WEISMAN: Obama Takes Aim at Republicans

JONATHAN WEISMAN

President Barack Obama, in a combative, campaign-like speech in Parma, Ohio, conceded that his policies have “fed the perception that Washington is still ignoring the middle class,” even as he castigated Republican opponents for “riding…fear and anger all the way to Election Day.”

The speech, at Cuyahoga Community College, was billed as a major economic address to unveil a new round of proposals to kick-start a flagging economic recovery. The president did introduce three new policy proposals the White House has been rolling out for nearly a week: $50 billion in additional infrastructure spending, a permanent and expanded research and experimentation tax credit and a measure allowing businesses to write 100% of their investment costs off their taxes through 2011.

But Mr. Obama’s speech was far more about politics than economics.

“If we’re willing again to choose hope over fear, to choose the future over the past, to come together once more around the great project of national renewal, then we will restore our economy, rebuild our middle class and reclaim the American dream for the next generation,” he said, striking the same cadences that buoyed his presidential bid.

He fell back on campaign themes that propelled his 2008 surge: his grandfather’s World War II fight, his father-in-law’s struggle to work with multiple sclerosis and his work “in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant on the South Side of Chicago.”

In a way he never has, the president singled out House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R., Ohio) repeatedly and by name, castigating him for proposing “the same [economic] philosophy that led to this mess in the first place. And he hit Republicans hard for opposing the administration’s economic policies.

“Instead of coming together like past generations did to build a better country for our children and grandchildren, their argument is that we should let insurance companies go back to denying care to folks that are sick, and let credit-card companies go back to raising rates without any reason. Instead of setting our sights higher, they’re asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth, eroding competitiveness and a shrinking middle class,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Boehner countered with a proposal that he said should garner bipartisan support: Extend all of the tax cuts passed under George W. Bush for two years and cut spending on programs not tied to national security to 2008 levels.

“If we’re able to do this together, I think we’ll show the American people that we understand what’s going on in the country, and we’ll be able to get our economy moving again and get jobs growing in America,” Mr. Boehner said on ABC’s Good Morning America.

The president’s speech and a White House news conference on Friday will cap more than a week of headline-grabbing economic efforts at the White House. Administration officials say Mr. Obama has regained the initiative and has muted criticism even in his own party that he is not sufficiently focused on a job market stuck at 9.6% unemployment.

The policy proposals, thus far, have gained little traction. Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.), who is locked in a difficult election fight, said Wednesday, “I will not support additional spending in a second stimulus package.” Such spending should come out of still-unused funds from last year’s stimulus law.

Democrats have expressed some disappointment in the president’s choice of proposals. In a speech Tuesday, Rep. Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, said he welcomed Mr. Obama’s proposals, although he added they should have come 18 months ago.

“Why now? We’re doing it for the polls, we should be doing it because it’s the right thing to do,” he said in a speech on the economy at Carnegie Mellon University.

But Mr. Sestak’s top priority, a 15% payroll tax credit for small businesses, was rejected by the White House, as was a proposed payroll tax holiday for new hires that Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, another embattled Democrat, pressed on White House economist Larry Summers last Friday, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

“The rollout has not been good,” said a Democratic congressional campaign aide, who noted there was little coordination between the White House and congressional leaders.

But, the aide added, Mr. Obama’s combative tone—both Wednesday and at a Labor Day picnic Monday—has been helpful for Democrats, who are trying to turn the November midterms from a referendum on Democratic control in Washington to a choice between Democratic and Republican policy prescriptions.

For their part, Republicans were not dodging the charge that their responses to the president’s proposals have been a constant and resounding “no.”

Asked why Republicans should win in November, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential rival to Mr. Obama in 2012, said Republicans “in a very unified fashion have opposed bad policy. And the public appreciates it when a party fights against what it knows is bad policy.”

Read the original article OnlineWSJ

Election 2010: How bad is it for Democrats?

Brad Knickerbocker
A consensus is building that Democrats’ chances of holding on to both houses of Congress – certainly with anything like the majorities they have today – are fast fading.

News story and polling headlines this past week paint a grim picture for Democratic lawmakers and therefore for President Obama:

“Americans Most Likely to Favor GOP Newcomers for Congress” … “Dems in power could be in peril, poll says” … “Fewer Young Voters See Themselves as Democrats” … “Dangerous Numbers for House Democrats” … “Republicans Hold Wide Lead in Key Voter Turnout Measure” … “Generic Ballot Continues to Suggest Major Losses for Dems” … “Democrats Plan Political Triage to Retain House”

Undoubtedly, there will be twists and turns (and probably some surprises) between now and when voters go to the polls Nov. 2. Eight weeks can be a political lifetime.

Plus, the “tea party” movement – showing extraordinary muscle in some recent Republican primaries – could be as much of a problem for the establishment GOP as it is for Democrats. And as John Dickerson at Slate points out, “The advantage for Democrats is that they have the better organization.”

“Organizing for America, the Obama campaign operation, has been up and running for more than three years,” he writes. “Some of the volunteers have been knocking on the same doors since Obama was just a freshman senator from Illinois running for president.”

Postpartisan? Forget it.Obama himself has largely shucked his “postpartisan” ideal, and you can expect some sharp rhetorical elbows thrown at Republicans when he addresses a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee on Monday. That’s likely to escalate in coming weeks as Obama – and first lady Michelle Obama – go stumping for Democrats.

“They’ve forgotten I politick pretty good,” he told a crowd in Austin, Texas, last month.

Still, it’s an uphill battle for Obama and his party. Some of the evidence:

In a new survey released Friday, a USA Today/Gallup poll shows voters more likely to pick a generic Republican over a Democrat for Congress by 53-40 percent, particularly if that candidate is a newcomer. “It appears that the best type of candidate to be this fall is a Republican challenger,” writes Gallup analyst Jeffrey Jones.

In another sign of danger ahead for Democrats, Gallup reports that minorities and young voters – a solid part of Obama’s base in 2008 – are unlikely to turn out in large numbers come November.

“In contrast to 2008, when whites and blacks were about equally likely to say they were giving ‘quite a lot of’ or ‘some’ thought to the presidential election, whites are much more likely than blacks to be thinking about the 2010 elections: 42 percent vs. 25 percent, a gap exceeding those from recent midterm elections,” according to Gallup’s Lydia Saad. “As a result, and because of the extraordinarily keen interest in the elections that conservative Republicans currently display, Republicans overall currently enjoy a 54 percent to 30 percent lead over Democrats in ‘thought given to the election’.”

Professional political prognosticators are weighing in along the same lines.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, sees it this way:

“Conditions have deteriorated badly for Democrats over the summer. The economy appears rotten, with little chance of a substantial comeback by November 2nd. Unemployment is very high, income growth sluggish, and public confidence quite low. The Democrats’ self-proclaimed ‘Recovery Summer’ has become a term of derision, and to most voters – fair or not – it seems that President Obama has over-promised and under-delivered.”

Could the GOP take over the House?At the moment, Sabato predicts, “Republicans have a good chance to win the House by picking up as many as 47 seats, net.” In the Senate, he writes on his web site, “Republicans have an outside shot at winning full control (+10), but are more likely to end up with +8 (or maybe +9, at which point it will be interesting to see how senators such as Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and others react).”

Charlie Cook doesn’t go quite that far. His latest outlook is for Republicans to gain 35 seats in the House (four fewer than they’d need to take control) with a net GOP gain in the Senate of 7-9 seats.

“The odds still favor Democrats holding their majority, but that is no longer given,” Cook wrote in the National Journal on Saturday. And with a campaign war chest that needs to be doled out most effectively, Democrats are going to have to make some tough choices – maybe abandoning some of their most vulnerable incumbents.

“With this many races in play, Democrats may have to perform triage and focus their resources on those that remain winnable,” Cook writes. “That means giving up on the rest.”

Dire straits for Democrats, in other words. For as David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report writes, “This is an environment in which any Democratic laxity or misstep can prove fatal and even underfunded or flawed Republicans can be highly competitive.”

Read the original article YahooNews

Social Security Is Not Risk-Free

Kevin D. Williamson
I was struck by a particularly interesting stream of nonsense emanating from the mouth of the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of the extraordinarily poorly governed state of Maryland. If we were to privatize or partially privatize the nation’s public-pension system, he argued, that would be the equivalent of “gambling.” Not investing, but gambling.

“If you privatize Social Security,” he said, “the end result will be that that money is not there. There is not a stable source of retirement money because we’ll be literally gambling it on Wall Street.”

Gambling. Literally?

Representative Van Hollen, as a pampered member of Congress, one day will enjoy a very nice pension funded by taxpayers. But he’s also an alumnus of a powerful Washington lobbyist/law firm, the well-connected son of an ambassador, and, even though he is not particularly well off by the standards of congressional Democrats (his ethics filings show his net worth to be considerably less than the price-tag on John Kerry’s yacht or Charlie Rangel’s sundry real-estate holdings) he’s not going to starve to death. If ever he leaves Congress, he will have a very lucrative career ahead of him. Chances are, he’ll retire a rich man. Is he going to invest all the money he makes in Treasury bonds? Does he invest all of his money in Treasury bonds today?

Presumably not. Most wealthy people invest their retirement savings in a mix of stocks, bonds, and other investments. The smart ones start off investing aggressively when they are young, getting more conservative and more liquid as they get older. That’s how you retire rich. That is not gambling. That is investing.

But many Americans, particularly Americans of modest means, find it difficult to save and invest. One of the reasons that they find it difficult to save and invest is that Uncle Sam skims 12 percent off the top of their paychecks and forces them to “invest” in Social Security — which, for most Americans, is an investment that provides embarrassingly low returns; for many Americans (such as black men, who are relatively short-lived), Social Security is a money-losing proposition.

Americans should keep this in mind: There is risk when investing in stocks and bonds. But there is also risk — real, terrifying risk — when “investing” in Social Security. Social Security’s unfunded liabilities are $108 trillion; if it were a bank or an insurance company selling retirement annuities, it would have been shut down long ago, and its executives probably would have been charged with crimes.

There is no corporation in the world that I am aware of with $108 trillion in net liabilities.

If you invest in a diversified basket of corporate bonds, there exists a possibility that some of them might go bad and default. (Speaking of which, junk bond issues are at an all-time high; what is it going to take to get Ben Bernanke’s attention? A giant flashing neon sign in the sky? A personalized message from God? An unexplainable rash in the shape of Milton Friedman?) Stocks and bonds go bad sometimes; that’s why you don’t put all of your money into one company. But for people of modest means, who will be almost entirely dependent on Social Security, all of their eggs are in a red, white, and blue basket — and they’re about to get scrambled by Congress and the Obama administration. When the time for choosing comes, and Washington has to decide whether to pay its bondholders in Beijing or little old blue-haired ladies in Muleshoe, Texas, waiting for their Social Security checks, who do you think is going to get shorted? The bond markets have the power to end Congress’s ability to borrow money on amenable terms — and that prospect scares the political class more than anything short of manual labor.

Don’t fall for the false-choice argument: There is risk to investing in stocks and bonds, but there is risk — probably greater risk — in counting on Social Security. You own your stocks and bonds, but Social Security can be taken away from you at the whim of Congress — or its value diluted by inflation when we start printing money to pay for all of the spending that Obama & Co. have been up to for the past couple of years.

Americans understand this, I think. Let me ask you to engage in a little thought experiment: Imagine that you are 25 years old. Given a choice between having the value of your future Social Security benefits in-hand today, either in the form of cash or in the form of a soberly diversified investment portfolio, or the promise of a Social Security check in 40 years, which would you choose? Why? Once you answer that question, you will know that Representative Van Hollen is talking through his hat.

Read the original article National Review Online

IBD:Rose Garden Thorn

Editorial:

Federal Spending: When the president urged Congress last week to pass $26 billion in emergency aid to help save the jobs of laid-off teachers, one of his human props was out of place. It was a mistake he may regret.

Flanked in the Rose Garden by teachers, President Obama said last Tuesday: “We can’t stand by and do nothing while pink slips are given to the men and women who educate our children or keep our communities safe.”

Later in the day, Obama signed the bill that Democrats say will save the jobs of 300,000 teachers and police officers who’ve been laid off due to budget problems in state and local governments.

While that claim is debatable — so far, federal spending legislation intended to save jobs has failed miserably — this one isn’t: The Obama team made a mistake with one of its human props, an error that will draw attention to an uncomfortable issue .

The scene didn’t look unusual. Next to Obama during his morning plea from the Rose Garden were two teachers, one of them Shannon Lewis, who had been laid off at Hampshire High School in West Virginia. Everything looked so normal that we even included in our I&I pages a photo of her at the evening bill signing.

But Lewis wasn’t laid off because the government could no longer afford to pay her. She was laid off “because of an enrollment decline in Hampshire County,” the Charleston Daily Mail reports.

“Even if the state were in boom times, the current school aid formula would not support her salary.”

Which brings up a question the White House is going to wish hadn’t been asked: How many other teachers are there who, like Lewis, lost their jobs not because of low tax revenues but simply because they were not needed, and will now be paid … for what?

There might not be many. But this question leads to another place the White House doesn’t want to go:

Public school employment, the Cato Institute reported in its @ Liberty blog, has increased 10 times faster than public school enrollment since 1970 — and the result has been stagnant test scores.

Despite these facts, Democrats continue to funnel money into teachers’ pockets, rewarding them for a job poorly done. And the party is getting a rich return. Democrats are heavily supported by teachers union money — the top two teachers unions make 95% of their political donations to Democrats, according to opensecrets.org — and union members’ votes.

This is another set of unsavory facts the Democrats want the public to forget. But when the party’s top operator tries to hoodwink voters by bringing in what amounts to a shill for a photo op, he reminds everyone of this unwholesome alliance.

Reaad the original article IBD Editorial

Glenn Beck: Pelosi hasn’t drained the swamp!

GLENN: Well, it’s like President Obama saying that Charlie Rangel should just step down. He’s very concerned now. He’s very concerned now about the ethics charges.

PAT: Well, it’s only been three years.

GLENN: It’s only been three years.

PAT: It’s taking a while for it to sink in.

GLENN: That’s all it’s been.

PAT: Yeah. And now he’s concerned.

GLENN: And now what he’s trying to do is give Mr. Rangel an opportunity to bow out gracefully instead of getting the slap on the wrist for things that you and I would be in jail for.

PAT: Oh, you know what they could do to this guy?

GLENN: Oh, no, what could they do?

PAT: They could actually censure you.

GLENN: Shut up.

PAT: No, they could.

GLENN: No.

PAT: They could do that.

GLENN: Now, you’d be in jail, right?

PAT: No, no, but you’d be ashamed.

GLENN: No, no. You’d be in jail.

PAT: I would be.

GLENN: You’d be in jail.

PAT: Of course I would be.

GLENN: Sure.

PAT: Of course, I would have been in jail three years ago.

GLENN: Right.

PAT: But Charlie won’t be in jail.

GLENN: Sure, no.

PAT: But he’ll feel naughty for a few minutes.

GLENN: Yeah. Well

PAT: He’ll feel naughty.

GLENN: Now Maxine Waters is also in trouble.

PAT: Yes.

GLENN: And I didn’t see this one coming.

PAT: No.

GLENN: Did you see this one coming?

PAT: Not at all.

GLENN: Now, what did she do?

PAT: Well, I don’t know.

GLENN: Ethics violations.

PAT: Ethics violations, of course.

GLENN: This is the deal on the bank in Boston. Remember her husband owned stock in this bank and she was I think on the board of this bank and do you remember, the people came this was, what, two years ago? This was right after TARP and people came in and they were like, “Hey, so maybe we should have a bailout, they didn’t qualify for it and they were like, yes, yes, Maxine says yes. So that might be something you should look into maybe a year and a half ago.

PAT: Well, this is all part of Nancy Pelosi’s promise to drain the swamp.

GLENN: Oh, really?

PELOSI: Drain the swamp means to turn this congress into the most honest and open congress in history. That is my pledge. That is what I intend to do.

GLENN: That is her pledge. No, it is.

PAT: That’s her pledge.

GLENN: She’s going to get some diamond encrusted ice picks and she’s going to go and take some of the ice down at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. I mean, which one is more believable?

PAT: I think the ice picks.

GLENN: I think the ice picks are.

PAT: The diamond encrusted ice picks.

GLENN: I think they are, believe it or not, more believable.

PAT: Because I didn’t believe Pelosi at all that she was totally going to drain the swamp. I totally believe that, you know, Stu’s diamond encrusted ice pick story.

Read the original article transcript GLENN BECK

CBS Legal Correspondent: Senate Democrats Can Blame Themselves for Kagan Confirmation Difficulties

For Sestak Matter, a ‘Trust Us’ Response From White House

Peter Baker

WASHINGTON — For three months, the White House has refused to say whether it offered a job to Representative Joe Sestak to get him to drop his challenge to Senator Arlen Specter in a Pennsylvania Democratic primary, as Mr. Sestak has asserted.

But the White House wants everyone who suspects that something untoward, or even illegal, might have happened to rest easy: though it still will not reveal what happened, the White House is reassuring skeptics that it has examined its own actions and decided it did nothing wrong. Whatever it was that it did.

“Lawyers in the White House and others have looked into conversations that were had with Congressman Sestak,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “And nothing inappropriate happened.”

“Improper or not, did you offer him a job in the administration?” asked the host, Bob Schieffer.

“I’m not going to get further into what the conversations were,” Mr. Gibbs replied. “People that have looked into them assure me that they weren’t inappropriate in any way.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the “trust us” response from the White House has not exactly put the matter to rest. With Mr. Sestak’s victory over Mr. Specter in last week’s primary, the questions have returned with intensity, only to remain unanswered. Mr. Gibbs deflected questions 13 times at a White House briefing last week just two days after the primary. Mr. Sestak, a retired admiral, has reaffirmed his assertion without providing any details, like who exactly offered what job.

Republicans have pressed Mr. Sestak to explain. “Congressman Sestak should tell the public everything he knows about the job he was offered, and who offered it,” former Representative Pat Toomey, his Republican opponent, said Monday.

Amber Marchand, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said, “Joe Sestak owes Pennsylvanians a full explanation for this potentially illegal activity.”

Whether the conversations might have been illegal is unclear without knowing what precisely was said. There are certainly statutes that bar government employees from using their authority to influence a Senate nomination or to promise employment as a reward for political activity. Yet presidents have given appointments to many people to reward allies or take would-be obstacles out of the way for other allies, explicitly or not.

Even if the conversations were perfectly legal, as the White House claims, the situation challenges President Obama’s efforts to present himself as a reformer who will fix a town of dirty politics. And the refusal to even discuss what was discussed does not advance the White House’s well-worn claim to being “the most transparent” in history.

When Mr. Gibbs was pressed on the matter Thursday, he resolutely referred to his original statement exonerating the White House and refused to elaborate.

“But you never really explained what the conversation was,” said Jake Tapper of ABC News.

“And I don’t have anything to add today,” Mr. Gibbs said.

“But,” Mr. Tapper continued, “if the White House offers a congressman a position in the administration in order to convince that congressman not to run for office …”

“I don’t have anything to add to that,” Mr. Gibbs said.

Mr. Tapper persisted: “But do you really think the American people don’t have a right to know about what exactly the conversation was?”

“I don’t have anything to add to what I said in March,” Mr. Gibbs said.

The White House had nothing more to say Monday. David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, said on CNN, “I don’t think any questions will be left unanswered on this,” but he did not actually answer the questions. Other Democrats have come to the White House’s defense by arguing that even if Mr. Sestak’s assertion about a job were true, it would hardly be shocking in a city of political tradeoffs.

“I don’t see the scandal,” Steve Elmendorf, who was chief of staff to former Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri when he was the House Democratic leader, said in an e-mail message. “Sestak is totally qualified for the job, and Dem and Rep presidents routinely offer members of Congress jobs for all sorts of reasons.”

Indeed, Douglas B. Sosnik, the White House political director under President Bill Clinton, said using jobs to reward political friends was simply “business as usual.” But, he added, that was the problem: Mr. Obama promised not to perpetuate business as usual. “It cuts against the Obama brand,” he said. “The public tolerance for these deals is less than in the past.”

Ron Kaufman, who had the same job under the first President George Bush, said it would not be surprising for a White House to use political appointments to accomplish a political goal. “Tell me a White House that didn’t do this, back to George Washington,” Mr. Kaufman said. “But here’s the difference — the times have changed and the ethics have changed and the scrutiny has changed. This is the kind of thing people across America are mad about.”

Moreover, he said, Mr. Obama’s own rhetoric raised the bar: “When you get out there and say, ‘We’re going to do things totally different, we’re above all this and we’re going to be totally transparent,’ they cause their own problem because they’re not being transparent.”

Read the original article NYTimes

The gathering revolt against government spending

NY Times: Mr. Limbaugh Victory

THERE are many theories for why very conservative Republicans seem to be doing so well lately, taking their party’s Senate nominations in Florida, Kentucky and Utah, and beating Democrats head-to-head in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Some attribute this to a generalized anti-incumbent mood. Others say it reflects the tendency of parties in power to falter in midterm elections. Recently it has been fashionable to ascribe right-wing success to the Tea Party movement.

But the most obvious explanation is the one that’s been conspicuously absent from the gusher of analysis. Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh.

Mr. Limbaugh has played an important role in elections going back to 1994, when he commanded the air war in the Republican Congressional victory. This time, however, he is more than simply the mouthpiece of the party. He is the brains and the spirit behind its resurgence.

How did this happen? The Obama victory in 2008 left Republicans dazed, demoralized and leaderless. Less than six weeks after the inauguration, in a nationally televised keynote address to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Limbaugh stepped into the void with a raucous denunciation of the new president’s agenda and a strategic plan based on his belief that real conservatism wins every time. He reiterated his famous call for Mr. Obama to fail and urged the party faithful to ignore the siren song of bipartisanship and moderation and stay true to the principles of Ronald Reagan.

Democrats responded by branding Mr. Limbaugh — whom they considered self-evidently unattractive — as the leader of the opposition. The day after the conservative conference, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, went on “Face the Nation” and described Mr. Limbaugh as the “voice and the intellectual force and energy” of the G.O.P.

Mr. Limbaugh loved being tossed into this briar patch. He mocked the notion that he was the titular leader of the Republicans even as he was becoming the party’s top strategist and de facto boss.

His strategy was simple. With Democrats controlling Congress, Mr. Limbaugh saw that there was no way to stop the president’s agenda. He dismissed the moderates’ notion that compromising with the president would make Republicans look good to independents. Instead he decreed that the Republicans must become the party of no, and force Democratic candidates — especially centrists — to go into 2010 with sole responsibility for the Obama program and the state of the economy. And that is what has happened.

Mr. Limbaugh was not just the architect of this plan, he was (and continues to be) its enforcer. Dissenters like Arlen Specter, whom Mr. Limbaugh disparaged as a “Republican in Name Only,” found themselves unelectable in the party primaries. Moderates like Michael Steele, the party chairman, were slapped down for suggesting cooperation with the administration. When Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia had the temerity to suggest that Mr. Limbaugh was too uncompromising, he was met with public outrage and forced into an humiliating apology.

When the Tea Party movement emerged, Mr. Limbaugh welcomed it. The movement’s causes — fighting against health care reform, reducing the size and cost of government, opposing the Democrats’ putative desire to remake America in the image of European social democracies — were straight Limbaughism. A very high proportion of the Tea Partiers listen to Mr. Limbaugh. Sarah Palin’s biggest current applause line — Republicans are not just the party of no, but the party of hell no — came courtesy of Mr. Limbaugh. (Ms. Palin gave the keynote address at the first national Tea Party convention.) Glenn Beck, who is especially popular among Tea Partiers, calls Mr. Limbaugh his hero.

So why the lack of attention? Mr. Limbaugh has studiously refrained from claiming credit for the movement. His only intervention thus far has been to quash talk about the Tea Party becoming a third party. He wants a unified, right-wing G.O.P. in 2010, and by all appearances he is going to get it.

Rush Limbaugh came along after the age of Ronald Reagan. He has never really had a Republican presidential candidate to his ideological satisfaction. But if the party sweeps this November under the banner of Real Conservatism, Mr. Obama will find himself facing two years of “no” in Washington and, very likely, a Limbaugh-approved opponent in 2012.

Read the original article New York Times

Cap-and-Trade is Back

By Brian Sussman
On Wednesday Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) plan to introduce legislation designed to inflate the cost energy, strain family budgets, and decimate America’s manufacturing sector — all in the name of supposedly saving the climate.

Kerry and Lieberman have been revamping legislation that narrowly passed the House of Representatives last year.  The House bill imposes oppressive limits on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and establishes a complex cap-and-trade scheme in which the federal government determines how much CO2 a business may omit.  If a business exceeds its allowance, it may purchase additional “carbon credits” from an exchange, where the credits will be traded like a commodity.  Rules for the exchange of carbon credits, including the trading of carbon derivatives, are addressed in the House bill, and my sources tell me the Senate version will include these same stratagems.

In an email sent to the media last week regarding their plans, Kerry and Lieberman said,  “We can no longer wait to solve this problem which threatens our economy, our security and our environment.” My insiders also say the new Kerry-Lieberman proposal will keep the House bill’s goal of attaining a 17 percent reduction of greenhouse gases (below their 2005 level) by 2020. Apparently the Senate bill will allow cap-and-trade to hit power companies first, and then within six years include the manufacturing sector.

The new bill apparently calls for more loan guarantees to build nuclear plants, and grants U.S. coastal states a share of the revenue produced by any expansion of offshore oil and natural-gas drilling.

This is a bill that will cause all of us to suffer great loss.

Presently 40 percent of CO2 emissions in the United States are derived from electricity generation, 35 percent from transportation, and 25 percent from business, industry, and natural gas to heat homes.

So where will the 17% cut come from?  Especially given that (according to U.S. census projections) there will be an additional 30 million people in the United States by 2020.  If the cuts are distributed proportionately the biggest blow will be to electricity production. Since 50 percent of our nation’s electricity is derived from coal, that industry and it’s customers will be hit hardest.  Coal plants are going to have to be shuttered.  And what will replace that energy resource?  Nothing. 

Some might counter saying the House bill touts complex tax credits for wind and solar development.  However when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining those two alternatives don’t provide a watt of energy — they’re simply enhancements, not baseload providers.  Additionally, the Kerry-Lieberman loan giveaway for the construction of nuclear plants — which do not generate carbon emissions — is simply a lure to entice gullible Republicans to bite, because the White House is not a fan of nuclear power.

Recall that during his January State of the Union address, Mr. Obama said that America needs to be “…building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.”

In an apparent move to look good on his promise, two days after the speech, Bloomberg reported: “President Barack Obama, acting on a pledge to support nuclear power, will propose tripling guarantees for new reactors to more than $45 billion …”

However, the proposal was a ruse. Many forget that shortly after taking office Obama’s first budget planned to cutoff money for the Nevada nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain — meaning that the $10 billion in taxpayer dollars spent since 1983 to ready Yucca for storing nuclear waste was a total loss.  Yucca Mountain will officially be zeroed-out in fiscal year 2011.

Meantime, Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced the creation of a special panel to find a solution for storing nuclear waste.

Problem is, we already had a solution — Yucca Mountain.

America has no nuclear option. And, as I have written here at American Thinker, the probability of additional drilling for domestic fossil fuels is low as well.

So, where will the carbon cuts come from?  They’ll come from the American people who will be forced to use less energy because of the higher costs imposed by cap-and-trade, and a variety of new energy taxes.

Proving my point, last week members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, took part in the Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference.  One of the better-attended seminars was entitled, “Efficiency and Renewables.” Presenters included Nancy Sutley, White House Council on Environmental Quality. According to the brochure promoting this session, “The cheapest, cleanest, and fastest emission reductions will come from the energy we never have to use at all. Cutting energy use also saves money on homeowners’ electricity bills and reduces costs for business.”
Translation: America does not need a plan for additional power plants to serve a growing population; instead the people must use less power. Coercion through increased pricing will be a key prod in producing the societal behavior modification necessary to accomplish this goal.By the way, Nancy Sutley is also the woman who announced the hiring of the radical Van Jones in March 2009, declaring: “Van Jones has been a strong voice for green jobs, and we look forward to having him work with departments and agencies to advance the President’s agenda of creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources. Jones will also help to shape and advance the administration’s energy and climate initiatives with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities.”

Further straining the family budget, a new set of fees and taxes will be imposed on all sectors of the economy that produce greenhouse gases. This will include transportation, farming, livestock production-even restaurants that cook barbequed chicken and ribs over an open flame, and bottling companies that sell fizzy drinks. To absorb the increased cost of doing business, companies large and small will be forced to raise their prices. Already pinched personal bank accounts will be further hammered as virtually everything is going to cost more.

The Kerry-Lieberman bill is also a job killer. To meet the demands of the new emissions limits, the few manufacturing businesses that remain in the United States will be further shipped overseas. This is a part of an elitist plan to redistribute America’s wealth abroad. In other words, this legislation will purposefully execute the loss of well-paying domestic jobs, so that those in Third World and underdeveloped nations have a chance to improve their standard of living — at our expense. 

Proving my point is the House version of this bill. If your manufacturing job is shipped overseas, you are eligible for three years of unemployment compensation, at 70% of one’s pay, plus retraining and relocation expenses.  The intent is to pacify your anger with a three-year paid vacation.

And another dirty little secret about the Democrats’ need to pass cap-and-trade: it’s a revenue builder.  According the Wall Street Journal, the cap and trade system could actually generate between roughly $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion between fiscal years 2012 and 2019.

This so-called energy bill is a punch to the gut that American does not need.  And keep in mind, as I have conclusively proven through past missives at American Thinker, as well as in my book Climategate, the temperature of the earth is not warming, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and without the greenhouse effect planet Earth would be a big ball of ice.

To pass, cap-and-trade will need bipartisan support. Thus far only Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have spoken out in favor of supporting a mandatory cap on greenhouse gases.

However, other Senate Republicans who could cross over and support this bill are Olympia Snowe of Maine, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, George LeMieux of Florida, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, and the retiring George Voinovich of Ohio.

Read the original article American Thinker