If you own a home or want to buy one – must read this!

 If you own a home or want to buy one – must read this!
 
 
  Don’t want to be bothered with “Political stuff?”  You’d better  read this one. It will come as a huge shock to you if you aren’t  informed as to what Obama is up to, and it has already passed one  hurdle.  It will take very little now to put it into actual law!!  YOU’D BETTER WAKE UP AMERICA !!!!
 
 So you think you live in a free country.
 
 Boy have you got a surprise coming.
 
 A License Required for your HOUSE?
 
 If you own your home you really need to check this out. At the end  of this email is the Google link to verify.  If the country thinks  the housing market is depressed now, wait until everyone sees  this. No one will be buying homes in the future.
 
 We encourage you to read the provisions of the Cap and Trade Bill  that has passed the House of Representatives and are being  considered by the Senate. We are ready to join the next march on  Washington ! This Congress and their “experts” are truly out to  destroy the middle class of the U.S.A.
 
 A License will be required for your house…no longer just for  cars and mobile homes….Thinking about selling your house?  Take  a look at H.R. 2454  (Cap and Trade bill).  This is unbelievable!  Home owners take note and tell your friends and relatives who are  home owners!
 
 Beginning one year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you  won’t be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply  with the energy and water efficiency standards of this  “Cap &  Trade” bill, passed by the House of Representatives. If it is also  passed by the Senate, it will be the largest tax increase any of  us has ever experienced.
 
 The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan)  estimates that in just a few years the average cost to every  family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one is excluded.  However, once the lower classes feel the pinch in their wallets,  you can be sure that these voters will get a tax refund (even if  they pay no taxes at all) to offset this new cost. Thus, you Mr.  And Mrs. Middle Class have to pay even more since additional tax  dollars will be needed to bail out everyone else..
 
 But wait. This awful bill (that no one in Congress has actually  read) has many more surprises in it. Probably the worst one is  this: A year from now you won’t be able to sell your house without  some bureaucrat’s OK. Yes, you read that right.
 
 The caveat (there always is a caveat) is that if you have enough  money to make required major upgrades to your home, then you can  sell it. But, if not, then forget it. Even pre-fabricated homes  (“mobile homes”) are included. In effect, this bill prevents you  from selling your home without the permission of the EPA  administrator.
 
 To get this permission, you will have to have the energy  efficiency of your home measured. Then the government will tell  you what your new energy efficiency requirement is and you will be  required to make modifications to your home under the retrofit  provisions of this Act, to comply with the new energy and water  efficiency requirements.
 
 Then you will have to get your home measured again and get a  license (called a “label” in the Act) that must be posted on your  property to show what your efficiency rating is; sort of like the  Energy Star efficiency rating label on your refrigerator or air  conditioner. If you don’t get a high enough rating, you can’t sell.
 
 And, the EPA administrator is authorized to raise the standards  every year, even above the automatic energy efficiency increases  built into the Act. The EPA administrator, appointed by the  President, will run the Cap & Trade program  (AKA the “American  Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009”) and is authorized to make  any future changes to the regulations and standards he/she alone  determines to be in the government’s best interest. Requirements  are set low initially so the bill will pass Congress. Then the  Administrator can set new standards every year.
 
 The Act itself contains annual required increases in energy  efficiency for private and commercial residences and buildings.  However, the EPA administrator can set higher standards at any  time. Sect. 202 – Building Retrofit Program mandates a national  retrofit program to increase the energy efficiency of all existing  homes across America.
 
 Beginning one year after enactment of the Act, you won’t be able  to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with its energy  and water efficiency standards. You had better sell soon, because  the standards will be raised each year and will be really hard  (expen$ive) to meet in a few years. Oh, goody!
 
 The Act allows the government to give you a grant of several  thousand dollars to comply with the retrofit program requirements  IF you meet certain energy efficiency levels. But, wait, the State  can set additional requirements on who qualifies to receive the  grants. You should expect requirements such as “can’t have an  income of more than $50K per year”, “home selling price can’t be  more than $125K”, or anything else to target the upper middle  class (that includes YOU?) and prevent you from qualifying for the  grants.
 
 Most of us won’t get a dime and will have to pay the entire cost  of the retrofit out of our own pockets. More transfer of wealth,  more “change you can believe in.” Sect. 204 – Building Energy  Performance Labeling Program establishes a labeling program that  for each individual residence will identify the achieved energy  efficiency performance for “at least 90 percent of the residential  market within 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act.”
 
 This means that within 5 years 90% of all residential homes in the  U.S. must be measured and labeled. The EPA administrator will get  $50M each year to enforce the labeling program. The Secretary of  the Department of Energy will get an additional $20M each year to  help the EPA. Some of this money will, of course, be spent on  coming up with tougher standards each year…
 
 Oh, the label will be like a license for your car. You will be  required to post the label in a conspicuous location in your home  and will not be allowed to sell your home without having this  label. And, just like your car license, you will probably be  required to get a new label every so often – maybe every year.
 
 But, the government estimates the cost of measuring the energy  efficiency of your home should only cost about $200 each time.  Remember what they said about the auto smog inspections when they  first started: that in California? It would only cost $15. That  was when the program started. Now the cost is about $50 for the  inspection and certificate.
 
  Expect the same from the home labeling program. Sect. 304 –  Greater Energy Efficiency in Building Codes establishes new energy  efficiency guidelines for the National Building Code and mandates  at 304(d) that one year after enactment of this Act, all state and  local jurisdictions must adopt the National Building Code energy  efficiency provisions or must obtain a certification from the  federal government that their state and/or local codes have been  brought into full compliance with the National Building Code  energy efficiency standards.
 
 CHECK OUT a few of the sites;
 
 Cap and Trade: A License Required for your Home http://www.nachi.  org/forum/ f14/cap-and- trade-license- required- your-home- 44750/
 
 HR2454 American Clean Energy & Security Act:  http:// http://www.govtrack .us/congress/ bill.xpd? bill=h111- 2454
 
 Cap & Trade A license required for your home: http:// http://www.prisonplanet.com/cap-and-trade-a-license-required-for-your- home.html
 
 Cap and trade is a license to cheat and steal:
 http://www.sfexamin er.com/opinion/ columns/oped_ contributors/  Cap-and-trade- is-a-license- to-cheat- and-steal- 45371937. html
 Cap and Trade: A License Required for your Home: http:// http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2393940/posts
 
 Thinking about selling you House? Look at HR 2454:
 
 http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/10/01/thinking-about-selling- your-house-a-look-at-h-r-2454-cap-and-trade-bill/
 
 http://www.google.com/ search?hl= en&source=hp&ie=ISO-8859- 1&q=A+License + required+ for+your+ home-+Cap+ and+Trade&btnG=Google+ Search

Oil in the Western USA and Obama is pushing Ethanol DUH!

Subject: Fw: oil – you better be sitting down when you read this!

 By the way…this is all true. Check it out at the link below!!! 

GOOGLE it, or follow this link.  It will blow your mind. 

 http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 

Here’s an interesting read, important and verifiable information : 

About 6 months ago, the writer was watching a news program on oil and one of the Forbes Bros. was the guest. The host said to Forbes, “I am going to ask you a direct question and I would like a direct answer;  how much oil does the U.S. have in the ground?”  Forbes did not miss a beat, he said, “more than all the Middle East put together.”  Please read below. 

The U. S. Geological Service issued a report in April 2008 that only scientists and oil men knew was coming, but man was it big.  It was a revised report (hadn’t been updated since 1995) on how much oil was in this area of the western 2/3 of North Dakota, western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana …… check THIS out: 

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable…. at $107 a barrel, we’re looking at a resource base worth more than $5..3 trillion. 

“When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea..” says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature’s financial analyst. 

“This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,” reportsThe Pittsburgh Post Gazette.  It’s a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the ‘Bakken.’  It stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada.  For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end.  Even the ‘Big Oil’ companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken’s massive reserves….. and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels.  And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL! 

That’s enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight.  And if THAT didn’t throw you on the floor, then this next one should – because it’s from 2006! 

U. S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World 

Stansberry Report Online – 4/20/2006 

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels.  OnAugust 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this motherload of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling? 

They reported this stunning news:  We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.. Here are the official estimates: 

– 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia 

– 18-times as much oil as Iraq 

 – 21-times as much oil as Kuwait 

 – 22-times as much oil as Iran 

– 500-times as much oil as Yemen 

– and it’s all right here in the Western United States . 

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy…..WHY? 

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we’ve got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped.  That’s more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post. 

Don’t think ‘OPEC’ will drop its price – even with this find?  Think again!  It’s all about the competitive marketplace, – it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists? 

Got your attention yet?  Now, while you’re thinking about it, do this: 

Pass this along.   If you don’t take a little time to do this, then you should stifle yourself the next time you complain about gas prices – by doing NOTHING, you forfeit your right to complain. Copy and paste to your e-mail

Now I just wonder what would happen in this country if every one of you sent this to every one in your address book.

A Pattern of Deception

The Obama Watch

A Pattern of Deception

By Peter Ferrara on 4.7.10 @ 6:09AM

When he was asking for our vote in 2008, then candidate Barack Obama most famously promised the American people:

And I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” [Emphasis added]

He didn’t just make that pledge once or twice. He promised it to the American people over and over, making it the centerpiece of his campaign.

His now enacted health care takeover bill directly violates that pledge. If you do not obtain the health insurance that Obama and Congressional Democrats now demand by law, either through your employer or directly yourself, then you must pay a new 2.5% income tax, or a minimum of $695 per person up to $2,085 per family. This applies to everyone making less than $250,000 per year as well as those making more than $250,000 per year. It cannot be logically denied that this violates a pledge not to impose any form of tax increase on such workers, though President Obama has, indeed, tried to so deny it.

But it gets worse. Because you don’t really avoid an effective tax increase by buying the required health insurance. Even with the budget crushing new entitlement subsidies in Obamacare, the mandated health insurance, with all of the required politically correct benefits and subject to highly expensive giveaway regulation, will be quite expensive, ranging up to 2% of income for people at 133% of poverty to 9.8% of income for people at 400% of poverty. That is like a new payroll tax, and everyone making less than 400% of poverty is making less than $250,000 per year.

But the pattern gets even worse. The above quoted pledge came right after an attack by Obama on his then GOP opponent John McCain for proposing to tax the Cadillac health plans of all workers, including those making less than $250,000 a year. Obama said then, “The better your health care plan, the harder you fought for your good benefits, the higher the taxes you’ll pay under John McCain’s plan.” But the health care legislation President Obama just signed taxes precisely the Cadillac health plans of workers making below $250,000 per year, as well as those making above $250,000, albeit after 2018.

The last time a President so blatantly violated a similar pledge was during the Administration of the first President Bush. After campaigning and winning in 1988 on a pledge of “Read my lips, no new taxes,” he broke that pledge in agreeing to the 1990 budget deal. The public rightly voted him out of office in the next election, because if a candidate once elected can so blatantly violate what he campaigned on, then we have lost our democracy, as there is then no way to express the will of the people among different policy choices.

President Obama owes John McCain an apology, not to mention the American people. But he owes one to Hillary Clinton too. During the Democrat primary battle, Obama attacked Hillary for supporting an individual mandate forcing people to buy the health insurance the government specifies. But the health care legislation he just signed includes precisely such a mandate.

The pattern goes all the way back to Barack Obama’s first appearance on the national stage, at the 2004 Democrat national convention. There he trumpeted as a central theme a call for a new era of post-partisanship, or bipartisan cooperation. He continued promoting that popular theme right through the 2008 election.

But since the election, what has been bipartisan? He laughed Republicans out of the room during the stimulus debate, saying “I won the election.” His Cap and Trade energy tax proposal squeaked through the House on a virtual party line vote, with no concessions to Republicans. Congressional Democrats locked Republicans out of health care deliberations, and then passed the legislation on a total party line vote in both houses, without a concession sufficient to win a single Republican vote. And so it has gone on every issue.

Health Care Deceptions

The pattern continues to this day. On April 1, Obama was in Portland, Maine, trying to sell the just enacted health care legislation. He proclaimed, “And over time, costs will come down for families, businesses, and the federal government, reducing our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades. That’s what this reform will do.”

Is it not deceptive for the President of the United States to run around the country saying that the Congressional Budget Office scores his legislation as reducing the deficit by a trillion dollars over the next two decades, without revealing that this deficit reduction estimate is based on an assumed $2.5 trillion in Medicare cuts as specified in his legislation? Such draconian Medicare cuts will sharply reduce the health care services that doctors and hospitals will be willing to provide to seniors. More and more seniors will be told in the coming years to just take the painkiller and go home, as President Obama suggested last year. With those cuts, and others, incentives will be squelched for investing the billions necessary for development of the breakthrough health care technologies, the life saving health care innovations applying the latest medical science, and the now possible miracle cure drugs improving and saving lives.

I thought the Obama health care gravy train was about providing health care for all. Or was it really about creating health care dependency for all, capturing voters for the Democrat political machine?

But President Obama continued last week in Portland, Maine, saying that under his now enacted health care overhaul “Insurance companies won’t be able to drop people when they get sick.” But that was, in fact, the law long before Obama ever came to Washington, because health insurance that can be canceled just because you get sick is like fire insurance that can be cancelled after your house catches on fire, or like flood insurance that can be canceled after the flood. That’s not insurance at all, and the prohibition on such cancellation can and should be strictly enforced without Obamacare’s trillion dollar new entitlement, 100 new health care bureaucracies, government mandates, multitrillion dollar tax increases, health care rationing, and draconian Medicare cuts.

Self-Deception and Dangerous Delusions

Another passage in President Obama’s Portland health care stump speech indicates something else is going on beyond a pattern of deception. Obama said:

So now that this bill is finally law and all the folks who have been playing politics will finally have to confront the reality of what this reform is, they’re also going to have to confront the reality of what it isn’t. They’ll have to finally acknowledge that this isn’t a government takeover of our health care system. They’ll see that if Americans like their doctor, they will keep their doctor. And if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.

This sounds more like someone who is quite sure that the health care legislation has been grossly misunderstood and that he will be vindicated by the reality of the now enacted legislation.

So let me be the first to reveal that the now enacted legislation is, indeed, a government takeover of the health care system. President Obama’s legislation creates over 100 new government bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions and programs with power over health care. These government authorities will now be involved in telling doctors and hospitals what are the “best practices” in health care, what works in health care and what doesn’t, what health care is cost effective, and what is quality health care and what isn’t, as if centralized government bureaucracies will know this so much better than your own, presumably hapless doctor.

Through both the individual and employer mandates, President Obama’s legislation also forces individuals to buy and employers to provide the health insurance with the exact benefits that he and his wise bureaucrats in Washington are certain you must have, regardless of what you want. Obama and San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi kept repeating the mantra that the bill would provide “choice and competition.” But with these mandates, where is the choice, not to mention the competition? They could have created real choice and competition in a national market by allowing interstate sales of health insurance. But they were not in favor of anything that did not expand the power and reach of government, which is not where you get “choice and competition.”

Under President Obama’s legislation, the government also dictates to insurance companies exactly what health insurance they must sell, to whom they must sell it, and at what price, and even redistributes premium income among insurance companies through “risk adjustment.” There is actually no aspect of essential health care that President Obama’s legislation leaves beyond government control.

Moreover, President Obama has now bet his Presidency on “If you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.” But you can’t keep your health plan if your employer terminates your coverage. Yet the legislation President Obama just signed encourages employers to do precisely that, as they can avoid the much higher and rising costs of the mandated health insurance by dumping their employees into the Exchanges, for a penalty that is a fraction of such costs. The expert Lewin Group estimated that close to 20 million workers would lose their employer health plan in this way, an analysis which the Democrats just dismissed as a fascist plot. I say it will be a lot more.

You also can’t keep your plan if your health insurer opts out of the business. President Obama is so certain he knows so much more than his own Medicare Chief Actuary, who has said that Obama’s sharp cuts for Medicare Advantage health plans will cause close to 10 million seniors to lose those plans, which provide them better benefits and coverage than standard Medicare.

And you also can’t keep your doctor if he terminates you because he is cutting back on his practice, or retiring early as an Obamacare refugee. Or if you are a senior and he stops taking Medicare patients due to Obama’s draconian Medicare cuts.

Perhaps Obama thinks that since his legislation doesn’t even become fully effective until 2014, and it will take time to have these effects, you will forget these promises he used to sell it, just as you may have forgotten all of his campaign pledges from 2008. Or maybe he thinks he will be out of office by the time you realize what has happened, even after a now remotely possible second term.

But maybe he is self-deceived to the point that he actually believes the health care fantasies he is weaving, which certainly seems to be true of Nancy Pelosi and other Congressional Democrats. Such self-deception fantasies are clearly on display in the controversy over the reported losses by major American companies already resulting from the passage of President Obama’s health care legislation. The companies tried to tell the Democrats these losses would result from the legislation. But, again, the Democrats simply dismissed what they had to say as a right-wing plot. Now the Democrats are shocked at the reality of the companies reporting the losses in legally required public accounting statements. If those reported losses are not correct, then the SEC can and should prosecute the companies.

But the reported losses are correct, as determined by professional accountants simply complying with the law. The reaction of top Congressional Democrats and the Obama White House simply reveals how out of touch with reality they are. President Obama and the Democrats promised us their government takeover of health care would promote jobs and economic growth by reducing costs for employers, but already it is doing just the opposite.

Beyond Health Care

But we see the same patterns on other issues beyond health care. During the 2008 campaign, Obama said, “Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.” Federal spending in 2008, when he was making this promise “throughout his campaign,” was $2,983 billion. President Obama’s own budget projects federal spending for this year of $3,720 billion, and for next year of $3,837 billion. That is some net spending cut. The health care legislation President Obama just signed involves by his own admission hundreds of billions in net spending and tax increases, just over the next 10 years. I say it will be a lot more.

On February 13, President Obama held a celebratory event at the White House for signing of the so-called Pay Go legislation. Obama explained, “It says to Congress you have to pay as you go. You can’t spend a dollar unless you cut a dollar elsewhere…. Now, Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else.” But every time President Obama and Congressional Democrats want some new government spending, they simply waive this pay go rule, as they did recently for another supposed jobs bill, or as they did for recent extensions of unemployment benefits. When Republicans try to enforce President Obama’s pay go rule by holding up the new spending until it is paid for, they are pilloried by Democrats and their media allies as against jobs or unemployment benefits for the starving long-term unemployed. Pay go is just employed when it is helpful to justify yet another tax increase, and certainly to shortcircuit any notion of real tax cuts.

On March 31, President Obama held another White House celebration to announce new offshore drilling. But as we will discuss in detail in a future column, the actual policy adopted took offshore drilling off the table in the Pacific, a large portion of the Atlantic, much of Alaskan coastal waters, and in some of the most promising areas of the Gulf of Mexico, even delaying by a year already planned drilling off the coast of Virginia. The policy also terminated already issued leases for some Alaskan offshore drilling, as well as even some onshore leases in quite promising northern U.S. fields.

But Mallory Factor recently provided a valuable public service in finding two promises from his 2008 campaign that President Obama has managed to keep. One was “Date Night,” a pledge that if elected he would take his wife Michelle out for a date in New York City, which he did at great taxpayer expense for the Air Force One trip and for blanket Secret Service coverage, greatly worsening city traffic jams. The other was his pledge to get his girls a dog, which he did in acquiring Bo, a Portuguese water dog.

Letter to the Editor

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Peter Ferrara is director of entitlement and budget policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, a policy advisor to the Heartland Institute, and general counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Morning Bell: The Road to a New Nuclear Arms Race

Morning Bell: The Road to a New Nuclear Arms Race

Posted By Conn Carroll On April 6, 2010 @ 9:44 am In Protect America | 45 Comments

^[1]

Later today, the Obama administration will release the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) which will set the framework for decisions on U.S. nuclear policy for the next five to 10 years ^[2]. Coupled with the follow-on Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) to be signed in Prague this Thursday, these documents begin to implement the “road to zero” ^[3] nuclear dream President Barack Obama outlined in Czech Republic last year. their exclusive interview with President Obama about the NPR, David Sanger and Peter Baker report in The New York Times ^[4]:

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Unfortunately for Americans, President Obama’s new strategy will have the exact opposite result of its intended effect. Instead of incentivizing countries to give up nuclear ambitions, it creates new incentives for them to maintain or develop their own nuclear programs. First look at the Russians, who clearly still see their nuclear weapons as the cornerstone of their defense, no matter how much President Obama wishes it were otherwise. Moscow has no interest in diminishing its own nuclear arsenal, but it is perfectly happy to allow the Obama administration to weaken the U.S. deterrent until it is on equal footing with Russia’s currently mediocre might.

A country like Iran is equally unimpressed with President Obama’s unilateral disarmament strategy. Tehran wants to be the pre-eminent power in the Middle East, and as a nuclear state it can more credibly make that claim. But more importantly, nuclear weapons would also boost the current regime’s domestic survival. Nuclear powers do not mess in the internal affairs of other nuclear powers. Witness Tiananmen Square. The ayatollahs believe that, when they have the bomb, they can crush the freedom-loving opposition with total impunity. They are counting the days.

First START and now the NPR demonstrate a shift by the Obama administration away from relying on nuclear deterrence to protect America and toward reliance on unverifiable international treaties. But as President Obama makes our nuclear arsenal smaller, less reliable and less usable, it becomes a far less credible deterrent to nuclear attack. Rather than serve as an example for other nation’s to follow, President Obama’s nuclear weakness will only give America’s enemies every incentive to advance their own programs. The President’s arms control “road” is more likely to lead to a new arms race, rather than to “zero.”

To provide some stark reality to the Obama administration’s dreams of a nuke-free world, The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Defense Studies are hosting a Conservative Counter Summit ^[5] to Question the Obama Nuclear Agenda. The first event is today at Heritage, and you can watch it online here ^[5] beginning at 10 AM EDT. The second event will be at AEI shortly after Congress reconvenes.

Quick Hits:

• According to a new report by the Office of Government Ethics, ^[6] two dozen of President Obama’s political appointees worked as registered lobbyists during the two years prior to joining the administration, and 22 appointees received waivers that allowed them to participate in matters in which their former employers or clients had an interest.
• The owner and majority shareholder of General Motors – the Obama administration – announced they would fine rival Toyota the maximum penalty allowed by law ^[7] for the non-unionized automaker’s gas-pedal safety problems.
• Energy and anti-tax groups are collecting signatures to put a repeal of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R) cap and trade law ^[8] on the California ballot this fall.
• According to Gallup ^[9], for the first time in the question’s 10-year history, more Americans say the United States should prioritize development of energy supplies over protecting the environment.
• Cincinnati is just one area of the country where after the passage of Obamacare “there are simply not enough primary-care providers available to take care of all these newly insured individuals.” ^[10]

Federal Motors Posts $4.3 Billion Loss For First Year Under Obama

April 7th, 2010 Posted By Pat Dollard.

Agencie French Pussies:

General Motors posted a post-bankruptcy 2009 net loss of 4.3 billion dollars Wednesday but said it hoped to achieve profitability in 2010.

The new GM, which emerged from bankruptcy protection on July 10, achieved global revenues of 57.5 billion dollars and ended the year with net cash of one billion dollars.

“As the results for 2009 show, there is still significant work to be done,” Chris Liddell, GM vice chairman and chief financial officer said in a statement.

“However, I continue to believe we have a chance of achieving profitability in 2010.”

The net loss includes the pre-tax impact of a 2.6-billion-dollar settlement loss related to the United Auto Workers union retiree medical plan and a 1.3-billion-dollar foreign currency re-measurement loss.

“We are building the foundation that will allow us to return to public ownership,” Liddell said.

GM has completed fresh-start accounting — which includes determining the fair value of assets and liabilities — and will file its third-quarter and 2009 results with the Securities and Exchange Commission later Wednesday.

This is an “important step” in the process of preparing for an initial public stock offering, Liddell said.

“Going public will enable the company to invest in designing, building and selling the world’s best vehicles, attract the best people and access the capital markets,” the automaker said.

“One of the most important measures in establishing the foundation for going public is the company’s ability to return to sustainable profitability.”

Chairman Of Obama’s Economic Advisory Board: Raise Taxes, Create New “Value-Added Tax” And New “Carbon Or Energy Tax”

April 6th, 2010 Posted By Pat Dollard.

Paul Volcker

Volcker was also appointed Fed Chairman by Jimmy Carter…

(Reuters) – The United States should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, chief White House economic adviser Paul Volcker said on Tuesday.

Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax “was not as toxic an idea” as it has been in the past and also said a carbon or other energy-related tax may become necessary.

Though he acknowledged that both were still unpopular ideas, he said getting entitlement costs and the U.S. budget deficit under control may require such moves. “If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes,” he said.

Obama diplomacy has torpedoed the Karzai presidency

BLANKLEY: A sinking ship of state

Tony Blankley

Last summer, President Obama spent several months publicly anguishing over what he would or wouldn’t do in Afghanistan. Finally, he

agreed to ramp up troop levels but warned that he intended to start getting American troops out in 18 months. After anguishing in several columns over the president’s anguishing, I concluded in November 2009:

“If the Taliban and al Qaeda retake Afghanistan, the world (and America) will have hell to pay for the consequences. But this president and this White House do not have it in them to lead our troops to victory in Afghanistan. So they shouldn’t try. The price will be high for whatever foreign policy failures we will endure in the next three years. Let’s not add to that price the pointless murder of our finest young troops in a war their leader does not believe in. Bring them home. We’ll need them later.”

At the time, about five months ago, the New York Times also reported that Mr. Obama “admonished President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that he must take on what American officials have said he avoided during his first term: the rampant corruption and drug trade that have fueled the resurgence of the Taliban.”

Mr. Obama told reporters that he was seeking “a sense on the part of President Karzai that, after some difficult years in which there has been some drift, that in fact he’s going to move boldly and forcefully forward and take advantage of the international community’s interest in his country to initiate reforms internally. That has to be one of our highest priorities.”

Mr. Karzai and the Afghan government were told “to put into place an anticorruption commission to establish strict accountability for government officials at the national and provincial levels. …”

“In addition, some American officials and their European counterparts would like at least a few arrests of what one administration official called ‘the more blatantly corrupt’ people in the Afghan government.”

That same week, coincidentally, the New York Times reported on the front page the name of a purported CIA-paid undercover asset. It was none other than Ahmed Wali Karzai, the powerful brother of the Afghan president. The Times cited, on background, Obama administration “political officials,” “senior administration officials” and others as its sources to the effect that the Afghan president’s brother has been secretly on the CIA payroll for eight years as well as being a major narcotics trafficker.

Last week, Mr. Obama made a surprise visit to Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. The White House did not release the transcript of the conversation between the two presidents. But conveniently, while en route to Kabul, Mr. Obama’s National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones, who was traveling with the president, went on the record with the prediction that Mr. Obama would (as reported by the Times) “pressure Karzai about corruption in governance and [would] tell Karzai that he had made no progress on this front since his Nov. 19 inauguration.”

And this week, the product of this careful six months of public diplomacy by the Obama administration bore its predictable fruit. The New York Times headlined its story on Mr. Karzai’s reaction: “Karzai’s Words Leave Few Choices for the West.”

According to the Times: “The tensions between the West and Mr. Karzai flared up publicly last Thursday, when Mr. Karzai accused the West and the United Nations of perpetrating fraud in the August presidential election and described the Western military coalition as coming close to being seen as invaders who would give the insurgency legitimacy as ‘a national resistance.’ ”

Mr. Karzai stepped up his anti-Western statements: “If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban. …”

The Times went on to say, “There are no good options on the horizon. … Many fear the relationship is only likely to become worse. … The political situation is continuing to deteriorate; Mr. Karzai is flailing around. … Mr. Karzai draws closer to allies like Iran and China, whose interests are often at odds with those of the West, and sounds sympathetic enough to the Taliban that he could spur their efforts, helping their recruitment and further destabilizing the country.”

The newspaper quoted Peter Galbraith, former U.N. deputy special representative for Afghanistan: “There is no point in having troops in a mission that cannot be accomplished. … The mission might be important, but if it can’t be achieved, there is no point in sending these troops into battle. Part of the problem is that counterinsurgency requires a credible local partner.”

Well, yes. We knew that six months ago.

And, if we need a credible “local partner,” our local partner needs a reliable, supportive “large brother” (to wit: the United States). But by first hesitating to support Mr. Karzai, then saying we will support him – but only for 18 months, then publicly admonishing him to end the endemic corruption, then leaking the fact that his own brother is a major drug smuggler, we have undermined and infuriated him, without whom we cannot succeed in Afghanistan.

Great nations often find themselves in alliance with undesirable local chieftains. Usually in such circumstances, the great nation either tries quietly to strengthen and improve the local boss or it gets rid of him and finds a better puppet. If neither method works – then the great nation eventually gets out.

The Obama administration has publicly humiliated and undercut our “local partner” to the extent that we can no longer influence or improve him. Unless our government is prepared to replace him (highly unlikely) – we ought to get out before more of our troops get killed.

Tony Blankley is the author of “American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century” (Regnery, 2009) and vice president of the Edelman public relations firm in Washington.

Obama’s Scary Nuke Plan

April 7th, 2010

By KT McFarland, FOXNews

 Obama’s new nuke plan is scary

Today President Obama reversed 60 years of U.S. nuclear policy and pledged we would not retaliate with nuclear weapons were we — or our treaty allies — attacked with conventional, biological or chemical weapons by nations in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. He hopes that other nuclear weapons states will follow suit with a similar pledge and we will be well on our way to a world without nuclear weapons.

In addition, by carving out those rogue states not in compliance, like North Korea and Iran, the president will give them sufficient incentive to drop their nuclear weapons programs.

That’s a lot of change resting on nothing more than awful lot of hope.

During the Cold War we kept the peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union through a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). As President Reagan said, we insure that “any adversary who thinks about attacking the United States or our allies…concludes that the risks to him outweigh any potential gains. Once he understands that, he won’t attack. We maintain the peace through our strength; weakness only invites aggression.”

This worked whether the adversary was the Soviet Union, or a lesser state. If a country picked a fight with us, we kept open the possibility of unleashing a response that would crush them. We thereby deterred them from launching an attack against us in the first place. This policy of deterrence may have made for an uneasy peace — but it managed to keep that peace for 60 years — perhaps the longest period of great power peace since the fall of the Roman Empire.

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Obama’s Real Agenda

April 7th, 2010

By J.R. Dunn, American Thinker

 What is Obama’s real agenda?

Over the past year and a half, we’ve seen much in the way of speculation of what Obama is really up to, what his true agenda might be behind all the soothing and meretricious rhetoric. It was quite clear that “Obama” was a construct, a carefully manufactured image, as all politicians are to one extent or another. But Obama was an extreme example — all image, most of it having little or no connection with any discernable substance. The gap between what he said and what he would then proceed to do was wide and glaring. This obvious and undeniable discontinuity is the major factor feeding all the conspiracy theories — the ones featuring George Soros as puppet master, or the claims of adherence to Islam and so forth. If only it were that simple! The past few weeks have clearly revealed that Obama is something at the same time entirely more commonplace while also being more obnoxious.

Obama is an example of that peculiar American contribution to the long line of political deviancy, the romantic leftist, a combination of undergrad Marxism, New Deal activism, Great Society idealism, and late 60s dementia. In fulfillment of this role, he is going down the list of left-wing daydreams, wish-fulfillment fantasies, and unfinished business, and doing his damndest to see them made reality. No more than that, and certainly no less.

Take a look at his latest series of crimes. Start with health-care “reform.” We all know about this — or, at least as much as we can be expected to know about a bill that is incoherent, contradictory, longer than Remembrance of Things Past and not fully grasped by even its most fanatic adherents. (Oh, there is one thing we do know that they don’t — that things that go up also come down, either by way of the Supreme Court, Congressional repeal, or the streets of Washington opening up to swallow everyone who voted for the atrocious thing.)

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Our new national security plan: Weaken, whitewash, and wait for whirled peas

By Michelle Malkin  •  April 7, 2010 10:19 AM

Look out. The retreater-in-chief has his big brush and can of whitewash and he is fixing to paint all our troubles away:

President Barack Obama’s advisers will remove religious terms such as “Islamic extremism” from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: “The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.”

The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.

The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

(Yeah, because the dhimmi diplomats at the Bush State Department didn’t do enough of that.)

The kumbaya candidate promised to usher in a national security plan of rainbows and unicorns and a world without jihad. Now, he’s delivering on the delusion with a full-scale retreat from the preventative war against Muslim terrorists and the decimation of our nuclear defenses. John Bolton sums it up:

The Nuclear Posture Review is deeply troubling in many respects, starting at the conceptual level with its unfounded assertion that the need for American nuclear deterrence has declined. By further unilaterally limiting the circumstances in which the U.S. would use nuclear weapons to protect itself and its allies, the Obama administration is in fact increasing international instability and the risks of future conflicts. By abandoning the reliable replacement warhead project, and drastically limiting programs to ensure the safety and reliablity of our existing nuclear stockpile, the president is risking our security and obtaining nothing in return.

NRO has more on Obama’s nuclear posturing here.

We’ve traded in a reality-based national security strategy for a Birkenstock bumper-sticker fantasy plan.