Clearly Conservative

WA 2011 Primary Election Underway!

2011-07-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

Washington’s 2011 primary is underway, with county election officials mailing ballots to more than three-fourths of the state’s registered voters.

It’s the first election since lawmakers officially switched the state to full use of vote-by-mail. Pierce County, the last holdout for poll-site voting for a dwindling number of their residents, had made the switch to mail balloting.

Not every registered voter should expect to receive a ballot. Two counties have no primary at all this year — Franklin and Wahkiakum — and portions of many counties also have no races that are contested in the primary.

There are no statewide primaries this year. The primaries for statewide office, including open races for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, will be next year, and that’s when the U.S. Senate, 10 U.S. House races, and many legislative, judicial and other contests will be on the ballot.

Two special legislative races to fill unexpired terms in Spokane and Clark counties, will be on the November ballot this year.

All told, the state Elections Division calculates that about 78 percent of the state’s registered voters, or about 2.86 million, will get primary ballots. Postmark deadline is Aug. 16, and turn-in deadline for drop boxes or voting centers, is at 8 p.m., Aug. 16.

Registered? The last possible date for an in-person registration for a new voter who wants to vote in the Aug. 16 primary is Aug. 8.

Secretary of State Sam Reed, the state’s chief elections official, said odd-year elections in Washington are largely devoted to local elections, mostly nonpartisan, and various ballot propositions. Turnout is typically not as strong as in even-numbered years, when many hotly contested races generate heavy voter and media attention and ad blitzes.

But Reed asked voters to “dig deep” and do their civic duty, and privilege, this year.

“As a former local elected official for many years, I can tell you that the local elections are often pivotal to the life of a community. Local government truly is the government closest to the people and those whom we elect will be making exceptionally important decisions in the days to come.

“We ask that every eligible citizen, particularly our young people 18 and older, get registered, get involved, get informed, and vote this year. Your vote truly is your voice, and you deserve to be heard.”

By David Ammons

CALL NOW - We Oppose the Boehner-Reid Debt Plan!

2011-07-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

FOX News is reporting that the Capitol Hill switchboards are overloaded with calls. Bring it on - Call Now!

Senator Maria Cantwell (202) 224-3441
Senator Patty Murray (202) 224-2621
1st District - Jay Inslee (202) 225–6311
2nd District - Rick Larsen (202) 225-2605
3rd District - Jaime Herrera Beutler (202) 225-3536
4th District - Doc Hastings (202) 225-5816
5th District - Cathy McMorris Rodgers (202) 225-2006
6th District - Norm Dicks (202) 225-5916
7th District - Jim McDermott (202) 225-3106
8th District - Dave Reichert (202) 225-7761
9th District - Adam Smith (202) 225-8901

Let DC Hear From You NOW!

2011-07-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

It is URGENT that those in Washington DC hear from you TODAY!

Heritage Action has provided this very easy way to communicate with your elected leaders in Washington DC on the issue of spending and the debt ceiling. Please use the link below right now and let your voice be heard.

Click here: Heritage Action

Go With the American Plan — Cut Gov Spending, Deeply and Right Now

2011-07-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

By David S. Addington, Heritage

It’s hard to understand why President Obama took to the airwaves tonight at prime time. He still has no plan for dealing with government overspending and overborrowing, and he gave the nation very little except a repetition of his never-ending call for tax hikes.

In noting the risk of ever-increasing debt, President Obama said every family knows that “a little credit card debt is manageable.” The government has racked up $14.294 trillion in debt — thought of by no-one as a little credit card debt. The spend-tax-and-borrow crowd, currently headed by President Obama, has been in charge in Washington too long. They have mortgaged the futures of our children and grandchildren. Our government is so deep in debt that the share of debt of a baby born today is $45,000.

It is time for the spend-tax-and-borrow crowd to stop. As the President indicated, conservatives want deep spending cuts. In contrast, President Obama wants more taxes, a terrible idea. First, the government already takes too much money from the pockets of Americans in taxes. Second, if Americans give the government more money in taxes, the government will just find ways to spend it, rather than using it to pay off the public debt. Third, raising taxes reduces investment, which cuts economic growth and kills jobs.

Americans sent a message in the election of 2010 — cut the size and cost of government. Conservatives must act now to drive down spending on the way to a balanced budget, while protecting America, and without raising taxes. Forget the McConnell, McConnell-Reid, Coburn, Gang-of-Six, Boehner, and Reid plans. Go with the American plan — cut government spending, deeply and right now, for the good of the country.

Cut, Cap, and Balance

2011-07-22T17:50:00.000-07:00

Conservative groups, including Eagle Forum, rolled out a pledge aimed at reining in the budget deficit, and will be rating lawmakers on how they measure up on that task.

The pledge, written by a coalition of more than 40 conservative groups, calls on lawmakers and candidates to oppose any debt limit increase unless all three of the following conditions have been met:

1. Cut - Substantial cuts in spending that will reduce the deficit next year and thereafter.

2. Cap - Enforceable spending caps that will put federal spending on a path to a balanced budget.

3. Balance - Congressional passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- but only if it includes both a spending limitation and a super-majority for raising taxes, in addition to balancing revenues and expenses.

Register to Vote in WA Primary - Deadline Monday

2011-07-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

by Brian Zylstra

This year’s Primary Election is just a few weeks away, and if you haven’t registered to vote and want to take part in the Primary, you need to act soon.

For qualified Washington residents, Monday (July 18) is the standard deadline to get signed up using the quick and easy online registration or by regular mail, or to update your address or change your name.

This year’s Primary is August 16. Since we’re a vote-by-mail state, you’ll be interested to know that the ballots will be mailed by July 29.

There is a late registration deadline on August 8 to sign up in person at your county elections department if you’re not already registered to vote in Washington.

The deadlines to register to vote in the November 8 General Election are October 10 for online or mail registrations, and October 31 for in-person registrations.

Saving Medicare

2011-05-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

Scare and distort. That would sum up what Democrats have to offer on Medicare. Thankfully the party with a plan has Paul Ryan: http://youtu.be/DJIC7kEq6kw

Abandoning Our Constitution

2011-05-16T18:44:00.000-07:00

By Tara Ross

In a shocking twist, ex-Senator Fred Thompson has joined the effort to abolish the Electoral College. He claims that the National Popular Vote movement is “totally consistent with our constitutional principles.”

I like Thompson. I voted for him in the 2008 presidential primaries. But his endorsement of NPV simply cannot be reconciled with the Constitution. It is a pity, because he has spent so much of his public life defending these important principles. It is puzzling that he has abandoned them now.

NPV is consistent with the Constitution?

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention explicitly rejected a nationwide popular vote for President. The small states would never have ratified the Constitution with such a system in place, for fear that they would be constantly outvoted by big states such as Virginia and New York. NPV implements the system that was rejected and pretends that it is somehow consistent with this constitutional history.

The Constitution requires approval from three-quarters (38) of the states before radical change can be made to constitutional processes. NPV is on track to change the method of electing a President with the approval of fewer than 20 states.

The Constitution implements a system that combines the best elements of federalism, republicanism, and democracy. The Founders understood from their study of history that a pure democracy “is one of the greatest of evils” that “soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” It is “very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.”

NPV shuns the lessons of history—so important to the Founders—and replaces America’s federalist, republican, democratic presidential election process with a purely democratic one.

There is more: NPV will likely cause Equal Protection, legal and logistical problems that I have discussed at length elsewhere. But even these few examples should show that Thompson and others need to more thoroughly study the history of our Constitution and the Electoral College before casually claiming that NPV is consistent with America’s founding principles.

Please visit and join the Freedom Foundation’s Save Our States Project dedicated to preserving our Constitution and Electoral College for the sake of our liberty, security, and prosperity.

Excess Federal Properties in WA State

2011-05-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

Puget Sound Business Journal

The White House has released a massive database of all federal properties deemed “excess” and no longer needed by the government, including 491 in Washington state.

The White House statement:

“The Federal Government is the biggest property owner in the U.S., and billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted each year on government properties that are no longer needed. The President has proposed a Civilian Property Realignment Board to help the Federal Government cut through red tape and politics to sell or get rid of property it no longer needs, saving taxpayers $15 billion over the first three years after the Board is fully up and running.”

“There are roughly 14,000 buildings and structures currently designated as excess and thousands of others that are underutilized. These properties range from sheds to underutilized office buildings and empty warehouses.”

Nationally, there is a database of 12,218 properties listed by federal agency, state and city where you can find detailed information regarding specific properties. Click here to see that list.

Another Federal "Capture Revenue" Proposal

2011-05-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration is floating another tax scheme that should be sunk immediately - taxing drivers by the mile.

The plan is part of a 498 page White House proposal called - and this is rich - the Transportation Opportunity Act. The "opportunity" referred to is the opportunity to take more of the money you earn through a VMT, or vehicle milage tax.

Specialized tracking equippment would need to be installed in every vehicle to electronically track miles driven. In other words, the government could potentially track not only how far you drive but where you go.

Knowing this might not sit too well with the public The Hill reports that an "awareness comunications" plan (translation: plan to indoctrinate the public) would likely be set up first.

While technically a draft, and not an actual bill, this proposal is clearly on the path to become another hideous reality of the desperate left.

It is just a bit comical to note that this proposal comes as a result of bullying the public into purchasing hybrid and electric cars. Bummer...those vehicles inadvertently result in less revenue for the tax-guzzling government to spend. No "mon" no fun!

Democratic Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota owned that in this statement reported by The Hill:

"Do we do gas tax?" Conrad asked. "Do we move to some kind of an assessment that is based on how many miles vehicles go, so that we capture revenue from those who are going to be using the roads who aren't going to be paying any gas tax, or very little, with hybrids and electric cars?"

The people's recourse is to loudly reject this proposal, and to "capture" power back from the left. November 2011 will be a great place to start.

How's That "Hope & Change" Working Out For You??

2011-04-27T17:10:00.001-07:00

This came across Facebook today and I think it's a creative, mysterious, truth-telling way to reach thousands of people around you everyday with the thought-provoking question "How's that "hope & change" working out for you?"

Can't fill your vehicle any more since it now costs over $100 and your credit card is stopped at that? How much has the price of your Cinnamon Burst Cheerios gone up in price? How many of your daily expenses have increased drastically over the past two years?

It's time for us to call attention to the financial impact Obama has had on us. Some friends in Georgia came up with a great idea how to do that and have fun at the same time. The vehicle - sticky notes!

We all have them, or can easily and inexpensively get them. Write on each one "How's that "Hope & Change" working for you?" and then place it where it will not impede the next customers ability to read information or price. We WANT to call attention to the price!

Those who shop after you will be reminded just how much the cost of living as increased since Obama took office.

What a great idea...and it's taking the nation by storm! Join the fun. Here's a Facebook link that will tell you more: "Hope & Change" Sticky Note Campaign

Atlas Shrugged

2011-04-04T23:11:00.000-07:00

The movie that liberals hate and major theater chains are refusing to show will be released on April 15, and across the US citizens are challenging them...with success.

Using the following link - Bring Atlas Shrugged To Your Town - you can participate in encouraging movie theaters in your local area to show Atlas Shrugged.

So let your voice be heard people, and let's bring Atlas Shrugged all over Washington State!

And here's a great piece from John Stossel on Atlas Shrugged that's worth watching:

Stossel Atlas Shrugged - Part 1

Treating Women & Children As Commodities

2011-03-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON STATE LEGISLATURE SEEKS TO TREAT WOMEN AND CHILDREN AS COMMODITIES

It is stunning. Bill 1267 now before the Senate, would legalize coercing poor women to prostitute their wombs for the manufacturing of children. Both the woman and child would be bought and sold. Barbaric.

This is a cynical if-you-have-enough-money, you have a right to purchase other human beings. THIS TRAVESTY MAY BE VOTED ON THIS WEEK.

Do we have to relearn that buying and selling of other human beings is a moral evil? Obviously, declaring: "Never again" is, by itself, never good enough, because human exploitation changes its disguise; the injustice appears in a different form with a new rationale.

Those legislators who pay lip-service to caring about women and children, are looking to legalize them as a commodity.

No matter your opinion on surrogacy, same-sex marriage, or abortion, you should be appalled at how poorly this legislation is written:

THE PURCHASE OF CHILDREN

HB 1267 would allow a couple to purchase a surrogate to have a child that may not be genetically related to the buyers.

Current Washington law sets forth that it is unlawful to purchase a minor child, but this bill inserts an exception into the law for a child that is the result of a paid contract.

This completely bypasses or circumvents all adoption safety procedures. These procedures are in place to protect children. This is an adoption, except in name. Gestational adoptions are adoptions. Yet, all adoption procedures are bypassed by this bill.

EXPLOITING POOR AND VULNERABLE WOMEN

Women who are low-income or unable to find work could be coerced into becoming a surrogate out of desperation.

While other state allow compensation for expenses and lost wages, there are NO LIMITS under this bill to the amount of money which could be spent to entice a women to become a surrogate.

This bill legalizes the renting of a woman's body for the first time, WITH NO REGULATIONS OR OVERSIGHT.

Under current law, paid surrogacy is prohibited and considered a misdemeanor.

This bill will, for the first time, open the doors to the renting of women in a completely unregulated service contract for over nine months.

Since the advent of paid surrogacy in other counties, a dark and disturbing trend of rich interests taking advantage of poor women has emerged. Surrogacy rings, amounting to slave labor have been occurring in Asia, and making international news.

Like pay day loan businesses, targeting poor military families, there is also evidence of surrogacy businesses targeting poor military families because of the great military healthcare. It will happen here.

It is a tragedy that some couples are unable to conceive, but an unregulated market that will take advantage of the growing number of woman dropping into poverty is wrong. Many states prohibit paid surrogacy.

CALL THE LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE 1-800-562-6000 AND LET YOUR SENATOR KNOW WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THIS BILL

- Human Life Washington

100 Ideas for Washington’s Future

2011-03-24T13:36:00.001-07:00

Press Release

OLYMPIA (March 23, 2011) State Representative Mike Hope (R-Lake Stevens) officially launched a statewide initiative today to find the best ideas for Washington’s future. The nonpartisan initiative is called .

At a Capitol press conference Wednesday, Hope was joined by Democrat and Republican leaders from across the state who pledged to listen to the people of Washington to develop a long term agenda for the state’s future.

“As much as we as political leaders hope to achieve at the state Capitol, government alone is not the answer to the challenges, and opportunities, of the future. Government cannot build our economy. Government cannot inspire citizens,” Hope said.

“Instead, the energy and drive of our people will move our state forward,” Hope explained. “The four walls of the state Capitol, filled with politicians, lobbyists, special interests and political insiders, are not the sole repository of good ideas for Washington. Instead, the hardworking citizens who pay taxes and raise families are the true reservoir of great ideas for our state. And that’s why we are launching the 100 Ideas Initiative,” Hope said.

Through a series of town hall meetings and interaction with the state’s citizens, the 100 Ideas Initiative will develop a comprehensive vision for our future. The meetings are called “Idearaisers,” and they are the heart of the 100 Ideas program. Hope and other leaders will travel the state throughout 2011 to conduct the Idearaisers.

“People are familiar with politicians holding fundraisers where they solicit money,” Hope said. “At an Idearaiser, we won’t ask for your money. Instead, we ask only that you bring your good ideas for the future of our state.”

Hope also emphasized that the Initiative is “non-partisan. In fact, we are not interested in ‘Republican’ ideas or ‘Democrat’ ideas. We simply want good ideas – regardless of their source,” Hope said.

Citizens will also be encouraged to submit their ideas on the program’s website – www.100ideaswa.org.

At the end of the year, the 100 Ideas Initiative will publish a book filled with 100 of the best ideas that emerge from across the state. The book will serve as a road map for policy makers.

Ideas submitted to the program will be evaluated by Hope and a bi-partisan team of advisors.

The Tolerant Left

2011-03-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

"Below, you’ll find a compilation of 20 days worth of the death threats, vandalism, and intimidation practiced by pro-union thugs opposed to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill."

Thank you John Nolte for exposing the tolerant left.

The Bottom Line Is This: There Is No Money

2011-03-15T16:09:00.000-07:00

When Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels took office six years ago, he rescinded collective bargaining rights for state employees and implemented merit pay.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Daniels slashed the state work force and turned a $600 million deficit into a $370 million surplus in one year. Indiana currently has an $800 million surplus.

Public-sector unions can prevent such all-out assaults by helping rather than hindering the process. For example, here in Washington, legislators passed a law allowing state services to be contracted out to private companies, but the process is essentially controlled by state employee unions, so it goes nowhere.

That’s not real reform.

The bottom line is this: There is no money. Business as usual is not an option. Rather than stand at the barricades fending off change, public-sector unions should use their experience and talents to help make government more efficient, effective and affordable.

That’s a solution that works for both the private and public employees.

Excerpt from Unions must be part of the solution as money dries up by Don Brunell president of the Association of Washington Business

The President Gets His Game On

2011-03-12T14:46:00.000-08:00

Tahman Bradley reports:

President Obama just could not wait for spring weather to arrive.

For the second week in a row, the most powerful man in the world stepped away from the White House to hit the golf course.

Even as his administration and the U.S. military help Japan recover from a devastating earthquake, and as the world worries about Fukushima's nuclear reactor, the president could not resist taking advantage of the 48-degree weather in the Washington, D.C., area.

The president left the White House Saturday afternoon for a short trip to Joint Andrews Base in Camp Springs, Md.

With cloudy skies, it's not the best weather for golf, but Obama loves to spend his Saturdays on the greens. Last fall, Obama went golfing darn near every weekend.

These are never quick "work on your swing" trips; usually the president plays 18 holes, as he did last week.

Dangers of an Article V Convention

2011-03-11T15:02:00.000-08:00

Written by Matthew Spalding, Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation

An Article V amendments convention has been a debated proposition since the very beginning. Madison understood this when he argued at the Constitutional Convention that “difficulties might arise as to the form, the quorum etc. which in constitutional regulations ought to be as much as possible avoided.”

He recorded some of these questions in his convention notes: “How was a Convention to be formed? By what rule decide? What the force of its acts?”

Combine these with the fact that no such amending convention has ever occurred (that is, there is no precedent) and too many serious questions are left open and unanswered. This absence of guidelines or rules makes an Article V convention a risky venture, and one that legislators have historically avoided.

Legislators have threatened an Article V convention as a way of encouraging Congress to take action on a certain issue. In these instances, the threat of an Article V convention (with all of its unknowns) is considered dangerous enough that Congress proposes the desired amendment through the usual congressional method. This is not an unreasonable aspect of a constitutional strategy, but very different from claiming that we should actually have such a convention as a matter of course.

The largest question is whether an amendments convention can be limited to specific amendments or even topics.

The pro-convention argument assumes that the power to limit the convention is inherent in the power to call the convention in the first place. I’m not so sure that follows: The text says that upon application of the states Congress “shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments,” not for confirming a particular amendment already written, approved, and proposed by state legislatures (which would effectively turn the convention for proposing amendments into a ratifying convention).

Indeed, it is not at all clear as a matter of constitutional construction (and doubtful in principle) that the power of two-thirds of the states to issue applications for a convention restricts, supersedes, or overrides the power of all the states assembled in that convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.

When Madison later pointed to an Article V convention as a way to solve the Nullification Crisis (as did Lincoln during the Civil War), an amendments convention was understood to be free to propose whatever amendments thought necessary to address the problems at issue.

Serious scholars will undoubtedly continue to debate the historical record and speculate about the possibility of an amendments convention under Article V. But the argument that, as a matter of course, we should spend considerable time, money and effort right now to design, plan, and implement a convention—despite the unknowns and risks involved—is both imprudent and potentially dangerous. It is a distraction that inevitably gets bogged down in a debate over technical details, taking valuable attention and focus away from the substance of the constitutional reforms themselves.

Claims of the ease and efficacy of an Article V convention are also misleading to the many committed and well-meaning reformers and activists who are serious about constitutional change in the United States.

The Allusion of Assisted Suicide in WA State

2011-03-11T11:49:00.000-08:00

In its recent Assisted Suicide report, the Department of Health reported that 87 people received lethal doses of medications under the Act and 71 individuals died. 51 people reportedly died after ingesting the lethal dose and 15 died from other causes.

The Department of Health does not know if the remaining 6 people died of assisted suicide or not. The Department of Health also has no idea about the status for the 15 remaining people who requested lethal medications-whether they are alive or dead, whether they died from natural causes or from assisted suicide.

There seems to be at least some problem with the accuracy of the reporting (and the timeliness of required documentation) if 15 people out of 87 cannot be accounted for. Of even greater concern is what the numbers don't, and can't, reveal.

True Compassion Advocates' President Eileen Geller noted, "The published data from the 2010 report is so limited and unreliable that even some who agree with the policy have qualms regarding the DOH's inability to determine whether the law operates with the full safety and voluntariness its proponents promised."

Geller continued, "Washington voters thought they were getting a law to assure choice-what they've received is something entirely different, a law which has in some instances has become a recipe for elder abuse and a vehicle for financial coercion."

The report, which doesn't even address whether the administration of the lethal dose was voluntary, has significant gaps. Instead, Washington's 2010 report on doctor prescribed death focuses on the "ingestion" of the lethal dose. "Ingestion" as described in the report does not require a patient's consent, competency, or even awareness.

"What the numbers in the report don't show is what really needs reporting," said Geller. "Assisted suicide in Washington is neither safe nor voluntary for those who feel coerced, can't afford proper health care, or are victims of unreported elder abuse."

True Compassion Advocates - True Compassion Advocates (TCA) offers education, resources, and support during aging, illness, and disability. We foster awareness about, and prevention of, suicide, doctor prescribed death, and elder abuse. We support safe and effective care, positive health care choices, and compassionate communities.

Powers

2011-03-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." --James Madison, Federalist No. 45

Let There Be (Incandescent) Light!

2011-03-02T16:44:00.000-08:00

By Pete Kasperowicz

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) this week introduced legislation that would eliminate federal light bulb standards passed in 2007 that are expected to have the effect of phasing out some incandescent bulbs in the next few years.

Bachmann said her "Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act" is needed because "government has no business telling an individual what kind of light bulb to buy."

"In 2007, Congress overstepped its bounds by mandating that only 'energy efficient' light bulbs may be sold after January 1, 2012," she said. "This mandate has sweeping effects on American families and businesses and needs serious consideration before taking effect."

Bachmann's bill, H.R. 849, would terminate two sections of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that set energy-efficiency standards for incandescent and fluorescent bulbs and labeling standards. The bill does, however, allow these standards to remain in place if the comptroller general were to find that they will lead to consumer savings, reduced carbon-dioxide emissions and pose no health risks to consumers (such as risks posed by the presence of mercury in more energy-efficient bulbs).

Obama vs Walker...and it wasn't even close!

2011-03-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

Obama: “I don’t think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon.”

Walker: "I’m sure the president knows that most federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits while our plan allows it for base pay.

And I’m sure the president knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin. At least I would hope he knows these facts.

"Furthermore, I’m sure the president knows that we have repeatedly praised the more than 300,000 government workers who come to work every day in Wisconsin.

"I’m sure that President Obama simply misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin, and isn’t acting like union bosses in saying one thing and doing another."

Call Governor Walker and let him know you appreciate the bold stand he is taking and his hard work for fiscal responsibility. (608) 266-1212.

Patriots Rally in Olympia

2011-02-26T15:11:00.000-08:00

Thank you to the hundreds of patriots who braving cold and snow drove (themselves) to Olympia today to stand with Wisconsin and Governor Walker against the taxing tyranny of the democrat/unions cartel.

Obama Paves Way For Same-Sex “Marriage”

2011-02-24T08:39:00.000-08:00

By Gary Bauer, American Values

Yesterday Attorney General Eric Holder made a stunning announcement: the Obama Justice Department will no longer defend the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. According to Holder, our president concluded that the law defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman was “unconstitutional” and ordered him to stop defending it in at least two cases currently before the federal courts.

Excuse me? The president is the chief law enforcement officer, not the chief justice! It is not up to Barack Obama to determine which laws he likes and which laws he doesn’t. It is his responsibility to enforce the law until the nation’s highest court decides the law does not pass constitutional analysis.

But this president sees things very differently — he’s here to fundamentally transform America, by, among other things, redefining marriage. He ignored public opinion and bent the rules to pass healthcare “reform.” Unable to get cap and trade through Congress last year, Obama now wants the EPA to implement it. And he does not hesitate to ignore the courts either.

The Obama Administration was recently cited for contempt by a federal judge for continuing its deep-water drilling ban, despite a previous order striking it down. Rather than abiding by Judge Vinson’s ruling against ObamaCare, the administration is asking the judge to “clarify” his ruling, while it orders states to continue implementing the big government health scheme.

Today’s news should put to rest any suggestion that Obama has moved to the center. He has just aligned himself with the most radical elements in the culture war who are trying to redefine normalcy.

Celebrate Washington’s Birthday

2011-02-21T11:05:00.000-08:00

Written by Julia Shaw, The Foundry

The third Monday in February has come to be known—wrongly—as President’s Day. But, this is not a day to celebrate every president in our Nation’s history.

The president who fails to wear a coat in cold weather should not be honored as much as the one who defeats the British’s Hessian mercenaries during a blizzard

This is the day that we celebrate the man who led America to victory in the War for Independence, who was instrumental in the creation of our Constitution, and whose character forever shaped the executive branch. We celebrate George Washington.

That’s why the holiday is Washington’s Birthday—not President’s day.

What makes George Washington a great president, worthy of such celebration, an example to all other presidents?

In short, he was committed to the principles of the American Founding: Liberty, Natural Rights, Equality, Religious Liberty, Economic Opportunity, the Rule of Law, Constitutionalism, Self-government, National Independence.

For nearly two centuries, Washington was celebrated every February 22nd. According to Al Felzenberg, Washington’s troops set aside that day during the War for Independence to honor him, especially for his surprise victories over Hessian mercenaries at Trenton and British troops at Princeton.

Yearly celebrations continued during and after Washington’s presidency, but Congress did not officially recognize Washington’s birthday as a national holiday until 1870.

Congress made Monday the official day to commemorate national figures and events with the Monday Holiday Law in 1968 (Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July are exceptions to the Monday rule).

Observance of Washington’s birthday was moved from February 22 to the third Monday in February. Contrary to popular opinion, no action by Congress or order by any president has changed “Washington’s Birthday” to “President’s Day.” Section 6103 of Title 5, United States Code, still designates the legal federal holiday as “Washington’s Birthday.”

It would be easy to for the president to issue an executive order that would enforce the law and remind all Americans that George Washington ought not to be lumped in with every other president: good, bad, and the ugly (yes, James Buchanan we are talking about you).

If anyone in American history (let alone a president) deserves to have a day celebrated in his honor, it’s George Washington.

Henry Lee summed up Washington the best when he said: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting…. Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private character gave effulgence to his public virtues…. Such was the man for whom our nation mourns.”

Such was the man for whom our nation celebrates this weekend

Roll Out The Milk Cartons

2011-02-17T19:13:00.000-08:00

Posted today by Bryan Preston:

Wisconsin: Let’s roll out the milk cartons to aid the search for fleeing Democrats!

Since it’s clear that the Democrats from President Obama on down are not interested in having an adult conversation about the debt that is wracking this country, and since the Wisconsin Democrats in particular have shown that they will cut and run rather than let the people’s senate vote, it’s time to roll out the milk cartons.

BTW, the man on the carton is the Democrats’ leader in the state Senate – Sen. Mark Miller.

After You...

2011-02-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

Well here’s a bill for all those in Olympia who are so anxious to raise taxes. S.B. 5486 is the bill for you!

Creating a “taxpayer savings account” S.B.5486 allows you the incredible opportunity to voluntarily "invest" more of your money to state government.

You happily and aggresively pillage the pockets of taxpayers, now let’s see you open your own wallets and lead the way. After you!

Obamacare - We’ve Bought Some Time

2011-01-31T14:21:00.000-08:00

by Erick Erickson

A Reagan appointed federal district judge in Florida has ruled key portions of Obamacare, namely the individual mandate, unconstitutional. Because Congress expressly did not put a severability clause in the legislation, the judge has ruled the whole law unconstitutional.

The left is, naturally, shocked and appalled that the judge did not let the rest of Obamacare stand as a judge in Virginia did. They are calling today’s judge “an extreme activist.”

Let’s clear this up: activism is when a judge changes a law in a way he wants, even if Congress did not intend it or when a judge imposes his own policy prescriptions into a law or the constitution.

What we are seeing here today is something extremely rare — a humble judge. Instead of trying to salvage a law with no severability clause, he followed long held precedent.

Congress typically puts severability clauses in legislation so that if one part of the law is unconstitutional the other parts stand. Congress chose not to in this case. Instead of the judge deciding whether or not Obamacare could or should stand on its own, the judge has decided he is not a legislature. Consequently, he’s thrown the whole thing out instead of letting his own policy prescriptions stand in the law to hold it up.

If that is activism, give me more of it.

Ultimately we should not get too excited. In reality, there is only one person’s opinion on this matter that counts — the opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

But we’ve bought some time.

Roanoke's Top Five For President 2012

2011-01-30T12:12:00.000-08:00

Republican at the Roanoke Conference in Ocean Shores held a Presidential straw poll this morning and selected Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels as their top choice for President in 2012 with 45 votes.

Other top five contenders included Mitt Romney with 20 votes, Tim Pawlenty 18, Chris Christie 13 and John Thune receiving 12 votes.

The Roanoke Conference describes itself as "Washington State’s premier Republican social gathering." While describing themselves as neither “conservative” nor “mainstream.” they state their commitment to the core principles of the free market, limited government and individual liberty.

Elephants Roaming Free in Ocean Shores

2011-01-29T21:32:00.000-08:00

by Bryan Myrick

Elephants are roaming free in Ocean Shores, Wash. this weekend, as Republicans from around Washington State converge on the hibernating beach town on the dramatic Pacific Coast for the second annual Roanoke Conference. Hundreds of Republicans filled the main room of the Ocean Shores Convention Center, and the event could not have come at a better time for the GOP in the Evergreen State.

Debate has persisted over whether the party should lick its wounds or count its blessings following disappointing 2010 returns. If left to fester, those disagreements could threaten the more productive conversation on how to get Republicans elected in a mostly blue state like Washington.

A critical dialogue around the party’s strategy for winning was at the core of the full-day agenda in Saturday sessions, one that focused on participation and open discussion. Even in a room filled with such high flyers as Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton, newly elected Washington State Republican Party Chairman Kirby Wilbur (among the many other notable attendees), it was clear that titles of office had been checked at the door.

As moderated panels of public officials and experts represented opposing arguments on key issues – the effect of the initiative process on state politics, the proper role of the state party, and whether the U.S. Congress should adopt a balanced budget amendment – gave way to open comment before straw poll voting, what emerged was a robust debate with some surprising results.

Tonight, the festivities shift into celebration mode with a dinner featuring a keynote speech by White House Press Secretary for Pres. George W. Bush and Fox News commentator Dana Perino. Perino will be introduced by Washington State’s newest Republican in Congress, Rep. Jaimie Herrera Buetler (WA-03).

The conference will wrap up Sunday morning.

Coming…Your Own Personal Government “Identity Ecosystem”

2011-01-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

“This is the world envisioned in the National Strategy for Trusted Identities. We call it the Identity Ecosystem. We will be working to finalize the NSTIC in the coming months, but that is only the beginning of the process.”

~ Howard A. Schmidt, Cybersecurity Coordinator and Special Assistant to the President

The government wants your information – from what you purchase to what you blog. Over the years many forms of national ID have been pursued by the government for various reasons. The American people, however, know privacy is foundational to freedom.

Now packaged as “Internet security” for you President Obama is mandating what amounts to a national ID card, your own Internet passport.

Who has a hand in creating this “identity ecosystem” ? That would be former WA State Gov Gary Locke. Since leaving this Washington for the “other” Washington to serve as Secretary of Commerce Locke has been at the forefront of developing this government “identity ecosystem” for you.

On January 7, 2011, Locke joined the White House cybersecurity advisor Howard Schmidt in announcing a new government ID card that will centralizing your personal information and credentials all the while tracking your web activity.

Do you want the government tracking every web site you visit, every purchase you make, your deposits or withdrawals, your private medical records, your blog comments, your Facebook and Twitter posts, or logging your religious and political affiliations, donations, memberships, and interests?

While insisting this will be a voluntary program we all know what happens to “volunteer” government programs. Voluntary is only the footpath to mandatory.

This "security" will leave Americans more vulnerable than ever. The Washington Times in their editorial says this:

“centralizing access to personal information only makes it easier for the bad guys because it means they only need to steal one key to unlock a vast wealth of financial and personal information. It's likely that the real motivation for this is to ensure the feds always have backdoor access into what people are doing in the online realm. Congress should take steps to ensure this Big Brother scheme is deleted."

This wildly radical proposal should alarm every American.

Eagle Forum has long warned of aggressive government attempts at citizen surveillance. We reject this proposal and urge citizens to immediately communicate their concerns to their elected leaders. We oppose ObamaNet, and any attempt to issue government Internet Passport ID cards for any reason.

Choosing Life for Charlotte

2011-01-20T16:03:00.001-08:00

by Ned Ryun

I’ve never written about an episode from several years ago, aside from a few blog entries for friends and family, but the week of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I want to share it because I always want to remember what took place and that I saw a miracle.

I found myself at 3 a.m. the morning of November 4th, 2008, standing next to my wife’s hospital bed, holding her hand, having watched her hemorrhage off and on for several days, physically and emotionally exhausted, listening to the doctors tell us, “Very large blood clots are forming, and all the amniotic fluid is gone, and there is a very good chance this pregnancy will have to end today to protect your wife.” Our little girl, who we had decided to name Charlotte Love, was only gestationally 24-weeks old and four months from her due date.

It seemed to me that everything was spiraling out of control. Within a matter of 72 hours, we went from, “We think she’ll stay in the womb for several more months,” to “Maybe a few more weeks,” to, “We have hours.” I remember staring at that white wall of the hospital that night, powerless, feeling as though I was being inexorably being pulled to the edge of a cliff. My heels were dug in, but I was unable to stop the forward motion and now I had come to the very edge, of what I didn’t know.

But that morning there was a pause in the fight: I knew there was no point in the fighting, in the struggling. I don’t believe in chance, but in a “Divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.” There are very interesting conversations you have with yourself in moments like I was experiencing. As a Christian, I want God’s will for my life, and I believe His will is perfect. What I was experiencing was not chance, but His will. As you take yourself thru a series of questions, answering in the affirmative, it leads you to certain conclusions, and mine was that if His will is perfect, and this was His will, then this was perfection. Of course I will be the first to tell you it did not feel like perfection.

But I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and resigned myself graciously to God’s will, took His outstretched hand and took the next step―but it was not off the edge into a dark unknown. For the next four months, I would find myself in the midst of perfection.

Several doctors visited the room in those early hours of the 4th, giving us the odds of Charlotte’s survival, and the significant chances of brain damage, blindness, and long-term health problems. We’d already been asked if we wanted to revive her should she come out not breathing, and three times it had been suggested that we might want to consider ending the pregnancy. You say you believe certain things, but when confronted with actual decisions, you authenticate and validate your belief system, or destroy it, by what you actually do. My wife, Becca, and I refused to even consider the thought of ending Charlotte’s life and we told the doctors and nurses they were to make their best efforts to revive Charlotte should she not be breathing when she was delivered.

The entire episode was happening in a rush, and a few hours later, our wonderful doctor walked in, in her scrubs, and asked how we were doing. I replied that we were hanging in there and then asked if the emergency C-section would be in the afternoon. She smiled and said, “No, you have fifteen minutes. The operating room is ready. We’ll wheel Becca down, you’ll get your scrubs on, and we are delivering the baby.”

Charlotte, all 1lb 7ozs and 12 inches of her, was delivered a little after 10am that morning of the 4th. She was checked into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). For over four months, we basically lived at the NICU (thank God for Ronald McDonald Houses) . There were ups and downs, an emergency heart surgery on Charlotte about two weeks after she was born, and most of the time in the NICU was spent in isolation because of a bacteria infection. But Charlotte never once had bleeding on the brain, never needed eye surgery, and never suffered anything that would lead to long-term health or disability issues, of which there were significant chances for all of those.

When I look back at the odds of what should have happened, or could have happened (and we were told some pretty staggering odds that early morning of November 4th), I think of it as nothing less than a miracle.

There were no guarantees that morning that Charlotte would live, or that she would even be healthy. But we chose life, no matter the consequences. I think about the experience often, when I get Charlotte up in the morning, or she climbs on my lap to cuddle, and I know that it took place for a reason. I can’t always explain why things happen, but I do believe in a just and loving God and I know that what took place with Charlotte was because of love. And because of that love, and our love for her, there was ultimately no questioning our decisions. I don’t know what life has for Charlotte, but I do know that she gets to live and have a chance at what I hope will be an amazing life.

Repeal it Now!

2011-01-19T17:12:00.001-08:00

The House voted today to repeal Obamacare 245 to 189 & and six more states have joined the lawsuit challenging it. That means more than half the states consider Obamacare unconstitutional and are willing fight it in court!

Meet Reince Priebus

2011-01-14T13:58:00.000-08:00

Reince Priebus elected today as the new National Chairman of the Republican Party

Before being elected as the Chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin in 2007, Priebus devoted his time and effort to electing Republican officials for many years, including running as a GOP candidate for state Senate in 2004.

Priebus previously worked in the Wisconsin legislature as the Committee Clerk for the State Assembly Education Committee.

After enrolling at the University of Miami School of Law, Priebus clerked for the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, the United States District Court, and the Southern District of Florida.

Priebus has made media appearances on Fox News with Megyn Kelly, Geraldo Rivera, MSNBC and C-SPAN's "Road to the Whitehouse."

Priebus resides in Kenosha with his wife Sally, his son Jack, and baby girl Grace Avalyn.

By the way, his name is pronounced ryns pree-buhs

RNC Chairman Vote Today

2011-01-14T07:46:00.000-08:00

The Republican National Committee is meeting in Washington DC this weekend to elect a new chairman. Our Washington State voting delegation consists of State Chairman Luke Esser, National Committeeman Jeff Kent, and National Committeewoman Fredi Simpson.

Current RNC Chairman Michael Steele is running for reelection. He is being challenged by five others:

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Wisconsin GOP

Saul Anuzis, former Republican chairman of Michigan

Ann Wagner, chairman of the Missouri Republican Party

Maria Cino, manager of the 2008 Republican National Convention

Gentry Collins, the RNC’s political director

There will be many votes and many strategic maneuvers before a chairman is elected, and it will be an interesting ride.

Washington Eagle Forum will be watching the vote live and you can follow all the action via Twitter @waeagles

*photo courtesy of Luanne VanWerven

Pilgrims, Socialism and Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T07:57:00.000-08:00

Pilgrims, Socialism and Thanksgiving

by Dr. Del Tackett

Pilgrims, Socialism and Thanksgiving....Huh?

Actually, they really do go together.

Here’s how.

The Pilgrim trip was funded by a group of investors who were hoping to get a return on their money. The Pilgrims were therefore contractually bound to the investor’s plan. That plan stated that the Pilgrims were to hold all things in common and equally share from the proceeds of their labor (socialism).

The early settlers of Jamestown were under the same kind of contract. I heard a great lecture from John Rolfe (okay, it was actually someone dressed up as John Rolfe) who explained it this way:

Basically, when one works hard all day and another simply strolls the grounds and puffs on his pipe, and yet they both get the same amount of food for dinner, eventually the one who works hard decides that tomorrow he will do his own strolling and puffing.

Because of this, the Jamestown settlers were starving. It was only when they apportioned private property and ate the fruit of their own labor that the colony began to thrive.

This was the same story in Plymouth not too many years later. Their leader, William Bradford, wrote of how they had to abandon the investor’s plan in order to survive, for when work and non-work both get the same reward, eventually no one will work.

Isn’t it interesting how we often times fail to learn the lessons from the past.
Socialism experiments continue today, with the same kind of results. They never really succeed. Why do we continue to try them? For several reasons.

One, the state has a vested interest in this happening. It is the big winner in socialism. It garners great power. So, when the state grows to the point that it can force the people to increasingly give up their rights to private property and fool the others to think that they will be better off sharing equally from the corn crib, guess where the power shifts…to the officials of the state.

Two, we misunderstand the nature of man. We have bought the Maslow lie that man is basically good. If he is good, then he will obviously love to work hard and go to years and years of medical school and specialized training so that he can work 14 hour days and get one ear of corn out of the crib while his friend follows his heart to stroll and puff. And because we are all such inherently good people, after dinner we will sit around the campfire and sing kum bay ya.

Third, we misunderstand the nature of work. We believe there is something cruel and oppressive about work and so we want someone (the state) to come up with a way to allow us not to work, yet circumvent the consequences of non-work. Or, we believe that the solution to someone not working is to give them another ear of corn.

However, the reality is this:

–The state may think that socialism will satisfy its lust for power, but, in the end, it will eventually collapse under a mountain of debt or a corn crib filled with IOUs. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “socialism works until you run out of other people’s money.” Eventually, the colony begins to starve.

–Man will not enjoy working his tail off so that someone else who is not working can reap the fruit of his labor. James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that they were establishing a government that had balances of powers because men were NOT angels.

–Work is not oppressive and cruel, but it is exactly what the poor need…not only to be able to produce their own corn, but because we were made by the Original Worker to work. We are happier and healthier when we do.

The Scriptures connect the dots for us regarding work and laziness. Here are a few:

Proverbs 10:4, “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.”

Proverbs 14:23, “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”

In other words, we reap what we sow.

In socialism, we try to reverse those consequences. Reward the lazy, punish the diligent.

You sow, I reap.

That eventually fails.

One solution is found in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat”. This is a statement that many would view as cruel, but it is actually compassionate…for both the man himself and for the colony as a whole. Hunger is a great motivator to work and therefore produce.

When the Pilgrims returned to a biblical view and threw off the yoke of socialistic bindings, they began to prosper. And when they prospered, they held a day of Thanksgiving. It saddens me that our nation is slipping so quickly back into this yoke. Though we have the lessons from our past and the lessons from failed experiments all around us, we seem to be asleep or in a fog.

With the elections only a few days ahead, I’m hoping we will come to our senses soon.

Maybe around your Thanksgiving table this year, you can recount the lessons learned to your children so that they will not be doomed to repeat the failures of the past.

Put on a Pilgrim hat or your John Rolfe outfit and tell them the story with great gusto as I heard it in Jamestown.

By the way, we just filmed a show for Cross Examine on this very topic.

We are going to title it: No workey, no turkey.

A Gore-y Revelation

2010-11-23T19:01:00.000-08:00

I know this is going to shock you, but former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore calls his corn-for-ethanol policies “a mistake”. He even admits supporting them to further his political ambitions.

It was Reuters Africa who reported yesterday comments our former VP made while speaking at an environmental conference in Athens.

His “mistake” was a costly one. According to the International Energy Industry ethanol subsidies totaled $7.7 billion last year alone. And it was none other than Gore who made the 1994 tie-breaking vote in the Senate mandating the use of ethanol.

And now he calls it a “mistake”.

According to Noel Sheppard in this NewsBusters column Gore even shares why he did it:

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

So more than ten years ago, Gore supported expensive, failed policy because he thought it would help him get elected president.

The liberal media still protects him, and will not even go there that Gore would manufacture the threat of global warming to get rich. Actually extremely rich would be more accurate!

The word shyster comes to mind. This is the antithesis of principled leadership. Boo Gore!

Flying Commercial

2010-11-23T09:56:00.000-08:00

Guess who'll be flying commercial again? Yes, Nancy will relinquish all those posh military flights she secured for herself over the past four years as Speaker of the House. Poor Pelosi. In January she'll be flying commercial again.

Oh, and by the way our new Republican Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner announced earlier this month he'll fly commercial...like the rest of us.

These winds of change are refreshing.

Historic Republican Sweep

2010-11-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

Jubilant GOP wins the House

By DAVID ESPO, AP

Resurgent Republicans won control of the House and cut deeply into the Democrats' majority in the Senate in momentous midterm elections shadowed by recession, ushering in a new era of divided government certain to complicate the final two years of President Barack Obama's term.

House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner, voice breaking with emotion, declared shortly before midnight Tuesday that the results were "a repudiation of Washington, a repudiation of big government and a repudiation of politicians who refuse to listen to the people."

Read the rest of this article here

One Trillion....

2010-10-02T23:47:00.000-07:00

by Connie Hair

A crowd of about one trillion people attended the hard-left progressive One Nation rally on the Mall Saturday in Washington, D.C. Leave aside for a moment that there are around seven billion people inhabiting the entire planet, attendees came from as far away as Alpha Centauri and Uranus to attend the rally in support of Barack Obama and his big government agenda.

All of these people want free health care (they already got the free lunch and T-shirt when they were bused in).

In all seriousness, if you weren't watching MSNBC's kind coverage (their drop-in shots were few and far between due to low turnout), you'd find there were actually a few thousand people surrounding the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall, herded into and held in that limited area by pre-set fencing as seen here. (h/t Amanda Carpenter)

by Connie Hair, read it here

A Vote to Adjourn Is A Vote to Raise Your Taxes

2010-09-29T23:36:00.000-07:00

Appearing at the weekly Republican leadership press conference, Congressman John Boehner decried Democratic Leaders’ intent to adjourn for the fall without allowing an up-or-down vote to stop all of the tax increases set to take effect on January.

Boehner issued the following statement:

“A vote to adjourn this Congress without an up-or-down vote to stop all the tax hikes is a vote to raise taxes and destroy more jobs. American families and small businesses deserve better. This Congress has a chance to help end uncertainty for families and small businesses by stopping all the tax hikes set to take effect on January 1. If Democratic Leaders leave town without stopping all of the tax hikes, they are turning their backs on the American people."

Republican's Release Their "Pledge to America"

2010-09-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

All year long, conservatives have been pressuring Republicans to release a Contract with America for 2010 — an updated version of the campaign platform that the party unveiled during its 1994 sweep of Congress.

Thursday morning, Republican congressmen are responding to that pressure by making a “Pledge to America.” The inevitable question will be: Is the pledge as bold as the Contract?

The answer is: The pledge is bolder. The Contract with America merely promised to hold votes on popular bills that had been bottled up during decades of Democratic control of the House.

The pledge commits Republicans to working toward a broad conservative agenda that, if implemented, would make the federal government significantly smaller, Congress more accountable, and America more prosperous.

NRO Editorial

Koster: Stimulus a "Breathtaking Waste" of Your Money

2010-09-20T07:13:00.000-07:00

In response to Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke's visit to Everett today and news reports out of Los Angeles last week providing evidence of that city's breathtaking waste of the taxpayer dollars, John Koster is asking Congressman Rick Larsen and Gary Locke for accountability of the stimulus money spent.

On Thursday of last week, Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel released two audits (click here and here) examining how L.A. has used "stimulus" money received through President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and issued a press release noting that the $111 million in federal stimulus dollars created only 55 jobs, which works out to an unconscionable $2 million per job.

"The numbers coming out of Los Angeles are an outrage to every American taxpayer," said Koster. "L.A. and Washington State have both seen little return for the stimulus money spent. Even the unaudited government website (Recovery.wa.gov) lists only 19,450 Washington State jobs created or saved (many temporary or seasonal) due to the $6.6 billion in stimulus dollars awarded here in Washington.

In a state where 318,027 are still unemployed, calling the stimulus plan a failure is an understatement. Rick Larsen, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Gary Locke all share responsibility for the wasteful spending that they continue to defend."

"Even as we enter the final weeks of the campaign season, Rick Larsen continues to ignore reality. He's been in Congress now for 10 years and wants to talk about everything but his culpability for the fiscal free fall that has left this country in near economic ruin. For Larsen to bring in a cabinet member from the most anti-business administration in U.S. history to stump for him at a business roundtable of all things, shows just how out of touch he's become."

"My message to Larsen, Pelosi, Obama and Locke is this: For the good of the country, discontinue immediately the reckless spending policies that have driven the national debt through the roof and the U-6 unemployment rate to a staggering 16.7%."

Koster Press Release

Delusional Democrats

2010-09-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

by Roger Hedgecock

Desperate Democrats this week trumpeted their latest party line—that the Tea Party backed Republican nominees (Christine O’Donnell the latest) were “more extreme than the public.”

Really? Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidates Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Joe Miller, and John Boozman are all running ahead of their Democrat rivals. Sharron Angle is within the margin of error against Harry Reid.

And what’s so “extreme” about running on a platform of restoring constitutional government and balanced budgets and free market solutions? What an increasing majority of Americans see as extreme is the “transformation of America” into a Big Government nanny state which, if Michelle Obama gets her way, will dictate the content of the menu at your favorite restaurant.

Then I heard the spin that independent voters are not going to buy the grassroots, Tea Party candidates that are winning Republican primaries all over the country.

But it is precisely the independent voters who are most abandoning the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda. In Florida's Senate race, for example, Tea Party backed Republican Marco Rubio leads the so-called "Independent" Charlie Crist among independent voters 38% to 36% with the Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek getting just 16 % of the independent vote.

In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer will be re-elected by at least two thirds of the voters, including independents, even if she never debates her opponent again.

Message to the ruling elites and power brokers of both political parties: Americans are fed up with total Democratic Party control of the federal government and so far the Republican Party elites don't have any better ideas.

The good ideas and a new wave of candidates are coming up from the people to challenge both parties. This "wave" election could become a tidal wave.

Obama Adds More to National Debt in 19 Months Than All Presidents from Washington Through Reagan Combined

2010-09-09T17:31:00.000-07:00

In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.

The U.S. Treasury Department divides the federal debt into two categories. One is “debt held by the public,” which includes U.S. government securities owned by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside the federal government itself.

The other is “intragovernmental” debt, which includes I.O.U.s the federal government gives to itself when, for example, the Treasury borrows money out of the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for expenses other than Social Security.

At the end of fiscal year 1989, which ended eight months after President Reagan left office, the total federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That means all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan had accumulated only that much publicly held debt on behalf of American taxpayers. That is $335.3 billion less than the $2.5260 trillion that was added to the federal debt held by the public just between Jan. 20, 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated, and Aug. 20, 2010, the 19-month anniversary of Obama's inauguration.

CNS News

Ferndale Teachers Defy District and Deny Students

2010-09-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning was supposed to be the first day of school for up to 4,800 students and 330 teachers in the Ferndale school district. Instead, teachers were pounding the pavement while students expressed frustration and disgust at the strike.

Tucked in the upper northwest corner of Washington state a few miles from the Canadian border, Ferndale is a pleasant community long associated with dairy farming and oil refining, not educational labor troubles.

The issues in dispute in the negotiations included six minutes per day of planning time for elementary teachers, 10 new early release days for teacher planning and more health care plan options for teachers.

But there was confusion as to whether some of the issues were in dispute at all. Communication efforts from both the district and the union made it difficult to discern the status of negotiations or what the relative positions of the two sides were.

In addition, some teachers on the picket line claimed that an attorney for the Washington Education Association had advised them that they had a legal right to strike. When advised that Washington state law did not give them a protected right to strike, they expressed surprise.

by EFF

Changing Everything Is Of Primary Importance

2010-08-13T23:54:00.000-07:00

It's time to turn in your primary ballot! We urge you to vote for Justice Richard Sanders and Justice Jim Johnson.

Both of these men will stand for our Constitution, so we must stand with them!Their opponents will not, and will use every opportunity to legislate from the bench.

We can't let that happen!

Please note these critical judicial races will be determined on Tuesday which makes your ballot of primary importance!

Please mail in your primary ballot as soon as possible.

Support every conservative!

Remember...we can change everything...if we vote!

Health Care's Dirty Little Secrets

2010-07-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

Dirty little secrets keep emerging from the belly of the beast, otherwise know as the Obama health care bill, imposed by Democrats on the American people.

And here's another one today as reported by ABC News:

Starting Jan. 1, 2012, Form 1099s will become a means of reporting to the Internal Revenue Service the purchases of all goods and services by small businesses and self-employed people that exceed $600 during a calendar year. Precious metals such as coins and bullion fall into this category and coin dealers have been among those most rankled by the change.

This provision, intended to mine what the IRS deems a vast reservoir of uncollected income tax, was included in the health care legislation ostensibly as a way to pay for it. The tax code tweak is expected to raise $17 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Taking an early and vociferous role in opposing the measure is the precious metal and coin industry...

Pat Heller, who owns Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Mich., deals with around 1,000 customers every week. Many are individuals looking to protect wealth in an uncertain economy, he said, while others are dealers like him.

With spot market prices for gold at nearly $1,200 an ounce, Heller estimates that he'll be filling out between 10,000 and 20,000 tax forms per year after the new law takes effect.

"I'll have to hire two full-time people just to track all this stuff, which cuts into my profitability," he said.

Republican Representative Dan Lungren has introduced legislation to repeal this section of the health care bill recognizing it will place a significant burden on the small businesses who are the job creators of our economy. However with entrenched Democrat control in place it will prove impossible to pass.

Which brings up November.

Unless we make real changes in those elected to lead, at both the national and state level, we will certainly face unprecedented economic disaster.

Real change begins on November 2. If you haven't engaged in the process of electing principled conservatives to office this should motivate you.

For Democrats Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures

2010-07-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

Obama-Pelosi Plan A Lame Duck Strategy Of Union 'Card-Check,' Cap And Trade, And So Much More.

By JOHN FUND

Democratic House members are so worried about the fall elections they're leaving Washington on July 30, a full week earlier than normal—and they won't return until mid-September. Members gulped when National Journal's Charlie Cook, the Beltway's leading political handicapper, predicted last month "the House is gone," meaning a GOP takeover. He thinks Democrats will hold the Senate, but with a significantly reduced majority.

The rush to recess gives Democrats little time to pass any major laws. That's why there have been signs in recent weeks that party leaders are planning an ambitious, lame-duck session to muscle through bills in December they don't want to defend before November. Retiring or defeated members of Congress would then be able to vote for sweeping legislation without any fear of voter retaliation.

"I've got lots of things I want to do" in a lame duck, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W. Va.) told reporters in mid June. North Dakota's Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, wants a lame-duck session to act on the recommendations of President Obama's deficit commission, which is due to report on Dec. 1. "It could be a huge deal," he told Roll Call last month. "We could get the country on a sound long-term fiscal path." By which he undoubtedly means new taxes in exchange for extending some, but not all, of the Bush-era tax reductions that will expire at the end of the year.

In the House, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters last month that for bills like "card check"—the measure to curb secret-ballot union elections—"the lame duck would be the last chance, quite honestly, for the foreseeable future."

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chair of the Senate committee overseeing labor issues, told the Bill Press radio show in June that "to those who think [card check] is dead, I say think again." He told Mr. Press "we're still trying to maneuver" a way to pass some parts of the bill before the next Congress is sworn in.

Other lame-duck possibilities? Senate ratification of the New Start nuclear treaty, a federally mandated universal voter registration system to override state laws, and a budget resolution to lock in increased agency spending.

Then there is pork. A Senate aide told me that "some of the biggest porkers on both sides of the aisle are leaving office this year, and a lame-duck session would be their last hurrah for spending." Likely suspects include key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress's "favor factory," such as Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter and Utah Republican Bob Bennett.

Conservative groups such as FreedomWorks are alarmed at the potential damage, and they are demanding that everyone in Congress pledge not to take up substantive legislation in a post-election session. "Members of Congress are supposed to represent their constituents, not override them like sore losers in a lame-duck session," Rep. Tom Price, head of the Republican Study Committee, told me.

It's been almost 30 years since anything remotely contentious was handled in a lame-duck session, but that doesn't faze Democrats who have jammed through ObamaCare and are determined to bring the financial system under greater federal control.

Mike Allen of Politico.com reports one reason President Obama failed to mention climate change legislation during his recent, Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil spill was that he wants to pass a modest energy bill this summer, then add carbon taxes or regulations in a conference committee with the House, most likely during a lame-duck session.

The result would be a climate bill vastly more ambitious, and costly for American consumers and taxpayers, than moderate "Blue Dogs" in the House would support on the campaign trail. "We have a lot of wiggle room in conference," a House Democratic aide told the trade publication Environment & Energy Daily last month.

Many Democrats insist there will be no dramatic lame-duck agenda. But a few months ago they also insisted the extraordinary maneuvers used to pass health care wouldn't be used. Desperate times may be seen as calling for desperate measures, and this November the election results may well make Democrats desperate.

Freedom From Government Monopoly

2010-07-02T23:56:00.000-07:00

This week the Save Our Jobs Coalition submitted more than 340,000 signatures to place I-1082 on the fall ballot. That initiative would move this state away from a government monopoly on workers’ comp by allowing private insurance companies to offer competing coverage.

Contrary to what some may believe, I-1082 does not privatize the current system. Instead, it adds a private option so that employers have choice – without reducing benefits to injured workers. Money saved through better administration and reduced premiums will help employers provide more jobs in this tenuous economy.

This holiday weekend, when you are celebrating American independence, remember that this may be the year employers and employees can declare freedom from a government-run insurance monopoly.

For more information about I-1082 or to contribute to the campaign, visit http://http://www.saveourjobswa.com./

Posted by thefarmstand.org

Next President Elected By 15% of Voters...If National Popular Vote Has their Way

2010-06-27T01:18:00.000-07:00

Rapidly advancing movement to eliminate Electoral College shifts control to coasts

A four-year-old effort that effectively would turn the Electoral College out to pasture in the United States by arranging a direct vote of president by the people is gaining strength, and is poised to claim support from states that control 106 of the 270 votes now needed to claim the Oval Office.

The total might be even higher already.

But that has a number of analysts alarmed, including author Tara Ross, who has written in opposition to the concept of a direct national vote for president at the Save Our States.com website.

"Eliminating the Electoral College would probably mean at least two things: Elections will become easier to steal and the two-party system will be undermined. So it follows that two types of political parties would benefit the most: Those that don't mind stealing elections and third parties," she wrote.

The California-based National Popular Vote has been working since about 2006 on its plan that would assign Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who has captured the most individual votes in a presidential election nationwide – no matter who has won in an individual state.

The Electoral College system now assigns votes by the state – or in a couple of cases by the congressional district – based on the popular vote in that state or district. This is the circumstance that gave George W. Bush the presidency in 2000 even though Al Gore collected more popular votes.

It is being promoted in state legislatures – it has been introduced in all 50 – as a compact among the states in which legislators commit their state's votes to the popular vote winner as soon as there are enough states to guarantee a victor with 270 Electoral College votes.

So far, Hawaii, with 4 votes; New Jersey, 15; Illinois, 20; Maryland, 10; and Washington, 11; have made commitments. As of now, there are active bills that could put another three states in that camp: New York, 31; Massachusetts, 12; and Delaware, 3.
That would total 106 of the needed 270 Electoral College votes.

Ross, who has written, "Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College," said in a National Review analysis that the campaign is coming "startlingly close to success even as most Americans remain completely unaware that the presidential-election process is so close to being turned on its head."

Tom DeWeese claims the Electoral College is an effective way of keeping every state in play in a presidential election.

"The abolishment of the Electoral College would, in fact, establish an election tyranny giving control of the government to the massive population centers of the nation's Northeastern sector and the area around Los Angeles. If these sections of the nation were to control the election of our nation's leaders, the voice of the ranchers and farmers of the Mid and Far West would be lost, along with the values and virtues of the South. It would also mean the end of the 10th Amendment and state sovereignty. "

WND columnist Henry Lamb has joined those expressing concern.

"Democracy is often described as two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Democracy is mob rule. Democracy collapses when the majority discovers it can vote for itself treasure from the public coffers. Democracy is the last plateau of social order before anarchy," he has written.

"The last remaining vestige of a federal republic is the Electoral College, an ingeniously designed system to insure that small states are not overrun by large states in the election of the president. Now, there is a powerful movement afoot to bypass the Constitution, and the amendment process, and destroy the Electoral College, which would transform America into a pure democracy," he said.

"The National Popular Vote movement seeks to get legislation adopted in enough states to guarantee that the president will be the candidate who receives the majority of the popular vote, thereby nullifying the constitutionally prescribed Electoral College," he continued. "The genius of the Electoral College designed by the founders is that it provides at least a degree of check and balance against the nation being perpetually led by a president chosen by urbanites. The Electoral College requires candidates to be aware of and concerned about the desires of all states, not just the states with the largest populations.

"It is essential that the president of the United States never be the choice of one segment of the population, or a "faction," as James Madison feared. The president must represent the broadest possible range of ideas and concerns of Americans all across the varied landscape," he said.

By Bob Unrauh

You can read the entire article on World Net Daily here.

Democrats New Financial Rules " No One Will Know...

2010-06-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

"No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time."

Key House and Senate lawmakers agreed on far-reaching new financial rules early Friday after weeks of division, delay and frantic last-minute deal making. The dawn compromise set up a potential vote in both houses of Congress next week that could send the landmark legislation to President Obama by July 4.

Lawmakers pulled an all-nighter, wrapping up their work at 5:39 a.m. -- more than 20 messy, mind-numbing, exhaustive hours after they began Thursday morning.

"It's a great moment. I'm proud to have been here," said a teary-eyed Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee led the effort in the Senate.

"No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done."

Both the House and Senate must approve the compromise legislation before it can go to Obama for his signature.

FOX Nation

Economic Realities Hold Bitter Pills For Democrats and Their Unions

2010-06-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

The economy is forcing leaders to swallow bitter pills these days.

Gov. Gregoire recently announced plans to consider major reforms to cut government costs. Unemployment, while falling, is still at 9.1 percent. The state faces a multi-billion dollar budget shortfall just months after "fixing" the last deficit.

Despite this the Washington Federation of State Employees is suing to prevent the state's plan to furlough state employees. The union argues that the furlough plan violates public employees' statutory and constitutional (hmmm....) rights.

And there you have it: the problem with public employee unions.

Regardless of the economic constraints placed upon the state the union will oppose cost-saving measures that affect the union's members.

Forget reality and forget the budget crisis.

Now,do I want to see these individuals and their families out of jobs? No,of course not. But the perverse nature of government unionization is that employees everywhere else are forced to accept economic realities while also shouldering the burden of sustaining the government union's dreamland.

by Mike Reitz

Murray...Lack of Respect or Lockstep

2010-06-24T20:39:00.000-07:00

by Bryan Myrick

In 2007, when Petraeus came before Congress to testify on the progress of the war in Iraq, his honest report was preceded by choreographed howling from the rabid anti-war Left.

As soldiers risked their lives executing a surge campaign that would ultimately be effective, Democrats and their allies were conducting a different kind of surge to undermine the military mission and attack leaders like Petraeus. Murray was a dutiful lieutenant in the overall effort to erode public support for the war, going so far as refusing to vote to condemn personal attacks against Petraeus.

While Moveon.org coordinated the anti-war media campaign – punctuated by its infamous full-page “General Betray Us” ad – Murray worked hard to make use of the negative public opinion it generated.

In September 2007, Murray and 24 other Democrats voted against an amendment to show full support for Petraeus and “condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.”

For the record, Obama did not vote on the measure. Shocking.

Murray’s upcoming vote on Obama’s appointment of Petraeus, therefore, will say a great deal about her principles. She cannot claim to have voted against supporting Petraeus simply because of who the commander-in-chief was at the time, because that truly was not the question put before the Senate.

The vote taken in 2007 was an up or down referendum on the character and fitness of the same man that stood beside Pres. Obama Tuesday morning in the White House Rose Garden, and if she saw serious deficiencies in his ability to lead at that time it is implausible that she would not find the same features in him today.

Neither can Murray claim to have changed her mind about Petraeus in light of the fact that he succeeded in radically reestablishing the kinetic advantage American-led forces had in Iraq and thus bringing greater stability to a country that had at one point been on the precipice of civil war.

The Petraeus plan was the same plan supported by Pres. George W. Bush, and admitting that Bush owns the victory in Iraq is political suicide for a Democrat.

So, will Murray risk breaking ranks with Obama on an issue in which national security is at risk? Or will she simply pull an Obama and vote “not present?”

That is within the scope of possibility, but as the Senate has a key role in foreign affairs any failure to weigh in at a critical moment for the country would be fair game in the upcoming election. The disgrace of Gen. Stanley McChrystal has become a catalyst for renewed debate concerning the Afghan mission. It will be an issue in the Senate campaign.

Whatever course Murray takes in devising a compromise between her lack of respect for Petraeus and her lockstep record of voting with Obama and her party, watching it unfold will be an old-fashioned, popcorn-eatin’ good time!

Coast Guard Halts Clean Up in Gulf

2010-06-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

Eight days ago Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal ordered barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state's oil-soaked waters. At a rate of over 4000 gallons per hour crude oil was removed from the Gulf by powerful vacuums and place safely into a waiting fleet of barges...that is, until the Coast Guard came and shut them down.

So on day 59 of this disaster, with 52 mile of coastline compromised, sixteen barges with giant vacuums sat idle...by government order.

Why? The Coast Guard said they needed to confirm there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and they had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.

"These barges work. You've seen them work. You've seen them suck oil out of the water," said Jindal. "The Coast Guard came and shut them down,"

After Jindal strenuously made his case, the barges finally got the go-ahead today to return to the Gulf and get back to work, after more than 24 hours of sitting idle.

Counting Words to Assess Priorities

2010-06-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

Obama Speech Breakdown
Counting the president's words to assess his priorities

by Mark Impomeni

President Obama’s much hyped Oval Office address on the Gulf oil disaster is being roundly criticized from the left and the right as lacking in substance and leadership on the spill but full of presidential inaction on the cleanup. An analysis of the number of words the president devoted to the four general topics of the speech shows that the critics are right.

The problem seems to be in Obama’s priorities, as the word count shows. This was not a speech about the oil spill, the aftermath, or recovery in the Gulf. It was largely a sales pitch for Obama’s “green energy” agenda.

Obama spoke close to 2,700 words in his first Oval Office address, which can be separated into four broad themes: an update the oil spill and clean up efforts; the impact on the Gulf region; a history of regulatory ineffectiveness (Bush bashing); and the case for his “green energy” agenda.

Here is how the sections breakdown in words spoken on each:

• 345 words blaming Bush
• 418 words on the impact to Gulf region
• 778 words on the oilspill and cleanup efforts
• 863 words on Obama’s “green energy” agenda

Clearly, the president’s number one priority in making this speech was to make the case for his high tax, command and control, lifestyle changing, carbon regulating energy plan.

Moreover, Obama placed his 863 words on “green energy” at the end of his address. In so doing, the president organized the speech on the principles of inductive logic - in which the bad news comes first in order to soften the impact of the proposed solution.

Everything which comes before his pitch for “green energy” is properly seen, then, as support for Obama’s proposal. The crisis, the impact, the lives of those affected, all props in Obama’s drive to remake the nation’s energy policy.

Last night, Obama revealed himself to be nothing more than a snake-oil salesman. He knows that the public does not want his energy-limiting scheme, but he is determined to force it on America using the worst environmental tragedy in the nation’s history as the hook. Never let a crisis go to waste.

Pay Close Attention - This One Should Be Riveting

2010-06-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

In grocery store parking lots (and even inside Costco stores), they’re gathering signatures on initiative petitions. In county auditor offices and in Olympia, they’re signing up to run for office.

Election season has begun in Washington. And with a record number of initiatives filed, along with competitive races taking shape for seats in Congress and the Legislature, it should be fun to watch — even if you’re not one of those too-talkative political nerds people avoid at parties.

If ever there was a year to pay close attention to issues and candidates, this is it.

• A record number of initiative petitions (77) were filed with the Secretary of State’s Office. Some will spark a spirited debate: putting hard-liquor sales in private hands; legalizing marijuana; enacting an income tax on the wealthy; busting the state’s monopoly on worker’s compensation insurance; and reinstituting a supermajority requirement for the Legislature to raise taxes, to name a few.

To qualify for the November ballot, petition supporters must gather 241,153 valid voter signatures by July 2. Expect to be approached soon, if you haven’t been already.

• Patty Murray’s U.S. Senate seat, which appeared safe a few months ago, is now in play. Republican Dino Rossi’s statewide name recognition, along with an apparent anti-incumbent mood, makes this a race to watch. (We’re assuming both will advance from the Aug. 17 primary. If you disagree, we can discuss it at some social event — in an otherwise empty room.)

Every seat in the state House of Representatives is up for election, as are 25 of the 49 Senate seats. Some races will feature contests in the primary. Under the primary system approved by voters in 2004, the top-two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party preference.

Might that set up an all-Republican or all-Democrat final? Probably not in relatively moderate Snohomish County this year, but, hey, it’s possible.

Three seats on the state Supreme Court are up this year, too. Judicial races are worth paying attention to in June, July and August, because if any candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary, they win the seat.

Whether you’re on the right, left, firmly in the center or hovering above the fray, this election will be worth your attention. Who knows? People might even start talking about it at parties.

HeraldNet Editorial

Candidate Filing Week Begins

2010-06-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

The election season is officially open with the start of filing week in Washington.

Candidates headed to the secretary of state's office Monday in Olympia.

Races this year include the U.S. Senate seat held by three-term incumbent Democrat Patty Murray. All the state's congressional seats are up, including an open seat in the 3rd Congressional District in southwest Washington where Brian Baird is not seeking re-election.

All 98 state House positions are up for re-election, as are 25 state Senate seats.

Three state Supreme Court seats are also up, as well as numerous court of appeals and superior court positions.

The deadline for candidates to file is June 11. Washington's primary election is Aug. 17.

AP

Gone..."Effective Immediately"

2010-06-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

From FOX News: Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas announced her retirement Monday following an uproar over comments she made about Jews in Israel.

Hearst Corporation, which employed Thomas as a columnist, put out a brief story by Hearst News Service announcing the retirement "effective immediately."

The announcement came after the White House Correspondents Association decried her remarks as "indefensible" and began to consider whether Thomas should continue to have the privilege of a front-row seat in the briefing room.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called her remarks "offensive and reprehensible" on Monday, as other former White House spokesmen called for Thomas to be fired.

The announcement Monday marked an abrupt end to a career that has spanned decades.

Speaking of Obama Spending

2010-06-06T22:17:00.000-07:00

Our national debt recently topped $13 trillion. The Washington Times crunched the numbers on Obama’s spending, and here’s what they found:

“At $13 trillion, that figure has risen by $2.4 trillion in about 500 days since President Obama took office, or an average of $4.9 billion a day. That’s almost three times the daily average of … the previous administration.”

The Stand at Ground Zero

2010-06-06T16:13:00.000-07:00

They started showing up long before the rally began at noon today. They came from Washington state, California, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, South Carolina, Florida, and elsewhere. They were Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, atheists, Muslims of conscience. They were lovers of freedom.

An hour before the rally began, they numbered 1,000. Zuccotti Park's owners withdrew their permit to allow us to gather there, and so the police repeatedly requested that people leave the park and move into the pens that the police had set up at Church and Liberty streets. Before noon, however, the pens were full -- and so, with free citizens having every legal right to be in the park, the park became a site for the rally.

By the time the rally was in full swing, the crowd filled the pens, the park, and the other side of the street. Police estimated that 5,000 people were there, and other estimates ranged as high as 10,000. The crowd carried signs expressing their love for freedom, their contempt for Sharia, and their anger at Islamic supremacism and insult to the memories of those murdered on 9/11 that this mosque represents.

Robert Spencer

King County Metro Drivers Enjoy the Third-Highest Wages in the Nation

2010-06-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

Life is good for King Co. Metro drivers according to this interesting post by Erica Barnett on Publico:

New information released by King County Metro shows that Metro drivers enjoy the third-highest wages in the nation, behind only Boston and San Jose. The top wage for a driver at Metro is $28.47 an hour—higher than drivers’ wages in much more expensive cities like San Francisco ($27.92) and New York ($28).

Metro drivers have also enjoyed significant wage increases over the years, averaging a 3.9 percent annual increase since 2004. That’s significantly higher than the Consumer Price Index (inflation rate) in Seattle, which rose an average of 3.2 percent a year between 2004 and 2008 and just 0.6 percent in 2009.

Only Las Vegas transit operators, who enjoyed an average wage increase over the past five years of 4.5 percent, had a larger pay increase—and they make far less than Metro drivers, topping out at just $19.60.

Meanwhile, Metro projects a budget shortfall due to declining sales-tax revenues of $600 million over the next three years.

You can read the rest here.

Time to Reclaim Self-Government from the Political Class

2010-06-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

Richard Davis published an interesting article in yesterday's Everett Herald titled "Government by the people needs renewal" from a recent interview he conducted with pollster Scott Rasmussen. I have exerpted a section below.

In an extended essay, “In Search of Self-Governance,” Rasmussen explores the growing disaffection between the American public and the political class.

He writes, “… the gap today between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them may be as big as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th Century.”

The divide transcends the usual political lines of demarcation.

“The American people don’t want to be governed from the left, the right, or the center,” he writes. “The American people want to govern themselves.”

He reflects on the Founders’ commitment to checks and balances, consciously designed to thwart swift government action. In this way, “the Founders created a mechanism that would force society to reach a consensus before” launching major new programs. Until the recent health-care reform, that demand for consensus has largely prevailed.

Our state has even more countervailing influences built into its governing documents. We have initiative and referendum, the plural executive (nine statewide elected officials), and an elected state Supreme Court. Our founders so distrusted government that they did everything possible to render it inefficient and ineffective.

Rasmussen…encouraging more public involvement. He recommends the usual transparency fixes, like posting legislation before a vote and disclosing meetings between lawmakers and regulators. He also suggests giving the public control of the purse strings, at all levels of government.

“With today’s technology and communications capabilities,” he writes, “there is absolutely no rational reason to keep voters out of the loop on tax increases.” He similarly calls for a public vote on tax exemptions offered to individual companies. At the Research Council dinner, he went further, suggesting a national referendum on major policy measures, like health care reform.

He may be on to something. We can quibble with the details, but it’s clearly time to reclaim self-government.

Richard S. Davis, president of the Washington Research Council, writes on public policy, economics and politics.

It’s Time for Washington to Get Competitive - Yes on I-1082

2010-06-01T10:37:00.001-07:00

FACTS

Initiative 1082: The Time is Right for a Competitive Option in Workers’ Compensation

Our Costs Are Too High

■Despite a 52% decrease in on the job injuries since 1990, workers’ compensation taxes have increased more than 53% over the past ten years.
■Even though claims have decreased, the Department of Labor & Industries’ administrative costs increased 82% from 1999 – 2009 (28% in just the last year).
■A recent report from the State Auditor says workers’ comp taxes will need to be increased 33% next year to keep the system solvent.
Our System Doesn’t Work
■In Washington, the average injured worker with a time-loss claim misses 270 days of work—more than twice the national average. Oregon’s average time loss rate is about 70 days.
■WA has the highest pension rate in the nation. Pension rates have increased more than 300% since 1996.
■More than 50% of injured workers are likely to receive a lifetime pension from Washington if they’ve been off work more than two years.
■Between 2007-08 Washington pensioned 3,600 injured workers, while Oregon pensioned just 24. So, for every 1 person who received a pension in Oregon, Washington handed out 150.
■A recent report from the State Auditor says our state’s Accident Fund faces a 74.4% chance of insolvency within two years. Within five years, the chance is 90%.
Washington Is Out of Step With the Rest of the Nation
■Washington is one of only four states with a government monopoly that forbids private competition for industrial insurance coverage.
■While workers’ comp taxes are falling around the country, Washington is one of only a handful of states that increased workers’ comp taxes this year. Oregon has not increased rates in 20 years—and employers there are actually enjoying rate decreases in 2010.
■Washington has the second-highest cost per employee in the nation for workers’ compensation. We provide the third most generous benefit package in the nation. There is no such thing as a high-benefit/low-cost system.

Employers Need More Choices

Five years ago, the West Virginia legislature passed a bill to transition their government-run workers’ compensation system into a competitive market. In the one year since the privatization of WV’s workers’ comp system was fully complete, the result has been:

■The number of claims filed has decreased from 40,000 to 29,000
■Claim protests have fallen 68 percent
■The overall appeals process has been streamlined, resulting in claims disputes being resolved in a shorter period of time
■Claimants have received better claims management by claims adjusters having fewer claims to manage, and
West Virginia’s open market for workers’ comp has also resulted in:

■Overall premiums have dropped over 30%, or more than $150 million
■198 different workers’ compensation insurance companies have filed rates and forms, and 154 of those have active workers’ comp policies in the voluntary market
■More than 90% of all claims are ruled upon within 30 days.
If the goal of workers’ compensation is to assist injured workers in the best way possible while maintaining a competitive business environment, shouldn’t we look at examples where both are apparently taking place?

It’s Time for Washington to Get Competitive.

The High Price of Freedom

2010-05-31T15:45:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day is an occasion of special importance to all Americans, because it is a day sacred to the memory of all those Americans who made the supreme sacrifice for the liberties we enjoy. We will never forget or fail to honor these heroes to whom we owe so much.

We honor them best when we resolve to cherish and defend the liberties for which they gave their lives. Let us resolve to do all in our power to assure the survival and the success of liberty so that our children and their children for generations to come can live in an America in which freedom’s light continues to shine.

The Congress, in establishing Memorial Day, called for it to be a day of tribute to America’s fallen, and also a day of national prayer for lasting peace. This Nation has always sought true peace. We seek it still.

Our goal is peace in which the highest aspirations of our people, and people everywhere, are secure: peace with freedom, with justice, and with opportunity for human development. This is the permanent peace for which we pray, not only for ourselves but for all generations.

The defense of peace, like the defense of liberty, requires more than lip service. It requires vigilance, military strength, and the willingness to take risks and to make sacrifices. The surest guarantor of both peace and liberty is our unflinching resolve to defend that which has been purchased for us by our fallen heroes.

On Memorial Day, let us pray for peace — not only for ourselves, but for all those who seek freedom and justice.

Ronald Reagan

This Should Scare You

2010-05-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

Government always grows at the expense of the private sector. Government is growing, and that should scare you.

"As for the private sector, thanks to Democrat spendthrifts, it's shrinking while the public sector grows.

"Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year," according to USA Today.

"At the same time, government-provided benefits -- from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs -- rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010."

Patriot Post

And "The Dino" Is In

2010-05-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

After months of uselessly wasting other people's energy, time and money NOW "the Dino" decided he wants to be Senator.

Oh how very "politician-y".

A Repulsive Spectacle

2010-05-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

Unprecedented: Calderon Slams US From House Floor. Receives Standing Ovation

by Lori Ziganto

Unprecedented, indeed. But, not surprising, given that our own President has done nothing but the same. I’m wondering if Calderon at least read the Arizona bill first, before demonizing an American state. That would actually be unprecedented, amongst our alleged leaders, at least.

President Obama, for once, forewent bowing. Not to worry, though! The Democrats in Congress picked up his slack and went one further. Standing ovations!

For a foreign leader bashing an American state. From our own House floor.

Not only do the Democrats fail to figuratively stand up for America, but they literally stand up for and applaud those who seek to condemn it. Worse, it is condemnation from the foreign leader whose own country is a primary source of our illegal immigration issues. All compounded by the fact that Arizona was forced to try to deal with their immense problem on their own, since the weak-willed and spineless folks in attendance at the Joint Meeting of Congress refused to do so.

You know, the very same ones who are breathlessly applauding and jumping to their feet in sycophantic grand-standing, including two, Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder, who have admitted to not reading the 16 page law. Which I’ve read and can comprehend. Granted, I’m no community organizer or an (alleged) lawyer, but still.

Allahpundit at Hot Air notes:

It’s a repulsive spectacle. And as bad as it is, it’s not even the most audacious bit of meddling that Calderon did today. Brace yourself for this.

On the gun question, Mr. Calderón said: “We have seized 75,000 guns and assault weapons in Mexico in the past three years, and more than 80 percent of those we have been able to trace came from the United States.”

He said it did not seem coincidental that violence in Mexico had begun to grow in 2006, not long after the weapons ban expired in the United States.

That’s right. WE are the source of Mexico’s problems, according to Calderon. If only we had weapons bans, Mexico would be free of crime and violence!

On the plus side, at least we can save some tax-payer cash. There is no longer a need for Obama to travel to commence apology tours. Now, he just invites the foreign leaders here where he apologizes and they bash.

From our House floor.

To cheers and ovations. Remember that, in November. Remember who cheered the bashing of an American state and the denigration of American citizens. For passing a law necessitated by the fact that the federal government themselves refused to act.

Arizona is just doing the job the federal government doesn’t want to do.

A(nother) Great Big Tax

2010-05-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

Democrat Cap And Tax Scheme

Wednesday, John Kerry (D-MA) unveiled the Democrats’ cap and trade bill in the Senate. It is 1,000 pages of new regulations, tax hikes and income redistribution. Many conservatives refer to cap and trade as “cap and tax,” but you don’t have to take our word for it.

John Dingell (D-MI) is the longest-serving Democrat in the House of Representatives. He referred to cap and trade as “a great big tax.” Warren Buffett has called it “a huge tax…and a fairly regressive one.”

The liberal New York Times inadvertently admits it even as it acknowledges that cap and trade is a massive redistribution of wealth scheme. Here’s how the Times described Kerry’s bill in a May 13th column: “Two-thirds of allowance revenues raised by the program, outside the 25 percent that goes toward paying down the deficit, will go to households through their utility bills. Low-income residents will receive additional rebates.”

If Congress wants to reduce the deficit, don’t come up with great big, huge new taxes. Just cut spending! And why bother imposing a tax when you know from the outset that 66% of it will be given back? Where’s the logic in that? It’s socialist redistribution of wealth plain and simple. It couldn’t be more obvious.

And why are those rebates necessary? Because cap and trade is a massive tax on energy intended to cause utility rates to skyrocket. Don’t believe me? Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Unfortunately, it’s more than just your utility bill. Cap and trade will cause food prices to skyrocket, it will cost families $1,800 a year, and lead to $7.00 a gallon gasoline.

Gary Bauer

Democrat Debt Crisis - U.S. Deificit 4X Higher in One Year!

2010-05-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

From Reuters today:

The United States posted an $82.69 billion deficit in April, nearly four times the $20.91 billion shortfall registered in April 2009 and the largest on record for that month, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.

It was more than twice the $40-billion deficit that Wall Street economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast and was striking since April marks the filing deadline for individual income taxes that are the main source of government revenue.

Department officials said that in prior years, there was a surplus during April in 43 out of the past 56 years.

The government has now posted 19 consecutive monthly budget deficits, the longest string of shortfalls on record.

The U.S. full-year deficit this year is projected at $1.5 trillion on top of a $1.4 trillion shortfall last year.

White House budget director Peter Orszag told Reuters Insider in an interview on Wednesday that the United States must tackle its deficits quickly to avoid the kind of debt crisis that hit Greece.

Democrats obviously enjoy spending with astounding reckless abandon, even to the point of placing our nation in the same peril as Greece.

Puerto Rico - Our 51st State?

2010-04-27T13:11:00.000-07:00

Puerto Rico is amazing, but do we want it as our 51st state? I don't think so! Would you be surprised to know that later this week the U.S. House is scheduled to vote to begin the process of doing just that?

Is it a good idea? I think we should have some good information before we decide. Brian Darling from The Heritage Foundation released this post today on The Foundry:

According to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the House will vote on H.R. 2499 , the Puerto Rico Democracy Act, later this week. The legislation provides Puerto Rico a two stage voting process and makes some non-resident Puerto Ricans eligible to vote on Puerto Rican statehood.

This legislation has rigged the process in favor of making Puerto Rico the 51st state and is not a fair way to force statehood on a Commonwealth whose people may not want it. Furthermore, this may be an expensive proposition for the American people who are already on the hook for approximately $12.9 trillion in national debt.

This bill attempts to rig the voting process and denies the American people a real say on the issue of whether they want to allow Puerto Rico to be granted statehood.

The fact of the matter is that Puerto Ricans have rejected statehood numerous times and this bill seems to have been written in a way to fast track statehood without a majority of Puerto Ricans favoring the idea.

Furthermore, the people of the United States should be allowed a vote on whether they want to admit Puerto Rico as a new state. If the people of Puerto Rico can vote, the people of the United States should have a vote.

You can read the rest of Brian Darling's post here. Then call your Representative - Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

House Attempts to "Invent" Another DC Congressmen this Thursday! Call!

2010-04-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

The D.C. House Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional.
Ask your Representative to vote NO on H.R. 157!
Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

After casting a career-defining vote in favor of Big Government Obamacare, congressional liberals know that they have little time left as the majority party in Congress, so they are pushing hard for all the little-known leftist bills that have been sitting in dusty desk drawers for decades. One such piece of legislation is the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act. Just last week, President Obama called on Congress to get this bill passed and to his desk before November 2010 rolls around.

Sponsored by DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 (H.R. 157) would establish full House of Representatives voting rights for the District of Columbia while adding an additional seat to Utah, a traditionally Republican stronghold and the next state in line to pick up a Congressional seat in reapportionment. However, there is one minor problem: D.C. is NOT a congressional district or a state!

The D.C. House Voting Rights Act would accomplish the following:

• Subvert the District Clause of the U.S. Constitution - Article I, Section 8, clause 17 - which makes clear that D.C. is a federal city, not a state, with final governing authority resting with Congress. The U.S. Constitution states that the House shall be composed of "Members chosen...by the People of the several States," not delegates representing non-state territories.

• Silence critics of D.C. voting rights by buying them off with a "sure Republican" seat because they know the D.C. seat will be a solid Democrat. In the last 12 elections since D.C. was granted the right to cast presidential electoral votes, it has never cast less than 74.8 percent of its popular vote for the Democratic presidential candidate. This move is simply a partisan trade-off by the congressional liberal Majority wanting to add a permanent Democrat vote to their tallies.
• Bribe Republicans to favor the idea by including a provision to increase the number of House Members from 435 to 437 and give the extra Representative to Utah.

• Lay the initial groundwork for achieving the ultimate goal of establishing two permanent Democrat Senate seats for the District. If the initial inclination is for DC to be "considered a Congressional district for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives," then the idea for DC to be "considered a state for the purposes of representation in the U.S. Senate," will not be far down the road.

Simply introducing a bill such as this is unconstitutional! DC cannot be "treated as though it were a congressional district," unless it were formally made a congressional district via a constitutional amendment, which would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress as well as three-fourths of the states to ratify it.

This is nothing new from the Left. Congressional liberals have been trying to grant full voting rights to the District of Columbia since the 1980s. The maiden attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution through the "D.C. Representation" Amendment was unsuccessful, after it passed Congress but was rejected by the American people and died on August 22, 1985 after a decisive majority of 34 of the 50 states refused to ratify it. Now, Members of Congress are attempting to forgo the constitutional process and slip one past the American people in order to accommodate their political agenda!

Remember, the Senate passed its version of the DC Voting bill (S. 160) by a vote of 61 to 37 (Roll Call 73) in February 2009. However, that bill stalled in the House because it contained a Senate Republican-offered amendment which repealed strict DC gun laws. Although the language of H.R. 157 has not yet been made public, the bill is expected to contain either the same or similar gun provisions, and although many House liberals favor DC gun control laws, it is likely that the liberal House leadership will approach this legislation in much the same way it did Obamacare: Pass it now, fix it later.

TAKE ACTION!

The House is scheduled to vote on H.R. 157 on Thursday, April 22, 2010! Please call and email your representatives and tell them to vote NO on this unconstitutional bill!

Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

Eagle Forum

Firm Pledge

2010-04-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

Barak Obama campaigning in 2008:

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

Held Hostage With Lies

2010-04-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

Dori Monson had this interesting post on My Northwest:

King County officials say they will likely put a sales tax increase on the ballot this summer. They say they need to jack the tax to avoid drastic cuts to police and criminal justice services.

Without the increase, they claim there will be no more tracking of burglars, fewer domestic violence investigations, arrest warrants piling up, and fewer cases filed.

And they say they need to raise the tax because they have already cut to the bone.

Really?

Take a look at this link with the list of the 17,894 King County employees and their salaries. I'm not very good with Excel - but I know some of you are. Do any of you in the comments want to take a shot at breaking down how many are making over $100,000/year? What is the average salary?

And see if you can find some of the more ridiculous job titles.

But most importantly, can anyone look at this list and tell me, with a straight face, that there is no fat to cut in King County? And that they need to raise taxes to preserve law enforcement?

Please stop buying this game that our politicians play - holding that which is important to us hostage - so their lies can grease the skids for yet another tax increase. It's an incredibly sleazy, shameless strategy on their part.

King County employee salaries

One commenter discovered this: I count 1,473 employees making over 100k/year while the average gross is $54,349.34. Michael David Miner, Police Officer, added 127k worth of overtime to Gross 228k, more than doubling his salary.

Public Disapproval Grows

2010-04-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

A new KING 5 News poll of people statewide finds strong disapproval of the job Gov. Chris Gregoire and the Legislature is doing.

In a poll of 600 adults conducted by SurveyUSA, 62 percent say they disapprove of Gregoire's job performance. 35 percent approve and 3 percent are not sure.

It's even worse for the Legislature. Seventy percent disapprove of the job they are doing while just 21 percent approve. Ten percent are not sure.

The poll comes two days after the Legislature approved about $800 million in new taxes to help close a $2.8 billion budget hole.

by DREW MIKKELSEN / KING 5 News

Tax Burden Dangerously Shifted To One Side Of The Boat

2010-04-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

Much has been made in recent years of the "Bush tax cuts" for wealthier individuals, and certainly there have been benefits for higher-income Americans. But the class warfare waged by Democrats is sorely misguided.

Here are the facts:

- The top 1 percent of wage earners in this country pay more than 40 percent of all federal income taxes.

- The top 5 percent pay over 60 percent of all federal income taxes.

- The top 10 percent pay over 71 percent of all federal income taxes.

Those numbers completely debunk the emotional blackmail coming from the left about who pays the freight in this country.

But it is what it is, as they say. The more troublesome statistic is that we are approaching the day when a majority of this country pays no income taxes.
Think about the ramifications of that.

When a majority of voters receive government services without paying for them, the natural incentive is to seek more of those services -- and not to bother about whether tax rates have to increase to support those services.

That starts a political and mathematical chain reaction that leads toward a financial meltdown. It is simply unsustainable.

Nor is it healthy, even for those who end up on the receiving end.

"We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing," Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told the Associated Press.

National policies cannot help but be warped if half or more of the people in this country have no skin in the game.

Moreover, you have to ask: Should Americans even want a tax system that requires nothing of so many of us? Where's the pride? Where's the American spirit of self-reliance and selflessness?

Tax time tends to pervert the spirit. Americans are the most generous on Earth when it comes to helping out the less fortunate with their time, talent and treasure. One recent news report brought that home in a very personal way: A nurse headed for volunteer work in Haiti broke her leg in three places, then learned she had breast cancer -- and she still left for Haiti.

Yet, late-night television ads happily trumpet how individuals and couples have managed to drastically reduce or eliminate the federal taxes they owe. Is that really something to celebrate? Didn't those people just shift more of the tax burden onto you?

A lower tax burden for all is a good thing. But shifting the weight too much to one side of the boat will only make it perilously unstable.

We're all in the same boat. Shouldn't everyone who's capable grab an oar?

Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff

Obama Tax Hikes...So Far

2010-04-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, President Obama made the following comment in Miami about the Tea Party rallies on Tax Day:

"In all, we passed 25 different tax cuts last year. And one thing we haven't done is raise income taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year -- another promise that we kept," he told supporters at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. "So I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you."

You know what? You're right, Mr. President. We should be thanking you. Not for keeping your actual promise never to raise "any form" of taxes on families making less than $250,000 (as opposed to the stripped-down promise you make above).

No, taxpayers should instead be "thanking" you for the following tax hikes you have signed into law (so far):

• a hike in the tobacco tax
• a new tax on individuls not purchasing and employers not providing "qualifying" health insurance
• a 40% excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans
• a new "medicine cabinet tax" on over-the-counter purchases from HSAs, FSAs, and HRAs
• increasing the non-medical early withdrawal HSA penalty from 10 to 20 percent
• a "special-needs kids" tax (capping FSA contributions at $2500)
• an increase in the top Medicare payroll tax rate from 2.9 to 3.8 percent (in so doing raising the top marginal tax rate on labor from 37.9 to 43.4 percent)
• a hike in the capital gains rate from 15 to 23.8 percent
• a hike in the dividends tax rate from 15 to 43.4 percent
• a hike in the "other" investment tax rate from 35 to 43.4 percent
• an increase in the "reduction of the deduction" for medical expenses from 7.5 to 10 percent of AGI
• new annual taxes on health insurance companies, innovator drug companies, and medical device manufacturers--which will make
• a 10% excise tax for tanning salon sessions
• eliminating the deduction for employer-provided retiree Rx coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D
• creating the "economic substance doctrine," which allows the IRS to disallow perfectly-legal tax deductions it deems are only being used to reduce tax liabilities
• requiring 1099-MISC information reporting for small business payments to corporations, increasing compliance burdens for small employers

If that's not enough thanks for you, Mr. President, maybe we should also be thanking you for the new taxes that you or your advisors have proposed on top of these tax hikes:

• a European-style value-added tax (VAT)
• a "bank tax," even on financial institutions that never received a dime of bailout money or who paid their bailouts back with interest
• restoring the death tax from totally gone (this year) to either a 45 or 55 percent rate (depending whom you ask)
• a dangerous new "cap and tax" energy tax on every American family who uses energy
• raising taxes on investment partnership managers, which will result in lower profit sharing for charities, universities, and pension plans
• restoring the "Superfund" tax for trial lawyers
• repeal "LIFO accounting," which is a tax hike on every America using liquid energy sources
• imposing a whole host of international tax hikes which will drive jobs and capital offshore
So thank you, Mr. President, for all you've done for us this Tax Day week.

Ryan Ellis, EA
Tax Policy Director of ATR

Back At Ya! Initiatives Filed To Repeal Democrat Taxes

2010-04-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

Tim Eyman took direct aim at the $668 million of new taxes Democrats passed in Olympia on Monday by filing eight seperate initiatives to repeal them. Stay tuned.

Tax and Run

2010-04-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

One of the state Legislature's top lawmakers voted to increase your taxes on Saturday, and then announced her retirement today. Of course she did!

Democrat House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler told the House today that she will not run for re-election in November.

Kessler has been in the Legislature for 18 years and served in the majority leadership team for about a decade. As majority leader, she is the second-ranking Democrat in the state House.

But even that position would not have protected her from the voters - the very real families and businesses she targeted with a multimillion-dollar package of tax hikes she helped pass.

So for Kessler it was tax and run...before November.

Not Enough Doctors

2010-04-13T06:54:00.000-07:00

The very real concern of a shortage of doctos was raised in this Wall Street Journal article today:

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won't be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

"Hardly Surprising" Americans Personal Income Down Since Obama/Biden Took Office

2010-04-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

Real personal income for Americans - excluding government payouts such as Social Security - has fallen by 3.2 percent since President Obama took office in January 2009, according to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

For comparison, real personal income during the first 15 months in office for President George W. Bush, who inherited a milder recession from his predecessor, dropped 0.4 percent. Income excluding government payouts increased 12.7 percent during Mr. Bush’s eight years in office.

“This is hardly surprising,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist and former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. “Under President Obama, only federal spending is going up; jobs, business startups, and incomes are all down. It is proof that the government can’t spend its way to prosperity.”

According to the bureau’s statistics, per capita income dropped during 2009 in 47 states, with only modest gains in the other states, West Virginia, Maine and Maryland. But most of those increases were attributed to rising income from the government, such as Medicare and unemployment benefits.

Two of the most populous states in the country reported dramatic declines: Per capita income in California dropped 3.5 percent to $42,325; in New York, the drop was 3.8 percent to $46,957.

“The evidence from New York and California reinforces a basic lesson: Where government gets too large, prosperity suffers. Let’s hope that the Congress learns this lesson before it is too late for the country as a whole,” said Mr. Holtz-Eakin, who also served as chief economic policy adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama often derided Mr. Bush for what he said were dramatically falling incomes for workers.

“American families, since George Bush has been in office, have seen average family incomes go down $2,000,” Mr. Obama said in a September 2008 speech on the economy in Green Bay, Wis.

The bureau, which doesn’t compile statistics on “family” income, reported that per capita income rose during Mr. Bush’s two terms, from $29,159 to $32,632 (using 2005 dollar values as a base). During Mr. Obama’s 15 months in office, per capita income has dropped nearly 1 percent to $32,343.

The dropping numbers show that the $862 billion stimulus package has not turned the tide on dropping incomes.

Washington Times

Democrats Give Us The Largest Tax Increase In State History

2010-04-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

Today Democrats in Olympia did the only thing they know how to do - raise our taxes.

Not a reform or restraint in sight, they only had eyes for our paychecks proving once again they are perfectly willing to hurt and even destroy employers and working families with the largest tax increase in state history.

Taxes include:

• A 0.30% increase in the B&O tax on all services except hospitals and scientific R&D = $242 million;
• DOT foods = $155 million;
• Cigarette($1 per pack) and other tobacco products = $101 million;
• B&O tax on economic income (Nexus) = $84.7 million;
• 50-cent per gallon (28-cents per six pack) beer tax = $59 million;
• Sales tax on bottled water = $32.6 million;
• Sales tax on candy/gum = $30.5 million;
• 2-cent per 12-ounce soda tax = $33.5 million;
• Taxes on business structure transactions = $8.5 million;
• B&O tax increase on property management salaries = $6.9 million;
• B&O increase on certain canned meat products = $4.1 million;
• B&O tax increase on mortgages = $3.6 million;
• B&O tax increase on corporate officer salaries = $2.1 million;
• Tax increase on bad debts = $1.7 million;
• Tax increase on livestock nutrient management = $1.3 million;
• Tax increase on PUD electric bills = $1.2 million;
• Personal liability for tax debts = $1.1 million.

“Families and small businesses are being targeted by new tax increases that will kill jobs and come at the worst possible time in a down economy. These new tax increases highlight an approach that refuses to reform state government in meaningful ways and embraces business as usual in Olympia.

“There have been solutions on the table since day one of the legislative session that would have created jobs, prioritized government and reformed the budget process. Nearly all of these solutions were pushed aside in favor of new tax increases.” Rep. Doug Ericksen

November is coming.

Imagine All Your Purchases Costing 20% More...

2010-04-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

VAT = Very Abominable Tax

President Obama is vetting a new national sales tax (commonly referred to as a VAT) to extract more wealth from the private sector to sustain his insatiable hunger for more government spending.

Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have commenced a vetting strategy to convince Americans that they need to give more and more money to an every-expanding and bloated federal government. Congress needs to just say no to a VAT — and increased taxation — as part of any pitch by this Administration to balance the budget.

Volker and Bernanke have used a two pronged strategy to vet the VAT. First is fear mongering. Bernanke argues that Americans need to choose between higher taxes or massive cuts in critical government programs.

He mentioned Social Security, Medicare, Education and Defense as areas of government spending that would be targeted if we don’t raise taxes. This is a false choice. The federal government needs to reform entitlement programs, needs to root out waste fraud and abuse and should eliminate programs like the National Endowment for the Arts.

The deficit incurred by the federal government has reached about $12.8 trillion and next year’s projected deficit is record breaking at $1.6 trillion. Obama’s solution? Not cutting government, not ending bailouts, not entitlement reform, and not stopping the Stimulus.

Instead, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke yesterday commenced a debate on higher taxes yesterday, see the Washington Post: To avoid large and ultimately unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.

White House economic advisor Paul Volcker, and former Chairman of the Fed, urged the United States to follow Europe and impose a Value Added Tax (VAT). The Washington Examiner has this description of a VAT:

A VAT is a national sales tax that would be collected by retailers. But it can also be imposed on products as they make their way through the manufacturing process. That is, the tax for a single product is paid by manufacturers, producers, and business that add value to the product, as well as by the consumers. Critics argue that the VAT is a regressive tax that unduly places the burden on the poor.

The reason why elites in Washington would look to a VAT before increasing income taxes (and, believe me, higher income taxes are coming) is because not enough of the population even pays income taxes to make it worthwhile for the government to use the income tax structure to balance the budget.

According to the Tax Policy Center, only about 47 percent of Americans will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Meanwhile, the government can extract the most amount of your wealth from a national sales tax (VAT) and Volker’s statement yesterday evidences a will on the part of this Administration to start the fear mongering process to tee up higher taxes.

Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric on the part of the agents of President Obama when they try to downplay the effort to impose higher taxes on all Americans. Volker and Bernanke would not be messaging for higher taxes if this Administration did not want them to.

A VAT, national sales tax, would be the end of economic freedom as we know it, because the federal government would then have the power to tax all aspects of our lives. Until Washington can restrain spending, we should not entrust it with the power to create a brand new tax.

by Brian Darling

An Obamanation Against Free Enterprise

2010-04-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal is reporting the Obama administration is banning internships within private businesses.

Barack Obama is telling teenagers and college students, who are now suffering through a 26% unemployment rate, that they are not allowed to volunteer their time in the free market in exchange for acquiring valuable and relevant job skills that might, just might, get them off the unemployment line — and that ignores the ability to make valuable connections through networking in the workplace and build relationships for future careers and opportunities.

“If … you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law,” the Labor Department’s Nancy J. Leppink tells the New York Times.

Since the nation was formed and even before that, apprenticeships and then internships have been a key way for students to acquire valuable jobs skills.

Companies would, frequently through college programs, agree to put a student to work teaching the student a trade. The company would get free labor and the student would, at no cost, get job skills.

It is a tried and true method of acquiring skills in this country. But the Obama administration is declaring such an act against the law.

If you want to work as a Congressional or White House intern, for Organizing for America, or any other non-profit, they’ll let you do it.

But if you want to actually work for a business that produces goods and services in the free market? You’re screwed as is the business.

And guess what? Existing workers will be spread more thinly and college kids will wait longer and longer for jobs.

Barack Obama is opposed to the American free enterprise system. Barack Obama is opposed to an individual’s right to make the individual’s own decisions about what is in the individual’s own best interest.

by Erick Erickson

Where Is My Free Health Care?

2010-04-07T17:50:00.000-07:00

By Margaret Talev, McClatchy

Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the big health care overhaul into law, Americans are struggling to understand how — and when — the sweeping measure will affect them.

Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors' offices, human resources departments and business groups.

"They're saying, 'Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?' " said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states.

McLean said the call center had been inundated by uninsured consumers who were hoping that the overhaul would translate into instant, affordable coverage.

That widespread misconception may have originated in part from distorted rhetoric about the legislation bubbling up from the hyper-partisan debate about it in Washington and some media outlets, such as when opponents denounced it as socialism.

"We tell them it's not free, that there are going to be things in place that help people who are low-income, but that ultimately most of that is not going to be taking place until 2014," McLean said.

You can read the rest of this article here.

Democrat Showdown in Olympia

2010-04-05T22:57:00.001-07:00

In Olympia Democrats are in a showdown with Democrats (they have all the power there) over how to raise your taxes. It's getting kind of interesting as reported by Austin Jenkins:

Today marks the start of week three of a legislative special session that, when Gov. Chris Gregoire declared it, was only supposed to last seven days. Each day that passes, Gregoire ratchets up her rhetoric. She’s moved from simply frustrated to now “disgusted” that lawmakers have yet to resolve their differences.

Majority Democrats in the House and Senate are locked in a stare-down over whether to hike the sales tax. The Senate says yes, the House and Gregoire say no. But the governor refuses to flash her veto pen.

Both chambers are so dug in that lawmakers have been sent home to resume their normal lives. Left behind to negotiate are Speaker of the House Frank Chopp and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown. On Friday, reporters staking out the third floor of the Capitol witnessed Chopp and his chief of staff cross the rotunda to meet with Brown.

Half an hour later, Chopp emerged with little more to say than he still opposes the sales tax. Brown then invited reporters into her office and offered the first hint that the Senate may blink first. She said she’s begun looking for $200 million in taxes that could replace the Senate’s proposed two-tenths-of-a-penny sales tax increase.

What those alternative revenue sources might be, Brown isn’t saying...yet.

Obama Month-by-Month

2010-04-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

If They Succeed We Will Be Less

2010-03-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

by Aaron Gardner

Today I was reading an article [make sure to read the whole thing] from National Review’s print edition written by Richard Lowry & Ramesh Ponnuru. In this article Ponnoru and Lowry do well in explaining the roots of American exceptionalism, and how the same has become a part of the core of our culture.

Here is the definition of American exceptionalism distilled to a single paragraph.

The late Seymour Martin Lipset defined it as liberty, equality (of opportunity and respect), individualism, populism, and laissez-faire economics. The creed combines with other aspects of the American character — especially our religiousness and our willingness to defend ourselves by force — to form the core of American exceptionalism.

After their brief history, the National Review duo then pivot their focus to the Obama administration’s agenda and it’s discomfort with American exceptionalism.

As is pointed out, this feeling of discomfort is mutual …

The popular revolt against Obama’s policies is a sign that Americans are not prepared to go gentle into that good night. Other factors are of course in play — most important, the weak economy — but the public is saying “No” to a rush to social democracy.

Although the conservatives, libertarians, and independents who oppose Obama’s health-care initiative may not put it in quite these terms, they sense that his project will not just increase insurance premiums but undermine what they cherish about America.

Those Americans who want to keep our detention facility at Guantanamo Bay think it necessary to protect our security — but they also worry, more profoundly, that our leaders are too apologetic to serve our interests.

Americans may want change, even fundamental change, but most of them would rather change our institutions than our national character.

We are engaged in a battle of permanence versus change, in which the object of conquest is nothing less than our national character, the idea of American exceptionalism.

Russell Kirk lays out, in more verbose form than Buckley’s “Standing Athwart History Yelling Stop”, the role of the conservative in this battle.

The intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise.

The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.

Surely, if we do not take up this battle and challenge this cult of Progress, we will, as Lowry and Ponnoru note, be less.

It is madness to consider President Obama a foreigner. But it is blindness to ignore that American exceptionalism has homegrown enemies — people who misunderstand the sources of American greatness or think them outdated.

If they succeed, we will be less free, less innovative, less rich, less self-governing, and less secure. We will be less.

Reading, Writing and Abortion

2010-03-24T14:23:00.001-07:00

When she signed a consent form, Jill figured it meant her 15 year old could go to the Ballard Teen Health Center located inside the high school for an earache, a sports physical, even birth control, but not for help terminating a pregnancy.

"She took a pregnancy test at school at the teen health center," she said. "Nowhere in this paperwork does it mention abortion or facilitating abortion."

Jill says her daughter was given a pass, put in a taxi and sent off to have an abortion during school hours all without her family knowing.

"We had no idea this was being facilitated on campus," said Jill. "They just told her that if she concealed it from her family, that it would be free of charge and no financial responsibility."

Swedish Medical Center runs the clinic at Ballard High and protects the students' privacy.

KOMO News

Bill to Repeal ObamaCare

2010-03-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

Today, U.S. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) introduced legislation to fully repeal the Democrats’ government health care takeover that President Obama signed into law Tuesday morning. 12 Republicans have already cosponsored this bill including Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Kit Bond (R-Missouri), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), John Ensign (R-Nevada), Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas), James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), George LeMieux (R-Florida), James Risch (R-Idaho), Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) and David Vitter (R-Louisiana).

“This fight isn’t over yet, Republicans are standing with the American people who are demanding we repeal this intolerable act,” said Senator DeMint. “We must repeal this bill and start over. There are commonsense solutions we can implement to expand health care freedom and choices, lower premiums, and increase quality. But this bill will force taxpayer funding of abortions, raise health costs, hike taxes, cut Medicare, raid Social Security, and put bureaucrats between patients and their doctors.

“In ramming through a bill that forces government into the most personal aspect of our lives, the President and his Democrat Party have revealed themselves as being radically to the left of the American people. They will lose this fight in the end; the American people cherish their freedom and will defend it this November,” said Senator DeMint.

TEXT of Senator DeMint’s bill to Repeal ObamaCare:
To repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. REPEAL.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the amendments made by that Act, are repealed.

Another Three Days in Olympia, Another Teacher

2010-03-22T14:48:00.001-07:00

Go home already. That is the sentiment of citizens as they watch Democrats spend another $14,000 per day keeping the Washington State Legislature in session.

Enough! You had an entire sixty day regular session to spend our money and raise our taxes. This special session is ridiculous, and the amount of money it takes everyday to be in Olympia is double ridiculous.

“Every three days they keep us in session equals the cost of a teacher,” said State House Republican Leader Richard DeBolt, who is among the lawmakers choosing NOT to collect his daily financial allowance for being in session."

“This is a family quarrel right now among Democrats over which taxes to increase. Once they agree on the tax increases, we can come back to Olympia and wrap up the session in a day or two.”

Taxing us the only option being considered by Democrats, and they hold all the legislative cards to raise them.

“When the time comes to debate these bills, we will do our best to provide a voice for the citizens who cannot afford higher taxes during these tough economic times."

"In the meantime, however, the taxpayers should not be paying the price for the Democrats’ inability to get their work done.”

With one week in to this "not-so-special" session, and no end in sight, we agree with Rep. DeBolt.

Go home already! At least attempt to save taxpayers THAT money.

WA to Challenge Democrat Health Care Bill

2010-03-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

KING 5 - Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna says Washington will be one of at least ten states that will file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the health care reform bill.

"The individual insurance mandate is unprecedented in American history in requiring the American people to go out and buy a product in the private market," said McKenna.

The House voted 219-212 late Sunday to approve the overhaul, which would extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans and make a host of other changes.

No Republicans voted for the bill and 34 Democrats voted no. McKenna is a Republican.

Obama could sign the bill as early as Tuesday.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said he planned to file the complaint "the moment Obama signs the bill."

What Didn't Change With Last Night's Vote

2010-03-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

59% Of Americans Oppose The Health Bill, 70% Believe The “Budget Deficit Will Go Up”

CNN: “Do You Generally Favor It Or Generally Oppose [Healthcare Legislation]: “Favor 39% Oppose 59%.” “As you may know, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate are trying to pass final legislation that would make major changes in the country’s health care system. Based on what you have read or heard about that legislation, do you generally favor it or generally oppose it? Favor 39% Oppose 59%.” (“CNN Opinion Research Poll,” 3/19-21/10, P.2)

• “From What You Know Of That Legislation, Do You Think You And Your Family Would, In General, Be Better Off, Worse Off Or About The Same If It Becomes Law? Better off 19% Worse off 47% About the same 33%.” (“CNN Opinion Research Poll,” 3/19-21/10, P.5)

• “From What You Know Of That Legislation, Do You Think Senior Citizens Who Are Currently On Medicare Would, In General, Be Better Off, Worse Off Or About The Same If It Becomes Law? Better off 20% Worse off 45% About the same 34%.” (“CNN Opinion Research Poll,” 3/19-21/10, P.6)

• “From What You Know Of That Legislation, Do You Think The Federal Budget Deficit Will Go Up, Go Down, Or Stay The Same If It Becomes Law? Go up 70% Go down 12% Stay the same 17% No opinion 1%.” (“CNN Opinion Research Poll,” 3/19-21/10, P.6)

SRG

Never Despair by NRO

2010-03-22T00:05:00.000-07:00

‘Nil desperandum” — never despair. That is a sentiment that conservatives need to take to heart now that Congress has narrowly passed a bill that simultaneously undermines life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It takes some ingenuity to add to the costs, inefficiency, and dysfunctions that government has already bequeathed to our health-care system, but the Democrats have proven themselves up to the challenge.

Almost nothing about this legislation is free of dispute, but we are convinced that it will increase taxes, increase premiums, and increase debt, while decreasing economic growth, job growth, and the quality of health care.

The Democrats had no mandate to take these steps. In 2008, the president campaigned both against forcing people to buy insurance and against taxing their benefits. The legislation runs counter to the campaign on both points.

NRO Editors

The president promised to change Washington. He has made its stench more noisome, winning this vote by using every kind of deceit and (legal) corruption, and over the objection of a bipartisan coalition representing most Americans.

We are now being told that the campaign to repeal this legislation is over before it has even begun, that Americans will come to appreciate the benefits that a bountiful government is giving them, and that the growth of the welfare state can never be reversed.

We understand the odds against repeal. We understand, indeed, that complete repeal of every provision of the bill is impossible. The doughnut hole — a gap in Medicare’s prescription-drug coverage designed to encourage seniors to economize — has been filled, and it is not going to be re-opened.

But the larger thesis seems as superficially plausible, and as ultimately convincing, as were earlier predictions that state socialism or secularization were our inevitable future.

It is quite possible that the majority of America that rejects this legislation will get its way in the next few years — if it is given the right leadership. And it is worth the effort to try.

It is possible, for example, that the results of the legislation will turn out to be unpleasant more quickly than most observers realize.

The bill requires insurers to charge people with pre-existing conditions the same as everyone else, and the only reason for people not to game the system — dropping their insurance until they get sick and the insurer has to take them — is because the law requires them to buy insurance or pay a fine.

For many people, the fine will be a cheap price to avoid premiums that could run around $8,000 a year for a family of four. The effect of the legislation could be to cause the number of healthy people with insurance to fall dramatically — and for premiums to rise, which would cause more people to drop their insurance.

If this happens, we can expect liberals to agitate for a single-payer system; but we can also expect the public to blame the Democrats whose health-care system it will now be. A less lopsidedly Democratic Congress is not going to respond to this chaos by enacting single payer or strengthening the fines.

For that matter, the lengthy legislation could turn out to have little time bombs, the nature of which cannot currently be guessed. Nothing about the process that produced the legislation, after all, suggests that it was put together with careful consideration.

Conservatives will be able to capitalize on the discrediting of Obamacare, however it takes place, only if they campaign this fall on a pledge to replace this government-heavy system with true reform.

Republicans running against Democrats who voted for this legislation will have the easiest task. But even Republicans running against Democrats who voted against it can advance the cause by challenging those Democrats either to advocate repeal and replacement themselves or to expose themselves as false opponents of Obamacare.

Nor have pro-lifers lost the war. Pro-lifers should campaign this fall on a pledge to make the Hyde amendment — the partial ban on government funding of abortion, which now applies to portions of federal spending and has to be renewed each year — a permanent feature of law that applies to all federal spending.

The Obama administration and most of liberaldom have pretended over the last year to favor both the principle in general and the Hyde amendment in particular. And the principle is popular. Their posturing, disingenuous though it was, has handed pro-lifers a winning issue.

The Democrats have abused the system, ignoring both the Founders’ design and public opinion. The first step toward undoing that abuse is to make them pay a political price for it.

by NRO Editors

219-212

2010-03-21T23:19:00.001-07:00

The Reality of an Executive Order

2010-03-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

1. An executive order can be rescinded any time. President Obama could reverse it next week, next month, or next year. Should another pro-abortion president be elected in the future, it could be rescinded on inauguration day.

2. An executive order will not prevent insurance companies that provide abortion from participating in the exchanges.

3. Abortion funding in the health care legislation can be only be removed using the legislative process. An executive order not only doesn’t fix the problem, it isn’t needed to fix the problem, and could not stand a legal challenge. If Democrats are serious about protecting taxpayers from funding abortion in the health care bill, they must use the legislative process to fix the problem.

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Happy Warriors

2010-03-21T15:31:00.000-07:00

“This is a historic day, and we are happy warriors. We will be a part of history, joining Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s passage of Social Security, Lyndon Johnson’s passage of Medicare and now Barack Obama’s passage of healthcare.”

Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.)

Battle By Phone

2010-03-19T23:08:00.001-07:00

Members continued to be inundated with phone calls from constituents and interest groups Friday thanks to an impending vote on health care reform this weekend.

Calls to the House numbered close to 100,000 an hour, creating a bottleneck in a phone system only meant to handle 50,000 calls an hour.

The chamber has been similarly overloaded for four consecutive days, beginning on Tuesday when radio host Rush Limbaugh told viewers to call the Capitol switchboard phone number.

Roll Call

Here are the numbers if you still want to call:

877-762-8762 or
202-224-3121 or
202-225-3121

Consequences of the Democrat Health Care

2010-03-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama and members of Congress received a letter on Thursday signed by more than 130 economists predicting the health care legislation they are pushing through will discourage private sector businesses from hiring more workers causing both a reduction in hours and wages for those currently employed.

Caterpillar Inc. is but one real-life example of the consequences which will be brutal to many businesses in the privates sector, and fatal to even more.

They know this legislation will increase their company's health-care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone. The Peoria-based company said its insurance costs will increase by at least 20 percent, more than $100 million.

Caterpillar also expressed it's concerns in a letter sent directly to House Speaker Pelosi.

"We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors," said the letter signed by Gregory Folley, vice president and chief human resources officer of Caterpillar.

And why would we purposely put businesses providing good living wage jobs in the position of being unable to compete anyway?

It isn't that this message hasn't been given to legislators, it has...repeatedly! What the message hasn't been is heard.

Both citizens and business owners are discouraged that concerns raise to Democrat legislators have fallen on deaf ears, and it appears that despite harm to the private sector they remain committed to passing their damaging health care reform legislation.

Speaking Fluent "Democrat"

2010-03-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

In Olympia the majority party has just announced this special session will likely last more than a week. Senator Ed Murray, chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, made several comments to the press about this speaking fluent "Democrat". No worries, I'll translate for you:

"We are in an unprecedented economic crisis," .

Translation: We spent way more money than we've taken from you...yet.

"Sixty days and probably 67 days is not going to be enough to solve this problem."

Translation: We're going to need more time to figure out how to take more of your money.

"The thorniest issues really are about revenue. That's sort of, what I would say, the major sticking point."

Translation: The word "revenue" used by any Democrat is always to be translated "taxes" or "other people's money".

Murray said general agreement has been reached on an $800 million revenue package but "there is not agreement over the pieces."

Translation: It's really quite difficult for us to decide what "pieces" of your money to take.

Never forget, YOU are the only "revenue" they have.