One in seven Americans lives on food stamps

Washington, Aug 5 (IANS) Believe it or not, one in seven Americans - 15 percent of the country - now need government-provided food stamps simply to survive, according to latest government figures.

Nearly 46 million Americans receive food stamps out of a population of some 311 million people, the US Department of Agriculture, which administers what's officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme reported Thursday.

The continued high unemployment and the weak US economy have contributed to the explosive growth of the food stamp programme with no end in sight to the monthly increases, CNN said noting that 27 million people were dependent on food stamps in October 2007.

Under the food stamps programme, an eligible individual gets $200 a month in food stamps - in the form of a debit card that can be used at supermarkets and stores to buy authorised food.

A two-person household gets $367 a month. A three-person household gets $526 a month. And a four-person household gets $668 a month.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)

The Democrats' Big Tax Lie

President Obama keeps insisting that the rich haven’t had it this good in half a century. Michael Medved says the Dems are fudging the numbers to justify their soak-the-wealthy approach.

Jul 28, 2011 1:05 PM EDT

You’ve probably heard this line dozens of times in the seemingly endless debate over deficits and taxation, and chances are you’ll hear it many times more during the campaign of 2012, regardless of the final resolution of the debt-ceiling crisis.

Don’t be fooled.

Neither of the dueling plans currently on the table (one from Speaker of the House John Boehner, the other from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) contain tax increases of any sort, but President Obama remains firmly committed to raising the rates on top earners when the latest extension of the Bush tax cuts expires at the end of next year.

The Democratic line about “the lowest rate in 50 years” effectively reinforces two important liberal themes: first, that the rich don’t pay their fair share to support the operations of government, and second, that hiking rates on undertaxed wealthy people offers a painless, eminently fair way to increase revenue and reduce the deficit.

The trouble with this rhetorical approach is that it relies on an obvious and embarrassing falsehood: far from paying the “lowest rate in 50 years,” top earners actually paid at the current rate or significantly lower for most of the time in the last quarter century.

Today, the most economically productive American couples pay a top rate of 35 percent on every dollar they earn above $379,150. In 1988-90, following Ronald Reagan’s triumphal second-term tax reform, big incomes paid at the highest rate of 28 percent—a big difference from today’s burden. In 1991-92, following the politically costly tax increases of President George H. W. Bush, taxes on the highest incomes went up to 31 percent—still considerably lower than today. In 1993, Bill Clinton pushed tax hikes through a heavily Democratic Congress (with a margin of just one vote in the House), and for the next nine years the top marginal rate soared to 39.6 percent. The second president Bush, welcomed to office with a significant budget surplus, sought to lower rates across the board, and since 2003 Americans in the most fortunate tax bracket have paid at the 35 percent level—slightly lower than under President Clinton, but notably higher than Reagan’s preferred rate.

"Why should the rich object to paying more in taxes when they’re right now paying taxes at the lowest rate in fifty years?"

On what possible basis, then, do Democrats repeatedly refer to “the lowest rates in 50 years”?

They cite figures showing the federal government taking in less revenue today as a percentage of gross domestic product than the long-standing postwar average. In the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency, Washington drew total funds amounting to just 14.9 percent of the economy, compared to a remarkably consistent 17 to 18 percent during the preceding 50 years.

But this reduction in revenue stemmed directly from the economic collapse of September 2008, and not from the controversial Bush tax cuts. As a matter of fact, during the Bush years, with the lower top tax rate (35 percent), Uncle Sam collected an average of 17.1 percent from the economy in federal taxes—very much in line with historical figures going all the way back to 1951. The last year of the Bush presidency (2008) produced a healthy 17.48 percent in revenue, before the suffering of the Great Recession pushed much of the middle class into lower tax rates and drove millions of hard-hit Americans off the tax rolls altogether. Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s own figures project that revenue for the federal government will be almost back to normal in 2012 (16.62 percent of GDP)—even without the tax-rate increase the president wants to impose the following year.

Even a cursory glance at the historical records make it clear the amount of revenue flowing to the federal government bears little connection to the tax rates applied to the wealthiest Americans. In 1951, for instance, top-earning families (those who earned more than $400,000) paid a confiscatory top marginal rate of 91 percent, but the government collected just 16.2 percent of the GDP in revenue. More than 30 years later, during the brief three-year interlude when taxpayers enjoyed the low Reagan top rate of 28 percent, the feds took in vastly more total revenue—an average of 17.9 percent.

In other words, contrary to the simplistic assumption that raising tax rates always increases revenues, a rate of 91 percent brought in less to the Treasury by every standard than a 28 percent rate. Alan Reynolds, a veteran economist with the Cato Institute (and a frequent guest on my radio show) isolates the figures for individual income-tax collections (excluding corporate levies, capital-gains tax, estate tax, and other sources of revenue) and shows that higher top rates historically bring somewhat lower not higher tax collections.

Between 1952 and 1979, the top tax rate ranged from 70 percent all the way to 92 percent, but revenues from personal income tax amounted to only 7.8 percent. From 1988 through 1990, with the highest individual rate 28 percent, taxpayers actually provided more funds, not less—8.1 percent of GDP. Reynolds concludes: “The trendy talking point of blaming projected deficits on ‘tax cuts for the rich’ is flatly absurd. Both individual incomes taxes and overall federal taxes have long been a surprisingly constant percentage of GDP—8 percent and 18 percent, respectively—regardless of top tax rates on salaries, small business, and investors. It follows that the only reliable way to raise real federal revenues over time is to raise real GDP.”

The hard facts (readily available from the Internal Revenue Service) not only expose the false Democratic claims about “the lowest tax rates in 50 years” but also give the lie to any suggestion that wealthy taxpayers contribute less than their fair share. The most recent numbers (updated in October 2010) show that the top 1 percent of tax returns covered an amazing 38 percent of all income taxes—nearly doubling the share of the total income they earned (20 percent). The top 5 percent of taxpayers (earning above $159,000) earned 35 percent of all income, but paid the big majority of all income taxes—59 percent.

On the other side of the economic divide, the bottom 50 percent of all taxpayers (who filed nearly 70 million returns) covered only 2.7 percent of the taxes, though they earned 12.8 percent of the nation’s total adjusted gross income. The bottom 50 percent of filers paid taxes at an average rate of just 2.59 percent, but the top 5 percent paid at a rate more than seven times higher: 20.7 percent.

No wonder that the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, representing the world’s 34 most prosperous Western and Asian nations) reported that the United States tax system counted among the most progressive in the world—relying more heavily on the wealthiest taxpayers and applying lighter obligations on the poor and middle class.

President Obama hopes to gain political traction by regularly attacking “millionaires and billionaires” who “contribute nothing” to solving our debt crisis, but his rhetoric ignores the fact that prosperous taxpayers generally kick in more than their share of federal revenue. Democratic propagandists may score cheap points by deriding “hedge fund managers who ride around in their private jets” but it’s simply not true that those people pay “the lowest tax rates in 50 years” (or even in 20 years), or that raising their rates would play a meaningful role in solving our fiscal crisis.

Report: Obama Administration Added $9.5 Billion in Red Tape in July

Conservatives take aim at job-killing regulations

By Paul Bedard

Posted: August 3, 2011

Many House and Senate conservatives are reviving their battle against federal regulations, claiming that the president hasn't stopped issuing job-killing rules during the debt ceiling fight. "While Washington and Americans have been focused on the debt ceiling, the Obama administration has continued to roll out more crushing red tape," said a spokesperson for Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who's been championing the regulation fight.

At Tuesday's GOP Senate caucus lunch, the lawmakers said that they will renew their efforts, supported by business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In a memo Barasso handed out to the lawmakers, he claimed that the administration in July only has put in $9.5 billion in new regulatory costs by proposing 229 new rules and finalizing 379 rules. Among those he cited were EPA, healthcare reform, and financial regulatory reform rules.

His handout included a word map that highlighted terms like "fragile," "uncertain," and "teetering," all concerns of Americans about the economy.

U.S. incomes fell sharply in 2009: IRS data

WASHINGTON | Thu Aug 4, 2011 6:07pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. incomes plummeted again in 2009, with total income down 15.2 percent in real terms since 2007, new tax data showed on Wednesday.

The data showed an alarming drop in the number of taxpayers reporting any earnings from a job -- down by nearly 4.2 million from 2007 -- meaning every 33rd household that had work in 2007 had no work in 2009.

Average income in 2009 fell to $54,283, down $3,516, or 6.1 percent in real terms compared with 2008, the first Internal Revenue Service analysis of 2009 tax returns showed. Compared with 2007, average income was down $8,588 or 13.7 percent.

Average income in 2009 was at its lowest level since 1997 when it was $54,265 in 2009 dollars, just $18 less than in 2009. The data come from annual Statistics of Income tables that were updated Wednesday.

The average tax rate was 11.4 percent, up from 10.5 percent in 2007, the Internal Revenue Service data showed.

No income tax was paid by 1,470 of the 235,413 taxpayers earning $1 million or more in 2009, compared with the 959 taxpayers with million-dollar-plus incomes who paid no income taxes in 2007.

Total adjusted gross income reported on tax returns, measured in 2009 dollars, was $7.626 trillion, down from $8.233 trillion in 2008 and $8.989 trillion in 2007.

Total adjusted gross income was up only slightly from the $7.475 trillion reported in 2001, when there were 10 million fewer taxpayers. Adjusted gross income is the amount on the last line of the front page of a Form 1040 tax return.

The data from tax returns showed a startling drop in the total number of taxpayers reporting any wages. A taxpayer, as defined by the IRS, can be an individual or a married couple. The data showed almost 4.2 million fewer taxpayers reported wages in 2009 than in 2007, with about 116.7 million taxpayers reporting wages and salaries in 2009 -- down from about 120.8 million in 2007.

Average wages fell, too, sliding $1,106 to $48,917 from $50,023 in 2007.

FEWER TAX RETURNS

The number of tax returns filed fell to 140.5 million, down almost 2 million compared with 2007, as millions of Americans went from working to having no earned income or so little that they did not have to file a tax return.

The number of Americans reporting incomes of $10 million or more also plunged even more than the steep drop in income for the population as a whole.

Just 8,274 taxpayers reported income of $10 million or more in 2009, down 55 percent from 18,394 in 2007. Compared with 2007, total real income of these top earners in 2009 fell 58.6 percent to $240.1 billion, but average income slipped just 8.1 percent to $29 million.

While the number of people who earned enough income to file a tax return fell, the share of those filing who paid no income tax rose to 41.7 percent of tax returns in 2009, up from 36.4 percent in 2008.

The average income of those filing but paying no tax was $14,483.

The share of households filing a tax return but paying no income tax results from two key factors:

* One is the drop in incomes because a married couple does not pay income tax until they make at least $18,300, and families with two children pay no income tax until they make more than $40,000 under policies started in 1997 and since expanded at the behest of Congressional Republicans, many of whom complain that too many households do not pay income taxes.

* The second reason was that in 2009, nearly all working taxpayers received the temporary Making Work Pay Tax Credit sponsored by President Obama, which saved as much as $400 ($800 for married couples) in federal income taxes in 2009. The credit continued in 2010, but then ended.

(This story is corrected in the 14th paragraph to make clear the years of taxpayer

comparisons.)

(Reporting and writing by David Cay Johnston in Singapore;

Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington and Jan Paschal in New York)

IRS: Not enough rich to cover the deficit

August 5, 2011 by Don Surber

Soak the rich, eh?

They do not have the money.

A report from the Internal Revenue Service found that the rich — 8,274 people with incomes of $10 million per year or more — earned a total of $240 billion in 2009.

Even if you confiscated every dime they earned, you would barely have enough money to cover government spending for 24 days.

Of course, about a quarter of that money already goes to the federal government for federal income. So make that 18 days.

Another 227,000 people earned $1 million or more in 2009.

Millionaires averaged taxes of 24.4% of their income — up from 23.1% in 2008.

They, too, did not earn enough money to come anywhere close to covering the annual deficits that are $1.5 trillion a year.

Barack Obama was the first president to sign a budget with a $1 trillion deficit into law.

In fact, all the taxpayers — including the ones who get a refund check bigger than the withholding taxes they paid — have the money.

From Reuters: “Total adjusted gross income reported on tax returns, measured in 2009 dollars, was $7.626 trillion, down from $8.233 trillion in 2008 and $8.989 trillion in 2007. Total adjusted gross income was up only slightly from the $7.475 trillion reported in 2001, when there were 10 million fewer taxpayers. Adjusted gross income is the amount on the last line of the front page of a Form 1040 tax return.”

Individual tax collections totaled $1,175,422,000,000 in 2009 — or 15.4% of all income.

Doubling federal income taxes for everyone would still leave us $400 billion or so shy of balancing the budget.

We must cut. We cannot afford to buy everything we want.

EPA comes after Texas once again!

Proposed Increased Regulation of Private Waters Worries Texas Farmers

EPA wants to extend regulatory control to stock tanks, mud holes'

Jim Forsyth

Texas farmers and cattle raisers are worried about a proposal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to extend it’s control of bodies of water to include drainage ditches, backyard ponds, and even mud holes and stock tanks, in the name of enforcing the provisions of the 'Clear Water Act,' 1200 WOAI news reports.

"The proposed guidance does not present sufficient legal or scientific evidence to justify the need for such drastic expansion of CWA jurisdiction," said Joe Parker, Hr., president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. "This represents yet another attempt by the federal government to overreach statutory authority and ignore the private property rights of landowners."

The EPA has long complained that chemicals and other items from private stock tanks, ponds, and so called 'intermittent streams' flow into the rivers and lakes which are already regulated by the CWA, and pollute the bodies of water. Without control over the tributaries, the EPA says, the pollution cannot be properly contained.

Parker says his fear is that the new regulations would overburden farmers and ranchers with strict new paperwork requirements. He says farmers would conceivably have to apply for a permit for every stock tank or pond on their land.

"Expensive permitting costs, increased time delays associated with acquiring permits and loss of property value caused by new land use restrictions would impose significant economic burdens on cattle producers and Texas landowners," Parker said.

The proposal would allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to police the stock tanks to make sure they don’t contain pollutants which could contaminate rivers and lakes, and they could also be subject to restrictions under the Endangered Species Act.

Look who just endorsed Obama for 4 more years

It may be early in the campaign season, but the Communist Party USA already has seen fit to endorse Barack Obama for the 2012 election.

While noting he is disappointed with "some aspects" of the Obama administration's domestic and foreign policy, Sam Webb, chairman of the Communist Party USA, threw his support behind Obama's re-election bid.

In an article last week at People's Weekly World, the official newspaper of the Communist Party USA, Webb discussed the need for a third party consisting of the so-called working class and labor as well as "racially and nationally oppressed people, women, youth, immigrants, seniors, gay and straight."

Webb, however, recognized that such a party is not likely to emerge by next year.

"Millions who have to be at the core of this party still operate under the umbrella of the Democratic Party, albeit increasingly in an independent fashion," he noted.

Webb said that for communists there are major differences between Democrats and Republicans. He urged his supporters to continue to back the Democrats.

Wrote Webb: "Neither party is anti-capitalist, but they aren't identical either. Differences exist at the levels of policy and social composition. And despite the many frustrations of the past two years, the election of Barack Obama was historic and gave space to struggle for a people's agenda."

He argued that to separate from the Democrats now "would be contrary to our strategic policy of building maximum unity against right-wing extremism now and in next year's elections."

Continued Webb: "We are keenly aware of the fact that the agenda of the far right is to bring this administration and country to its knees, with a heavy dose of racism, lies and economic sabotage, setting the stage for a full blown return to power of the most reactionary, racist, anti-labor, anti-women, homophobic and militarist grouping in U.S. politics."

"We want no part of that," wrote Webb. "We don't have any illusions about the Democratic Party, but we don't have any illusions about the Republican Party either."

Webb concluded: "Furthermore, we are also aware of the undeniable fact that no other party besides the Democratic Party stands a chance of beating the GOP next year."

Communist party covers up support for Obama

Last November, the Communist Party USA was caught scrubbing its website of references that stated it "actively supported" President Obama's election, as WND reported.

An article posted on the party's official website on Dec. 30, 2007, previously stated, "Our Party actively supported Obama during the primary election."

The article was referring to Obama's 2004 election to the Senate. It detailed how the African-American community and trade unionists played key roles in defeating the "ultra right."

Democrats Still Want to Spend More

July 14, 2011 5:30 P.M.

Even as we approach the debt ceiling, they can’t stop themselves.


It’s no secret that Democrats love to spend money, but given their recent behavior in the debt negotiations, perhaps it’s time for A&E producers to feature them in the next installment of their hit series Intervention, in which friends and family members try to convince loved ones to give up their crippling addictions.

In an interview with National Review Online, Senate minority whip Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) explains that even at the height of national concern over the country’s debt and deficit problem, Democratic negotiators are insisting that additional spending measures be included in a deal to increase the debt limit.

In discussions this week, Kyl says, Democrats proposed extending unemployment insurance for another 99 weeks at a cost of $43 billion. In addition, they requested another $10 billion to spend on research projects overseen by the National Institutes of Health. Democrats have not, Kyl says, offered to offset the new spending with additional cuts.

These measures come on top of the increased spending Democrats proposed in negotiations led by Vice President Joe Biden, which included a $33 billion increase in Pell Grant funding and $27 billion — a number Kyl says was never explained and is much higher than Republican estimations — for the so-called “doc fix” to restore Medicare payments to physicians.

Another point of contention in the talks, Kyl explains, is that roughly 75 percent of the “savings” proposed in non-health-care mandatory spending are achieved through revenue mechanisms such as fee increases, which technically aren’t classified as tax hikes, but certainly highlight the Democrats’ fundamental unwillingness to reduce spending. Kyl says at this point he can identify only about $55 billion in actual reductions to federal spending.

When it comes to health care, Kyl says that even the modest savings introduced in the Biden talks, primarily of the “waste, fraud, and abuse” variety — all of it outlined by President Obama in his budget “framework” speech — have since been taken off the table. Republicans can “buy them back,” Kyl explains, if they agree to match them dollar-for-dollar with tax increases. “But we’re just not going to do that,” he says. This is why the top-line figure agreed to in the Biden talks — about $2 trillion — has since shrunk to less than $1.4 trillion. Kyl predicts that as the deal stands, the Congressional Budget Office would score only about $1 trillion of actual savings.

Negotiators are meeting today at the White House. Kyl says he expects the White House will continue to press Republicans to “buy back” health-care savings with tax increases (which isn’t going to happen) and agree to a global “deficit trigger” that would impose automatic spending and tax increases if Congress fails to meet certain targets. This too, Kyl says, is a non-starter with the GOP. He holds out hope that some agreement can be reached on a number for an overall ten-year deficit target and an appropriate enforcement mechanism that does not include tax increases, which continue to be a stumbling block at every turn.

— Andrew Stiles is a 2011 Franklin fellow.

NBC Nightly News Mentions Jet Tax Loophole Twice, Ignores It Was Part of Obama's Stimulus

The "NBC Nightly News" mentioned the corporate jet tax loophole twice in its report concerning Barack Obama's press conference Wednesday.

Unfortunately, Brian Williams and Chuck Todd neglected to inform viewers that this loophole was part of the President's stimulus package in 2009 (video follows with commentary):

During his over one-hour press conference, the President mentioned the need to close this loophole for the "rich" six times.

But as the Associated Press reported in February 2009, this was actually part of that year's stimulus package (h/t Heritage Foundation):

Just a few months after lawmakers scolded auto executives for flying to Washington in private jets, Congress approved a tax break in the stimulus package to help businesses buy their own planes.

The incentive -- first used to help plane makers recover from the 2001 terror attacks -- sharply reduces the up front tax bill for companies who buy assets like business planes.

The aviation industry, which is cutting jobs as it suffers from declining shipments and canceled orders, hopes the tax break in the economic-stimulus bill just signed by President Barack Obama will persuade more companies to buy planes and snap a slump in general aviation that began last year.

Pretty amazing that the President made a big deal on Wednesday over a tax loophole that he himself thought was a good idea when it was included in his stimulus bill two years ago.

Equally absurd was that the "Nightly News" would refer to this tax break twice in its report on the President's press conference without noting the delicious irony.

This seems particularly negligent given NBC's fascination with so-called gaffes and hypocrisies associated with Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. There have been a minimum of three such reports filed by NBC News this week.

Yet the current President mockingly proposing to close a tax loophole that he extended and trumpeted shortly after taking office deserved absolutely no mention.

As NewsBusters has been cautioning for months, Americans better get used to this kind of duplicitous coverage from Obama's media shills.

Until the elections are over, he could probably throw up on a visiting dignitary without it being reported while a Republican presidential candidate sneezing without covering his or her mouth will likely garner the attention of a breast popping out during a Super Bowl halftime show.

Maybe even more.

Taxes Are Not Too Low: It’s the Spending, Stupid

Tax Hikes Can’t Fix the Deficit

• Current Taxation: In 2010, the federal government collected roughly $2.2 trillion in total tax revenue. Income taxes accounted for $900 billion of collections, or about 40% of all tax receipts. The federal government spent around $3.5 trillion; the resulting deficit of $1.3 trillion was made possible by borrowing.
• Covering the Deficit: If Congress, rather than borrowing or cutting spending, raised income taxes by the $1.3 trillion necessary to pay for 2010 deficit spending, it would need to more than double income tax collections. In fact, income tax revenue would need to increase by 144% to cover the overspending.
• Government Spending Hidden from Taxpayers: The future tax burden created by this level of borrowing and spending is frightening. If Americans knew the level of income taxes they would have to pay in the not-too-distant future to cover current and future federal overspending, Tax Day would be even more alarming.

President Obama’s Tax Hike Plan

• Tax, Tax, Tax: Rather than seriously address out-of-control spending and entitlement reform, President Obama is once again proposing major tax increases to help pay for his reckless spending habits.
• Tax the Rich? If Obama convinced Congress to simply tax small business owners and investors who make $250,000 or more per year to pay off the deficit, their rates would have to rise to levels that are not even possible. The top two rates would need to rise to 132% and 142%, which is, of course, more than they earn.
• Killing Economic Growth: Moreover, it is impossible to get even close to 100% and still raise federal revenue because businesses, workers, and investors would simply stop producing, working, and investing as the government came close to confiscating almost every additional dollar they earn. Much of their economic activity would be driven underground.
• Spend More, Tax More: In his recently released budget, President Obama proposes to keep deficits at unsustainable levels throughout the 10-year window. Income tax rates would have to remain nearly 50% higher than current levels through 2021 across the board to close the gap without cutting spending.
• An Unsustainable Path: According to the Congressional Budget Office, if Congress enacts Obama’s 2012 budget, interest payments on accumulated deficits will total $931 billion in 2021 alone. That would account for 20% of all tax receipts. Combined with spending on other mandatory programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, 95% of all tax revenues would be spoken for before Congress can allocate funds to national defense or any other essential function of government.

Obama’s Tax Hikes Are Not the Answer

• Tax Hikes Won’t Fix the Spending Problem: Raising taxes in the face of a spending crisis will not solve the problem as entitlement and interest spending continues to balloon out of control. Tax rates would have to be perpetually raised to keep pace.
• Cut Spending: Congress and the President must cut spending, and they must do so soon—before interest expenses and entitlement spending take off.
• Stop Taxing Our Future: It is time for Congress and the President to stop the current trajectory of massive spending and borrowing and be honest with the American people about the hidden deficit taxes that they are asking them to pay in the future.

For more information, please visit: http://heritage.org

Too hot for the HuffPo

American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris emails:

Nearly two years ago, I was invited by The Huffington Post (HuffPo) to become a blogger on their site. I was honored. It is one of the most heavily trafficked news sites anywhere, and it reaches an influential audience. Since September 2009, I have published nearly 50 articles there, and look forward to publishing many more. This week, for the first time, I was told by HuffPo that an article submitted was "not for us." It's below. I ask you to read it and decide for yourself. Apropos, the same article was published on my Jerusalem Post blog earlier this week.

Harris's blockaded post is titled "The Hamas - Oops, Gaza - Flotilla." I'm pretty sure Power Line readers can handle Harris's post. Here it is:

We're on the verge of another "flotilla" to Gaza. Estimates of the number of ships and participants vary from day to day, tending downward, but the erstwhile organizers insist that the maritime operation will take place.

Their spokesmen have been hyperactive in drawing attention to the event. After all, without coverage, they'd be denied their oxygen. And the kind of coverage they seek - idealistic humanists and peace activists determined to aid the poor, beleaguered residents of Gaza versus stone-hearted oppressors in military uniforms determined to block them at all costs - would, needless to say, portray Israel in the worst possible light.

The International Solidarity Movement, Free Gaza Movement, U.S. Boat to Gaza, and kindred spirits want the world to believe there is a strip of land called Gaza that, left to its own devices, would create the Shangri-La of the Middle East.

All its residents want are peace, harmony, coexistence, and tranquility. Some spokesmen acknowledge that Gaza has a governing authority. A very few even mention its name, Hamas, but hasten to add that it was elected democratically, so end of story. The rest don't give it a name, as it might muddy the waters.

According to this narrative - a word particularly popular in Middle East discussions- the residents of Gaza face a neighboring oppressor, Israel, which, for diabolical reasons of its own, wants to inflict maximum harm on people whose only dream in life is to live and let live. For these spokesmen, the wealth of vocabulary in the Oxford English Dictionary fails to capture the true nature of Israel's venality.

Enter, then, the self-described, modern-day Freedom Riders. They're boarding flotilla ships, they suggest, to bring aid, relief, and attention to those trapped in Birmingham, Alabama, circa 1963.

George Orwell, where are you? You could have a field day with this story.

Actually, you anticipated it when you wrote about the Ministry of Truth in your classic book, 1984. What were the ruling party's slogans on the outside of the 1,000-foot-tall building housing the ministry? Weren't they "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength"? And didn't the ministry rewrite history at will to ensure it always served the party's interests?

The Gaza flotilla spokesmen are inverting the truth and rewriting history at will to serve their interests. And what are those interests? To prop up the Hamas regime in Gaza and delegitimize Israel.

While they are entitled to their own opinions, however misguided, they are not entitled to their own facts.

They cannot separate Hamas from the equation. Much as they might try, the central fact is that Hamas is key to understanding Gaza today.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. Don't take my word for it. Check with the United States and European Union, both of which have designated Hamas as a terrorist entity.

Hamas preaches the elimination of Israel and a toxic brew of classical anti-Semitism. Again, don't believe me. Read the Hamas Charter.

While Hamas may have been elected to govern with the PA in 2006, the first and only national Palestinian elections, one election does not a democracy make. Hamas used the ballot box to gain a foothold, then employed anti-democratic means to impose its own suffocating vision on the land. Hamas violently ousted the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007 and has ruled ever since. Because Hamas cannot reform, the much heralded "unity" agreement it signed with Fatah six weeks ago is headed for an uncertain future.

Hamas celebrates violence. It joyously speaks of jihad, martyrdom, conflict, and the ultimate destruction of Israel. It has matched its fiery rhetoric with a sustained effort to import weapons, courtesy of Iran, smugglers in the Sinai, and tunnels from the Egyptian side of the border. In recent years, literally thousands of rockets and missiles have been fired from Gaza at Israel. Why?

Israel has no claim on Gaza. To the contrary, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Soldiers and settlers alike were pulled out by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, giving local residents the first chance ever in their history to govern themselves.

Indeed, with Israel's encouragement, a number of Jewish donors purchased Israeli greenhouses in Gaza and left them behind to help jump-start the local economy. The first reaction was to ransack them, when they could have been sources of flowers and vegetables for the local economy.

Israel has an interest in a stable, peaceful, and prospering Gaza, not a gun-toting, missile-firing, jihad-preaching entity. After all, you can change a lot of things in life, but not neighbors. Israel and Gaza are destined to be neighbors for a long time to come.

The Quartet - the U.S., EU, Russia, and UN - set three conditions for engagement with Hamas. The group must forswear violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. To date, none of those conditions have been met. Apologists for Gaza would have you believe otherwise, but Hamas's spokesmen always undercut them. When it serves their purposes, they might briefly curtail violence to regroup and rearm, but Hamas is adamant that it will never abandon its struggle against Israel.

So, let's be clear. The flotilla participants, whether they acknowledge it or not, are handmaidens of a terrorist regime. That regime, not Israel, is responsible for the conditions in Gaza, which may not be enviable, but are a far cry from the dire picture of starvation and stunted growth painted by the hyperbolic spokesmen.

Israel has only one concern, which is to ensure that Hamas, a declared enemy of Israel, does not get additional means to threaten its neighbor. That's it, pure and simple.

As has been said, if Hamas laid down its weapons, there would be peace. If Israel laid down its weapons, there would be no Israel.

The flotilla participants claim their mission is nothing more than humanitarian, but, in reality, it serves the interests of a regime that espouses terrorism, peddles anti-Semitism, and praises the memory of Osama Bin Laden.

To portray themselves as the new wave of Freedom Riders is to trample grotesquely on the legacy of America's civil rights struggle and rewrite history. Orwell's Ministry of Truth is back.

And the friends of Orwell's Ministry of Truth seem to be running the show over at the Huffington Post.

Supreme Court reinstates collective bargaining law

By Patrick Marley and Don Walker of the Journal Sentinel Updated: June 14, 2011 5:32 p.m.

Madison - Acting with unusual speed, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated Gov. Scott Walker's plan to all but end collective bargaining for tens of thousands of public workers.

The court found a committee of lawmakers was not subject to the state's open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when they hastily approved the measure and made it possible for the Senate to take it up. In doing so, the Supreme Court overruled a Dane County judge who had struck down the legislation, ending one challenge to the law even as new challenges are likely to emerge.

The majority opinion was by Justices Michael Gableman, David Prosser, Patience Roggensack and Annette Ziegler. The other three justices - Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and N. Patrick Crooks - concurred in part and dissented in part.

The opinion voided all orders in the case from the lower court. It came just before 5 p.m., sparing Republicans who control the Legislature from taking up the contentious issue of collective bargaining again.

Legislative leaders had said they would have inserted the limits on collective bargaining into the state budget late Tuesday if the court hadn't acted by then. But the high court ruled just before that budget debate was to begin.

The Assembly is to take up the budget Tuesday night.

The court ruled that Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi's ruling, which had held up implementation of the collective bargaining law, was void ab initio, or invalid from the outset.

In its decision, the state's high court concluded that "choices about what laws represent wise public policy for the state of Wisconsin are not within the constitutional purview of the courts."

The court concluded that Sumi exceeded her jurisdiction, "invaded" the Legislature's constitutional powers and erred in halting the publication and implementation of the collective bargaining law.

The court added that its role is limited to determining whether the Legislature employed a "constitutionally violative process in the enactment of the act. We conclude that the Legislature did not violate the Wisconsin Constitution by the process it used."

Tens of thousands of public workers and their supporters demonstrated at the Capitol in February and March. They are now ramping up efforts for more protests over the state budget, which makes deep cuts in state aid to schools and local governments.

Lawmakers' stance on collective bargaining triggered efforts to recall state senators. Recall elections are scheduled this summer for six Republicans and three Democrats.

The legal fight over Walker's plan will continue on other fronts. Two other lawsuits are already pending, and "numerous" others are expected, according to Madison attorney Lester Pines, who represented Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller (D-Monona) in the case the Supreme Court decided Tuesday. The other cases challenge the law on other grounds, rather than on open meetings violations.

The justices issued their order just one week after hearing oral arguments that lasted more than 5 hours, making them the longest in memory if not state history, attorneys said.

Walker's fellow Republicans in the Legislature passed the measure in March and he signed it, but Sumi quickly blocked it and then later struck it down because she said a committee of lawmakers violated the open meetings law in adopting it.

Walker's administration then asked the Supreme Court to take over the case, and the court scheduled oral arguments for June 6 on whether to do that. Until Tuesday, the court had not officially said whether it would even accept the case.

In February, Walker proposed eliminating most collective bargaining for all public workers except police, firefighters and State Patrol troopers.

The day the Senate was to take up the bill, the Democrats prevented action on the bill by fleeing to Illinois. Under the state constitution, at least 20 senators had to be present to pass the measure because it included fiscal elements, and the Republicans hold just 19 seats.

After three weeks, Republicans - with less than two hours' notice - created a conference committee with lawmakers from both houses and stripped out the parts of the bill that were considered "fiscal" under the narrow state definition. The Legislature then passed it and Walker signed it.

Democratic Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne then filed a court complaint alleging the committee violated the open meetings law. He said the committee needed to give 24 hours' notice before meeting and had to allow more people into the room to see the meeting.

The room was packed with legislative aides, reporters and camera crews, but just 20 members of the general public were allowed into the meeting. Hundreds if not thousands of others attempted to get inside.

The state constitution requires the doors of the Legislature to remain open when it is in session, and that portion of the constitution is referenced in the state's open meetings law.

The open meetings law requires public entities to provide 24 hours' notice before meeting except in emergencies, when they can give two hours' notice. The meetings have to be accessible to the public and can be closed only for certain reasons, such as considering legal matters.

No one argued in court that the conference committee had good cause to meet with less than 24 hours' notice, and as it happened, the committee met with a little less than two hours' notice.

The open meetings law has an exception that allows the Legislature to write rules that exempt it from the meetings law. The two sides disagreed whether lawmakers have established a rule on when meetings must be noticed for joint committees.

During arguments, four of the justices signaled they were skeptical of Sumi's ability to halt the law. "I think frankly you've got to amend the constitution" to have the open meetings law apply to legislators, Roggensack said during arguments.

Sumi first blocked the law with a temporary restraining order, saying Ozanne was likely to succeed on his open meetings arguments. Walker's administration then filed a petition for what is known as a supervisory writ - a request that the high court take over the case.

Last month, while the Supreme Court was considering whether to take the case, Sumi entered her final order enjoining the implementation of the collective bargaining law.

In its ruling Tuesday, the Supreme Court said it took up the case because the lower court had "usurped the legislative power which the Wisconsin Constitution grants exclusively to the Legislature."

The Republican lawmakers are immune from civil process during the legislative session, and so far they have been unwilling to appeal decisions by Sumi because they would have to give up that immunity to do so.

Sumi determined she was able to rule on the case even though the Republican lawmakers never appeared in court. She said they would be allowed to mount a full defense once their immunity expires. Violating the open meetings law could cost them fines of up to $300 each.

The order comes just after Prosser narrowly won re-election April 5 after a campaign that prominently featured the collectively bargaining measure and claims that Prosser was an ally of Walker's. Prosser and his opponent, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, did not comment during the campaign on the merits of the case, but others portrayed Prosser as being in support of the law and Kloppenburg as being opposed to it.

Prosser served as Assembly speaker as a Republican, but he said during the campaign that he set aside his partisanship when he joined the court in 1998.

The Welfare State and the Selfish Society

Dennis Prager

April 26, 2011 12:00 A.M.

The Welfare State and the Selfish Society
Capitalism teaches people to work harder; the welfare state teaches people to want harder. Which is better?

In the contemporary world, where left-wing attitudes are regarded as normative, it is a given that capitalism, with its free market and profit motive, emanates from and creates selfishness, while socialism, the welfare state, and the “social compact” as it is increasingly referred to, emanate from and produce selflessness.

The opposite is the truth.

Whatever its intentions, the entitlement state produces far more selfish people — and therefore a far more selfish society — than a free-market economy. And we have little evidence that this widespread selfishness can be undone once it catches on.

Here’s an illustration: Last year, President Obama addressed a large audience of college students on the subject of health care. At one point in his speech, he announced that the students will now be able to remain on their parents’ health-insurance plan until age 26. I do not ever recall hearing a louder, more thunderous, and more sustained applause than I did then. I do not believe that if the president had announced that a cure for cancer had been discovered that the applause would have been louder or longer.

It is depressing to listen to that applause. To be told that one can be dependent on one’s parents until age 26 should strike a young person who wants to grow up as demeaning, not as something to celebrate.

Throughout American history, the natural — or at least hoped-for — inclination of a young person was to become a mature adult, independent of Mom and Dad, and to become a grown-up. But in the welfare state, this is no longer the case.

In various European countries, it is increasingly common for young men to live with their parents into their 30s and even longer. Why not? In the welfare state, there is no shame in doing so.

The welfare state enables — and thereby produces — people whose preoccupations become more and more self-centered as time goes on:

How many benefits will I receive from the state?

How much will the state pay for my education?

How much will the state pay for my health care and retirement?

What is the youngest age at which I can retire?

How much vacation time can I get each year?

How many days can I call in sick and get paid?

How many months can I claim paternity- or maternity-care money?

The list gets longer with each election of a left-wing party. And each entitlement becomes a “right,” as the Left transforms entitlements into the language of “rights” as quickly as possible.

What handouts do, and what the transformation of handouts into rights does, is create a citizenry that increasingly lacks the most important character trait — gratitude. Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent. That is why we teach our children to say “thank you.” But the welfare state undoes that. One does not express thanks for a right. So, instead of “thank you,” the citizen of the welfare state is taught to say, “What more can I get?”

Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the Left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people.

They succeed in part because demonizing conservatives and their values is a left-wing art. But the truth is that capitalism and the free market produce less selfish people. Teaching people to work hard and take care of themselves (and others) produces a less, not a more, selfish citizen.

Capitalism teaches people to work harder; the welfare state teaches people to want harder. Which is better?

— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. He may be contacted through his website, dennisprager.com.

Taxing Our Way Out of This Mess

Bernie Sanders

By Neal Boortz

I can understand why this "tax the rich" rhetoric works. Look at the polls. A huge percentage of Americans believe we could balance our budget if we would simply eliminate foreign aid? Sorry … that's less than 1% of the federal budget. But if that many people believe you can balance the budget by simply eliminating foreign aid, then it is easy to understand why they would think that you could balance the budget by just raising taxes on the rich. I'll show you in a second why that just won't work.

This brings up a question: Is self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders from Vermont an idiot or a demagogue? Sanders is out there with the Democrats saying that he doesn't believe the rich are paying enough in taxes, even though the top earning 1% is paying nearly 40% of all individual income taxes collected by the IRS! Bernie Sanders told MSNBC, "… the richest people are getting richer. They have not contributed one nickel to deficit reduction." It's hard to take this guy seriously for a few reasons. Number one, he believes that taxing the rich is a viable solution to solving our deficit problems; secondly, it's hard to believe that anyone in Washington, particularly liberals, are concerned about deficit reduction. Look, just last month (March 2011) our federal government spent 8.3 times more than it took in in revenue. No amount of taxing the rich is going to make up this gap. The problem is clearly spending, NOT revenue and not revenue from the uber productive.

So now for some painful truth that I'm sure will never grace the desk of one Bernie Sanders. But you can arm yourself with this information from the Amerian Thinker when your lib and prog friends claim that all we need to do is "tax the rich, tax the rich!"

The tax year of 2008 was the last to date that the IRS has done this kind of analysis. In 2008 the highest marginal tax rate of 35% applied to all AGI above $357,700.00. In that year the total amount of AGI subject to the highest rate was $622.8 Billion. The government collected in taxes $218.0 Billion (35%).

In 2011 the annual budget deficit will be nearly $1.665 trillion and in 2012: $1.1 trillion. If the Liberal Democrats in league with the Socialists, the Unions and the Communists, succeed in raising the highest marginal rate, how much more would Washington D.C. receive, assuming no change in behavior and a general eagerness to pay more?

If the highest rate of 35% were raised by a factor of 20% to 42%, then the additional tax revenue would be $43.5 Billion, not much of a dent in $1.665 trillion. So, let's raise the rate by a factor of 50% to 52.5%; the additional revenue would be $108.9 Billion. Still nowhere near enough, so let's just tax it at a rate of 100%, bringing in an additional $404.8 Billion. Unfortunately the country is still $1.26 trillion in the hole for the year.

But wealth envy is a lot easier a campaign platform to run on than facts and figures and the painful truth.

Nancy Pelosi’s absurd math on senior citizens losing their meals

By Glenn Kessler

(Justin Sullivan - GETTY IMAGES)

“In one of the bills before us, 6 million seniors are deprived of meals — homebound seniors are deprived of meals. People ask us to find our common ground, the middle ground. Is middle ground 3 million seniors not receiving meals? I don't think so. We've got to take this conversation from a debate about numbers and dollar figures and finding middle ground there to the higher ground of national values. I don't think the American people want any one of those 6 million people to lose their meals or the children who are being thrown off of Head Start and the rest of it.”

— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), April 4, 2011

The day before House Republicans unveiled their long-term budget plan, one-time House Speaker Pelosi held an event with the Hunger Fast Coalition to draw attention to the budget cuts envisioned in the fiscal 2011 budget bill that passed the House earlier this year. The White House and the Senate have been engaged in tense discussions with House leaders over a compromise deal in an effort to avoid a government shutdown later this week.

Pelosi’s impassioned plea signifies her discomfort at even the thought of compromise. But several readers wondered about the figures she used. Are 6 million poor seniors really at risk of losing their meals — or even 3 million under the compromise plan being negotiated by President Obama?

The Facts

The meal programs, which cost about $818 million a year, are managed by the Administration on Aging (AOA), an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services. The House bill would cut $65 million from the approximately $2.4 billion budget of the agency — a figure derived from GOP estimates of the savings in the agency from repealing the health care law — as well as eliminate $6 million in earmarks.

The first problem with Pelosi’s statistic is that, according to the agency’s budget documents, only about 2.6 million seniors receive such meals. That’s even less than what she decried as the mushy middle ground of compromise.

After we pointed out that fact, Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said “she means meals for seniors — 6 million meals.” In 2011, the agency is expected to deliver a little over 200 million meals, so that’s a cut of about three percent.

That’s a pretty big “oops.” She referred to “6 million seniors,” “3 million seniors” and “6 million people.” We understand slips of a tongue, but three times in a row, so emphatically, is hard to fathom.

But Hammill tried to defend the number of 6 million, though he acknowledged that “that pot of money I mentioned is not exclusively dedicated to this program.”

According to Hammill, the agency has “informally indicated” to Pelosi’s staff that if they had to cut $71 million in the last seven months of the fiscal year, the two programs where services could be cut quickly to achieve quick savings would be the senior nutrition programs and senior centers. So Pelosi’s staff assumed a $30 million cut from the overall budget for senior meals, or 3.6 percent, resulting in 6 million fewer meals.

Marta Dehmlow, a spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee, says the $65 million figure came from estimates on savings the administration provided regarding a provision of the new health care law that would be administered by the agency. “The Committee did not specify where this cut would come from and also does not know how AOA will spread that cut within their operations,” she said. “The Committee has received no official word on impact.”

A spokeswoman for the Administration on Aging referred a question to the White House budget office, which did not respond to our query. Hammill later acknowledged: “The Obama Administration had not made any determination of how they would implement a $71 million cut at the Administration on Aging if HR 1 was signed into law.”

So, in other words, Pelosi’s staff took a wild guess at where the cuts would fall in the agency.

But there are other problems with Pelosi’s 6 million number.

First, the administration requested the elimination of $6 million in earmarks, so it seems strange for Pelosi to call that a Republican cut. That should not be included, leaving us with $65 million in possible cuts.

Second, in the administration’s 2012 budget request, President Obama identified $150 million in cuts to the agency’s budget. It seems that those already-identified targets would be a more logical place to start looking for trims than meals for senior citizens, most of whom have incomes of less than $20,000.

Finally, the agency’s budget justification notes on page 55 that it has kept spending on senior meals essentially flat from 2010 to 2012, resulting in 36 million fewer meals for senior citizens. That’s six times higher than the figure that Pelosi has decried as an affront to “national values.” The administration’s budget, in fact, has earned the ire of some advocates for hungry seniors. Perhaps 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be a more appropriate place for Pelosi to direct her outrage.

The Pinocchio Test

In a city with overheated rhetoric, Pelosi’s statement ranks high on this year’s list of bloviated bluster. It’s bad enough that she repeatedly mixed up 6 million meals and 6 million people — and made no effort to correct the record after her statement was reported in the media. But the figure she used appears to have been invented itself, with little basis in fact.

The budget cuts being contemplated by Republican and Democratic lawmakers will result in some painful sacrifices, especially as the end of the fiscal year draws near. Respected analysts such as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have identified the potential impact. There was no need for Pelosi to hype the potential pain.

Four Pinocchios

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MoveOn.org Fundraises Off of Kloppenburg’s “Victory”

Hah! MoveOn.org celebrated Wisconsin State Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg’s victory on in Tuesday’s election.

Yesterday they the far left group decided to raise funds from the big win in Wisconsin.
Here’s their letter:

A message from Wisconsin MoveOn volunteer and Regional Organizer Steve Hughes:

Dear fellow MoveOn member,

I’m writing to you from Wisconsin, ground zero in the fight between Republicans and the middle class, where we just had a HUGE win!

I’m literally breathless. I’m witnessing history. Incumbent candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court generally get re-elected in a landslide. But in the general election on Tuesday, progressive JoAnne Kloppenburg closed the gap and won by a razor thin margin against conservative justice David Prosser!

The result was extremely close, and there’s still a recount to grapple with, but this is a HUGE change from the primary where she lost 25% to 55% to conservative Justice David Prosser before Walker’s attacks on workers began. And it’s proof that the grassroots army that formed to battle Governor Scott Walker is a force to be reckoned with.

Tuesday night, all of us volunteers sat around the Kloppenburg office, right next to the Wisconsin 14, and watched these historic returns come in together.

And I knew it was happening because thousands of us MoveOn members, along with our friends and allies, voted, volunteered, knocked doors, hit the phones, and got out the vote through our emails, posts and tweets. We’re a part of this, but now we need to make sure what happened in Wisconsin doesn’t stay in Wisconsin.

The Republicans in Washington are copying Walker’s radical “my way or the highway” tactics, threatening to shutdown the government in order to force the Democrats to cave on the budget. They’re willing to harm countless Americans in order to impose their agenda on the rest of us.

But MoveOn is fighting back, just like we are in Wisconsin. They’re planning a huge nationwide campaign, capturing the energy from our victory to win this massive battle for our nation’s future against the Republicans’ plans to destroy decades of progressive legislation, including our entire social safety net.

Can you help stop the Republicans by chipping in $5 right now?

I read a quote the other day from the Tea Party Express, and while I wouldn’t normally agree with them, they could not be more right about the stakes in this election:

“If…liberal Joanne Kloppenburg wins, then Barack Obama and his union…allies will have won…If conservative Justice David Prosser wins, then Gov. Scott Walker and the tea party movement will have won in Wisconsin. The stakes could not be higher.”1

The result of this election will have an important impact right here in Wisconsin on the battle to protect workers’ rights. But a Kloppenburg victory is also sending a message nationally that Americans are rejecting the radical right-wing Republican agenda sweeping across other states and our federal government.

I need your help to keep the momentum going. We’re doing great here in Wisconsin, but MoveOn needs your support to make sure the growing grassroots movement to protect the American Dream doesn’t stall at our state’s border.

They need to raise $215,000 today to do it—for ads, field mobilizations, and polling. Can you help?

Click below to chip in $5:

https://pol.moveon.org/donate/wicourtwin.html?bg_id=hpc5&id=26839-10132788-pccNH2x&t=5

Thank you for all that you’re doing.

Hat Tip Ross

It’s just too bad Kloppenburg lost, huh?

Apoplectic Dem. Congresswoman: Gov‘t Shut Down is ’Like Bombing Innocent Civilians’

“It’s time that the District of Columbia told the Congress to go straight to hell,” a fiery Eleanor Holmes Norton (D -DC) told MyFoxDC.

Norton represents the District of Columbia in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D -DC) was on fire when she spoke to FOX 5 Morning News Thursday about how Washington, D.C. residents are being treated as work to avoid a government shutdown continues.

“We are absolutely outraged. This is the functional equivalent of bombing innocent civilians,” she said.

Are College Students Losing Their Religion?

Conservative talk radio personality Dennis Prager thinks that God is not doing so well in our society. Why? The chief reason he cites is that college students are losing their religion.

Students at Notre Dame, a Catholic University

Over at National Review Online, he writes:

Increasingly large numbers of men and women attend university, and Western universities have become essentially secular (and leftist) seminaries. Just as the agenda of traditional Christian and Jewish seminaries is to produce religious Christians and religious Jews, the agenda of Western universities is to produce (left-wing) secularists. The difference is that Christian and Jewish seminaries are honest about their agenda, while the universities still claim they have neither a secularist nor a political agenda.

The more university education a person receives, the more likely he is to hold secular and left-wing views. The secular Left argues that this correlation is due to the fact that a college graduate knows more and thinks more clearly and therefore gravitates leftward and toward secularism.

But if you believe that the average college graduate is a clear and knowledgeable thinker as a result of his or her time at university, I have more than one bridge to sell you. A radio talk-show host for 29 years, I long ago began asking callers who made foolish comments what graduate school they had attended. It takes higher education to learn that America and Israel are villains, that men and women have essentially the same natures, that human nature is good, that ever-larger governments create wealth, etc.

Conor Friedersdorf, a writer who attended Catholic school for 14 years, is skeptical of Prager’s argument.

Writing in The Atlantic, Friedersdorf thinks:

To me, there are better explanations for the fact that “the more university education a person receives, the more likely he is to hold secular and left-wing views.” One is that people who attend college leave home.

That is to say, they leave their church, the community incentives to attend it, and the watchful eye of parents who get angry or make them feel guilty when they don’t go to services or stray in their faith. Suddenly they’re surrounded by dorm mates of different faiths or no faith at all.

For many of these students, it turns out that their religious behavior was driven more by desire for community, or social and parental pressure, than by deeply held beliefs. Another reason education correlates with secularism is that secularists are more likely to seek advanced degrees, partly because they’re more focused than their religious counterparts on career.

Maybe it’s a little bit of both: maybe many students abandon religion at college both because they are away from home and because they are in an environment that does not value religious belief. That, at least, is what I observed when I was a college student.

Fundamental Transformation? Andy Stern Speaks Out Against Checks and Balances

Editor’s note: this opinion piece would usually appear on the blog. We have decided to feature it on our story side.

Is this what fundamental transformation looks like?

In an op-ed on the Huffington Post, former SEIU president Andy Stern decided to get all “Founding Fathers” with his audience. He went back, way back, to the time of male, powdered wigs and the Federalist Papers. His thesis: you know those checks and balances the old guys put in place? Yeah, they’re just kind of getting in the way of change.

“American democracy has layers of power and responsibility, which James Madison rationalized in Federalist, no. 51 as a check against possible tyrannical rule,” Stern writes. “Our Founding Fathers saw fit to divide power between two strata — state and federal. Then, within the federal structure, they codified a trifurcation of power to ensure that no single branch came to dominate government; and while power has ebbed and flowed between branches, the system of checks and balances has provided stability, and kept tyrannical rule at bay.”

But today, he goes on to say, that system is just so, well, old:

Now, however, in the midst of the transformative change of globalization and this third economic revolution, those layers have become an impediment to making the changes necessary to keep America competitive in the world economy. Today, America crawls along at a snail’s pace. [Emphasis added]

I think he just said that our system of government, as laid out in the Constitution, is hampering his vision of a global economy. That would make sense, since Stern in the past has been all about the world coming together, so to speak. Remember, he’s the one who trumpeted the old Marxist phrase, “Workers of the world, unite!”

Stern goes on to name the problem “demosclerosis,” a term he once read in a book. That term means the “government’s progressive loss of the ability to adapt, credited as a side-effect of the postwar pluralist political system.”

See, it seems in Andy’s world America is outdated: It’s a 1776 runner trying to compete in a 2011 race. All we need to do is update a little. Give it some new legs. Hint hint. Wink wink. Nudge.

“Our democracy is frozen, calcified like arteries beset by arteriosclerosis,” Stern writes near the end. His remedy is to “recommit ourselves to both the common good, and common sense, rather than self-interest.”

Sure, that may sound nice, but it’s anti-capitalist. Anyone who’s taken an economics class knows that our system is based on self-interest rightly understood (SIRU). Marxists and communists have destroyed countries trying to get rid of self-interest. What Stern and the communists don’t understand is that self-interest in and of itself isn’t evil. It can be used for much good. And yes, selflessness is important, too — and we see it all over the place. But you can’t base an economic system on men being good and generous, because we’re naturally not.

Side note: doesn’t a lesson in selflessness from a former union boss, whose underling (Stephen Lerner) is now trying to collapse the economy, seem out of place? Just a thought.

Stern never returns to his earlier comments on checks and balances. It’s more like a seed, planted early in hopes that one day it will spring up. I’m sure we can expect some watering later. But it seems the more and more we uncover this whole hope and change thing, the more foreign it appears.

Foreign, now that’s a funny word. In Stern’s future, once we’re all “united” and together, it probably won’t exist. Just like the wisdom of those old powdered wigs.

Irony? Rep. Louise Slaughter Says GOP in Washington ‘to Kill Women’

I can’t write this story without pointing out the irony: Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) — yes, Slaughter — has accused the GOP of coming to Washington “to kill women.” Oh, and she equated them to Nazis, too. Now to the story.

CNS News reports:

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said [Thursday] that the new Republicans elected to the House of Representatives last November came to Congress “to kill women.” She also likened Republican efforts to prohibit federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is endangered to actions taken by Nazis.

“This is probably one of the worst times we’ve seen because the numbers of people elected to Congress. I went through this as co-chair of the arts caucus,” Slaughter said. ”In ’94 people were elected simply to come here to kill the National Endowment for the Arts. Now they’re here to kill women.”

Slaughter was speaking out against H.R. 3, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” That bill, CNS explains, “would make permanent the Hyde Amendment restrictions on federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape or incest or a threat to the life of the mother, and that would also prohibit people from taking tax deductions for payments made for abortions except in those circumstances.”

That’s when the Nazi reference came:

“You are allowed to have an abortion if you have been raped or it’s a matter of incest. However, you have to keep a receipt. Did you know that? It’s sort of like an old German Nazi movie. Show me your papers!”

As CNS points out, the text of the bill does not say anything about receipts.

Nonviolence Is Not Always the Answer; American Socialist Leader Calling for Revolution Says ‘We Are Not Pacifists, Violence Sometimes Is Necessary’

Obama in 2002: Toppling Brutal Dictator a ‘Dumb War’

Wednesday, March 30, 2011
By Matt Cover

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama, as an Illinois state senator in 2002, said that using military force to topple a murderous dictator amounted to a “dumb war” and should be opposed.

The “dumb war” Obama was criticizing was the planned invasion of Iraq and the murderous dictator was its leader, Saddam Hussein. Obama, speaking at an anti-war rally in Chicago on Oct. 2, 2002 said that while Saddam was a brutal tyrant, that was not enough to justify using military force to remove him from power.

“Now, let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein,” said Obama in his speech. “He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.”

"... After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again," said Obama. "I don't oppose all wars. ... What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."

Obama argued that deposing Saddam militarily was not necessary, because Iraq posed no “direct threat” to the United States. Obama also cited Iraq’s weakened economy and the fact that it was still possible to contain Saddam’s aggression, repudiating the Bush administration’s rationale that Saddam posed too great a threat to American interests and his own people to be left in power.

“But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history,” said Sen. Obama.

However, as president of the United States, Obama has discounted those same arguments he once made against using military force against brutal dictators.

In his March 28, 2011 speech justifying his decision to attack the government of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Obama cited Gadhafi’s record of brutality, saying that allowing Gadhafi to continue his brutality was not an option.

“Qaddafi declared he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people,” said President Obama. “He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day.

“Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city,” Obama said. “We knew that if we waited, if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

Gadhafi, apparently unlike Saddam, needed to be stopped because he would kill his own people to maintain his own power, an act that this time posed a threat to America’s “interests and values,” Obama said.

“But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act,” said Obama. “That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks.”

Obama, in his 2002 speech, said that instead of deposing Saddam through force, America should “fight” for democratic reforms in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, stronger international nuclear safeguards, and energy independence.

“Those are the battles that we need to fight,” Obama said in 2002. “Those are the battles that we willingly join – the battles against ignorance and intolerance, corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.”

By 2011, however, Obama had come to endorse the use of military power to enforce America’s “responsibility as a [global] leader” arguing that the United States was “different” and therefore had no other choice but to attack Libya.

“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and, more profoundly, our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are,” he said. “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.”

ATF agent exposes ATF culpability in Border Patrol agent’s death

Posted by The Right Scoop on Mar 17, 2011 in Politics

This is a very eye opening video and thanks to the tipster for this one. It was published a couple of weeks ago by CBS and details the account of an ATF agent that claims that the US Justice Department has been forcing ATF to let guns flow freely to Mexico. The crux of this video comes when you find out that one of the guns they let go to Mexico a year earlier was used in the killing of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

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Rep. Grassley slams Obama over stonewalling on ATF’s “Project Gunrunner”

Posted by The Right Scoop on Mar 25, 2011 in Politics

Last week we ran an interview by CBS of an ATF agent accusing the feds of allowing guns to be smuggled into Mexico, guns that are responsible for the death of a border agent. You can watch that here. In the video they showed Rep. Grassley investigating this story.

Today Grassley came on Laura Ingraham’s show and said that he is getting nothing but stonewalled by the administration on this issue. Listen below:

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Glenn interviewed Wayne LaPierre on radio this morning, and the NRA boss unveiled a shocking story to the radio audience.

Wayne explained, “What’s going on is NRA called for full‑scale congressional investigations into this program that our government, the Obama administration was running called Fast and Furious.”

“Apparently what was going on and this is all based on what agents, law enforcement agents, are coming forward under the Whistleblower Act and saying is that we all heard Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder and the administration saying 90% of the guns the cartels are getting are coming from the United States.”

“Blaming the Second Amendment, lock, stock and barrel for the guns of the Mexican gun cartels.”

“Problem was they could only prove a trickle. What it looks like, apparently, is someone in this administration, in our federal government, set out to turn that trickle into a river of guns flowing from the United States into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels over the border into their hands.”

“It’s called Fast and Furious. They did it over the objections of their field agents who said if we send guns over the border into the hands of these evil people, the Mexican drug cartels, we’ll see these guns again. These people will cause harm with these guns.”

“They wept ahead and did it. They, in effect, set up a dealership. They set up an illegal pipe line and they pumped thousands and thousands according to the agents’ words, guns, from the United States over the border into the hands of the Mexican drug cartel.”

“We’re arming the military to help stop them, or are you saying there’s actually an illegal gun smuggling ring that was set up by the United States government to push to actually put them in the hands of the bad guys?” Glenn asked.

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Obama says he didn’t inform Mexico of U.S. gun smuggling operation because he didn’t know about it

Posted on 03/24/2011 by Richard Dunham, Bureau Chief

Under fire for an operation that allowed smuggling of U.S. weapons across the nation’s border with Mexico, President Obama said in an interview that neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder authorized the controversial “Operation Fast and Furious.”

The Mexican government has complained that it didn’t know about the U.S. operation that allowed guns to illegally cross the southwestern border so they could track the weapons.

AP photo

Obama told Univision‘s Jorge Ramos that President Felipe Calderon wasn’t informed of the operation because he — the president of the United States — wasn’t informed either. When asked whether he knew of the weapon smuggling plan, Obama responded that it is “a pretty big government” with “a lot of moving parts.”

The investigation into the program comes after it was connected to two weapons that were found at the scene of a border shootout that killed U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December. Likewise, a gun smuggled from the U.S. were used to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent Jamie Zapata, but it has not been determined if it was part of “Fast and Furious.”

When President Calderon came to visit Washington recently, the two presidents came together on a policy to stop drug and weapon smuggling across the border.

“Our policy is to ram up the interdiction of guns flowing south because that’s contributing to some of the security problems that are taking place in Mexico and what we’re doing is trying to build the kind of cooperation between Mexico and the United States that we haven’t seen before,” Obama told Univision.

The president said his attorney general has been “very clear that our policy is to catch gunrunners and put them into jail.”

The controversial operation was the subject of a CBS News Investigation that reported ATF was allowing traffickers to bring weapons into Mexico in order to track them rather than arresting the traffickers. Obama said Holder has assigned an inspector general to investigate what happened, because he does not know who authorized the operation.

“Letting guns ‘walk’ is not something that is acceptable,” Holder said during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing. “Guns are different than drugs or money when we are trying to follow their trail. That is not acceptable.”

Holder said he made this clear to attorneys and ATF agents.

>>> On the jump page: Complete transcript of the exchange from Univision

JR: THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT COMPLAINS THAT THEY WERE NOT INFORMED ABOUT THE “FAST AND FURIOUS” OPERATION. DID YOU AUTHORIZE THIS OPERATION AND WAS PRESIDENT CALDERON PROPERLY INFORMED ABOUT IT?

PBO: Well, first of all I did not authorize it. Eric Holder, the Attorney General, did not authorize it. He’s been very clear that our policy is to catch gun runners and put them into jail. So what he’s done is he’s assigned an I.G., an inspector general, to investigate what exactly happened…

JR: SO WHO AUTHORIZED IT?

PBO: Well, we don’t have all the facts. That’s why the I.G. is in business. To collect the facts.

JR: AND YOU WERE NOT EVEN INFORMED ABOUT IT?

PBO: Absolutely not, this is a pretty big government, the United States government. I got a lot of moving parts. But I want to be very clear, I spoke to President Calderon when he came to visit just a few weeks ago, our policy is to ramp up the interdiction of guns flowing south because that’s contributing to some of the security problems that are taking place in Mexico and what we are doing is trying to build the kind of cooperation between Mexico and the United States that we haven’t seen before. That ensures that we have a comprehensive approach. I’ve said to President Calderon and I’ve said it publicly, we’ve got obligations. It’s not just Mexico’s problem, it’s also our problem. We got to reduce demand for drugs, which is why even though we got obviously significant deficits; we are allocating 10 billion dollars in our budget to try to reduce demand through prevention programs and education programs. We have to make sure that we are enforcing the kinds of measures that will stop the flow of guns and cash down south that is helping to fuel these transnational drug cartels. So we’ve initiated excellent cooperation, there may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made, if that’s the case then we’ll find out and will hold somebody accountable.

JR: MEXICO WAS NOT INFORMED THEN?

PBO: Well, if I wasn’t informed I assure you that Mexico wasn’t either.