Stand Like A Rock

More… March 13, 2010

DagnyTaggart — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:10:56 +0000

President Obama Is Pooped!
According to London’s Sunday Telegraph, the president’s decision to not welcome British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last March with the customary press conference and State Dinner was not a result of a deliberate slight, rather POTUS was tired.

Will House healthcare reform vote come next week?
With President Obama delaying a trip to Asia until March 21 to rally support for healthcare reform, House Democrats are stepping up the pace to get a bill to the Oval Office by the end of next week. “I’m delighted that the president will be here for the passage of the bill,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a briefing Friday. “It’s going to be historic,” Pressed on that timing, she added: “We will take the time that we need to pass the legislation. … I’m hoping that it will be in that time frame.”

Obama’s sick obsession
Nationalized health care is the progressives’ Golden Fleece. It is their obsession, the ultimate prize that was denied to previous administrations but is closer than it ever has been. As the ability of government to take over the health care system draws tantalizingly near, the president and leaders of the majority party have become infected with a kind of mania. President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders seem determined to ram through a severely flawed piece of legislation by any means necessary…

Hillary Clinton Is NOT Happy: Israel “Insulted” The U.S.
Secretary Of State Clinton Hillary Clinton is not happy with Israel. Earlier this week, during Vice President Joe Biden’s trip there, Israel made a surprise, seriously ill-timed announcement of a 1,600 home development project to be built in a disputed part of East Jerusalem. The U.S. was not pleased (to put it mildly) and Clinton apparently said as much in a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier today, and later elaborated in an interview with CNN.

GOP Highlights Roadblocks to Two-Bill Reconciliation Strategy
Republicans on the House Budget Committee, led by Rep. Paul Ryan, have released a new memo outlining the possible roadblocks to Democrats’ strategy of passing the Senate health care bill with the promise that the Senate would be able to make changes to it through the reconciliation process. I’d like to highlight a few of the key issues it raises. The reconciliation instructions in last year’s budget said that any health care changes adopted through reconciliation would have to reduce the deficit by $1 billion between 2010 to…

Cap and Tax
A tripartisan trio of senators — John Kerry (D., Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.), and the New York Times’s favorite Republican environmentalist, Lindsey Graham (S.C.) — is working overtime to build support for “doing something” about climate change in the upper chamber of Congress.

GOOGLE ‘99.9%’ sure to shut China search engine
Talks with China over censorship have reached an apparent impasse and Google, the world’s largest search engine, is now “99.9 percent” certain to shut its Chinese search engine, the Financial Times said on Saturday.

FCC’s National Broadband Plan: What’s in It?
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to release a national broadband plan next week that will lay out an ambitious set of goals for broadband deployment and adoption.

Media heavyweights spar over charging for news online

New CATO Study Shows Educators Lie

DagnyTaggart — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:08:01 +0000

by Mytheos Holt
BigGovernment.com, March 13, 2010

As any exasperated advocate of commonsense education reform can tell you, liberals and their allies in the teachers unions will, like drunken spammers, never cease to declaim on how “PUBLIC EDUCATION NEEDS MORE MONEYS LOL.” Yet, as highlighted in the video above, a recent study by the CATO Institute has found that public educators routinely lie about the exorbitant costs of education so as to keep parents from realizing just how little the vaunted Leftist sacred cow of public education actually provides for their child. Yes, you read right. When it comes to public education costs, some of the biggest liars are people who our tax dollars pay to teach the truth.

Just as an example, the CATO study found that, while Washington DC public schools claim to spend about $17,000/student, the actual price tag is closer to $28,000. Just to put this in perspective, this is a higher price than the private Potomac School, Georgetown Preparatory School, Stone Ridge School and Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. In fact, it’s only $2,000 less than Sidwell Friends, the ultra-exclusive private academy where President Obama’s own daughters attend.

In other words, parents in Washington are spending nearly as much on schools with a 41.8% dropout rate as they could be on a school that produced Nancy Reagan and Bill Nye and is widely regarded as one of the best private schools in the nation. One is reminded of Ronald Reagan’s quotation during his 1964 speech that “But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we’re going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.”

Maybe not, but time in the Washington, DC school system certainly isn’t the answer to juvenile delinquency! Just ask the kids over in Ward 8.

And if that seems scandalous, then believe me, that’s just a taste of all the explosive revelations the CATO study has to offer, which is why I’d urge any freedom loving reader on this website to take a look at it. It will shock you, it will anger you, but unlike the public education system, it will also actually enlighten you.

Source: BigGovernment.com

Small-Town Mom Second American Woman Arrested in Terror Plot on Swedish Cartoonist

DagnyTaggart — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:02:44 +0000

FoxNews, March 13, 2010

Last Easter, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a 31-year-old mom with a $30,000-a-year job as a medical assistant, announced to her family that she had converted to Islam. A few months later, she began posting to Facebook forums whose headings included “STOP caLLing MUSLIMS TERRORISTS!”

On Sept. 11, she suddenly left Leadville, Colo., a small town in the Rocky Mountains, with her 6-year-old son for Denver, then for New York, to meet and marry an Algerian man she connected with online, her family says. Paulin-Ramirez, who is 5-foot-11 and blonde, phoned her mother and stepfather in Leadville, providing them with an address in Waterford, Ireland, they say.

Now, she is in the custody of the Irish police, along with three other individuals, arrested as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to commit murder, according to officials familiar with the case. The nature of the authorities’ suspicions about Paulin-Ramirez couldn’t be determined on Friday.

A U.S. official confirms that a Colorado woman has been detained in Ireland in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist whose sketch offended many Muslims.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez was among seven people arrested in Ireland this week as authorities investigate an alleged plot to kill the cartoonist over a 2007 sketch depicting the head of the Muslim prophet Mohammed on a dog’s body.

The drawing provoked terror group Al Qaeda in Iraq to offer a $100,000 bounty for his killing.

The U.S. official was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Irish authorities only identified the seven arrested as three Algerians, a Libyan, a Palestinian, a Croatian and an American woman married to one of the Algerians.

Irish police said Saturday three Muslims arrested in the case were freed without charge, but three men and an American woman remain in custody.

Paulin-Ramirez’s interest in Islam “came out of left field,” said her mother, Christine Holcomb, in an interview at her home Friday, wearing a blue sweatsuit with a silver cross around her neck.

“I’m angry with her right now,” Holcomb said. “I’d like to just choke her. But I’m worried about her, too. I love my daughter.”

Holcomb learned about the arrest of her daughter in the case by the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies.

She said she’s also concerned for the welfare of her grandson, who has been placed in the custody of Ireland’s foster care system.

“This is about my baby,” Holcomb said. “We need some help to get this baby back. I’m concerned about my daughter but I’m concerned about our baby boy because he shouldn’t be caught in the middle of this.”

Holcom said Paulin-Ramirez announced to her family last spring that she was converting to Islam and began wearing headscarves, and later a hajib.

“It came out of left field,” Christine Mott said. “I knew she was talking to these people online… What caused her to turn her back on her country, on her family and become this person? I don’t know how or why. All I know is she was in contact with this Jihad Jane.”

“The only thing I could think of is that they brainwashed her.”

Paulin-Ramirez’s stepfather, George Mott, said the FBI seized a desktop computer in late September but did not tell the family what they found.

It’s not clear whether Paulin-Ramirez might face terror charges.

Paulin-Ramirez is the second American woman to be linked to an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who made fun of the Prophet Mohammed. An indictment was unsealed this week against Colleen R. LaRose, 46, a suburban Philadelphia woman who authorities said used the Web alias “JihadJane.”

LaRose was accused of plotting to kill the cartoonist and attempting to recruit jihadis via the Internet. She was arrested in October and later charged with providing material support to terrorists. The Justice Department kept its case under wraps until this week while investigators in the U.S. and Europe pursued their investigation against other potential suspects in the U.S. and abroad.

The main contact for LaRose is believed to be one of the men in Irish custody, an Algerian, who has a relationship with Paulin-Ramirez, according to a person close to matter. A person close to the Irish police couldn’t confirm whether Paulin-Ramirez and the Algerian are married. LaRose spent roughly two weeks in Ireland last fall, a person familiar with the matter said.

Click here for more on this story from the Wall Street Journal.

Source: FoxNews.com

The Land of Entitlements

DagnyTaggart — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:33:30 +0000

By David S. Van Dyke
American Thinker, March 13, 2010

Even though more than half of government spending goes to entitlements, the era of entitlements is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of our country.

Democrats are eager to defend creating yet another healthcare entitlement by flatly stating “everybody loves Medicare.” To put this in context one must realize that there are no Medicare recipients alive today who have first hand knowledge of being without Medicare while elderly. Some may remember their parents or grandparents surviving well into old age without Medicare, but not themselves. Very few alive today remember a time without Social Security. Within the space of a human lifespan our society has become a culture conditioned to accept (and expect) entitlements as the norm without questioning the consequences. It has been a very effective strategy to enlarge government.

Social Security was enacted in 1935 (75 years ago). The country was suffering in the Great Depression. Communism was actually popular in this country at the time. The very concept was unprecedented. It is important to realize that the average life expectancy in 1935 (all races, both sexes) was 61. Social Security was originally intended to provide supplemental retirement income for workers (and their spouses) after they retire and reach the age of 65. At the time Social Security was enacted it was palatable to the American public and a reasonably safe bet for the federal government. Most people didn’t live long enough to become eligible. For several decades Social Security did not appear to be the obvious Ponzi scheme that it is. At its inception there were something like 16 workers for every Social Security recipient and the associated payroll taxes were low. Left alone, Social Security would be solvent to this day and perhaps far into the future. But things changed.

Before too long Social Security was funding all sorts of things for which it was never intended (e.g., disability, dependent children). Congress viewed it as a giant vote buying machine. Further, they saw that great big pile of money from Social Security payroll taxes and couldn’t help but spend it and replace it with worthless IOUs. Perhaps more worrisome, within 30 years of being enacted the average life expectancy had increased to about 70. As a result, at over time there were more and more living eligible recipients and fewer workers per recipient. By this time it was politically impossible to stop the Social Security juggernaut. Every worker who had been taxed for this entitlement expected to receive it. Many had parents or grandparents who had come to depend on their Social Security payments. What was originally envisioned as a supplemental income came to be viewed as a total government funded pension. If the money collected through payroll taxes had not been spent as fast as it came in, Social Security might still be solvent today. But this is not the case.

Estimates vary, but right now the Social Security Administration is posting an unfunded liability of about $38 trillion. The current worker to recipient ratio is just under 3:1 and is expected to reach 2:1 within only a few years as baby boomers start to retire. For the first time Social Security is paying out more in benefits than it is collecting in payroll taxes. The nation is staring down the barrel of a very real financial crisis… and politicians are fretting about the planet being slightly warmer 90 years from now.

Had Social Security never been enacted or (at least) had been reformed when we had a chance, our country would be in much better financial health. I clearly remember my father complaining that my maternal grandparents drew far more from Social Security than they ever paid in. This is probably true for every generation ever since Social Security was enacted. My father passed away last year at the age of 90 (he retired when he was 63) and my mother is still alive at age 87. They have drawn many times more from Social Security than they ever contributed. We are today witnessing the inevitable implosion of the largest Ponzi scheme ever devised by mankind. Social Security essentially defines “unsustainable.” We can buy some time, but none of the necessary measures are palatable to either politicians or the American public.

The obvious remedies are to raise the age of eligibility to at least 70 (today the average life expectancy is nearly 79), increase Social Security withholding taxes, establish some form of means testing (i.e. don’t pay Social Security benefits to retiring millionaires) and perhaps somehow correlate total lifetime benefits paid with total contributions. These measures will buy us time, but they won’t fix the fundamental problem. In short, it is utterly impossible to continue down the path FDR established 75 years ago.

If Social Security doesn’t pose enough of a threat, left unchecked, Medicare will utterly bankrupt the nation. Medicare was enacted in 1965 following other “Great Society” welfare measures. At the time the average life expectancy was 70. More significantly, medical care was not as sophisticated or expensive as it is today. There were few effective interventions for the big killers, cardiovascular disease or cancer in 1965. Who could have predicted the absolute explosion in medical and pharmacologic innovation? Who could have anticipated that life expectancy would continue to increase? Consider how common such procedures as total knee and hip replacement are today. Think about coronary artery bypass graft surgery, stents, pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, intraocular lens replacement, advances in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, advances in the management of diabetes and the myriad of drugs that treat and prevent disease. No, to LBJ and the liberal Congress of 1965 Medicare appeared to be a relatively small ticket, vote buying initiative. The problems Medicare (and Medicaid) present today nearly dwarf Social Security but we can employ the same tactics to buy some time while we formulate a more realistic solution for the long run.

The fact is that our current entitlement programs threaten to consume virtually 100% of GDP if left unchecked. In truth, we can’t go on much longer without making some unpopular changes. Why Obama is pushing for an expansion of our current entitlement system defies logic. We can’t even afford to maintain the programs we already have.

The generations of our parents and grandparents gave rise to these entitlement programs and milked them for all they were worth. Let us pray that the generations of our children and grandchildren will learn the lesson of such folly. Let us pray that all of us wake up from our entitlement stupor in time to enact necessary changes before then entire nation falls prey to a true financial and social crisis.

Source: American Thinker

President Obama to unveil education plan Monday

DagnyTaggart — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:22:28 +0000

By: Carrie Budoff Brown
Politico, March 13, 2010

President Barack Obama will release a blueprint Monday for his long-awaited overhaul of the No Child Left Behind law, replacing annual benchmarks for schools with a goal of having all graduating students prepared “for college and a career.”

“Through this plan we are setting an ambitious goal: all students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career – no matter who you are or where you come from,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. “Achieving this goal will be difficult. It will take time. And it will require the skills, talents, and dedication of many: principals, teachers, parents, students. But this effort is essential for our children and for our country.”

Obama first signaled his intent to push ahead with the overhaul this year in his budget released last month. The blueprint he will send to Congress Monday will flesh out details of his plan.

“What this plan recognizes is that while the federal government can play a leading role in encouraging the reforms and high standards we need, the impetus for that change will come from states, and from local schools and school districts,” Obama said. “So, yes, we set a high bar – but we also provide educators the flexibility to reach it.”

The president called for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which first passed in 1965 and has been reauthorized every five years. The law became known as No Child Left Behind during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

The 2002 No Child Left Behind law pushed schools to boost test scores each year, with the goal of having every student read and perform math on their grade level by 2014. But Education Secretary Arne Duncan has reportedly called this goal “utopian,” and said the law does too little to reward schools for progress.

Obama said that under the blueprint he’ll release next week, schools that perform well would receive incentives, while those that fare poorly would face consequences.

“Schools that achieve excellence or show real progress will be rewarded, and local districts will be encouraged to commit to change in schools that are clearly letting their students down,” Obama said. “For the majority of schools that fall in between – schools that do well but could do better – we will encourage continuous improvement to help keep our young people on track for a bright future: prepared for the jobs of the 21st century.

“And because the most important factor in a child’s success is the person standing at the front of the classroom, we will better prepare teachers, support teachers, and encourage teachers to stay in the field,” Obama said. “In short, we’ll treat the people who educate our sons and daughters like the professionals they are.”

Source: Politico

Why our ‘post-modern presidents’ fail

DagnyTaggart — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:10:36 +0000

By RALPH PETERS
New York Post, March 13, 2010

Since the end of World War II, our country has had three great presidents: Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.

Their politics varied, but these giants stand in sharp contrast to our last three presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now Barack Obama. The first two presided over gravely flawed presidencies; the third is on his way to outright failure.

What makes these two presidential trios so different? A recent visit to the Truman Museum and Library in Independence, Mo., made me ask what made those great presidents great.

The answer is character. The three greats were men of great character; the three recents, men of great ambition — driven, in their different ways, by a fateful sense of entitlement.

And you don’t build character by punching your ticket at today’s Ivy-League universities, then dashing straight into politics.

The people I admire most in life aren’t the golden boys (or girls), but those who’ve come up the hard way. Frankly, failure builds character — in those who have the gumption to get back up on their feet and fight to succeed.

Until the Reagan years, it was still possible to become president without elite credentials. Harry Truman had only a high-school diploma. Reagan graduated from the sort of college today’s Washington insiders mock. Eisenhower was a Military Academy grad — back when West Point was still an engineering school.

Most important, each man tasted bitter disappointments along the way. Young Harry Truman had to return from Kansas City to work 16-hour days on his family’s troubled farm. After combat service in the First World War, he co-owned a men’s store — only to face bankruptcy in the postwar recession. Barely averting that bankruptcy, he paid each debt he owed over the years.

Eisenhower thought his career was finished when he failed to get a combat command during World War I. His peers gained medals while he trained troops Stateside. Years later, he was little more than a football coach in uniform. But he never gave up — and worked relentlessly at his profession.

Ronald Reagan knew what it felt like to be written off, to be regarded as a second-rater. Descending through B-movies to minor television jobs, he seemed finished. He wasn’t. Reagan remade himself to serve the country he loved. And the world’s better and safer for it.

Each of these men — all from rural or small-town backgrounds — knew hardship, failure and what it was like to sweat for a living. Not one of them would stand a chance of being elected president today.

Instead, we’ve had Clinton, Bush and Obama, with their laurel wreaths of degrees from Oxford, Yale and Harvard. Two did have challenging childhoods (who hasn’t?). But once they figured out how to game the system and get into top schools, Clinton and Obama never deviated from their identical goal of becoming president.

George W. Bush did fail in business — but he never had to worry about how he was going to feed his family. The Bush-dynasty safety net was there for him — Dad could always make the phone call.

As president, Bush showed tenacity — and far more character than Clinton or Obama — but he, too, fit the post-modern model of gaining the White House from an inside track.

Will we ever again have a president who didn’t go to an Ivy League school, who knows what it’s like to struggle — as so many Americans struggle every day — and who’s tasted defeat, but got back in the ring with his dukes up?

Wouldn’t it be a fine thing to have another president whose first serious taste of failure didn’t come in the Oval Office?

We don’t need presidents with exclusive academic credentials. We need presidents who know what it’s like to work for a living. We need presidents who understand average Americans. We need presidents for whom the White House isn’t just the ultimate résumé entry.

Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan had different visions of what was right for America — but their concern was America, not themselves.

These profoundly different men had two other things in common: They weren’t lawyers, and they had the courage to make tough decisions, from dropping the first atomic bombs to telling the chieftain of an evil empire to tear down a wall.

Our post-modern presidents can’t even decide what to do with blood-soaked terrorists. I don’t think that would’ve been a problem for Harry, Ike or the Gipper.

Ralph Peters’ new book, “Endless War,” is on sale now.

Source: New York Post

Harsanyi: Beware the Amazon

DagnyTaggart — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:02:07 +0000

By David Harsanyi
Denver Post, March 12, 2010

Tyranny is afoot. And this evil arrives in the guise of second- hand books and cheap Chinese trinkets. So beware.

Actually, if anyone ever needed an obvious illustration of how government overreach can damage an economy, they need look no further than the Colorado legislature’s foolish attempt to wheedle a few extra bucks out of consumers via an Internet sales tax.

After legislation forcing online companies to collect sales tax passed, Amazon.com moved to protect its consumers and long-term interests by severing its ties with Colorado. Unfortunately, this meant closing its associates program, which involved an estimated 5,000 jobs.

Amazon’s actions were not surprising, as it did the same in North Carolina and Rhode Island (a state, incidentally, which reportedly saw no additional revenue generated after passing a similar law taxing Internet sales).

“They’ve done nothing here but spit in our face,” bristled Colorado Senate Majority Leader John Morse in a ludicrous rant on YouTube, wherein he went on to describe Amazon’s actions as “such tyranny!”

Tyranny? Imagine that.

Since we’re throwing incendiary words around, it should be noted that Morse’s actions are a far better fit for the definition. The dictionary, after all, defines tyranny as “oppressive power exerted by government” or a “government in which absolute power is vested in a single ruler.”

Besides, Amazon does not possess the power to compel its will on any Colorado citizens. All Amazon can do is pick up and leave. The state, on the other hand, does have the ability to coerce both taxpayers and corporations.

Once you get past the hyperbole of embarrassed legislators, the argument— and it has appeal — is that there is a lack of “fairness.” Why should out-of-state online stores have an advantage over the traditional stores in the state?

Well, Amazon came up with better technology, it offers better services and, thus far, it has had a far superior business model. That’s why. Let’s leave the slippery concept of “fairness” to toddlers and legislators.

Amazon and other similar online stores offer a near-infinite array of choices at affordable prices. Their success hurts many on-the-ground businesses, no doubt, but it also benefits millions of consumers who save money. The tax savings that consumers cull from Internet purchases will be spent elsewhere, and more than likely in brick-and-mortar establishments.

But let’s not forget that legislators also packed the bill with punitive measure and mandates that resemble, gulp, “tyranny.”

Not only must online businesses notify consumers to pay taxes, but they would be mandated to hand over consumer sales records, and if not, pay fines for every violation — many beyond their control.

And as a recent Tax Foundation study on “Amazon laws” concluded, online companies would have to deal with more than 8,000 different tax computations should every state join Colorado’s effort. Amazon would be nuts not to fight.

Still, you can understand why some folks are mad. ProgressNow, a liberal advocacy group, has launched a boycott of Amazon, which is a fine way to make a point, though I suspect its impact will be as small as the national Whole Foods boycott (which started after CEO John Mackey had the gall to offer some constructive ideas on health care reform).

One only wishes that citizens could boycott irascible and intrusive state legislators — with their knee-jerk, ill-informed, anti-capitalist sentiment — who are willing to risk the jobs of thousands of citizens for a couple million bucks in the state’s coffers.

Alas, no such luck.

E-mail David Harsanyi at dharsanyi@denverpost.com and follow him on Twitter at @davidharsanyi.

Source: Denver Post