What is the real agenda?

Why all of the rush, all of a sudden? Ever since the Democrats came into full power in January, they have been in full hurry-up mode.

I remember the so-called stimulus bill was rushed through before anybody could read it or understand it. Turns out it didn't stimulate much but it did feather a bunch of Democratic nests.

A bullet train from Southern California to Las Vegas for good old Harry Reid, for instance.

It is easy to recognize that some action was called for at the time. A day or two or even a month would not have made any difference. So why the rush?

The energy bill, aka the cap and trade bill, was similarly rushed through the House, with no time to read it, and no amendments permitted ( Ms. Pelosi makes Tom DeLay look like a warm fuzzy kitten).

And now the President is pushing it through the Senate, trying to pass it by August.

This so-called problem ended in 1998 when the globe started cooling again. Why not take a few months and have a good debate on it? Why the big rush?

And now we have the big push to pass socialized health care (disguised as "reform") by August as well. The health care business has been around for a long time, and Medicare and Medicaid have needed reform since they were initiated.

So why are we rushing into all of this? These are major bills that will have lasting, perhaps permanent, effects on our lives and our economy.

And we must pass them without even having a debate or being able to read and understand them before they become law?

Wait a minute. Just wait a minute. Is this the kind of "hope and change" we want? Does this constitute the transparency Obama promised? Or the bi-partisanship?

Maybe its just Rahm Emmanuel not wanting to lose the benefit of a good crisis to ram things through.

Could there be another agenda at work here? Not just health care reform, or solving global warming? Is this an attempt to transform the United States into a socialist state, where everyone has equal results in the pursuit of happiness?

Consider the energy proposals. This would levy high direct and indirect taxes on everyone who uses energy.

Companies that manufacture or produce things would be the heaviest hit. It would make those industries even more uncompetitive than the labor unions have managed to do. That would produce a huge drag on employment. This has very deleterious effects on the entire economy, because we have to produce things to create wealth.

Of course, we would all be hit, depending upon the energy we use. Walk to work and do away with all of your modern appliances, including lights, and you might avoid most of the tax.

The health care industry is also a large part of our economy, and employs a very large number of people. The proposals before the Congress would create a number of taxes on various aspects, and particularly employers within and without the industry. Uninsured individuals who don't want insurance ( about 40% of the total according to a study for the CBO) will be taxed, forcing them to buy or pay the tax. (Free country, right!).

Both of those bills will contribute to severely crippling our economy right in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

And anyone with any degree of intelligence should know it.

Now I know that Obama and his team are intelligent and should know this is true ( that does not apply to Lenin's "useful idiots" in the Congress).

So is it their real agenda to bring the US to its knees? Where are they heading us?

They have already nationalized the biggest automaker. Who will be next?

Health care on the front burner

William Katz over at Urgent Agenda calls our attention to something in the New York Daily News writtten by one Kristen Lopez Eastlick about a study done by her organization for the Congressional Budget Office. The subject was the nation's folks that are not insured for health care. Who are the 47 million uninsured, really? is part of the title of the article.

It seems that the study found that 43% of them are voluntarily uninsured, in that they make an average of $65,000 per year, and can therefore afford the coverage, but for their own reasons, choose not to buy it. I can see why we don't hear that from the pols in DC.

She goes on to point out that 13% of the uninsured are illegal aliens. In addition, 40 % of the uninsured are unemployed, and if they could find suitable employment or were trained so they could, many of them could get insurance from their employers.

As a result, she questions why we should do such a radical overhaul of our entire system, when lesser approaches would solve the problem. That is a good question.

Mr. Katz has a comment of his own:

"Congress is about to enact a hugely expensive solution to a problem it doesn't even understand. Indeed, the lack of interest in facts is stunning. It's especially stunning when you look at the media, which is always whining about "the people's right to know." Apparently, there are many things the people don't have a right to know, like the real nature of the health-care "crisis.""

Why the hurry? Why such drastic measures? Why such high costs?

Only The Shadow knows.

Follow the money

Profits from two very large financial institutions have been in the news lately. Its amazing how that can happen in an environment where taxpayers have been subsudizing those institutions and others like them since last Fall.

One, JPMorgan Chase, just paid back its TARP money, but there has been not accounting for the funds advanced by the Fed.

Goldman Sachs, on the other hand, did not take TARP money, and again, there is not any accounting, one way or the other, for any funds advanced by the Fed.

Goldman, however, was the primary beneficiary of the bailout of AIG, receiving $12.9 Billion dollars of taxpayer money passed through AIG.

One might ask why them....why not Lehman Bros., too?

One of the things learned early in my career in politics was that when you have questions like that, you "follow the money."

OpenSecrets.org is a site where one can do just that. I highly recommend it to you.

If one checks campaign donations to the big shots, one can learn a lot. Take Obama's biggest contributors last year:


"University of California
$1,564,490

Goldman Sachs
$994,795

Harvard University
$854,017

Microsoft Corp
$833,617

Google Inc
$803,436

Citigroup Inc
$699,790

JPMorgan Chase & Co
$695,132

Time Warner
$589,334

Sidley Austin LLP
$588,598

Stanford University
$586,557

National Amusements Inc
$550,683

UBS AG
$543,219

Wilmerhale Llp
$542,618

Skadden, Arps et al
$530,839

IBM Corp
$527,572

Columbia University
$526,802

Morgan Stanley
$514,881

General Electric (NBC)
$499,130

Latham & Watkins
$493,835

US Government
$491,420"

Now these are contributions that are aggregated by the particular entity employed by the giver. Any of them look familiar?

Note that the two companies in this discussion are high up the list. Also ABS was a beneficiary of AIG bailout as well.

Now for the McCain contributors:


Merrill Lynch
$373,595

Citigroup Inc
$322,051

Morgan Stanley
$273,452

Goldman Sachs
$230,095

JPMorgan Chase & Co
$228,107

US Government
$208,379

AT&T Inc
$202,438
Wachovia Corp
$195,063

Credit Suisse Group
$183,353

UBS AG
$183,079

PricewaterhouseCoopers
$167,900

Bank of America
$166,026

US Army
$165,370

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
$159,596

Blank Rome LLP
$154,226

Greenberg Traurig LLP
$146,437

US Dept of Defense
$143,605

FedEx Corp
$131,974

Lehman Brothers
$126,057

Bear Stearns
$117,498

Hmmm. The same guys appear both places, and near the top. Note that the two in last place on McCain's list didn't make the Obama list, and they are no longer with us. That and what is below may point out why Lehman Bros., Goldman Sach's biggest competitor was allowed to fail. Of course, Obama was not elected yet.

Now Goldman Sachs did have more going for it than campaign contributions. They have actually been in charge of making policy at least since Robert Rubin was Clinton's Sec/Treas. Then we had Summers, then Paulson, and now Geithner, with Summers making sort of a re-run in the White House. All from Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs was there at the creation of the bubble, and at the end, and now at the "recovery."

Basically, what we have is the coyotes guarding the henhouse.

Isn't this a wild way to run a government?

Cramming

After kicking around yellow dogs yesterday, today has been slow.

We changed out our telephone, cable and Internet providers this morning, so have been playing a bit with that.

Its Uverse, and so far, so good.

The summer doldrums are here, and Congress is rushing to get a bunch of bad legislation through while most people are thinking about vacation, or wishing they had the money to go.

From what I read, a lot of Democratic Congressmen were taken aback by their constituents' reactions to the "cap and trade" bill. I cannot understand why.

One would think that anybody with any sense would have realized that if you pass a huge tax without reading a word of the bill, most folks might get a little upset.

Watch them try to do the same thing with socialized medicine. I saw where Rahm, Obama's man, has threated to cram the socialized medicine down our throats whether we like it or not.

Hope and change.

Of Yellow Dogs and Stuff

From back when I was a Democrat until this very day, I have known Democrats who would swear they would vote for a yellow dog, if he was a Democrat.

There are a lot who actually would....its not a joke.

There is a lot of "tribalism" that goes into political parties, I guess.

I was always a bit too independent to turn over my political choices to a group that anybody could join, so although I supported Democrats back in the day with whom I didn't fully agree, I didn't pull the straight ticket lever but once. That was in 1964. Big mistake. Have not done it since.

But back to yellow dogs....I have seen some candidates who wouldn't be able to stand up to a good yellow dog, and from both parties. I have nothing against yellow dogs, per se. In fact, I like dogs, even yellow ones.

Where I take issue with those Democrats is when the candidate doesn't measure up to a good dog, and they will vote for him or her anyway, if they run for election as a Democrat. (To treat everyone the same, I would feel the same way about a Republican who would do such.)

Of course, there are some elections where neither of the parties offer a decent choice. One that comes to mind was the last election for governor here. There were lots of candidates, but I wasn't real happy with either of the two parties' candidates, and the independent, although an old friend, just didn't measure up. So I voted for old UT graduate Kinky Friedman, because I knew he couldn't screw things up nearly as badly as the others could. But Kinky, although really a Democrat, wasn't a yellow dog.

I came up with this yellow dog business today as I was pondering some of the emails about Obama that are flying about the Internet. You know, the ones about his birth certificate, his travel to Pakistan on a foreign passport, his college records, and all that stuff.

Now, I have no idea whether those allegations are true or false.

But what I do know is that the allegations have been out there since before the election (many are based upon his books).

That raises the question: how can anyone have voted for him without knowing the answers to the questions?

The so-called mainstream press never pressed any of it, although private parties tried to. I understand Obama has spent nearly a million dollars keeping it all hushed up. He, like any individual, has a right to privacy, but it would seem that a candidate for President would not be concerned about a birth certificate. Or college records (we had Bush's). Or passport records.

I have been in public service for over 40 years, and my life has been an open book. I never had anything that I was sufficiently ashamed of to hide. Why is Obama ashamed?

He could very easily solve the problems and answer the questions.

And that is what got me to thinking about the yellow dog.

Whither climate change? What is the real agenda?

It is noted that the new term adopted by the environmental "sky is falling" group is "climate change" to replace the old term "global warming."

But its perhaps not so unexpected when you consider that the globe mysteriously stopped warming in 1998. That occurred even though manmade CO2 emissions have continued to rise.

Unfortunately, that has not stopped the "Chicken Littles" out there from demanding that we take great and painful steps to limit the use of fossil fuels in the U. S. even if few others do.

One must question why we should do this to cure a problem that doesn't even exist.

There are two articles out lately that explain what is happening. Unfortunately, our media in the United States is ignoring the fact that there are reputable scientists that disagree with the "consensus" view that we are having a catastrophic warming event. The two I mention are from the United Kingdom.

Ian Plimer, in an interview in the Spectator, has another view:

‘The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology."

In his book, Heaven and Earth, he pointed out that:

".... polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty."

During the period of growing gapes and citrus in southern Scotland, the world was far warmer than now, and warmer than predicted in the next hundred years.

His view of the various computer models used to forecast future climate change is correct:

"...I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase."

So there you have it. There is more from him, but let's consider the article by Christopher Booker in the Telegraph.

He speaks of the G-8 summit last week which committed to fight "global warming", or "climate change", if you will:

"Last week in Italy, the various branches of our emerging world government, G8 and G20, agreed in principle that the world must by 2050 cut its CO2 emissions in half. Britain and the US are already committed to cutting their use of fossil fuels by more than 80 per cent. Short of an unimaginable technological revolution, this could only be achieved by closing down virtually all our economic activity: no electricity, no transport, no industry. All this is being egged on by a gigantic publicity machine, by the UN, by serried ranks of government-funded scientists, by cheerleaders such as Al Gore, last week comparing the fight against global warming to that against Hitler's Nazis, and by politicians who have no idea what they are setting in train."

He goes on:

"What makes this even odder is that the runaway warming predicted by their computer models simply isn't happening. Last week one of the four official sources of temperature measurement, compiled from satellite data by the University of Huntsville, Alabama, showed that temperatures have now fallen to their average level since satellite data began 30 years ago."

He then talks of the paper by George Carlin at the EPA, which the EPA attempted to suppress:

"In March, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has a key role in President Obama's plans to curb CO2 emissions, asked one of its senior policy analysts, Alan Carlin, to report on the science used to justify its policy. His 90-page paper recommended that the EPA carry out an independent review of the science, because the CO2 theory was looking indefensible, while the "counter consensus'' view – solar radiation and ocean currents – seemed to fit the data much better. Provoking a considerable stir, Carlin's report was stopped dead, on the grounds that it was too late to raise objections to what was now the EPA's official policy."

Why the rush to judgment on a ruinous "cap and trade" bill in the United States? Now that the global warming "consensus" is beginning to collapse, and the globe is cooling again, would it not be better to stop and study the issue more thoroughly?

In a deep recession it just does not make sense to usher in radical rules that will greatly increase everyone's energy bills. Particularly when the worls biggest CO2 emitter is not going to join in. So if Obama and the Democrats have their way, we are going to ruin our economy while giving China, India and other developing nations a giant competitive edge over Americans.

That makes so little sense that I have to wonder if their agenda is not to solve the imagined global warming, but to "transform" our economy into something the left can be proud of, but at the cost of millions of jobs.

Sheer madness.

Starting

Starting the blogging day hoping that the tree we just planted in the back yard prospers.

And also looking forward to the fresh blackeyed peas my bride has been shelling.

They are cooking now and sure smell good.

One of the simple pleasures for an old retired guy.

The Transformation of America

William Katz who blogs at Urgent Agenda has a bit about something written by Frank Miele, the managing editor of a small Montana newpaper, The Daily Inter Lake.

The commentary is about Obama and Abraham Lincoln, for whom Obama has shown a great deal of admiration.

Mr. Katz blogs about wisdom and genius and how it can be confused. And warns about Obama relying on genius as opposed to wisdom. Its good, and you should go there and read it.

But Miele's commentary is much more than that.

He quotes Obama:

"Let us transform this nation," Obama said in his 2007 announcement address. "Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy... And as our economy changes, let's be the generation that ensures our nation's workers are sharing in our prosperity.... Let's be the generation that ends poverty in America.... Let's be the generation that finally tackles our health care crisis... Let's be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil... Let's be the generation that makes future generations proud of what we did here."

Miele says we should not now be surprised at what Obama is doing. He told us well in advance.

Obama also talked about greatly transforming our economy long before the economy went into the tank. When he said that, the economy was humming along.

From the very beginning, he has had the notion of doing away with our old economic system, capitalism, and substituting.........what?

Given that Obama was raised in a Marxist leaning household and has an awful lot of friends who are extremely radical, one can figure out where he wants to take us pretty easily.

Our intrepid editor goes on to say:

"Thus, to the extent that he is indeed the "towering genius' his admirers perceive, President Obama may quote Lincoln, but he certainly doesn't want to be him. He wants not to preserve the work of presidents past, but to "transform" the nation, to "take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America," as he said in Springfield...."

This is right on point. What Obama wants to do is not preserve our nation as it has been, but to transform it into something else. And he is busy trying to do just that.

Miele further states:

"Now, Abraham Lincoln was not a prophet –– just a very wise man. His words provide food for thought, but should not themselves be considered an indictment of any individual. Nonetheless, for those of us who are concerned that Barack Obama means exactly what he says, and does indeed intend to "transform" the nation, they are one more opportunity to make a plea for "preservation" of the "temple of liberty" instead."

We still have a chance to stop this, but people must wake up to what is happening. Congress cannot be trusted to do it. For crying out loud, they spent nearly a trillion dollars without reading the bill, and passed the "cap and trade" bill in the House with nobody having read it as well.

We need a political revolution in this country to counter the one that Obama and the left is trying to cram down our throats. Unfortunately, neither of our political parties is up to the task.

Will we all wake up?........... In time?

Who will lead the revolution? Is anybody out there?

The War Against the Producers

The summer doldrums are here. News is slow, but there are some good blogs out there.

Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent piece over at Pajamas Media. I won't try to blog about it. Its all too good to break down. Its called The War Against the Producers.

The subtitle at Pajamas asks the good question:

"How can rewarding unproductive areas of the economy and punishing the engines of the economy possibly work?"

Hanson proceeds to answer that question and others. Perhaps the best quote from the artice is:

"Final observations: Obama brilliantly conflated the Wall Street class with the upper-tier of Main Street in Animal Farm fashion: the former gets lectured, but stays enriched through bailouts; the latter takes both the moral hit for the former’s crimes and greed and the actual hit in higher taxes.

(Nota bene: the new Democrats, in Prince Charles fashion, like the taste and culture of the hyper-rich, who care little about taxes, are sensitive behind their ramparts to the less well off, and know high-culture (think Streisand, Gates, Soros, the Georgetown/Hollwood/Silicon Valley, Upper East Side, Cambridge, Mass, set). These aristoi despise the wheeler-dealer, always on the move, uppity, wanna-get-rich scrambler that is desperately trying to get his get kid through Public U, and add a wing on his gross MacMansion, while towing his outboard up to the lake for five hours of water-skiing, without an opera, symphony, or NPR analysis on the radio)."

This is a very good article, is very thoughtful, and needs to be read in its entirety. Go here to do so.

Will we wake up?

Starting the blogging day wondering if the people of the United States will realize what a drastic transformation of our country Obama is attempting in time to stop it.