The Strategery Blog

Indefinite Hiatus

2013-01-28T11:09:00.000-05:00

As the 2nd term of Barack Obama begins, I'm going to take an indefinite hiatus from posting about politics and do other things. I might be back, I might not...who knows?

Check out the following to keep reading:
hotair.com
weeklystandard.com
Charles Krauthammer
And others...

Here we go....

2012-11-09T14:25:00.000-05:00

And if anyone is shocked by this, I have a bridge to sell you. A few bridges. Companies, economists, politicians, and pundits have been warning about this for a while now. Read the original here.

PICKET: Companies plan massive layoffs as Obamacare becomes realityBy Kerry Picket - The Washington Times
November 8, 2012, 09:52PM

Freedom Works has put together a list of companies that will be laying off employees as a result of President Barack Obama's health care law:

Welch Allyn

Welch Allyn, a company that manufactures medical diagnostic equipment in central New York, announced in September that they would be laying off 275 employees, or roughly 10% of their workforce over the next three years. One of the major reasons discussed for the layoffs was a proactive response to the Medical Device Tax mandated by the new healthcare law.

Dana Holding Corp.

As recently as a week ago, a global auto parts manufacturing company in Ohio known as Dana Holding Corp., warned their employees of potential layoffs, citing "$24 million over the next six years in additional U.S. health care expenses". After laying off several white collar staffers, company insiders have hinted at more to come. The company will have to cover the additional $24 million cost somehow, which will likely equate to numerous cuts in their current workforce of 25,500 worldwide.

Stryker

One of the biggest medical device manufacturers in the world, Stryker will close their facility in Orchard Park, New York, eliminating 96 jobs in December. Worse, they plan on countering the medical device tax in Obamacare by slashing 5% of their global workforce - an estimated 1,170 positions.

Boston Scientific

In October of 2009, Boston Scientific CEO Ray Elliott, warned that proposed taxes in the health care reform bill could "lead to significant job losses" for his company. Nearly two years later, Elliott announced that the company would be cutting anywhere between 1,200 and 1,400 jobs, while simultaneously shifting investments and workers overseas - to China.

Medtronic

In March of 2010, medical device maker Medtronic warned that Obamacare taxes could result in a reduction of precisely 1,000 jobs. That plan became reality when the company cut 500 positions over the summer, with another 500 set for the end of 2013.

Others

A short list of other companies facing future layoffs at the hands of Obamacare:

Smith & Nephew - 770 layoffs
Abbott Labs - 700 layoffs
Covidien - 595 layoffs
Kinetic Concepts - 427 layoffs
St. Jude Medical - 300 layoffs
Hill Rom - 200 layoffs
Beyond the complete elimination of a significant number of American jobs is another looming problem created by the health care law - a shift from full-time to part-time workers.

Read more: PICKET: Companies plan massive layoffs as Obamacare becomes reality - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/nov/8/picket-companies-plan-massive-layoffs-obamacare-be/#ixzz2BkrycLdy
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Mourning in America - Here's Those Layoffs We Voted For Last Night
By Rusty Weiss on November 07, 2012
http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/grusbf5/good-morning-america-heres-those-layoffs-you-voted

Last night's victory for the President marks the first time since its inception that Obamacare is no longer a what-if; it is the future of health care in America.

It also means a near immediate impact on the economy. With 20 or so new or higher taxes set to be implemented, ranging from a $123 billion surtax on investment income, through the $20 billion medical device tax, all the way down to the $600 million executive compensation limit, Obamacare will be a nearly unbearable tax burden on the economy.

Who will pay? The middle-class workforce, of course.

So with another four years for President Obama to look forward to, and the obvious inevitability of Obamacare that this entails, let's examine the very real jobs that will be lost, and the very real lives that will be affected.

Welch Allyn

Welch Allyn, a company that manufactures medical diagnostic equipment in central New York, announced in September that they would be laying off 275 employees, or roughly 10% of their workforce over the next three years. One of the major reasons discussed for the layoffs was a proactive response to the Medical Device Tax mandated by the new healthcare law.

Dana Holding Corp.

As recently as a week ago, a global auto parts manufacturing company in Ohio known as Dana Holding Corp., warned their employees of potential layoffs, citing "$24 million over the next six years in additional U.S. health care expenses". After laying off several white collar staffers, company insiders have hinted at more to come. The company will have to cover the additional $24 million cost somehow, which will likely equate to numerous cuts in their current workforce of 25,500 worldwide.

Stryker

One of the biggest medical device manufacturers in the world, Stryker will close their facility in Orchard Park, New York, eliminating 96 jobs in December. Worse, they plan on countering the medical device tax in Obamacare by slashing 5% of their global workforce - an estimated 1,170 positions.

Boston Scientific

In October of 2009, Boston Scientific CEO Ray Elliott, warned that proposed taxes in the health care reform bill could "lead to significant job losses" for his company. Nearly two years later, Elliott announced that the company would be cutting anywhere between 1,200 and 1,400 jobs, while simultaneously shifting investments and workers overseas - to China.

Medtronic

In March of 2010, medical device maker Medtronic warned that Obamacare taxes could result in a reduction of precisely 1,000 jobs. That plan became reality when the company cut 500 positions over the summer, with another 500 set for the end of 2013.

Others

A short list of other companies facing future layoffs at the hands of Obamacare:
Smith & Nephew - 770 layoffs
Abbott Labs - 700 layoffs
Covidien - 595 layoffs
Kinetic Concepts - 427 layoffs
St. Jude Medical - 300 layoffs
Hill Rom - 200 layoffs

Beyond the complete elimination of a significant number of American jobs is another looming problem created by the health care law - a shift from full-time to part-time workers.

Sean Hackbarth of Free Enterprise explains:

A JP Morgan economist "points out that 8.3 million people are working in part-time jobs even though they'd prefer full-time work. Unfortunately, because of President Obama’s health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), workers in the hotel, restaurant, and retail industries could be pushed into part-time jobs working less than 30 hours per week."

"Under the health care law, if a company has more than 50 “full time equivalent” workers, a combination of full and part-time employees, but doesn’t offer “affordable” coverage that meets the government’s minimum value standard, the company will have to pay a penalty. This penalty is determined by the number of full-time employees minus 30 full-time employees. So to reiterate a very important point: part-time workers are not part of the penalty formula. The health care law creates a perverse incentive to hire part-time versus full-time workers."

Tangible examples of Obamacare causing a reduction in full-time workers:

Darden Restaurants

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Darden Restaurants, a casual dining chain best known for their Red Lobster, Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse restaurants, is "experimenting with limiting the hours of some of its workers to avoid health care requirements under the Affordable Care Act when they take effect in 2014".

JANCOA Janitorial Services

The CEO of JANCOA, Mary Miller, testified to Congress that Obamacare was a "dream killer", adding that one option she had to consider "is reducing the majority of my team members to part-time employment in order to reduce the amount that I will be penalized."

Kroger

The American retailer in Cincinnati, Ohio recently was reported to be planning a significant slashing of their hourly workers. Doug Ross writes:

Operative Faith (a mid-level manager with the company) reveals that Kroger will soon join the ranks of Darden Restaurants and slash the hours of its non-exempt (hourly) workers to avoid millions in Obamacare penalties.

According to the source, Obamacare could result in tens of thousands of Kroger employees being limited to working 28 hours per week.

Summary

This is by no means, meant to be an exhaustive list. But it is meant to provide examples of real companies, real jobs, and real names, soon to be added to the growing list of employment casualties provided by the inevitable implementation of Obamacare.

Last night, America voted for four more years of President Obama and his destructive economic and health care policies. By extension, America last night voted their approval of the aforementioned layoffs and overall work reduction.

Now we must accept the inevitable. Welcome to mourning in America.

Why Chris Matthews is ridiculous

2012-11-07T11:07:00.000-05:00

Seriously, how does anyone take him seriously, when he says things like this? Read the original here.

Chris Matthews on Obama win: 'I'm so glad we had that storm'
Published November 07, 2012
FoxNews.com

To all the millions of victims of superstorm Sandy, Chris Matthews has a message: "I'm so glad."

The MSNBC host, on a panel of pro-Obama pundits including Rachel Maddow, ended election coverage overnight by saying he's "glad" the storm hit, suggesting it served a greater good by boosting President Obama to a second term.

"I'm so glad we had that storm last week," Matthews said, after interjecting to give some final thoughts. Somebody off-screen could be heard saying "ooo" at that remark, but Matthews confidently put his hand up to explain.

"No, politically I should say -- not in terms of hurting people. The storm brought in possibilities for good politics," he said.

Click to see the video.

The death toll from that storm, which caused billions of dollars in damage, now exceeds 100. Many in the path of the storm's wrath -- in New Jersey, New York and elsewhere -- lost their homes or their cars or were otherwise displaced. The storm wreaked havoc on Election Day, as officials scrambled to facilitate the vote with many precincts facing power outages and fuel shortages.

Some analysts did say the storm boosted Obama's image by allowing him to show a bipartisan side -- reaching out to Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who publicly thanked Obama for the federal government's support -- and effectively sidelining Mitt Romney for a few days one week before the election.

Exit polls also showed about four in 10 voters said Obama's response to Sandy was important to their vote, and they backed the president by more than a 2-to-1 margin.

Matthews, though, was oddly upbeat in describing the political impact. He made the Sandy comment after ripping Republicans for their "assault" on the president.

"I am so proud of the country. To re-elect this president and overcoming -- not because of the partisanship or even the policies -- just the fact, here's an African guy, African-American guy with an unusual background -- part immigrant background, part African-American background -- with all this assault on him from day one. From Mitch McConnell, from the clowns out there that aren't elected, never will be to anything," he said. "And the way he took it, as someone said, with coolness and charm and dignity and just took it and took it and kept moving forward and doing his job. ... A good day for America."

This is what angers me most

2012-11-07T01:26:00.005-05:00

That the media attempts to shamelessly shape things for their guy. Read the original here.

Five ways the mainstream media tipped the scales in favor of ObamaBy Rich Noyes
Published November 07, 2012
FoxNews.com

Fox News and other media outlets have projected that President Obama has been reelected to a second term. If, in celebrating his victory Obama wanted to give credit where credit is due, he might want to think about calling some of America's top journalists, since their favorable approach almost certainly made the difference between victory and defeat.

Reviewing the 2012 presidential campaign, here are five ways the media elite tipped the public relations scales in favor of the liberal Obama and against the conservative challenger Mitt Romney:

1. The Media’s Biased Gaffe Patrol Hammered Romney: The media unfairly jumped on inconsequential mistakes — or even invented controversies — from Romney and hyped them in to multi-day media “earthquakes.” Case in point: the GOP candidate’s trip to Europe and Israel in late July. A Media Research Center analysis of all 21 ABC, CBS and NBC evening news stories about Romney’s trip found that virtually all of them (18, or 86%) emphasized “diplomatic blunders,” “gaffes” or “missteps.”

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer blasted the news coverage in an August 2 column, calling the trip “a major substantive success” that was wrapped “in a media narrative of surpassing triviality.”

Similarly, when the left-wing Mother Jones magazine in September put out a secretly-recorded video of Romney talking to donors about the 47% of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, the networks hyped it like a sensational sex scandal. Over three days, the broadcast network morning and evening shows churned out 42 stories on the tape, nearly 90 minutes of coverage. The tone was hyperbolic; ABC’s "Good Morning America" called it a “bombshell rocking the Mitt Romney campaign,” while ABC "World News" anchor Diane Sawyer declared it a “political earthquake.”

None of Obama’s gaffes garnered that level of coverage. After the president in a June 8 press conference declared that “the private sector is doing fine,” the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts gave it just one night’s coverage, then basically dropped the story — nothing further on ABC’s "World News" or the "CBS Evening News" in the weeks that followed, and just two passing references on the "NBC Nightly News."

And, when Obama infamously declared, “You didn’t build that,” ABC, CBS, NBC didn’t report the politically damaging remark for four days — and then only after Romney made it the centerpiece of a campaign speech.

2. Pounding Romney With Partisan Fact Checking: There’s nothing wrong with holding politicians accountable for the honesty of their TV ads and stump speeches, but this year the self-appointed media fact-checkers attacked Republicans as liars for statements that were accurate.

For example, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter writing for PolitiFact branded VP candidate Paul Ryan’s convention speech anecdote about the closing of the General Motors plant in his hometown as “false,” even though Ryan was correct in all of his details. The slanted review became TV reporters’ talking points; the next day on NBC, correspondent Chuck Todd grumped that while what Ryan said “was technically factual, by what he left out, [he] actually distorted the actual truth.” Matt Lauer greeted Ryan the following week in an interview on Today: “There are some people who are claiming that you played a little fast and loose with the truth....”

The same thing happened when Mitt Romney talked about Obama’s “apology tour” during the final presidential debate. While in 2009 Obama had, in fact, criticized the United States as “arrogant,” “derisive” and having “too often... set [our] principles aside,” the networks said to call it an “apology tour” was “false” because, as CNN’s John Berman tenuously insisted, “even if he was critical of past U.S. foreign policy, he issued no apologies.”

Writing in the New York Times August 31, correspondent Jackie Calmes scolded that “the number of falsehoods and misleading statements from the Romney campaign coming in for independent criticism has reached a level not typically seen.” That’s not true, either; Romney’s team was, at worst, guilty of highlighting those facts that best illustrated their points (something done by all politicians), and the Obama campaign certainly put out their share of tawdry TV ads and dubious campaign claims.

But with “truth cops” who mainly policed just the GOP side of the street, the media used “fact-checking” as another club to tilt the playing field in favor of the Democrats.

3. Those Biased Debate Moderators: Upset liberals scorned PBS’s Jim Lehrer for taking a hands-off approach in the first debate on October 3, with MSNBC analyst Howard Fineman slamming him as “practically useless” for not jumping into the debate on behalf of President Obama.

Such criticism may have encouraged the activist approach taken by ABC’s Martha Raddatz in the vice presidential debate October 11, and by CNN’s Candy Crowley in the October 16 town hall debate, as both of those journalists repeatedly interrupted the Republican candidate and larded the discussion with a predominantly liberal agenda.

Crowley earns extra demerits for taking the media’s penchant for faulty fact-checking to new heights when she jumped into the October 16 town hall-style debate to validate President Obama’s claim that he called the attack in Benghazi, Libya, “an act of terror” the very next morning. Crowley endorsed Obama’s story, telling Romney: “He did, in fact, sir, call it an act of terror.”

Not according to the transcript, which had Obama only speaking generically about how “no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this nation,” not assigning that label to the violence in Benghazi.

Wrong though she was, Crowley became a heroine to many in the liberal media; ABC's Matt Dowd, for example, cheered: “What Candy Crowley did, I actually thought, was laudable....I hope we get to do more of that in this discourse.”

Moderators are supposed to ensure both sides get a fair hearing, not pick sides. By leaping into the fray, Candy Crowley epitomized the media’s itch to tilt the scales this year — again, in Obama’s favor.

4. The Benghazi Blackout: Right after the September 11 attack in Libya, the networks proclaimed that the events would bolster President Obama — “reminding voters of his power as commander-in-chief,” as NBC’s Peter Alexander stated on the September 14 edition of "Today." But as a cascade of leaked information erased the portrait of Obama as a heroic commander, the broadcast networks shunted the Benghazi story to the sidelines.

News broke online in late September, for example, that Team Obama knew within 24 hours that the attack was likely the result of terrorism. That starkly contradicted claims from White House press secretary Jay Carney, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, and President Obama himself that the attack was a “spontaneous” reaction to an anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube. Yet, ABC took nearly two days to bring this story to viewers, while CBS and NBC held off for three days.

This was, shamefully, the broadcast networks’ pattern in October: New developments exposing the administration’s failure to provide adequate security, or contradictions in their public statements, were either given stingy coverage or buried completely. The puzzle pieces revealed a disturbing failure of Obama’s national security apparatus, but the networks flitted in and out of the story, never giving it any traction.

Instead of an “October Surprise,” the networks engineered an “October Suppression” — keeping a lid on the boiling Benghazi story until Election Day. Who knows how voters might have reacted if the media had covered this story as tenaciously as they did Romney’s “47% gaffe”?

5. Burying the Bad Economy: Pundits agreed that Obama’s weakness was the failure of the US economy to revive after his expensive stimulus and four years of $1 trillion deficits. But the major networks failed to offer the sustained, aggressive coverage of the economy that incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush faced in 1992, or even that George W. Bush faced in 2004 — both years when the national economy was in better shape than it is now.

According to a study conducted that year by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, from January through September of 1992, the networks ran a whopping 1,289 stories on the economy, 88% of which painted it in a dismal, negative light. That fall, the unemployment rate was 7.6%, lower than today’s 7.9%, and economic growth in the third quarter was 2.7%, better than today’s 2.0%. Yet the media coverage hammered the idea of a terrible economy, and Bush lost re-election.

In 2004, the economy under George W. Bush was far better than it is today — higher growth, lower unemployment, smaller deficits and cheaper gasoline — yet network coverage that year was twice as hostile to Bush than it was towards Obama this year, according to a study by the Media Research Center’s Business and Media Institute.

When Republican presidents have faced reelection, network reporters made sure to spotlight economic “victims” — the homeless man, the woman without health insurance, the unemployed worker, the senior citizen who had to choose between medicine and food. But this year, with an economy as bad as any since the Great Depression, those sympathetic anecdotes have vanished from the airwaves — a huge favor to Obama and the Democrats.

Given Obama’s record, the Romney campaign could have overcome much of this media favoritism and still prevailed — indeed, they almost did. But taken together, these five trends took the media’s historical bias to new levels this year, and saved Obama’s presidency in the process.

Rich Noyes, is research director for the Media Research Center.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/07/five-ways-mainstream-media-tipped-scales-in-favor-obama/#ixzz2BW12oQm1

French Socialism backs up its promise

2012-09-28T08:34:00.003-04:00

There it is. The tax rate on the "super-rich" is now 75%. Will this help or will it hurt the french economy? Will anyone notice what it does? Read the original here.

France taxes rich and business to slash deficitBy Daniel Flynn and Leigh Thomas
PARIS | Fri Sep 28, 2012 7:49am EDT

(Reuters) - President Francois Hollande's Socialist government unveiled sharp tax hikes on business and the rich on Friday in a 2013 budget aimed at showingFrance has the fiscal rigor to remain at the core of the euro zone.The package will recoup 30 billion euros ($39 billion) for the public purse with a goal of narrowing the deficit to 3.0 percent of national output next year from 4.5 percent this year - France's toughest single belt-tightening in 30 years.

But with record unemployment and a barrage of data pointing to economic stagnation, there are fears the deficit target will slip as France falls short of the modest 0.8 percent economic growth rate on which it is banking for next year.

The budget disappointed pro-reform lobbyists by merely freezing France's high public spending rather than daring to attack ministerial budgets as Spain did this week as it battles to avoid the conditions of an international bailout.

"This is a fighting budget to get the country back on the rails," Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said, adding that the 0.8 percent growth target was "realistic and ambitious".

"It is a budget which aims to bring back confidence and to break this spiral of debt that gets bigger and bigger."

With public debt at a post-war record of 91 percent of the economy, the budget is vital to France's credibility not only among euro zone partners but also in markets which for now are allowing it to borrow at record-low yields around two percent.

France's benchmark 3.0 percent 10-year bond was steady, yielding 2.18 percent after the announcement.

The government said the budget was the first in a series of steps to bring its deficit down to 0.3 percent of GDP by 2017 - slightly missing an earlier target of a zero deficit by then.

But early reactions were skeptical.

"The ambitions that were flagged are very audacious," said Philippe Waechter at Natixis Asset Management. "I struggle to see how we'll find the growth needed in 2013 and afterwards."

Of the total 30 billion euros of savings, around 20 billion will come from tax increases on households and companies, with tax rises already approved this year to contribute some 4 billion euros to revenues in 2013. The freeze on spending will contribute around 10 billion euros.

"SICK" MODEL?

To the dismay of business leaders who fear an exodus of top talent, the government confirmed a temporary 75 percent super-tax rate for earnings over one million euros and a new 45 percent band for revenues over 150,000 euros.

Together, those two measures are predicted to bring in around half a billion euros. Higher tax rates on dividends and other investments, plus cuts to existing tax breaks are seen bringing in several billion more.

Business will be hit with measures including a cut in the amount of loan interest which is tax-deductible and the cutting of an existing tax break on capital gains from certain share sales - moves worth around four billion and two billion euros each.

"The government is impeding investment and so will block innovation," Entrepreneurs Club head Guillaume Cairou said of the preference for raising taxes rather than cutting spending.

"France is sick because of the model it has ... but is choosing to preserve it."

Four months after he defeated Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande's approval ratings are in free-fall as many French feel he has been slow to get to grips with the economic slow-down and unemployment at a 10-year high and rising.

Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici defended next year's growth target on French radio. But, highlighting the bet on growth underpinning the entire budget, he added that it was achievable "if Europe steadies".

Data on Friday confirmed France posted zero growth in the second quarter, marking nine months of stagnation, as a pickup in business investment and government spending was offset by a worsening trade balance and sluggish consumer expenditure.

Despite a rise in wages, consumers - traditionally the motor of France's growth - increased their savings to 16.4 percent of income from 16.0 percent a year earlier. In another setback, other data showed consumer spending dropped 0.8 percent in August.

(Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer and Brian Love; writing by Mark John; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Scheduling Priorities

2012-09-11T08:47:00.002-04:00

What do you want your President to spend his time doing? Does the President deserve the flexibility to work the same hours as you do? Is being POTUS, a 9 to 5, 5 days a week job? I was wondering if perhaps he was skipping intelligence meetings to concentrate on the economy. Or maybe it's something else. Don't get me wrong, everyone needs a vacation. I suppose campaigning is hard work. Err...governing. Read the original here.

REPORT: OBAMA SPENDS MORE TIME ON GOLF THAN ECONOMY
by WYNTON HALL 19 Jul 2012
Breitbart.com

An eye-opening new report by the Government Accountability Institute reveals that President Barack Obama averages just eight minutes more a week on economic meetings than the average dog owner spends walking their dog.

When it was recently reported that Mr. Obama had played his 100th round of golf, the president said that playing golf was "the only time that for six hours, I'm outside." Therefore, by his own estimate, the president has spent 600 hours playing golf, as compared to just 412 hours in economic meetings of any kind throughout his presidency.

“You should know that keeping the economy growing and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up every morning,” Mr. Obama said in 2011 to an audience of UPS workers. “It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."

But just how little time Mr. Obama has spent working on the economy can be seen in the data contained in the Government Accountability Institute’s analysis:

Throughout the first 1,257 days of his presidency, Mr. Obama has spent just 412 hours in economic meetings or briefings of any kind
In 2012, so far Obama has spent just 24 total hours in economic meetings of any kind
Assuming a six day, 10-hour workweek, Obama has spent less than 4 percent of his total time in economic meetings or briefings of any kind
There were 773 days (72 percent), excluding Sundays, in which he had no economic meetings
Mr. Obama has spent an average of 138 minutes a week in economic meetings. According to a study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, new dog owners spent an average of 130 minutes a week walking their dogs

The study, which was based upon the president’s official schedule, practically bent over backwards to include anything even remotely akin to an economic meeting. For example, “Obama meets with Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum” was tallied as an economic meeting. Also included was, “Obama meets with Cabinet secretaries,” which may or may not have dealt with economic issues, counted as well.

Still, with Americans suffering in the worst economy since the Great Depression, Mr. Obama’s time spent in economic meetings came in shockingly low.

The President's schedule...

2012-09-11T08:42:00.001-04:00

...is publicly available information. Based on this information what percentage of daily intelligence briefings does POTUS attend? What percentage should he attend? (Bolding in the article has been done by me for emphasis.) Read the original here.

Why is Obama skipping more than half of his daily intelligence meetings?
Marc A. Thiessen, Opinion Writer
Washington Post
Published: September 10

President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting.The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.

I asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor about the findings, and whether there were any instances where the president attended the intelligence meeting that were not on his public schedule. Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” He says that the president reads his PDB every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions. “I actually don’t agree at all,” Vietor told me in an e-mail, “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community each day.”

Yet Vietor also directed me to a Post story written this year in which Obama officials discuss the importance of the intelligence meeting and extol how brilliantly the president runs it. “Obama reads the PDB ahead of time and comes to the morning meeting with questions. Intelligence briefers are there to answer those questions, expand on a point or raise a new issue,” The Post reported. “One regular participant in the roughly 500 Oval Office sessions during Obama’s presidency said the meetings show a president consistently participating in an exploration of foreign policy and intelligence issues.”

Not so consistently, it seems. Since Obama officials have actively promoted the way the president runs his daily intelligence meeting as evidence of his national security leadership (even releasing a photo of him receiving the briefing on an iPad), it is fair to ask why he skips the daily meeting so often.

According to former officials who have detailed knowledge of the PDB process, having the daily meeting — and not just reading the briefing book — is enormously important both for the president and those who prepare the brief. For the president, the meeting is an opportunity to ask questions of the briefers, probe assumptions and request additional information. For those preparing the brief, meeting with the president on a daily basis gives them vital, direct feedback from the commander in chief about what is on his mind, how they can be more responsive to his needs, and what information he may have to feed back into the intelligence process. This process cannot be replicated on paper.

While the Bush records are not yet available electronically for analysis, officials tell me the former president held his intelligence meeting six days a week, no exceptions — usually with the vice president, the White House chief of staff, the national security adviser, the director of National Intelligence, or their deputies, and CIA briefers in attendance. Once a week, he held an expanded Homeland Security briefing that included the Homeland Security adviser, the FBI director and other homeland security officials. Bush also did more than 100 hour-long “deep dives” in which he invited intelligence analysts into the Oval Office to get their unvarnished and sometimes differing views. Such meetings deepened the president’s understanding of the issues and helped analysts better understand the problems with which he was wrestling.

When Obama forgoes this daily intelligence meeting, he is consciously placing other priorities ahead of national security. As The Post story that the Obama White House sent me put it, “Process tells you something about an administration. How a president structures his regular morning meeting on intelligence and national security is one way to measure his personal approach to foreign policy.”

Indeed it is. So is how often he holds it. With President Obama, it seems, the regular morning meeting on intelligence is not so regular.

Marc A. Thiessen, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, writes a weekly online column for The Post.

POTUS, the Democrats, and the Auto Industry Takeover

2012-09-10T08:42:00.003-04:00

Yeah, I'm just going to let the editors of the National Review Online take this one. Read the original here.

The Democrats’ GM Fiction
By The Editors of the National Review
SEPTEMBER 10, 2012 4:00 A.M.

The Democrats have decided to run in 2012 as the bailout party. It is an odd choice — the 2008–09 bailouts were deeply unpopular among the general public, and even their backers were notably conflicted about the precedent being set and the ensuing moral hazard. But Democrats have nonetheless made one of the most abusive episodes in the entire bailout era their economic cornerstone: the government takeover of General Motors.

The GM bailout was always an odd duck: The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was created in order to preserve liquidity in the financial markets by heading off the collapse of key financial institutions that had made catastrophically bad bets on real-estate securities — nothing at all to do with cars, really. GM’s financial arm, today known as Ally Financial, was in trouble, but GM’s fundamental problem was that its products were not profitable enough to support its work-force expenses. A single dominant factor — the United Auto Workers union’s extortionate contracts with GM — prevented the carmaker from either reducing its work-force costs or making its products more efficiently. And its hidebound management didn’t help.

Admirers of the GM bailout should bear in mind that it was the Bush administration that first decided to intervene at the firm, offering a bridge loan on the condition that it draw up a deeply revised business plan. President Obama’s unique contribution was effectively to nationalize the company, seeing to it that the federal government violated normal bankruptcy processes and legal precedent to protect the defective element at the heart of GM’s troubles: the financial interests of the UAW. It did this by strong-arming GM’s bondholders into taking haircuts in order to sweeten the pot for the UAW. The Obama administration also creatively construed tax law to relieve GM of tens of billions of dollars in obligations — at the same time that Barack Obama & Co. were caterwauling about the supposed lack of patriotism of firms that used legal means rather than political favoritism to reduce their tax bills.

Mitt Romney’s proposal for a structured bankruptcy would have necessitated considerable federal involvement, too, but with a key difference: The UAW contracts would have been renegotiated, and GM’s executive suites would have been cleaned out, placing the company on a path toward innovation and self-sufficiency rather than permanent life support. Which is to say, Obama did for GM what he is doing by un-reforming welfare: creating a dependent constituency.

The Democrats cling to the ridiculous claim that the bailout of GM and its now-Italian competitor, Chrysler, saved 1.5 million U.S. jobs. This preposterous figure is based on the assumption that if GM and Chrysler had gone into normal bankruptcy proceedings, the entire enterprise of automobile manufacturing in the United States would have collapsed — not only at GM and Chrysler but at Ford and foreign transplants such as Toyota and Honda. Not only that, the Democrats’ argument goes, but practically every parts maker, supplier, warehousing agency, and services firm dedicated to the car industry would have collapsed, too. In fact, it is unlikely that even GM or Chrysler would have stopped production during bankruptcy: The assembly lines would have continued rolling, interest and debt payments would have been cut, and — here’s the problem — union contracts would have been renegotiated. Far from having saved 1.5 million jobs, it is not clear that the GM bailout saved any — only that it preserved the UAW’s unsustainable arrangement.

Bill Clinton bizarrely tried to claim that the bailout has been responsible for the addition of 250,000 jobs to the automobile industry since the nadir of the financial crisis. Auto manufacturers and dealerships have indeed added about 236,000 jobs since then, but almost none are at GM, which has added only about 4,500 workers, a number not even close to offsetting the 63,000 workers that its dealerships had to let go when the terms of the bailout unilaterally shut them down.

Ugly as the bank bailouts were, the federal government appears set to make its money back on most of them, with the exception of some smaller regional banks and CIT. Even AIG, one of the worst of the financial basket cases, is set to end up being a break-even proposition for U.S. taxpayers. But tens of billions of dollars will be lost on GM. The federal government put up more for a 60 percent interest in the firm than GM is worth today.

At their convention, Democrats swore that GM is “thriving,” but the market doesn’t think so: GM shares have lost half their value since January 2011. And while the passing of the Great Recession has meant growing sales for all automakers, GM is seriously lagging behind its competitors: Its sales are up 10 percent, a fraction of the increases at Kia, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Porsche. With its sales weak, its share price crashing, and its business model still a mess, some analysts already are predicting that GM will return to bankruptcy — but not until after the election.

The Obama administration talks up all of the “jobs” it saved at GM — but jobs doing what? Manufacturing automobiles that are not competitive without a massive government subsidy? Propping up an economically unviable enterprise just long enough to get Barack Obama reelected? As much as it will pain the hardworking men and women of GM to hear it, it is not worthwhile to save jobs at enterprises that cannot compete on their own merits. So long as the federal government is massively subsidizing the operation, a job at GM is a welfare program with a fairly robust work requirement. (And we all know how the Obama administration feels about work requirements.)

We have bankruptcy laws and bankruptcy courts for a reason. It may make sense to expedite the proceedings for very large firms such as GM in order to prevent disruptions in the supply chain that would, as Ford’s executives argued, harm other, healthier firms. But bankrupt is what GM was, and bankrupt is what GM is, a fact that will become blisteringly apparent should the government ever attempt to sell off the shares it owns in the company.

The GM bailout was a bad deal for GM’s creditors, for U.S. taxpayers, and, in the long run, for the U.S. automobile industry and our overall national competitiveness. No wonder the Democrats are campaigning on a fictionalized account of it.

Which party has more Women and Hispanic Governors?

2012-08-31T14:31:00.001-04:00

The answer may surprise you? Or maybe not. Does it matter? Should it matter? Is there a distinction between the leadership role of 50 elected governors vs. any elected officials? Either way, read the original here.Chuck Todd: Why Do Republicans Have More Women and Hispanic Governors?
2:02 PM, AUG 31, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER
The Weekly Standard: THE BLOG

MSNBC host Chuck Todd asked the co-chair of the Democratic party's convention, L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, why there are more Republican women and Hispanic governors:

"Let me ask you though, this one question, why is it that the Republicans have elected more women governors and have two Hispanic governors and the Democrats don’t?," asked Todd. "Don’t have as many women governors and don’t have Hispanic governors, why do you think that is?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KkJbOJ-BpI

"Well we have a lot more legislators and mayors and Congress members that are women, that are Latino, that are Asian, that are African American. We have a much broader tent, a much broader representation of every walk of life, people from, you know, every ethnicity and race and sex," said Villaraigosa. "It’s true, they may have more governors but we have a much broader field when you look at all of the elected officials."

Those who don't learn from history...

2012-08-13T20:46:00.001-04:00

...are doomed to repeat it. Of course, POTUS doesn't believe it's a "doom", but rather, a success. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that someone with no business or private sector experience would deem this a success. And I shouldn't be surprised, that he'd want more of the same. Regardless of his intent, the great orator still says that what happened with the government takeover of GM was a success. I disagree.

Read the originals here and here.

Obama: Let's repeat auto industry success
By DONOVAN SLACK

Politico.com
8/9/12 2:18 PM EDT

PUEBLO, Colo. – President Obama, while villifying Mitt Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout, bragged about the success of his decision to provide government assistance and said he now wants to see every manufacturing industry come roaring back.

“I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.

“I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China, I want those jobs taking root in places like Pueblo,” Obama told a crowd gathered for a campaign rally at the Palace of Agriculture at the Colorado State Fairgrounds here.

He made the remarks while pushing for the renewal of a tax credit for wind energy manufacturing – something Romney opposes – and for the creation of credits for companies who bring jobs home from overseas, as well as the elimination of loopholes for offshoring.

“Gov. Romney brags about his private sector experience, but it was mostly invested in companies, some of which were called 'pioneers of outsourcing,'” Obama said. “I don’t want to be a pioneer of outsourcing. I want to insource.”

Clarification: This post was updated to reflect the president's intent to express his support for manufacturing success. An earlier version was unclear about his intent.

(This is the success, that the President refers to. -TheStrategeryBlog)

Report: U.S. Treasury ups expected bailout losses to $25 billion
Published: Monday, August 13, 2012, 4:00 PM Updated: Monday, August 13, 2012, 4:17 PM
By Michael Wayland

mwayland@mlive.com

Mlive.com

DETROIT, MI- The U.S. Treasury Department reportedly expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout involving General Motors and Chrysler.

A new report sent to Congress on Friday states the Obama administration now expects to lose about $25.1 billion, according to the Detroit News.

Aug. 13, DetroitNews.com: “The report may still underestimate the losses. The report covers predicted losses through May 31, when GM's stock price was $22.20 a share.”

The government still owns 500 million shares of the automaker as part of the 2009 auto bailout, which forced both automakers into government-backed bankruptcies.

To recoup all of its nearly $50 billion from GM, government officials would have to sell the remaining shares at about $53 per share.

Earlier this year, GM spokesman Selim Bingol said it is "anybody's guess" as to when the government will exit the automaker.

“The day will eventually come when the Treasury sells its GM stake,” he wrote in an executive blog post in March. “When is anybody’s guess (we have no say in the matter). Meantime, we are focused on designing, building and selling the best vehicles in the world.”

As of 3:45 p.m. today, the Detroit-based automaker’s stock [NYSE: GM] was trading for about $20.45 a share, a 38 percent decline from its initial offering price of $33 in November 2010. The stock hit a record low of $18.85 per share late last month.

During the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June, GM CEO and Chairman Dan Akerson said global economic uncertainty, along with its troubled European operations and pension obligations were hindering the stock’s performance.

“I regret that the stock has not done well post-IPO,” he said. “I will ensure you that we are all dedicated to improving that over the immediate to long-term.”

The Obama administration completely exited Chrysler last year after recovering $11.2 billion of its $12.5 billion bailout to the Auburn Hills-based automaker.

The $25 billion in losses remains less than its estimates of $30 billion in December 2009, according to the Detroit News.

How would you like to make $0.25 on the dollar?

2012-08-03T09:44:00.001-04:00

If you live in France, get ready. The best part is, it won't even make a difference economically or fiscally. It's simply a political middle finger to people who are rich. Read the original here.

In France, socialist Hollande makes the wealthiest pay
By Michael Birnbaum, Published: August 2
Washington Post

PARIS — In Washington, Republicans are bashing President Obama for inflicting “European-style socialism” on the United States.

Here in Paris, a genuine socialist took the presidential oath in May, and he has wasted no time implementing policies designed to make the rich pay more.

French President Francois Hollande has made good on a campaign pledge to make the wealthiest in France pay up to 75 percent income tax. The U.S. Congress, meanwhile, is debating an Obama proposal to allow the top tax rates to rise from 35 percent to nearly 40 percent.

Although the new taxes will not make a major dent in France’s budget, they have delighted the country’s labor unions and others who thought that former president Nicolas Sarkozy, nicknamed President Bling-Bling, gave the wealthy a pass as he called for deep cuts in government spending on the poor. But the rapidly rising tax rates have some businesses and investors saying that economic growth, forecast at a catatonic 0.2 percent this year, will further suffer.

The debate echoes the one playing out in Washington but also illustrates the deep divide — in policy and politics — between the United States and Europe as the countries struggle to crawl their way out of a slowing global economy. Policies that would be considered laughably extreme on the campaign trail in Ohio or Florida have found a champion in the Elysee Palace.

Hollande’s balancing act will test whether higher taxes can work in an age when money hops borders with the click of a mouse and nervous investors display little allegiance to individual countries. Many of France’s neighbors are focusing on cutting spending to balance their budgets rather than raising taxes. Hollande plans a mixture of both, and his aides are gambling that growth will result.

Constrained by a bad economy and commitments to balance the French budget by 2017, the plans are far from the rallying cry of stimulus-led growth on which Hollande based his campaign.

Many of the 17 countries that use the euroare fundamentally reevaluating the sustainability of their model. British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose country uses the pound, has said he would welcome investors and wealthy French people taking flight from Hollande’s taxes.

Hollande’s advisers say new taxes won’t scare away investors if the government follows up with convincing plans for how it will shrink spending, open the labor market and implement other business-friendly measures. In doing so, the advisers say, they hope to reduce France’s 10.2 percent unemployment rate while being fairer to the most vulnerable parts of society by putting the weight of service cuts and tax increases on the wealthy.

“If it’s necessary to have reforms, we will do them . . . based on fiscal elements that are just,” Hollande said in a recent television interview.

Uncertainty about the future

France is contemplating rates dramatically higher than those proposed by Obama. Paris’s conservative Figaro newspaper blazed in a front-page editorial last month about “confiscation” — dredging up memories of Soviet property seizures — reprinting a famous complaint from Tour de France great Bernard Hinault that three pumps of his bike pedal went to the government for every one dedicated to pushing himself forward in the race.

Although the 75 percent tax on earnings over $1.23 million a year, up from a previous top marginal rate of 48 percent, is more a political symbol than an economic measure — because it raises too little money to make a dent in France’s funding needs — analysts say it will help give Hollande political cover to cut government spending and open the labor market, making France more competitive with its neighbors. Parliament approved a one-off wealth tax on people whose assets total more than $1.6 million, and new taxes will raise $8.7 billion this year alone.

“From a strictly economic point of view, I wouldn’t recommend these policies. But that’s not what this is,” said Elie Cohen, an economist who has advised Sarkozy and Hollande. “This is clearly designed to create some kind of consensus in this country for structural reforms” — the kinds of measures otherwise known as austerity.

Many business owners say that they are waiting to see what will happen but that they are nervous about the future.

“We pay a pretty high level of tax already. The money we earned was not stolen,” said Stanislas de Bentzmann, co-chief executive of Devoteam, a computer systems company. “I switch on the radio and I hear the news that the government is doing the opposite of what I think it should do. In this kind of mood, investment decisions are not stimulated in this country.”

But he added that investors would probably tolerate temporary tax increases if there were a “real reorganization of the welfare state” at the same time. French Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac has said that the 75 percent income tax might be reduced once the country balances its budget.

Some economists say they think the prospect of French wealth and investment flowing out of the country is more bogeyman than real.

“French people don’t want to give up the level of service they’re getting,” said Fabrice Montagne, the chief French economist at Barclays Bank. “I wouldn’t overestimate” people leaving the country, he said.

A fragile moment

This is a fragile moment for France. Last month, Peugeot, Europe’s second largest car manufacturer, announced plans to shut down a plant and lay off 8,000 workers. Hollande has fought the plans, but he has little recourse, and his advisers are bracing for more bad news and layoffs in the fall. And with borrowing costs soaring in Spain and Italy, the euro zone’s overall prospects look dim.

Painful policy changes could be easier, with France temporarily benefiting from the fears about its neighbors. Its borrowing rates are close to record lows as nervous investors shift their euros from Spain and Italy to Germany and France, which are seen as more stable. But if markets become nervous about France’s future, rates could spike quickly.

Although France’s income taxes are high and getting higher, the country also has a national sales tax of 19.6 percent and a financial transactions tax and a social services tax of 7.5 percent of earnings, among others. French workers have long accepted the costs as the price of a government that offers cradle-to-grave social protections, but businesses have complained that the high cost of contributions to pension plans and the health-care system have made French workers more expensive than those elsewhere in Europe.

Hollande’s advisers agree there is a problem, and they have signaled that they will cut employers’ required social-safety-net contributions and shift more of the burden onto workers. Nor has the government increased every tax it can find: One of the new president’s first actions when he came into office was to halt a rise in the national sales tax that had been planned by Sarkozy, reasoning that it disproportionately hurt the poor and middle class.

Sarkozy’s associates have slammed the moves.

“I’m quite sure it will be a fiscal shock, which will be very bad for growth, and I’m quite sure that a lot of people who have money or run firms are looking at going outside France,” former finance minister Francois Baroin said in a telephone interview.

For now, with Paris emptying for summer holidays, shuttered businesses with signs saying they’ll be back in September are a reminder that some traditions are hallowed on both sides of the political aisle.

Supply & Demand is a fairly straightforward principle

2012-08-01T08:59:00.001-04:00

Unfortunately, free medical care is a limited commodity, and as a commodity, subject to the economical principles of supply and demand. If the demand goes way up, the supply will be even more limited. I'm not saying people shouldn't have healthcare. I'm questioning why people are surprised with developments like this one. Read the original here.

Rationing Begins: States Limiting Drug Prescriptions for Medicaid Patients
By Melanie Hunter
July 30, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – Sixteen states have set a limit on the number of prescription drugs they will cover for Medicaid patients, according to Kaiser Health News.

Seven of those states, according to Kaiser Health News, have enacted or tightened those limits in just the last two years.

Medicaid is a federal program that is carried out in partnership with state governments. It forms an important element of President Barack Obama's health-care plan because under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--AKA Obamcare--a larger number of people will be covered by Medicaid, as the income cap is raised for the program.

With both the expanded Medicaid program and the federal subsidy for health-care premiums that will be available to people earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level, a larger percentage of the population will be wholly or partially dependent on the government for their health care under Obamacare than are now.

In Alabama, Medicaid patients are now limited to one brand-name drug, and HIV and psychiatric drugs are excluded.

Illinois has limited Medicaid patients to just four prescription drugs as a cost-cutting move, and patients who need more than four must get permission from the state.

Speaking on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Monday, Phil Galewitz, staff writer for Kaiser Health News, said the move “only hurts a limited number of patients.”

“Drugs make up a fair amount of costs for Medicaid. A lot of states have said a lot of drugs are available in generics where they cost less, so they see this sort of another move to push patients to take generics instead of brand,” Galewitz said.

“It only hurts a limited number of patients, ‘cause obviously it hurts patients who are taking multiple brand name drugs in the case of Alabama, Illinois. Some of the states are putting the limits on all drugs. It’s another place to cut. It doesn’t hurt everybody, but it could hurt some,” he added.

Galewitz said the move also puts doctors and patients in a “difficult position.”

“Some doctors I talked to would work with patients with asthma and diabetes, and sometimes it’s tricky to get the right drugs and the right dosage to figure out how to control some of this disease, and just when they get it right, now the state is telling them that, ‘Hey, you’re not going to get all this coverage. You may have to switch to a generic or find another way,’” he said.

Arkansas, California, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia have all placed caps on the number of prescription drugs Medicaid patients can get.

“Some people say it’s a matter of you know states are throwing things up against the wall to see what might work, so states have tried, they’ve also tried formularies where they’ll pick certain brand name drugs over other drugs. So states try a whole lot of different things. They’re trying different ways of paying providers to try to maybe slow the costs down,” Galewitz said.

“So it seems like Medicaid’s sort of been one big experiment over the last number of years for states to try to control costs, and it’s an ongoing battle, and I think drugs is just now one of the … latest issues. And it’s a relatively recent thing, only in the last 10 years have we really seen states put these limits on monthly drugs,” he added.

NY Magazine says using quotes are racist

2012-07-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

Of course it must be racist, right? Cue sarcasm. NY Magazine points out again, that in the media, racism only goes 1 way: their way. Breitbart breaks it down. Read the original here.

'NY MAG': HITTING OBAMA FOR 'YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT' IS RACIST
by JOHN NOLTE
27 Jul 2012
Breitbart.com

With Rasmussen showing Romney enjoying a five-point lead (and that's a pollster everyone in media knows is reliable, which is why they preferjuiced NBC polls), the media is now in pure panic mode. Furthermore, Obama's Media Palace Guards know that when the full context is played of Obama's revealing "you didn't build that" quote, it's absolutely devastating for Obama because the full context of those comments show the President openly ridiculing America's small business owners.

So what's a panicked media to do?

Well, at first the corrupt media lied about Obama being taken out of context. But that's a desperate lie and everyone knows it, which means the Romney campaign was comfortable to keep on keeping on with its use of the President's comments.

So NOW what's a desperate media to do?

Well, I think we all know what the media does when it's at its mostdesperate to protect Obama, don't we, boys and girls?

That's right, the corrupt media screams... RACISM!

Mitt Romney’s plan of blatantly lying about President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech is clearly drawing blood. But what makes the attack work so well is not so much the lie itself but the broader subtext of it. Watch Obama’s delivery in the snippet put together by this Republican ad[.] ...

The key thing is that Obama is angry, and he’s talking not in his normal voice but in a “black dialect.” This strikes at the core of Obama’s entire political identity: a soft-spoken, reasonable African-American with a Kansas accent. From the moment he stepped onto the national stage, Obama’s deepest political fear was being seen as a “traditional” black politician, one who was demanding redistribution from white America on behalf of his fellow African-Americans.

So desperate to reelect Obama he's unafraid to embarrass himself, that's a flailing Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine and this is the ad he's attempting to declare racist.

Sorry, Jonathan, but the only one "blatantly lying" here is you. And your vile race-baiting is equal parts hilarious, maddening, unAmerican, and just plain pathetic.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC

Taranto on Obamacare's Effect

2012-07-25T13:17:00.001-04:00

Is anyone surprised by this? If so, I have many things to sell you, starting with a bridge. Read the original here.

The ObamaCare Tax Increase
WSJ BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
Updated July 25, 2012, 12:39 p.m. ET
By JAMES TARANTO

The Congressional Budget Office has revised its estimates of the effects of ObamaCare, taking into account last month's Supreme Court decision that upheld most of the law. The office found that "of the 33 million people who had been expected to gain coverage under the law, 3 million fewer" now will because of changes in Medicaid., the New York Times reports. By 2022, CBO predicts, "30 million people will be uninsured." Universal health care, baby!

Here are the revenue and spending numbers:
With the expected changes as a result of the court decision, the budget office said the law would cost $84 billion less than it had previously predicted.
"The insurance coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act will have a net cost of $1.168 billion over the 2012-2022 period--compared with $1.252 billion projected in March 2012 for that 11-year period--for a net reduction of $84 billion," or about 7 percent, the budget office said.
In addition, the budget office said that repealing the health care law would add $109 billion to federal budget deficits over the next 10 years. Specifically, it said, repeal of the law would reduce spending by $890 billion and reduce revenues by $1 trillion in the years 2013 to 2022.

Now, how can it "cost" money to repeal a massive new entitlement? Well, the entitlement comes with even more massive new taxes. So right now the prospect of cutting taxes is serving as an argument against cutting spending. The logic of Grover Norquist's "starve the beast" philosophy has never seemed clearer.

WSJ on the debate on Gun Control

2012-07-24T10:35:00.005-04:00

Taranto hits the nail on the head...again. Read the original here.

OK, Let's Debate Gun Control!
A second Obama term could kill the Second Amendment.
By JAMES TARANTO

WSJ BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
Updated July 23, 2012, 4:05 p.m. ET

Last week's horrific crime in Aurora, Colo., has, predictably enough, prompted many leftist politicians and commentators to call for more antigun laws. Actually, that's not quite right. Rather than directly call for more antigun laws, some of them are complaining about the absence of a debate over gun control. Where's the "searching conversation over what rational steps can be taken by individuals, communities and various levels of government to make the recurrence of a comparable tragedy less likely"? the Washington Post's E.J. Dionnewants to know.

"Where a gun massacre is concerned," Dionne writes, "an absolute and total gag rule is imposed on any thinking beyond the immediate circumstances of the catastrophe." It doesn't seem to occur to him that this assertion is self-refuting. If "an absolute and total gag rule" were actually in effect, it would prevent Dionne from saying so.

When people find it necessary to demand a "debate" or complain about the absence of same, it usually means they're frustrated because there is a debate and their side is losing. Sure enough, Dionne's complaint is that those who disagree with him--whom he labels "the gun lobby," "worshipers of weapons" and adherents to "the theology of firearms"--make their case far more effectively than his side does. "The rest of us," he whines, suffer from a "profound timidity," as a result of which they "allow" their opponents' arguments "to work every time."

Dionne is claiming that those on his side have good arguments but fail to advance them because they have poor character. That may be true, especially the part about poor character, but it's still an odd thing to say.

But anyway, by all means let's debate gun control! The Associated Press's Steven Hurst begins a dispatch on the subject by "reporting" that "controlling access to guns would appear, on its face, the simple answer to preventing public massacres like the movie-theatre tragedy in Colorado." He does not reveal the source of this information, but we'll bet it was an exclusive interview with the Associated Press's Steven Hurst.

New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who governs a city some 1,800 miles from Aurora, demanded to know what President Obama and Mitt Romney are "going to do about" making it "harder to get guns." Bloomberg asserted that lawmakers "have been cowed by a handful of advocates who think that the right to bear arms allows you to go out and kill people at random." It is unlikely that anybody actually holds the position that Bloomberg ascribes to his opponents.

The president got into the act too. He "condemned U.S. gun laws as 'mistaken' and urged Washington to review them after a shooter killed 12 people and injured more than 50 others at a U.S. movie theater on Friday,"Reuters reports, quoting his tweet: "Because of the Aurora, Colorado tragedy, the American Congress must review its mistaken legislation on guns. It's doing damage to us all."

Oh, we should specify that was Felipe Calderon, president of Mexico. We'll get to what President Obama said in due course.

Now, there's a very good reason why coastal elites' arguments for gun control fall on deaf ears in most of Middle America. Those who value the Second Amendment suspect that people like Dionne and Bloomberg advocate "reasonable" gun restrictions as a camel's nose to a total or near-total ban on private ownership of firearms and their use for self-defense.

This suspicion is entirely justified. At his press conference, for instance, Bloomberg professed to believe that "there's nothing wrong with you having a gun. . . . If you comply with the law you will have responsible people who know the danger that a weapon or the responsibility that somebody who has a weapon in their hands has."

Well, this columnist lives in Bloomberg's New York, and we would like to own a pistol. But our understanding is that the procedures for acquiring a permit are so onerous that it isn't worth our while to apply. In more than a decade as mayor, Bloomberg has never sought to relax the city's gun restrictions, which are among the nation's most oppressive. He has always pushed in the other direction, demanding loudly if ineffectually that the rest of the country make its laws more like New York's. His actions give every reason to think his claims to respect gun rights are in bad faith.

A New York Times editorial makes similarly disingenuous concessions but carelessly lets the mask slip at the end. The editorialists allow that "many perfectly reasonable people" (though not they themselves) are of the view that the Second Amendment "gives each individual the right to bear arms." They pretend to seek a reasonable middle ground: "The country needs laws that allow gun ownership, but laws that also control their sale and use in careful ways."

The editorial concludes by quoting Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas: "It does make me wonder, you know, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying? That could have stopped this guy more quickly?" To which the Times responds: "That sort of call to vigilante justice is sadly too familiar, and it may be the single most dangerous idea in the debate over gun ownership."

The answer to Gohmert's question is that the chain that owns the theater where the massacre took place has a no-weapons policy, which oddly enough did not deter the shooter any more than Colorado's strict laws against murder did.

But what gives away the game is the Times's characterization of Gohmert's musing as a "call to vigilante justice." To see why that is not just mistaken but pernicious, let's consider the story of another shooting in Aurora.

On April 22, Denver's KCNC-TV reports, a man ran into an Aurora church "and told people to take cover." The pastor's mother "came out of the church to see what was happening in the parking lot and got shot." She was killed, but further carnage was averted because "an off-duty [police] officer was at a service and went outside and shot the man who shot the woman." The officer, a cousin of the pastor, was unhurt, but the suspect later died.

Now, the Times might find this acceptable because the man who shot the murderer was not a "vigilante" but a law-enforcement officer with a (presumably) government-issued gun. But the crucial point is that the shooting was not an act of "justice," which is to say that it was not punitive. If the killer had dropped his weapon, held up his hands, and surrendered to the cop, shooting him would have been an act of murder. Even if he arguably deserved to die, he also has a right to due process of law.

The policeman shot him because there was an immediate danger that he would wound or kill more innocent people. It was an act of defense, not justice. Vigilante justice is contrary to the rule of law, but self-defense is an essential part of it. If the latter is indistinguishable from the former, as the Times claims, then individual self-defense is never justified. To put it another way, the Times editorialists claim not merely that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are dangerous but that it is wrong in principle to save innocent lives by stopping a mass murder in progress.

Does President Obama agree with this extreme and un-American position? He professes not to. "The White House signaled [yesterday] that President Obama . . . did not intend to make a push for stricter gun controls," reports ABC's Jake Tapper, Press secretary Jay Carney says the president stands by "the op-ed that was published in an Arizona newspaper."

That would be Tucson's Daily Star, in which the following assertion appeared under the president's byline in March 2011: "Like the majority of Americans, I believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. And the courts have settled that as the law of the land."

Is that a sincere expression of Obama's views? If you believe it is, we have a bridge we'd like to sell you. (Disclosure: We didn't build that.) After all, this is the man who in 2008, when he thought only his snotty and well-heeled San Francisco supporters were listening, said of Middle Americans: "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

To be sure, the political exigencies are such that Obama's true feelings may not matter. As Politico notes: "The gun control caucus in Congress is increasingly urban, liberal and shrinking. . . . The handful of bills introduced this Congress that would tighten gun restrictions have languished, with a Republican majority in the House. No gun-control bills have cleared the Democratic-controlled Senate, either."

New federal gun-control legislation is highly unlikely to be enacted even if Obama is re-elected. None passed Congress in 2009-10, when Democrats had a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. It's virtually impossible the Dems will reach 60 seats anytime before 2017.

But there's a third branch of government, and it is the reason why a second Obama term could prove deadly to the Second Amendment. Obama's professions of support for the right to keep and bear arms sounds awfully familiar. They sound, in fact, a lot like this: "Like you, I understand that how important the right to bear arms is to many, many Americans. . . . I understand the individual right fully that the Supreme Court recognized in Heller."

That was Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's first appointee to the Supreme Court, answering a question at her 2009 confirmation hearing from Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. She was referring to District of Columbia v. Heller, which astonishingly was the first Supreme Court decision ever to recognize this fundamental right. Sotomayor's statement was a careful one. She did not say that she agreed with Heller or even that she would respect it as precedent. She could easily turn out to "understand" it and wish to wipe it from the books.

And she did. In 2010 the court decided McDonald v. Chicago, which applied the "incorporation" doctrine to the Second Amendment--that is, it held that the amendment, coupled with the 14th, forbids states as well as the feds from encroaching on the right to keep and bear arms. Sotomayor (along with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) joined Justice Stephen Breyer's dissent, which flatly asserted: "The Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense."

McDonald, like Heller, was decided 5-4. One of the dissenters, Justice John Paul Stevens, has since retired from the court. His successor, Justice Elena Kagan, has not yet had occasion to cast a vote in a gun-rights case (and as solicitor general she did not file a brief in McDonald). But we are going to go out on a limb and guess that she agrees with Ginsburg, Breyer and Sotomayor that the Second Amendment is essentially a nullity.

If that is correct, then the court is one vote away from having a majority to reverse Heller. Two of the justices in the pro-Second Amendment majority, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, will be 80 by the end of the next presidential term. If either or both of them were to leave the court during a second Obama term, it is far likelier than not that an Obama appointee would join what is now the minority to kill the Second Amendment.

Ginsburg and Breyer are also in their 70s. If Romney were to replace one or both of them, it is likely that the right to keep and bear arms would be secure, backed by a 6-3 or 7-2 majority.

So by all means, let's have a vigorous debate about gun control and the Constitution. But it's not too much to ask of President Obama that in describing his own views on the subject and the consequences of re-electing him, he be at least as honest as the New York Times editorial page.

Podcast: James Taranto on gun control.

Who built what?

2012-07-18T16:24:00.002-04:00

Who is responsible for success? If something is given, it can be taken away. James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal gives his $0.02. Read the original here.

You Didn't Sweat, He Did
Constructing a sentence is hard work when you're the World's Greatest Orator.
By JAMES TARANTO

Wall Street Journal

"If you've got a business, you didn't build that." If the World's Greatest Orator turns out to be a one-term president, it is likely to go down as the most memorable utterance of his career. Mitt Romney certainly hopes that happens. HotAir.com's Ed Morrissey has highlights of Mitt Romney's response, in a speech yesterday at Irwin, Pa.:

The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn't build Apple, that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn't build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn't build McDonald's, that Bill Gates didn't build Microsoft, you go on the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn't build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America, and it's wrong.
And by the way, the president's logic doesn't just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation or an oil field service business like this and a gas service business like this, it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themself [sic] up a little further, that goes back to school to get a degree and see if they can get a little better job, to somebody who wants to get some new skills and get a little higher income, to somebody who have, may have dropped out that decides to get back in school and go for it. . . . The president would say, well you didn't do that. You couldn't have gotten to school without the roads that government built for you. You couldn't have gone to school without teachers. So you didn't, you are not responsible for that success. President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success and I will change that.
I've got to be honest, I don't think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business. And my own view is that what the President said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States. It goes to something that I have spoken about from the beginning of the campaign. That this election is, to a great degree, about the soul of America. Do we believe in an America that is great because of government or do we believe in an America that is great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and build our future?

There's a website called didntbuildthat.com with a variety of hilarious treatments of the Obama philosophy. Of course, whoever's running the site didn't build that. As he acknowledges, Al Gore did. And hey, remember Julia, Barack Obama's composite girlfriend? At 42, she starts a Web business. Under President Obama, she didn't build that.

Obama may be God's gift to comedy, but Romney is right that the philosophical stakes here are serious. The president's remark was a direct attack on the principle of individual responsibility, the foundation of American freedom. If "you didn't build that," then you have no moral claim to it, and those with political power are morally justified in taking it away and using it to buy more political power. "I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama said in another candid moment, in 2008.

This isn't even Obama's only such revelatory comment of the past week. Politico.com reports that the president, in an interview with WTOL-TV of Toledo, Ohio, let the mask slip again when asked about the ObamaCare mandate tax. "It's less a tax or a penalty than it is a principle--which is you can't be a freeloader on other folks when it comes to your health care, if you can afford it," he said.

Of course this is a dodge. The administration claimed that the mandate was not a tax for political purposes but was a tax for legal purposes. Chief Justice John Roberts tied himself in knots to accept the argument Obama is now running away from. Between them, the solicitor general and the chief justice look as if they were too clever by 1.

What's objectionable about Obama's comment, however, is not "tax" or "penalty" or even "principle." It's the way he uses the word "freeloader."

Normally we think of a freeloader as somebody who sponges off others, which in the context of public policy means the government. A freeloader is an able-bodied welfare recipient, or someone who fakes a disability to collect Supplemental Security income, or who waits until his unemployment runs out before looking for a job.

Now, think about how the ObamaCare mandate tax is structured. As Roberts noted in his opinion for the court in NFIB v. Sebelius, "It does not apply to individuals who do not pay federal income taxes because their household income is less than the filing threshold in the Internal Revenue Code. For taxpayers who do owe the payment, its amount is determined by such familiar factors as taxable income, number of dependents, and joint filing status."

The only people who pay the ObamaCare mandate tax are people who make a living. Actual freeloaders are exempt. What Obama calls a freeloader is someone who makes his own money and pays his taxes but does not spend his money in the government-approved way.

The Obama campaign hotly disputes Romney's contention that the president meant what he said. A "fact check" from the Obama-Biden "Truth Team" (formerly Attack Watch) claims that Romney "is taking President Obama's words out of context" to produce "a complete distortion." Here is the full context, as presented by the Truth Team:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

The Team then explains: "The President's full remarks show that the 'that' in 'you didn't build that' clearly refers to roads and bridges--public infrastructure we count on the government to build and maintain."

That's bunk, and not only because "business" is more proximate to the pronoun "that" and therefore its more likely antecedent. The Truth Team's interpretation is ungrammatical. "Roads and bridges" is plural; "that" is singular. If the Team is right about Obama's meaning, he shoudl have said, "You didn't build those."

Barack Obama is supposed to be the World's Greatest Orator, the smartest man in the world. Yet his campaign asks us to believe he is not even competent to construct a sentence.

Why the "Arab Spring" may be a cautionary tale

2012-07-13T09:25:00.001-04:00

The phrase "The devil I know versus the devil I don't know" and "The lesser of two evils" come to mind. Was Mubarak a bad guy? Yes. Was Ghaddafi a bad guy? Yes with exclamation points. But when overthrowing a bad guy like Saddam Hussein or Mohammed Omar, it is important to know what to do about the power vacuum that will inevitably occur. This also inevitably requires a truly significant investment of time, energy, resources, personnel, political capital, and risk. However, when you ignore that need, and simply support an overthrow of an existing regime, and move on to your next fundraiser and the next news cycle, you may find that you do not like what or who has filled that vacuum. As usual, Krauthammer takes everyone to school. Read the original here.

The Islamist ascendancy
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: July 12
Washington Post

Post-revolutionary Libya appears to have elected a relatively moderate pro-Western government. Good news, but tentative because Libya is less a country than an oil well with a long beach and myriad tribes. Popular allegiance to a central national authority is weak. Yet even if the government of Mahmoud Jibril is able to rein in the militias and establish a functioning democracy, it will be the Arab Spring exception. Consider:

Tunisia and Morocco, the most Westernized of all Arab countries, elected Islamist governments. Moderate, to be sure, but Islamist still. Egypt, the largest and most influential, has experienced an Islamist sweep. The Muslim Brotherhood didn’t just win the presidency. It won nearly half the seats in parliament, while more openly radical Islamists won 25 percent. Combined, they command more than 70 percent of parliament — enough to control the writing of a constitution (which is why the generals hastily dissolved parliament).

As for Syria, if and when Bashar al-Assad falls, the Brotherhood will almost certainly inherit power. Jordan could well be next. And the Brotherhood’s Palestinian wing (Hamas) already controls Gaza.

What does this mean? That the Arab Spring is a misnomer. This is an Islamist ascendancy, likely to dominate Arab politics for a generation.

It constitutes the third stage of modern Arab political history. Stage I was the semicolonial-monarchic rule, dominated by Britain and France, of the first half of the 20th century. Stage II was the Arab nationalist era — secular, socialist, anti-colonial and anti-clerical — ushered in by the 1952 Free Officers Revolt in Egypt.

Its vehicle was military dictatorship, and Gamal Nasser led the way. He raised the flag of pan-Arabism, going so far as changing Egypt’s name to the United Arab Republic and merging his country with Syria in 1958. That absurd experiment — it lasted exactly three years — was to have been the beginning of a grand Arab unification, which, of course, never came. Nasser also fiercely persecuted Islamists — as did his nationalist successors, down to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and the Baathists, Iraqi (Saddam Hussein) and Syrian (the Assads) — as the reactionary antithesis to Arab modernism.

But the self-styled modernism of the Arab-nationalist dictators proved to be a dismal failure. It produced dysfunctional, semi-socialist, bureaucratic, corrupt regimes that left the citizenry (except where papered over by oil bounties) mired in poverty, indignity and repression.

Hence the Arab Spring, serial uprisings that spread east from Tunisia in early 2011. Many Westerners naively believed the future belonged to the hip, secular, tweeting kids of Tahrir Square. Alas, this sliver of Westernization was no match for the highly organized, widely supported, politically serious Islamists who effortlessly swept them aside in national elections.

This was not a Facebook revolution but the beginning of an Islamist one. Amid the ruins of secular nationalist pan-Arabism, the Muslim Brotherhood rose to solve the conundrum of Arab stagnation and marginality. “Islam is the answer,” it preached and carried the day.

But what kind of political Islam? On that depends the future. The moderate Turkish version or the radical Iranian one?

To be sure, Recep Erdogan’s Turkey is no paragon. The increasingly authoritarian Erdogan has broken the military, neutered the judiciary and persecuted the press. There are more journalists in prison in Turkey than in China. Nonetheless, for now, Turkey remains relatively pro-Western (though unreliably so) and relatively democratic (compared to its Islamic neighborhood).

For now, the new Islamist ascendancy in Arab lands has taken on the more benign Turkish aspect. Inherently so in Morocco and Tunisia; by external constraint in Egypt, where the military sees itself as guardian of the secular state, precisely as did Turkey’s military in the 80 years from Ataturk to Erdogan.

Genuinely democratic rule may yet come to Arab lands. Radical Islam is the answer to nothing, as demonstrated by the repression, social backwardness and civil strife of Taliban Afghanistan, Islamist Sudan and clerical Iran.

As for moderate Islamism, if it eventually radicalizes, it too will fail and bring on yet another future Arab Spring where democracy might actually be the answer (as it likely would have been in Iran, had the mullahs not savagely crushed the Green Revolution). Or it might adapt to modernity, accept the alternation of power with secularists and thus achieve by evolution an authentic Arab-Islamic democratic norm.

Perhaps. The only thing we can be sure of today, however, is that Arab nationalism is dead and Islamism is its successor. This is what the Arab Spring has wrought. The beginning of wisdom is facing that difficult reality.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Coincidence or Systemic Change?

2012-07-08T12:39:00.004-04:00

Is this a coincidence or a result of an actual systemic change and improvement? You decide, and read the original here.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE DROPPED IN EVERY STATE THAT ELECTED A REPUBLICAN GOV. IN 2010
by TONY LEE 8 Jul 2012, 6:24 AM PDT

In 2010, influenced by the Tea Party and its focus on fiscal issues, 17 states elected Republican governors. And, according to an Examiner.com analysis, every one of those states saw a drop in their unemployment rates since January of 2011. Furthermore, the average drop in the unemployment rate in these states was 1.35%, compared to the national decline of .9%, which means, according to the analysis, that the job market in these Republican states is improving 50% faster than the national rate.

Since January of 2011, here is how much the unemployment rate declined in each of the 17 states that elected Republican governors in 2010, according to the Examiner:

Kansas - 6.9% to 6.1% = a decline of 0.8%

Maine - 8.0% to 7.4% = a decline of 0.6%

Michigan - 10.9% to 8.5% = a decline of 2.4%

New Mexico - 7.7% to 6.7% = a decline of 1.0%

Oklahoma - 6.2% to 4.8% = a decline of 1.4%

Pennsylvania - 8.0% to 7.4% = a decline of 0.6%

Tennessee - 9.5% to 7.9% = a decline of 1.6%

Wisconsin - 7.7% to 6.8% = a decline of 0.9%

Wyoming - 6.3% to 5.2% = a decline of 1.1%

Alabama - 9.3% to 7.4% = a decline of 1.9%

Georgia - 10.1% to 8.9% = a decline of 1.2%

South Carolina - 10.6% to 9.1% = a decline of 1.5%

South Dakota - 5.0% to 4.3% = a decline of 0.7%

Florida - 10.9% to 8.6% = a decline of 2.3%

Nevada - 13.8% to 11.6% = a decline of 2.2%

Iowa - 6.1% to 5.1% = a decline of 1.0%

Ohio - 9.0% to 7.3% = a decline of 1.7%

On the other hand, the unemployment rate in states that elected Democrats in 2010 dropped, on average, as much as the national rate decline and, in some states such as New York, the unemployment rate has risen since January of 2011.

This is yet another example of how the so-called “blue state” model is not working.

Status check on POTUS: Article from November, 2008

2012-06-27T09:34:00.001-04:00

Here is an article from Investor's Business Daily from November 10, 2008. Read it in its entirety, and it will make you think:

A Checklist Of Obama's Many Promises

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, November 10, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Few presidential candidates have made more specific promises to American voters than Barack Obama. They came so fast and furious in the latter part of the campaign, you'd be excused for not keeping up. So as a public service, we've put together a handy checklist of some of the biggest Obama promises — culled from his "Blueprint for Change," his campaign speeches and advertisements. Clip it. Save it. And see how he did in four years.

Taxes

• Give a tax break to 95% of Americans.

• Restore Clinton-era tax rates on top income earners.

• "If you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime. Not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes. Nothing."

• Dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes.

• Give American businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every job they create in the U.S.

• Eliminate capital gains taxes for small business and startup companies.

• Eliminate income taxes for seniors making under $50,000.

• Expand the child and dependent care tax credit.

• Expand the earned income tax credit.

• Create a universal mortgage credit.

• Create a small business health tax credit.

• Provide a $500 "make work pay" tax credit to small businesses.

• Provide a $1,000 emergency energy rebate to families.

Energy

• Spend $15 billion a year on renewable sources of energy.

• Eliminate oil imports from the Middle East in 10 years.

• Increase fuel economy standards by 4% a year.

• Weatherize 1 million homes annually.

• Ensure that 10% of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012.

Environment

• Create 5 million green jobs.

• Implement a cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

• Get 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015.

Labor

• Sign a fair pay restoration act, which would overturn the Supreme Court's pay discrimination ruling.

• Sign into law an employee free choice act — aka card check — to make it easier for unions to organize.

• Make employers offer seven paid sick days per year.

• Increase the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2009.

National security

• Remove troops from Iraq by the summer of 2010.

• Cut spending on unproven missile defense systems.

• No more homeless veterans.

• Stop spending $10 billion a month in Iraq.

• Finish the fight against Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorists.

Social Security

• Work in a "bipartisan way to preserve Social Security for future generations."

• Impose a Social Security payroll tax on incomes above $250,000.

• Match 50% of retirement savings up to $1,000 for families earning less than $75,000.

Education

• Demand higher standards and more accountability from our teachers.

Spending

• Go through the budget, line by line, ending programs we don't need and making the ones we do need work better and cost less.

• Slash earmarks.

Health care

• Lower health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year.

• Let the uninsured get the same kind of health insurance that members of Congress get.

• Stop insurance companies from discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

• Spend $10 billion over five years on health care information technology.

Preparing for Voter Fraud

2012-06-27T08:54:00.002-04:00

Seriously, someone please explain to me why I need an ID to drive a car, buy alcohol, validate my airline boarding pass, and so many other things, but there are political interests that don't want me to need an ID to vote. Is there an other logical reason other than making it possible TO commit voter fraud to prevent the showing of an ID to vote? Read the original here.

Obama prepping thousands of lawyers for election
By MIKE BAKER
Associated Press
Jun 26, 9:33 PM EDT

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- President Barack Obama's campaign has recruited a legion of lawyers to be on standby for this year's election as legal disputes surrounding the voting process escalate.

Thousands of attorneys and support staffers have agreed to aid in the effort, providing a mass of legal support that appears to be unrivaled by Republicans or precedent. Obama's campaign says it is particularly concerned about the implementation of new voter ID laws across the country, the possibility of anti-fraud activists challenging legitimate voters and the handling of voter registrations in the most competitive states.

Republicans are building their own legal teams for the election. They say they're focused on preventing fraud - making sure people don't vote unless they're eligible - rather than turning away qualified voters.

Since the disputed 2000 presidential election, both parties have increasingly concentrated on building legal teams - including high-priced lawyers who are well-known in political circles - for the Election Day run-up. The Bush-Gore election demonstrated to both sides the importance of every vote and the fact that the rules for voting and counting might actually determine the outcome. The Florida count in 2000 was decided by just 537 votes and ultimately landed in the Supreme Court.

This year in that state alone, Obama and his Democratic allies are poised to have thousands of lawyers ready for the election and hope to have more than the 5,800 attorneys available four years ago. That figure was nearly twice the 3,200 lawyers the Democrats had at their disposal in 2004.

Romney has been organizing his own legal help for the election. Campaign attorney Ben Ginsberg did not provide numbers but said the campaign has been gratified by the "overwhelming number of attorneys who have volunteered to assist."

"We will have enough lawyers to handle all situations that arise," he said.

The GOP doesn't necessarily need to have a numerical counterweight to Obama's attorneys; the 2000 election showed that experienced, connected lawyers on either side can be effective in court.

Former White House counsel Robert Bauer, who is organizing the Obama campaign's legal deployment, said there is great concern this year because he believes GOP leaders around the county have pursued new laws to impede the right to vote.

"The Republican Party and their allies have mapped out their vote suppression campaign as a response to our success in 2008 with grass-roots organization and successful turnout," Bauer said. "This is their response to defeat: changing the rules of participation so that fewer participate."

Several states with Republican leaders have recently pursued changes that could make voting more difficult, including key states such as Florida and Ohio, despite objections from voting rights groups that believe that the laws could suppress votes from low-income and minority blocs.

Republicans dispute that the laws are political, pointing to cases of election fraud and arguing that measures like those requiring voters to show identification are simply common sense. Pennsylvania's Republican House majority leader, Mike Turzai, however, told GOP supporters over the weekend that the state's new ID law "is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania."

Independent from the Romney team, a conservative group is prepping an Election Day team of its own to combat possible fraud.

Catherine Engelbrecht, president and founder of True the Vote, said the organization hopes to train and mobilize up to one million volunteers this year, many of them to serve poll watchers. One of the group's main initiatives is to "aggressively pursue fraud reports."

"Being a poll watcher is an age-old tradition and we're fortunate that so many volunteers are ready and willing to take a day off, learn what they need to know and help out at the polls," Engelbrecht said. True the Vote already has thousands signed up to help and had 500 trained election workers monitoring the Wisconsin recall vote earlier this month.

"They serve as volunteer guardians of the republic, to ensure that procedures at the polls are in keeping with state law," she said.

It's one of the efforts that have Obama's team fretting. The Democrats fear that anti-fraud activity could get out of hand, with vigilante poll watchers targeting and intimidating voters who may not know their rights.

"We will have the strategy and the resources to address the threat and protect the voter," Bauer said.

The Obama-aligned attorneys, most of whom are not election experts by trade, undergo training and have materials to show them how to help at the polls on Election Day.

Charles Lichtman, who is helping advise the effort in Florida this year after leading it in the last two cycles, first created the Florida Democratic Lawyers Council after the 2000 election, vowing that there would never be a repeat of that disputed vote. He contends Democrat Al Gore would have won the presidency over Republican George W. Bush if a similar legal infrastructure had been in place then.

Lichtman's efforts have since been replicated for other states. He said that is vital to provide voter protection.

"My experience has been that, in every election, the other side has taken drastic measures to try to suppress the vote," Lichtman said. The volunteer organization has not been involved in the 2012 legal disputes so far, though they are monitoring the developments.

Four years ago, the teams of lawyers organized by Obama and Republican candidate John McCain in 2008 went largely unused since the election wasn't very close.

But this year may be different given all the changes to voting laws - and the closeness of the race in recent polling.

The states with the strictest ID laws require voters to show photo identification before casting ballots. If they don't have proper identification or fail to bring it, they can cast a provisional ballot but must later go to meet with state elections administrators to sort things out before the ballot is counted.

Voting groups see a variety of potential problems, such as how voters are informed of the rule changes, how poll workers handle voters who fail to bring IDs and whether voters are provided adequate notice of the steps they need to take after casting an absentee ballot.

About 30 states have some form of an ID law, with varying methods of implementation.

Legal challenges typically start coming in the weeks before the election, but "litigation has started coming sooner and more vociferously" this year, says Edward Foley, an elections law expert with Ohio State University. That includes lawsuits surrounding Florida's plan to purge ineligible voters from the rolls.

Foley said. "We're in an era of increased litigiousness over the voting process."

He said lawsuits after Election Day may occur only if votes in a battleground state are within the "margin of litigation." That would probably be a difference of just hundreds of votes, a result that would be rare.

---

Associated Press writer Mike Baker can be reached on Facebook:http://on.fb.me/HiPpEV

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Stimulus money went to cheats...

2012-06-27T08:49:00.000-04:00

...and in other news, the sky is blue. Read the original here.

GAO: $1.4 billion in stimulus credits went to tax cheats
Stimulus cash bought homes
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Tax cheats were given $1.4 billion in government-backed mortgage loans under President Obama’s economic stimulus, and the government doled out at least an additional $27 million in tax credits to delinquents who took the first-time-homebuyer tax break, according to a government audit released Tuesday.

Under government rules, delinquent taxpayers are supposed to be ineligible for the mortgage insurance program unless they have reached a repayment agreement with the Internal Revenue Service. But theFederal Housing Administration didn’t have the right controls to weed out bad applications, said the Government Accountability Office, Congress‘ chief investigative arm.

That meant FHA insured $1.4 billion in mortgages for 6,327 borrowers who collectively owed $77.6 million in unpaid taxes, or an average of more than $12,000 each.

The auditors said that as a category, the tax cheats had foreclosure rates up to three times as high as other borrowers, which meant the delinquent taxpayers exposed the government to even greater risks.

“In the name of ‘stimulus,’ the federal government gave mortgage insurance to thousands of people we knew were tax cheats and had a bad track record paying their debts,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, who joined a bipartisan group of other lawmakers to request the investigation. “The federal government needlessly put taxpayers on the line to help tax cheats buy homes. Congress needs to ensure that tax cheats are no longer allowed to take advantage of FHA programs.”

In addition to the mortgages, the auditors found that more than half of the tax-delinquent borrowers claimed the first-time-homebuyers’ credit, worth up to $8,000.

GAO said there is no prohibition against someone claiming the credit, even though they still have unpaid tax bills. The credit is refundable, meaning taxpayers can get a check back from the government if the benefit exceeds their liability. IRS rules generally call for the agency to subtract any unpaid taxes from the refund, but in three of the nine cases that GAO analyzed in depth, it said the taxpayers had declared bankruptcy, meaning the IRS was prevented from docking the refunds.

The report was the GAO’s second study looking at tax cheats and the stimulus.

In the first report, GAO said thousands of contracts and grants were paid out under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to those with unpaid tax bills.

Mr. Obama pushed the $831 billion economic stimulus in early 2009 as a means of bolstering the faltering economy, and promised to use strict controls to cut fraud and abuse. At its peak in mid-2010, it was responsible for as many as 3.6 million jobs, but could have funded as few as 700,000, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Part of the Recovery Act was aimed at shoring up the housing market, which included the first-time-homebuyer tax credit and the mortgage assistance, which let the FHA insure loans at a higher rate in high-cost housing markets.

About 1.7 million individuals claimed the tax credit, while FHA insured more than $20 billion in mortgages for 87,000 homeowners, thanks to the Recovery Act provisions.

Under a White House policy, buyers who are delinquent on their federal taxes are not supposed to receive the mortgage assistance, unless they have worked out a repayment agreement with the IRS. But FHA rules don’t prod private lenders to ask for that information, and the FHAdoesn’t have a system to work with the IRS to get that information.

Mr. Coburn joined Sens. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat; Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat; Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican; and Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, to request a review of the program.

“The stimulus-spending program was ill-conceived, with far too little oversight,” Mr. Grassley said. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone, unfortunately, that tax dollars have gone to tax cheats. It’s another one of many negative consequences of writing checks without enough checks and balances.”

Compounding the matter, those with tax problems are more likely to end up in foreclosure. Nearly a third of mortgage holders with unpaid taxes were “seriously delinquent” on their payments, and 6.3 percent had been foreclosed - a rate nearly three times higher than homeowners who were paid up with the IRS.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development accepted the report and will work with the IRS to try to get access to information that would help it cull tax cheats, Carol J. Galante, an acting assistant secretary, said in the department’s official response.

She said they also will try to clarify FHA rules so lenders are clear about the eligibility requirements for loans.

Anyone surprised

2012-06-21T09:22:00.000-04:00

When you aren't playing with your own money, you have no sense of obligation to spend it wisely. When was the last time the government spent money efficiently and intelligently? Seriously, why is anyone surprised that so much of the money was wasted and didn't accomplish what they said it would? Not only are the people making these policies and spending this money government bureaucrats, but in this administration, many of them come from academia as well. So that's twice removed reality. Read the original here.

$9 Billion in ‘Stimulus’ for Solar, Wind Projects Made 910 Final Jobs -- $9.8 Million Per Job
By Michael W. Chapman and Fred Lucas
June 20, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration distributed $9 billion in economic “stimulus” funds to solar and wind projects in 2009-11 that created, as the end result, 910 “direct” jobs -- annual operation and maintenance positions -- meaning that it cost about $9.8 million to establish each of those long-term jobs.

At the same time, those green energy projects also created, in the end, about 4,600 “indirect” jobs – positions indirectly supported by the annual operation and maintenance jobs -- which means they cost about $1.9 million each ($9 billion divided by 4,600).

Combined (910 + 4,600 = 5,510), the direct and indirect jobs cost, on average, about $1.63 million each to produce.

As explained in a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“economic stimulus”) of 2009 included Section 1603, a grant program run through the Treasury Department.

The 1603 program offered “renewable energy project developers a one-time cash payment” to reduce the need for green energy companies “to secure tax equity partners” and also help them to achieve “ ‘the near term goal of creating and retaining jobs’ in the renewable energy sector.”

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (EREL) tracked the grant program from its inception in 2009 through Nov. 10, 2011. Its report is entitled, Preliminary Analysis of the Jobs and Economic Impacts of Renewable Energy Projects Supported by the 1603 Treasury Grant Program.

The report explains that the program provided “approximately $9.0 billion in funds to over 23,000 PV and large wind projects.” PV stands for photovoltaic, which is the method by which solar power is turned into electricity, usually with solar panels or solar cells. There were specifically 197 large wind projects and 23,692 PV projects that received funds, according to the EREL report.

For calculating the number of green jobs created, the EREL did not actually count the people working at the facilities but instead relied upon Jobs and Economic Development Impact, or JEDI, computer models.

In its summary, the EREL report states that for the 2009-11 timeframe there were an average 52,000-75,000 “direct and indirect jobs per year” created for the construction, installation, and related work on the wind and solar projects.

These were temporary jobs, construction and installation work at the facilities, not long-term positions at the green energy sites.

The number of these “indirect,” temporary construction jobs averaged between 43,000 and 66,000, according to the EREL, and the “direct” jobs “supporting the design, development, and construction/installation of systems” averaged out to about 9,400 per year.

For the operation and maintenance (O&M) of the photovoltaic and large wind systems, however, the report states there are “between 5,100 and 5,500 direct and indirect jobs per year on an ongoing basis over the 20- to 30-year estimated life of the systems.”

The report further clarifies that from that number there are 910 direct jobs and 4,200-4,600 indirect jobs per year.

The 910 jobs are “directly supporting the O&M of the systems” and that number “is significantly less than the number of [indirect] jobs supporting manufacturing and associated supply chains.”

Through the grant program, $9 billion was spent to, in the end, establish 910 jobs that will last upwards of 30 years. That means those jobs cost, in the end, about $9.8 million to create.

Add in the indirect jobs -- high estimate of 4,600 -- and there are 5,510 total jobs (direct and indirect). Starting with the $9 billion in grants, the end result to establish 5,510 jobs averages out to $1.63 million per job.

Paid to Protest

2012-06-20T09:16:00.001-04:00

Are protesters being paid to protest Mitt Romney? Doesn't this go against the principle of protesting? Read the original here.

Anti-Romney Protesters Say They're Paid To Heckle
Two protesters and an Obama official say “Good Jobs Now” protesters are compensated for their time. A protest leader denies it.
McKay Coppin s BuzzFeed Staff
Posted Jun 19, 2012 4:06pm EDT

DeWitt, Mich. — The protesters popping up at Mitt Romney's rallies throughout Michigan Tuesday look like run-of-the-mill grassroots liberals — they wave signs about "the 99 percent," they chant about the Republican's greed, and they describe themselves as a loosely organized coalition of "concerned citizens."

They're also getting paid, two of the protesters and an Obama campaign official told BuzzFeed.

At the candidate's afternoon stop outside a bakery in DeWitt, a group of about 15 protesters stood behind a police barricade, a few of them chanting in support of Obama. Asked why he was protesting, a man dressed in a grim reaper costume pointed a reporter to a pair of "designated representatives" standing in the shade.

"I can't talk, you gotta get one of those people over there to talk to y'all," he said. "They're the ones who can talk to reporters."

Neither of the representatives agreed to give their names, but two protesters said they were getting paid to stand outside of the rally, though their wage is unclear: one said she was getting $7.25 per hour, while another man said they were being paid $17 per hour.

Meanwhile, about 50 feet away, another protest had been organized by local Democrats in conjunction with the Obama campaign. A campaign official told BuzzFeed they had nothing to do with the other group — which he said he believed they had been sent by the labor-backed "Good Jobs Now" — and confirmed that they were being paid.

"I mean, it's a free country, they can go anywhere they want, but they're not with us," the official said.

The protesters also made an appearance at Romney's rally in Frankenmuth earlier in the day. There, a young man who identified himself only as Demarcus stood with a group of about five others, stopping reporters after the candidate's speech and saying they were there "to represent the 99 percent and tell Romney to stand up for us." He said he was from the group, "Good Jobs Now," but did not indicate whether he was being paid.

Brittany Smith, a spokeswoman for Good Jobs Now, confirmed that they had protesters at the events, but said their "activists are NOT paid to protest. We are a statewide community advocacy group."

The politics of heckling has been a point of frequent debate lately, with both campaigns allowing demonstrators to derail public events in recent weeks. At a press conference in Boston last month, Romney campaign aides and volunteers drowned out a press conference featuring David Axelrod. And the Romney campaign was forced to skip a scheduled stop at a WaWa gas station in Pennsylvania last Saturday after a group of protesters positioned themselves outside the location.

But while both sides enjoy a good, loud demonstration, it's generally acknowledged that paying people to protest is a form of cheating — which explains why the Obama campaign was quick to distance themselves from the group.

By the end of Romney's remarks, most of the "Good Jobs Now" group was standing in the shade, chatting amongst themselves and letting their signs hang to the the ground. And while the Democrats aligned with the Obama campaign continued to shout at rally-goers as they filed out of the event, the other group of demonstrators made their way down the street and loaded on to a charter bus.

UK Telegraph calls shenanigans on US Media bias

2012-06-15T09:34:00.000-04:00

Seriously, imagine if the tables were turned and it was a GOP candidate that made these claims. Read the original here.

Elizabeth Warren's 'Native American' claims: if she was a Republican, the media would call her a racistBy Tim Stanley

Last updated: June 14th, 2012
UK Telegraph

Imagine if a Republican candidate claimed, confidently, that she was part Native American. Imagine if she had actually used that identity to have herself listed as a minority at Harvard, qualifying her for special treatment and celebration as proof of how diverse and progressive her department is. Imagine if, many years later, it turned out that her claims to Native heritage were dubious and, when pressed for proof, she offered her “high cheekbones.” Oh, and she once contributed a recipe to a Native American cookbook called “Pow Wow Chow” (that may even have been plagiarised).

Chances are, that Republican candidate would be hounded night and day by the press, branded a racist and probably be winding down her political career. Right now, she’d be sitting by the phone, praying for a call from the producers of Celebrity Apprentice (gotta pay the mortgage on that wigwam somehow).

The incredible thing is that all this has happened to a Democratic senatorial candidate called Elizabeth Warren. And not only has she been given a pass by her party, which normally treats race with the respect it deserves, but also by the mainstream media. Last night she was chatting with Chris Matthews on MSNBC and Matthews failed to mention the scandal once. If there’s any one reason why Democrats and liberals aren't showing the expected anger about this, it’s because their section of the media has declined to discuss it.

The sad thing is that Warren is, otherwise, an intelligent and credible candidate for the Senate. The product of a working-class family, this self-made academic was one of the bright sparks behind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and is one of the leading liberal minds of her generation. She’s competing in a naturally Democratic state (Massachusetts) that turned bellwether when it elected Tea Party Republican Scott Brown. The 2012 senate race ought to be about jobs and the economy.

Alas, Warren’s bizarre posturing as a Native American (which she has pursued with all the conviction of a full blown delusion) has sapped her credibility. Race shapes a lot of the way that Democrats think about economics and social justice – and within that narrative, Native Americans were the very first minority that the Europeans oppressed on American soil. It thus ought to be not just odd but immoral that Warren would try to borrow their heritage of suffering in order to advance her political career. Worse still, the Harvard Law Journal described her as a “woman of color,” as if it was translating her claimed identity into proof that it was reaching out to African-Americans. A lot of liberals invested a lot of emotional effort into sustaining this myth. This sort of thing is just as inappropriate as Mitt Romney suddenly claiming to be the descendent of slaves.

But what is almost worse is how much the liberal media has tried to smooth the story over. They want the Massachusetts senate race to be a straightforward fight between Warren’s populism and Brown’s conservatism. And so headlines have been massaged, innuendoes have gone unreported, and only one local paper has pursued Warren with the righteousness that the issue deserves. Articles have been written expressing sympathy along the lines of “Well, we’re probably all a little bit Native American.” The Matthews softball interview is only a representative pass.

The takeaway from all of this is that racial insensitivity only matters if it’s done by a Republican. That isn’t to say that conservatives don’t deserve everything they get when they flirt with racially coded appeals (George Allen ought to be hiding in shame, not running for office again). But Democrats can have records of racist activity (the former Senate Majority Leader, Robert Byrd, was a member of the KKK in his youth), express racist sentiments towards Asians (step forward, Marion Barry) and appropriate the racial heritage of others – and no one seems to mind. When it comes to racism, the Democratic credo is “Do as I say, not as I do.”

US Politics: The rules of mixing business with raising money

2012-06-15T09:29:00.004-04:00

Not sure what to think. Would it have been better if he separated them into 2 trips? Maybe, maybe not. Does it add to the feeling that POTUS is disconnected from middle-class America and increase resentment that the American tax-payers have to pay for him to continually campaign and raise money? Maybe, maybe not. Is he the only politician to do this? Fat chance. It still feels dirty to me...regardless of which politician does it. Bolding is done by me. Read the original here.

Campaigner-in-chief: Obama jets out of New York on Air Force One after an evening of star-studded fundraisers... but a short trip to the World Trade Center means TAXPAYERS must pick up the check

By HUGO GYE and LOUISE BOYLE
PUBLISHED: 17:39 EST, 14 June 2012 | UPDATED: 08:01 EST, 15 June 2012
UK Daily Mail

President Barack Obama brought Manhattan to a standstill last night as he held two star-studded fundraising events at exclusive addresses in the city - raising a total of $4.5 million. However, the President's re-election campaign will not have to pay the full cost of his jaunt to the Big Apple, because he combined the trip with an official event which will be charged to the taxpayer. Before the fundraisers, one at actress Sarah Jessica Parker's house and one at the five-star Plaza Hotel, Mr Obama scheduled a visit to the World Trade Center site. Following his visits across New York he headed home to the White House in Washington DC aboard the presidential helicopter, Marine One.

Mr Obama has now held more fundraising events than the last six presidents combined, leading to his opponents coining the derisive nickname 'Campaigner in Chief'. He frequently combines the events with his official duties, which allows his re-election campaign to defray the President's travel costs by charging part of them to the public purse.

For a trip like yesterday's, involving both official duties and campaign events, a formula is applied so that the campaign pays part of the costs - but it still works out cheaper than making a trip purely for campaigning. Mr Obama must be accompanied by Secret Service protection and fly on Air Force One at all times for security reasons, further increasing the cost of his travel.

The World Trade Center, which Mr Obama has visited several times before, is a major building project and recipient of generous federal aid, as well as an iconic national memorial. It is unclear what prompted the President to return to the site - where he took the chance to hail 'the American spirit' - on this occasion.

The intimate dinner at the house of Sex and the City star Ms Parker and her actor husband Matthew Broderick banked about $2million, with 50 people paying $40,000 each to attend.

Ms Parker, dressed in a navy lace cocktail dress, a jewel-studded necklace and a giant diamond ring, gave the president a hug and kiss as she introduced him to the donors in her Manhattan home.

She referred to Michelle Obama as 'our radiant and extraordinary First Lady' and said the group of 50 donors had gathered 'hopefully, with enormous enthusiasm'.

Speaking in a dimly-lit, art-filled room, Mr Obama told supporters they would play a critical role in an election that would determine a vision for the nation's future.

'The other side is going to spend $500 million with a very simple message, which is "You’re frustrated, you’re disappointed, and it’s the fault of the guy in the White House",' he said. 'And that’s an elegant message. It happens to be wrong. But it’s crisp. You can fit it on a bumper sticker.

'So we’re going to have to work hard in this election. We’re going to have to work harder than we did in 2008.' He went on: 'You're the tie-breaker. You're the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes.'

Among the celebrities on hand to hear the President's remarks were Oscar winner Meryl Streep, fashion designer Michael Kors and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who moderated a private question-and-answer session between the Mr Obama and the guests.

Mr Broderick, who was starring in a Broadway musical, was absent. New Orleans jazz musician Trombone Shorty performed for the guests, who were seated at two long tables that spanned two rooms, with the dividing doors thrown open.

Aretha Franklin, who left the party after just 20 minutes, told TMZ she ate 'chicken with a mustard sauce, diced tomatoes and a lot of relishes on the side of the plate'. The meal was prepared by Michael White, owner of Marea in Manhattan. Olivia Young, his publicist tweeted: 'I'm eating Marea steak in Sarah Jessica Parker's kitchen wearing no shoes. Oh and Obama is upstairs.'

During his address, Obama poured praise on Wintour, saying she was 'working hard in New York and Chicago' to help his campaign for re-election. He also had praise for his wife: 'I recognise that most of you are here to see Michelle,' he joked.

'I always explain I rank fifth in the hierarchy in the White House. There’s Michelle, my mother-in-law, the two girls and Bo. So that actually makes it six. In terms of star wattage, people come to the White House and say, "Where’s Michelle?"'

When the president mentioned that U.S. car manufacturer GM is 'back on top', Ms Parker's nine-year-old son started clapping, impromptu. 'That’s worth applauding,' Obama said with a smile as the donors laughed and also began clapping. 'Right on cue,' Obama said.

The night's second glitzy fundraiser was held at the Plaza Hotel for 250 guests, paying $10,000 each for dinner and a performance by Mariah Carey.

Co-host Newark Mayor Cory Booker and singer Alicia Keys addressed the crowd before Obama took the microphone to speak of the challenges the economic downturn has brought Americans. 'The crux of this campaign is going to be about the economy,' he said.

Some New Yorkers reacted with anger at the prospect of footing the bill for Mr Obama's fundraising visit to the city. Lauren Greenwood, a 28-year-old who works in medical sales, told MailOnline that while she had no objection to the President attending campaign events, 'it shouldn’t be on New York taxpayers’ dollars to support him having parties.' But Jonathan Fischer, 24, disagreed, saying: 'He came here on business, he handled his business... He spends his days protecting the country, the rest is up to his own free will. He also pays taxes, so it doesn’t bother me.'

Much of downtown Manhattan was temporarily sealed off for the duration of Mr Obama's visit, and the street in the West Village neighbourhood where Ms Parker's house is situated was closed to pedestrians. Some pedestrians bemoaned the disruption caused to the New York streets by the presidential motorcade - Mary Grach told ABC that Mr Obama's visit was 'really inconveniencing a lot of commuters'. She added: 'There has to be a better way to go about it rather than putting out how many thousands of riders out of commission, and having to find another way home.'

In 2004, Democrats criticised George W. Bush for combining fundraisers with official duties, and Republicans have responded in kind this year. Mr Obama has been furiously fundraising ever since a Supreme Court decision removed most restrictions on spending by super PACs, outside groups which raise money to promote causes and candidates.

The President initially opposed super PACs, but earlier this year he relented and allowed top officials to speak at fundraising events organised by such groups. The Republican party has officially complained about Obama’s campaign activities.

In a letter, Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee chairman, alleged: 'Throughout his administration, but particularly in recent weeks, President Obama has been passing off campaign travel as "official events", thereby allowing taxpayers, rather than his campaign, to pay for his re-election efforts.'

During the 2008 election, Mr Obama declined public money for his campaign, allowing him to raise an unlimited amount privately. He ended up spending around $730million, almost double the amount raised by his rival John McCain.

Republicans also lambasted Obama for courting celebrities for dollars while middle-class angst rides high. The party lampooned the President when his campaign promoted Ms Parker's event on the same day news broke of climbing unemployment.

Priebus wrote a column on conservative website Breitbart.com criticising the president for declaring the private sector was 'doing fine' during a news conference last week. 'Where would President Obama get an outrageous idea like "the private sector is doing fine?" Perhaps from one of his many star-studded fundraisers,' he wrote.

'The president has his priorities all backward. He puts growing government ahead of growing the economy, his job above American jobs, and celebrity galas above presidential duties.' Obama, who has been seen at recent events with George Clooney, Tobey Maguire and Jessica Alba, appears increasingly reliant on the celebrity draw for his campaign fundraisers. His next Dinner With Barack raffle tells would-be donors they can help pick Obama's guest, naming Clooney and Parker as examples.

Neither Mr Obama nor his Republican opponent Mitt Romney is expected to take public financing for November's election.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2159554/Barack-Obama-New-York-President-jets-evening-star-studded-fundraisers.html#ixzz1xrsvLrwe