Historically that meant slaves but theconstitutional language does not say ldquoslavesrdquo Does the Constitution require that illegal immigrants beincluded in that category of ldquoall other personsrdquo If so then only three-fifths of an illegal immigrant shouldbe included in the census

Rivera estimates that there are three million members of churches in his coalition of 20000 churches Outof these three million Reverend Rivera estimates 38 percent of the congregants in these churchesincluding one-sixth of the clergy are illegal immigrants That translates into about 800000 illegalimmigrants who attend services at these churches and who Reverend Rivera and the coalition wish tohave a path to citizenship If the three-fifths provision applies to illegal immigrants these 800000 shouldbe counted as 480000


The impact of such a boycott would not only affect illegal immigrants but also Hispanics belonging to thecoalition who were either legal immigrants or citizens Thwarting the census process would reduce theamount of federal programmatic funding for those areas in which Hispanics lived as well as reducing thenumbers of persons counting for purposes of reapportionment and redistricting or congressional statelegislative and municipal council districts

Christian clergy have from time to time in American history urged parishioners to disobey unjust lawsThe National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders however is not contending that the censuslaws are unjust or that the underlying constitutional provision requiring a census is immoral but ratherthat legislation that the coalition wants has not yet been passed The threat is in effect a form of politicalblackmail against those politicians who rely upon support from illegal immigrants and their friends

The impact of consciously misreporting the census data has other consequences as well The data iscollected by the Department of Commerce and it is used by businesses to make economic decisions poordata means poor business decisions State and local governments also use census data for a variety ofdecisions and policies these decisions and policies also are compromised by corrupted data And ofcourse the boycott would hurt the very people that the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and ChristianLeaders are trying to help

The Census Bureau is already suspected by many Americans of trying to politicize the census which is akey reason Republican Senator Gregg declined the office of Secretary of Commerce in the Obamaadministration mdash the Census Bureau was going to be directed by the White House and not the CabinetSecretary Pressure like that which the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders is tryingto impose upon the federal government will doubtless increase the perception that the census is becominganother political football

Photo AP Images



Doddrsquos Finance Reform Bill Would Strengthen Fedwritten by Charles Scaliger

There are from time to time political events that attract attention and controversy only to fade into well-deserved obscurity Who today can recall the storm and stress over the rsquo90s-era debates over thepresidential line item veto or the proposed Conference of the States for example The very latest in a verylong line of forgettable Capitol Hill follies the Dodd Finance Reform Bill was unveiled this past weekenda bill that deserves similarly to wind up in the dustbin of failed Grand Ideas

The bill almost singlehandedly crafted by Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd proposes to compound almostall of the decades-old errors that set the stage for the ongoing economic crisis In substance it representsa complete volte-face for Senator Dodd who a year ago could find nothing good to say about the FederalReserve or the Byzantine federal regulatory structure that provided cover for the financial shenanigans ofAIG Goldman-Sachs Fannie Mae and their ilk It is therefore more than a little surprising that the Doddlegislation adds considerably to the Fedrsquos dreary kit of tolls for monetary manipulation and contemplates awhole range of new regulatory activities for the Federal Government


The Federal Reserve itself is the centerpiece of the Dodd legislation The central bank only months agothreatened of being stripped of many of its powers would be given sweeping new authorities instead TheFed would become the chief regulator of the hundreds of bank holding companies with $50 billion or morein assets It would also acquire the authority to regulate and whenever deemed necessary break up largecorporations like AIG whose failure could affect the entire economy It would provide for thecomprehensive regulation of the issuance of credit giving the Federal Reserve regulatory authority overcredit card and mortgage companies and even over the hundreds of firms that issue gift cards or offerlayaway plans



In other words the Federal Reserve would abandon any lingering pretext of being a disinterestedimpartial entity and openly transform into yet another Big Government regulatory bureaucracy mdash albeitone that already wields the awesome and illegitimate power to manipulate the money supply

Also contemplated in the bill is a nine-member Financial Stability Council to be chaired by the Secretaryof the Treasury which would have among its many powers the authority to place large corporationsunder the regulatory authority of the Federal Reserve The Council would also act to prevent financialfirms from becoming ldquotoo big to failrdquo and would be empowered to approve the breakup of large companiesregarded as a threat to the financial system

The bill is said to have initially enjoyed a measure of bipartisan support until Senator Dodd chose toabruptly end negotiations with Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee and introduce the bill withthe intent of ramming it through committee within a few days

Unfortunately Republican opposition to the measure is mostly cosmetic rather than motivated by anysemblance of principle Republicans are said to be angered for example by the fact that the proposednew credit regulation authority within the Fed be placed in a quasi-autonomous agency According to theWall Street Journal ldquoRepublicans hellip have argued the Fed itself should retain responsibility for consumerprotectionsrdquo while Democrats favor the creation of an entirely new and independent agency

In other words nobody on Capitol Hill mdash with the notable exception of Congressman Ron Paul mdash is evenquestioning the prudence of imposing the new regulations in the first place The brief opprobriumdirected at the Federal Reserve appears to have largely passed and lawmakers in both parties are nowcommitted to strengthening the institution rather than curtailing or abolishing it As the Wall StreetJournal pointed out ldquothe biggest winner in Doddrsquos bill appears to be the central bank It would policepreviously unregulated sectors of the economy and would have a new division to write consumerprotection policyrdquo

Senator Doddrsquos 1336-page monstrosity is being touted as the most ambitious overhaul of the financialregulations since the New Deal It represents the first time ever that large swathes of previouslyunregulated financial activity will be subject to the suffocating scrutiny of the state It will impose heavypunitive costs on the entire financial sector and put a definitive end to financial privacy a right to whichAmericans are apparently no longer entitled And as with all previous regulatory regimes it will produceunintended consequences that will lead to further economic distortion and instability for generations yetunborn

All of this stems from a distrust of freedom in America that has reached epidemic proportions From acountry that once prized individual freedom and responsibility we are rapidly allowing ourselves to betransformed into just another docile populace dependent on government to safeguard us from making ourown decisions For bills such as this one would not even be discussed if lawmakers believed they riskedthe wrath of an electorate jealous of their own financial liberties It is to be devoutly hoped that Americanswill wake up someday soon oust Big Government buffoons like Senator Dodd (the good Senator himselfwill not be running for reelection this year perhaps to spare himself the potential indignity) and reclaimthe liberties we have unwisely permitted our leaders to strip from us

Photo of Sen Chris Dodd AP Images



Mitch McConnell One Smart Political Pragmatistwritten by Bob Adelmann

Republican Minority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) had a strategy even before PresidentObama was inaugurated according to the New York Times Recognizing that Republicans had lost controlof the Senate as well as the presidency that strategy was to use his 30-plus years of political wheeling anddealing to slow down the Democrat juggernaut and wait for reinforcements

During the current healthcare debate McConnell bet that by presenting a united even if a minority frontagainst Obamacare and putting in place delaying tactics Republicans would force the Democrats to useldquoparliamentary back flipsrdquo to get the bill passed and onto the Presidentrsquos desk Such Democrat efforts asreconciliation the Slaughter tactic and the ldquodeemerrdquo strategy would so dismay the average Americanvoter as to derail the juggernaut before it became law


Although such tactics have made the voting public increasingly cynical about the entire legislative process(see Rasmussen Reports for daily updates here) ldquoin the short run at least his approach has workedrdquoaccording to the Times McConnell kept reminding his 40-member minority to avoid ldquothe lure of hellip short-term attention to be gained [by going along with the Democrats on healthcare] and linked Republicangains in November to showing voters they could hold the line against big governmentrdquo

The Democratic whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill) agrees ldquoTheir goal is to slow down activity to stoplegislation from passing in the belief that this will embolden conservatives in the next electionrdquo

McConnell holds himself out as a centrist not a conservative Of the Democrats McConnell said ldquoTo theextent that they want to do things that we [Republicans] think are in the political center and would behelpful to the country wersquoll be helpfulrdquo But his pragmatic opposition to the rush to totalitarianism by theDemocrats has earned him such titles as ldquostaunch conservativerdquo and a politician of ldquoprincipled beliefsrdquo



In fact McConnell holds a Freedom Index rating of 85 out of 100 and has taken strong stands againstdamaging legislation such as McCain-Feingold in 1995 calling it ldquoneither fair nor balanced norconstitutionalrdquo In 2009 the Supreme Court agreed with the unconstitutional part inciting greatresentment in the liberal media who saw it as diminishing their role in providing their readers with ldquoallthe news that fitsrdquo because news media were among the few corporate entities exempted from McCain-Feingold free-speech restrictions

On the other hand McConnell introduced the Protect America Act of 2007 which passed Congress andallows the NSA (National Security Agency) to ldquomonitor telephone and electronic communications ofsuspected terrorists inside and outside the United States without obtaining a warrantrdquo

McConnell also voted for the Supplemental Appropriations bill that contained additional spending for theundeclared war in Iraq and the unconstitutional ldquoCash for Clunkersrdquo program as well as the Interior-Environment Appropriations bill which also contained mostly unconstitutional spending He voted for theMedicare Prescription Drug Act which has put the entire Medicare program into significant financialjeopardy And McConnell has no problem ladling earmarks from the public trough for his Kentuckyconstituents As one of the five members of the Appropriations Committee he has used his influence toobtain 38 earmarks worth more than $60 million so far in fiscal 2010

McConnellrsquos opposition to Obamacare isnrsquot based on its unconstitutionality In an interview with GretaVan Susteren of Fox News recently he said ldquoWe need to start over as wersquove been advocating mdash my sidehas been advocating for some time start over and go step-by-step to fix the problemrdquo He explained thaton the Republican side of the aisle ldquoWe have broad philosophical diversity and the NortheastRepublicans are not exactly like a Southeast or a Western Republicanrdquo But since every one of themldquothought that [Obamacare] was a bad deal for Americardquo they presented a united front of opposition to theDemocrats

And McConnell no doubt has been a team player himself The biography of Senator McConnell at the NewYork Times makes this clear

McConnell has done much to build up Kentuckyrsquos long ailing Republican Party In 1994 he helpedEd Whitfield pick up the 1st District House seat and helped Republican legislative candidates win ineastern Kentucky He backed Anne Northup in her win in the Louisville-based 3rd District in 1996and he helped rescue Sen Jim Bunningrsquos re-election campaign in 2004 He helped to persuade twoDemocratic state senators to switch parties in July and August 1999 which gave Republicans a20-18 margin in the state Senate and he has helped them hold that majority ever since

The original Times article stated that ldquothe extent of Republican unity to date is attributable to hellip the riseof the Tea Party movement which has exerted tremendous pressure on Republicans not to do anythingthat might give comfort to the president and his partyrdquo This pressure can now be measured statisticallywith a generic poll by Rasmussen showing American voters favoring Republicans over Democrats in thefall elections by 10 percentage points ldquoTheir biggest lead ever in nearly three years of weekly trackingrdquoAnd voter unhappiness with Congress has ldquoreached the highest level ever recorded hellip with 71 nowsaying the national legislature is doing a poor jobrdquo

McConnell is biding his time ldquoI think the reason my members are feeling really goodrdquo he said ldquois theybelieve the reward for playing team ball this year was the reversal of the political environment and thepossibility that we will have a bigger team next yearrdquo



Real change that American voters will see however wonrsquot come just by having a ldquobigger teamrdquo of RINOstrying to keep the United States in the ldquocenterrdquo but a better team as well made up of constitutionalistswho understand the rules the limitations the deliberate restrictions on government regardless ofwhether they are from the Northeast the Southeast or the West A bigger team Probably A better teamOnly if the Tea Partiers and other constitutionalists continue to make inroads into Republican territoryAnd only if being a ldquoteam playerrdquo means playing by those rules

Healthcare Bill Rife with Provisions FundingAbortionwritten by Joe Wolverton II JD

As the House of Representatives rushes to pass the version of a healthcare bill passed in December by theSenate particular emphasis is being paid by Americans to key provisions in the measure One of the mostcontroversial elements and one of most importance to many voters is whether the bill underconsideration will permit federal dollars to fund abortions

Struggling to cobble together a filibuster-proof coalition of supporters Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid(D-NY) went out of his way to assure pro-life senators (and by extension likeminded constituents) that nogovernment money would be used to pay for abortions no federally-managed health insurance policywould subsidize abortions and no healthcare provider that performed abortions would receive federaldollars


Senator Reidrsquos assurances may have more purchase with concerned citizens if it wasnrsquot for the fact that asa candidate the billrsquos biggest backer mdash President Barack Obama mdash promised pro-abortion activists thatabortion coverage would be ldquoat the heartrdquo of any health care scheme he would propose as PresidentJudging from the vague language and textual gymnastics still extant in the health care bill President



Obama remains committed to fulfilling that promise and knows that such trickery is necessary to sneaksuch coverage passed the watchful gaze of wary abortion foes

One staunch pro-life organization insists as a matter of fact that the Senate bill ldquowill allow direct fundingof abortion without restrictionrdquo The National Right to Life Committee warns that despite politiciansrsquopledges to the contrary there is no unqualified proscription of abortion funding to be found on any of the2407-page legislative labyrinth approved by the Senate late last year and now being pushed through theHouse of Representatives

Other abortion foes have similarly warned that the mammoth measure is pocked with loopholes throughwhich abortion coverage can pass James Dobsonrsquos Family Research Council (FRC) makes just such aclaim in a press release published on its website in February The statement quotes current FRC presidentTony Perkins as stating that President Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) aredeliberately misleading the public about the health care billrsquos prohibitions on abortion funding ThePresident and Speaker Pelosi should be ashamed of their misleading statements The legislation thatPresident Obama is pushing provides federal subsidies for health plans that cover abortions authorizesplans to cover elective abortions and funds community health care centers to the tune of 11 billiontaxpayer dollars without any abortion restrictionsrdquo asserts Perkins in a statement quoted in the pressrelease

It is in the funding of these health care centers that has drawn the ire of many attentive abortionopponents According to Section 10503 of HR 3590 $7 billion dollars in taxpayer money is appropriatedover five years for the maintenance of Community Health Centers (also called Federally Qualified HealthCenters or FQHCs) There are presently over 1200 such facilities Because the bill directly apportionsthis money these funds will bypass the annual approval process through which appropriations for theDepartment of Health and Human Services typically must pass Therefore these funds would not becovered by the Hyde Amendment The Hyde Amendment prohibits most federal funding of abortion

This is more than an innocent oversight attributable to the haste with which the bill was shoved throughthe Senate There was time to make explicit proscription on abortion funding in other provisions of thebill For example the section of the bill apportioning money to the Indian Health Service contains thefollowing restriction ldquoAny limitation pursuant to other Federal laws on the use of Federal funds to theService shall apply with respect to the performance or coverage of abortionsrdquo Other similar qualificationsare included in various expenditures authorized in the bill It would seem then that the lawmakers whocrafted this behemoth subscribe to the axiom that the devil is in the details And the details herein providea port of entry to a great evil

The chicanery of congressional abortion proponents has provided other outlets for abortion funding in thetext of the health care bill being deliberated One of the most pernicious portals for the federal funding ofabortion is found in Section 1001 of the legislation This provision known as the Mikulski Amendment forSenator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md) authorizes government appointed bureaucrats to request funds forpayment of ldquopreventative servicesrdquo as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services Uponreceiving such a request the Department must pay for such procedures (without copayments) forpurchasers of qualified private health care insurance plans

Finally the bill funnels billions of dollars into pools of ldquodirectly appropriated fundsrdquo that are exempt fromall other abortion prohibitions Five billion dollars for example are set aside for the subsidizing of atemporary high-risk insurance pool program An additional $6 billion is granted to health co-operatives



without specific limitation on the use of those funds for the payment of abortions

In a few days perhaps as early as this weekend members of the House of Representatives will be votingon a bill that notwithstanding the vows of the President and his congressional allies permits the use oftaxpayer money for the funding of abortion There are millions of Americans steadfastly opposed to theuse of the public treasury for payment of a practice they deem both criminal and immoral The time isshort for the communication of concerns with onersquos elected representatives It is imperative that all thosededicated to eliminating government sponsorship of abortion immediately contact their congressman andencourage them to vote against passage of any unconstitutional health care proposal especially one soriddled with clandestine coverage for a most unholy act

Photo Sen Tom Coburn (R-OK) with Sen John Barrasso (R-WY) at news conference on healthcare withHouse GOP physicians on March 18 2010 AP Images

Jobs Bill The Law of Intended Consequenceswritten by Bob Adelmann

With great fanfare the Obama administration celebrated its first policy victory of the year mdash the $176billion jobs bill Eleven Republican Senators helped push the bill through the Senate 68-29

The economically flawed and unconstitutional law provides employers an exemption from Social Securitytax withholding through the end of the year on any employees added to the payroll who have beenunemployed for at least 60 days And if the employees stay on that payroll for at least a year theemployers would receive an additional $1000 tax credit In addition the law spends $20 billion on federalhighway construction and other public improvement projects


Timothy Bartik at the Institute of Employment Research estimated that the new law might create as many



as 200000 new jobs However according to a Cornell economist John Bishop the law would only benefitthose employers with high turnover such as fast-food restaurants He said ldquoTo get the subsidy it doesnrsquotrequire that a company actually growrdquo

Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) helped President Obama celebrate thevictory in the Rose Garden on Thursday The President said ldquoThere is a lot more [that] we need to do tospur hiring in the private sector and bring about a full economic recoveryrdquo Schumer added ldquoTheAmerican people sent us a message in Massachusetts and elsewhere It was [to] focus on jobs theeconomy helping the middle class stretch its paycheck Our answer today We heard yourdquo

The flaws in the bill just signed into law are so vast and breathtaking that itrsquos hard to know where tobegin First of all doing the math reveals that each job ldquocreatedrdquo will cost taxpayers at least $88000Since most of these potential jobs will be at fast-food restaurants staffed by entry level workers makingperhaps $10 an hour each job will cost four times the annual salary earned by each worker if they stayemployed that long

John Browne at Euro Pacific Capital points out that ldquoif this bill has any effect [at all] it will be toencourage cash-strapped entrepreneurs to make hiring decisions that are unjustified by current businessactivityrdquo In other words the law would encourage employers to make economically unsound businessdecisions that they wouldnrsquot otherwise make except for the perception of the tax breaks offered This isthe farthest thing from genuine job creation

The law has been hailed as an effort to stimulate the economy But not only do such bills fail to stimulatethe private economy they increase government debt and add more government workers to administer theprograms In fact an increase in government spending actually has a negative impact on the overalleconomy Harvard economist Robert Barro writing in the Wall Street Journal makes the case that theldquospending stimulus will likely raise GDP by less than the increase in government spendingrdquo And there itis from a Harvard economist no less One cannot spend oneself into prosperity

To claim that such stimulus bills do create jobs is to believe in the ldquobroken windowrdquo fallacy mdash otherwiseknown as the law of unintended consequences This fallacy is presented in Henry Hazlittrsquos bookEconomics in One Lesson

A young hoodlum say heaves a brick through the window of a bakerrsquos shop The shopkeeper runsout furious but the boy is gone A crowd gathers and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at thegaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies After a while the crowdfeels the need for philosophic reflection And several of its members are almost certain to remindeach other or the baker that after all the misfortune has its bright side It will make business forsome glazier As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it How much does a new plate glasswindow cost Two hundred and fifty dollars That will be quite a sum After all if windows werenever broken what would happen to the glass business Then of course the thing is endless Theglazier will have $250 more to spend with other merchants and these in turn will have $250 more tospend with still other merchants and so ad infinitum The smashed window will go on providingmoney and employment in ever-widening circles The logical conclusion from all this would be if thecrowd drew it that the little hoodlum who threw the brick far from being a public menace was apublic benefactor

The fallacy comes from thinking thatrsquos all there is to know about the transaction Herersquos the rest of the



story The baker has $250 less to spend elsewhere Itrsquos gone Itrsquos a net loss to the capital in the economyNo amount of expository obfuscation can explain that away

And so what are the hidden costs involved with the current ldquojobsrdquo bill just signed into law First the$176 billion has to be borrowed from somewhere probably from those good friends the Chinese And thegovernment will pay interest to them for the privilege Letrsquos forgo any discussion about the threat tonational sovereignty involved with such borrowing for the time being There will be administrative costs tofunnel the money to those employers making hiring decisions But that funnel is going to be the InternalRevenue Service who will have to hire additional employees to monitor track and follow the money Andthere will be lawyers (always lawyers) to ldquointerpretrdquo and ldquoclarifyrdquo the rules And other lawyers to defendemployers who fail wittingly or not to follow the rules And the employees will likely be moved fromunemployment to full employment at perhaps as suggested earlier $10 an hour But there will bebookkeeping costs training costs and as suggested turnover costs that approach 50 percent annually insuch establishments One could go on and on But Hazlitt nicely summarized the fallacy by sayingldquoEverything we get outside [of] the free gifts of nature must in some way be paid forrdquo Robert Heinleinsummarized it with the acronym TANSTAAFL There Ainrsquot No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

There are some who say that politicians donrsquot know what they are doing or that theyrsquore just doing thebest they can with incomplete information Or that they are following bad economics or bad advice orcaving in to pressure or temptation to enjoy the spoils However Charles Schumer does know what hersquosdoing According to the New York Times Schumer is ldquobrash and brainy [with] perfect SATs and doubleHarvard degrees hellip [and] quickly showed a keen grasp of complex financial issuesrdquo And ldquoas vice-chairmanon the Joint Economic Committee and a member of the finance committee Mr Schumer helped with the2009 economic stimulus packagerdquo

And so how could the man not know that the stimulus bills including the latest ldquojobsrdquo bill scam wonrsquotwork How could he not know that these would expand government power further restrict the ability ofthe free market to operate efficiently and create additional incursions into freedom of citizens to maketheir own good economic decisions How could he not know that these stimulus bills would take jobs awayfrom the private sector and move them into government How could he not know that these bills wouldcontinue to create increasing dependency upon government How could he not know

Happily the fallacy of the broken window mdash the intended consequences of more government and lessfreedom mdash is becoming more widely known by voters as is the fallacy of continuing to vote for those whointend for them to ldquoenjoyrdquo those intended consequences And with that increased understanding comesthe beginning of the end for such politicians The other senator in the Rose Garden along with Schumerand President Obama Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) is having her reelection difficulties In a liberal district ina liberal state Boxer until recently was a shoo-in for reelection this fall But according to RasmussenReports ldquoIncumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer is now in a virtual dead heat with former CongressmanTom Campbell in Californiarsquos US Senate race [and what is] worrisome for her is her inability to rise outof the 40s where shersquos been stuck for months while her opponents have been gaining ground Incumbentswho capture less than 50 percent of the vote at this stage of a campaign are considered potentiallyvulnerablerdquo Further Rasmussen reported that 59 percent of all California voters say ldquoIt would be betterfor the country if most incumbents in Congress were defeated this Novemberrdquo

More and more informed voters do understand the ldquobroken windowrdquo fallacy and they do intend theconsequences of their actions



Photo of Barbara Boxer and Charles Schumer AP Images



marketplaces where individuals without employer-provided insurance could buy health coverage Federal subsidies would be available to help cover the cost for many purchases But in 2019 theypropose to suddenly reduce the rate of growth of the subsidies to something closer to that of theSenate bill

The subsidies would start at $5200 per person in 2015 and rise anywhere from $100 to $300 per yearuntil it rests at a growth of $200 in 2019 However the Democrats expect future Congresses to decreasethe number of new subsidies to help people buy insurance in 2019

At the same time premium costs would ldquotrigger the excise tax by the rate of inflation plus one percentagepoint in 2019rdquo By 2020 however it would grow at the general inflation rate causing the reach of the taxto expand faster When this happens future Congresses would more than likely be pressured to increasesubsidies and slow the growth of the tax once again

The bill delays the tax for all plans until 2018 which was originally intended to begin sooner and thedelay results in reduction of savings from $148 billion to $39 billion in the first 10 years To compensatefor that loss the legislation enacts an additional 9 percent payroll tax on individuals who earn $200000and married couples earning more than $250000 per year to begin in 2013

In addition to the income tax the bill includes a 38 percent tax on ldquounearned incomerdquo including interestcapital gains dividends etc on the same taxpayers

Skeptics like Republican Representative Tom Price of Georgia believe that the odds of a reduction inprojected Medicare spending coupled with the two policy changes are slim to none Likewise Republicanshave targeted the tax increases in the bill indicating that the increases will discourage investments

Additionally the billrsquos plans to slow the growth of payments to healthcare providers while cuttingpayments to insurers for those who participate in the Medicare Advantage program is expected to ldquocausemassive disruption for the million seniors enrolled in the planrdquo says the insurance industryrsquos tradeassociation

The question of the accuracy of the CBOrsquos estimates remains Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute assertsthat the CBO has a reputation for making mistakes ldquoin part because there is no attempt to measure how abigger burden of government has negative macroeconomic effects but also because the numbercrunchers do a poor job of measuring the degree to which people (recipients health care providers stateand local politicians etc) will modify their behavior to become eligible for other peoplersquos moneyrdquoMitchell adds that this issue is ldquocompounded by similar mistakes for revenue estimates from theCommittee on Taxationrdquo who also overlooks macroeconomic effects and behavioral changes

Likewise Mitchell asserts that all of the estimates are incorrect specifically that new spending will bemore than predicted the tax increases wonrsquot generate as much as expected and future restraints inspending are highly unlikely

Mitchell also explains that if there is indeed a phase-out of subsidies in 2019 taxpayers with modestincomes will face marginal tax rates of nearly 70 percent

Overall the government is inept at predicting healthcare spending When Medicare was created in 1965the government estimated that the cost of the program would be $12 billion by the year 1990 In actualitythe program cost $110 billion in 1990 and to date costs $500 billion Also in 1965 Medicaid was created







































































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Related content

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Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































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They are




































Related content

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Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images









































































































They are




































Related content

IOUSA How Much






























































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images






























































































They are




































Related content

IOUSA How Much






























































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images
















































































































Related content

IOUSA How Much






























































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images




































































































Related content

IOUSA How Much






























































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images


























































































Related content

IOUSA How Much






























































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images














































































































































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images






































































































































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images




























































































































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images


















































































































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images





































































































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images


























































































Money Manipulation
















































affluent Europeans




































Present Predicament





























Duty Undone




Immigration History


















Recent Developments

















































Photo AP Images





















































































Documents

Obama’s Healthcare Pitch to Congress