“…The tax-paying rebels are not going away.

In Green Bay, Wisconsin, today an estimated 500 protesters gathered for a Tea Party at Titletown Brewing. Reader David has more at Pork Revolution:

…”

“…I’ve got tons of photos and e-mails pouring in from Tea Party people across the country. I joked to a Christian Science Monitor reporter covering the events that fiscal responsibility is the new counterculture. More coverage/photos/livestreaming at TCOT Report.

There is, as the old ’60s song goes, something happening here. And what it is, is very clear: A grass-roots revolt against the culture of entitlement. The spendzillas in Washington do not speak for us. …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/02/27/fiscal-responsibility-is-the-new-counterculture/

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

By James Simpson

“…America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama’s connections to his radical mentors — Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama’s radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama’s life comprise a who’s who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn’t fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s. …”

President Barack Obama’s Radical Socialist Network

“…As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately lead to the current financial crisis.

Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did.

Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision. Their influence has spread so far and so wide that despite their blatant culpability in the current financial crisis, they are able to manipulate Capital Hill politicians to cut them into $140 billion of the bailout pie!

God grant those few responsible yet remaining in Washington, DC the strength to prevent this massive fraud from occurring. God grant them the courage to stand up in the face of this Marxist tidal wave.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

Does Obama Have a Double Standard on Earmarks?

By Jay Newton-Small and Michael Scherer

“…On Tuesday evening, when President Barack Obama declared before a joint session of Congress that “we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks,” House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, popped out of their seats like jackrabbits for a standing ovation. On Wednesday, those same House Democrats, led by Pelosi, passed a budget with, by some counts, nearly 9,000 earmarks, worth an estimated $7.7 billion. …” “…The last eight years, spending got way out of control. The White House couldn’t put a check on Congress and the Congress wouldn’t put a check on the White House, so everyone spent what they wanted and we ended up with trillion-dollar deficits,” says Representative Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat who nevertheless voted for the package. “We have a responsibility as Democrats to make sure that we don’t do that sort of thing — that when the White House is willing to make tough budgetary choices, that Congress plays a constructive role.” Apparently, that new responsible role doesn’t officially start until fiscal 2010.”

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1881855,00.html?iid=tsmodule

Obama’s Mortgage Relief Could Bailout 9 Million Homeowners

by Broderick Perkins

“…The President Barack Obama administration’s “Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan” could help as many as 9 million struggling homeowners, but largely those in lower-cost housing areas.

The $275 Billion Plan, with a March 4 rollout, includes a refinancing program for “responsible” borrowers who haven’t missed payments and whose loans are larger than the value of their homes, and a loan modification provision with incentives for lenders to voluntarily modify certain mortgages. …”

http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20090226_reliefbail.htm

Beware of Cap and Trade Climate Bills

by Ben Lieberman

“…A Costly PropositionThese measures would set a limit, or cap, on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use. The effect of such a cap would be to impose rationing of coal, oil, and natural gas on the American economy. Each covered utility, oil company, and manufacturing facility would be given allowances based on past emissions or some other formula. Those companies that emit less carbon dioxide than permitted by their allowances could sell the excess to those that do not; this is the trade part of cap and trade. Over time, the cap would be ratcheted down, requiring greater cuts in emissions. …”

“…A Regressive Tax

By limiting the supply of fossil fuels, S. 2191 would raise the cost of energy. For consumers, cap and trade means more expensive gasoline and electricity as well as net job losses in energy-dependent sectors. Senator Lieberman himself concedes costs into the hundreds of billions of dollars. And as the Congressional Budget Office has noted, such energy cost increases act as a regressive tax on the poor.[8]

Lost Jobs

The net job losses from S. 2191 are estimated by Charles River Associates to be 1.2 million to 2.3 million by 2015.[9] Some of these jobs will be lost for good, due to the impact of higher energy costs on economic activity. Others, chiefly in the manufacturing sector, will be sent overseas. In the very likely event that S. 2191 significantly raises domestic manufacturing costs and that developing nations refuse to impose similar restrictions, the American economy could experience a substantial outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to those nations with lower energy costs.

Little Environmental Gain

While the costs of aggressive cap and trade proposals are substantial, the environmental benefits are suspect. This is true even if one fully accepts the claim of man-made global warming. The most ambitious measure to date is the Kyoto Protocol, but even if the U.S. were a party to this treaty and the European nations and other signatories were in full compliance (most are unlikely to meet their targets), the treaty would reduce the Earth’s future temperature by an estimated 0.07 degrees Celsius by 2050–an amount too small even to verify.[10] S. 2191 would at best do only a little more.  …”

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1723.cfm

Obama Proposes $634 Billion Fund For Health Care

Aides Call Money a ‘Down Payment’ Toward Universal-Coverage Efforts

By Ceci Connolly

“President Obama is proposing to begin a vast expansion of the U.S. health-care system by creating a $634 billion reserve fund over the next decade, launching an overhaul that most experts project will ultimately cost at least $1 trillion.

The “reserve fund” in the budget proposal being released today is Obama’s attempt to demonstrate how the country could extend health insurance to millions more Americans and at the same time begin to control escalating medical bills that threaten the solvency of families, businesses and the government.

Obama aims to make a “very substantial down payment” toward universal coverage by trimming tax breaks for the wealthy and squeezing payments to insurers, hospitals, doctors and drug manufacturers, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Embedded in the budget figures are key policy changes that the administration argues would improve the quality of care and bring much-needed efficiency to a health system that costs $2.3 trillion a year.

By first identifying a large pot of money to underwrite health-care reform — before laying out a proposal on who would be covered or how — Obama hopes to draw Congress to the bargaining table to tackle the details of a comprehensive plan. The strategy is largely intended to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton administration, which crafted an extensive proposal in secret for many months before delivering the finished product to lawmakers, who quickly rejected it. …”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/25/AR2009022502587_pf.html

The Obama Health Care Plan

Obama Budget Pushes Sweeping Change

$3.6 Trillion Plan Would Raise Taxes Sharply on the Affluent, Open Battles on Health, Education; The ‘Trickle Up’ Agenda

“President Barack Obama delivered a $3.6 trillion budget blueprint to Congress Thursday that aims to “break from a troubled past,” with expanded government activism, tax increases on affluent families and businesses, and spending cuts targeted at those he says profited from “an era of profound irresponsibility.”

The budget blueprint for fiscal year 2010 is one of the most ambitious policy prescriptions in decades, a reordering of the federal government to provide national health care, shift the energy economy away from oil and gas, and boost the federal commitment to education. …”

“…The budget’s introduction is likely to herald one of the fiercest political fights Washington has seen in years, waged on multiple fronts. Within minutes, Republicans were lambasting a document they called class warfare, designed to mire the nation in recession for years to come. Business lobbyists were girding for battle even before the budget’s unveiling. Even Democrats are likely to blanch at cuts to agriculture and other programs that have been tried before – and have failed repeatedly.

The budget sets aside an additional $250 billion to complete the president’s effort to rescue the financial markets and stabilize the banking sector. That would come on top of the $700 billion already allocated by Congress. And it is likely to grow. The budget makes clear that the reserve would be used to leverage the purchase of toxic assets weighing down the banking sector’s books, $750 billion in asset purchases overall. That could mean a doubling of the original bailout in the end. …”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123564748462081261.html

Editorial: Obama budget is too heavy on taxes, spending

The Detroit News

“…President Barack Obama’s proposed budget outline assumes tax increases don’t affect behavior. They do. It also assumes Congress will end its spending spree. It won’t. If all of the programs in the budget plan become law, tax increases will affect more Americans than the high-income earners targeted in this proposal, and the economy will suffer.

The president’s outline for a 2010 budget, and a blueprint covering the next decade, was released Thursday. The plan sees $3.9 trillion in spending in the current budget year, with a deficit of $1.7 trillion, a shortfall equal to more than 12 percent of the nation’s $14.2 trillion gross domestic product. That kind of deficit as a share of the nation’s total economic output hasn’t occurred since World War II.

And while short-term deficit spending is necessary to jolt the nation out of recession, Obama’s plan advances spending far beyond what’s necessary for stimulus and for the long term. …”

“…Raise the cost of extra effort and risky investments, the kind that make the economy grow, and the result will be less economic activity.

The budget optimistically assumes inflation-adjusted GDP growth rates of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4 percent in 2011 and 4.2 percent in 2012, but the private Blue Chip Consensus forecast for the same years is 2.1 percent, 2.9 percent and 2.9 percent. It’s also worth noting that many of the proposed tax hikes for upper-income families go into effect in 2011, just when the Obama budget foresees a sharp increase in economic growth.

Those higher taxes could very well derail that anticipated rebound.

The Obama budget also expects reductions in spending to help reduce the deficit over the next several years. But is this realistic when the House of Representatives just adopted a $410 billion spending plan for the remainder of this budget year that is generously larded with pork and includes an average increase for domestic agencies of 8 percent? …”

http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090227/OPINION01/902270322

LOL

If You’re a Responsible American. You’re Screwed…