Hugh Hewitt: Seventy percent of Americans know they’ve been conned

Minimum estimate of Saturday’s crowd on the Mall: 300,000 Maximum estimate: One million people.

Meaning of the crowd: An enormous upheaval in the emotions of average Americans is coursing through the country, with a certain significance for November’s elections. It will have a lasting, profound impact on America’s political direction.

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin provided an occasion to glimpse this undeniable phenomenon. Of course, the interpretations of what the phenomenon is and what its consequences will be will keep the chattering class busy for weeks, if not years.

Some on the left are trying, with increasing desperation, to use old and new media to brand this surge in public participation in politics as sinister, even though it was preceded by a surge from the left of people and energy into President Obama’s campaign.

The new tools of communication and the ease of movement have unleashed a tumultuous era of politics driven by the demand that elites not attempt to speak for, or condescend to, average citizens. They will not quietly or passively be lectured to, or insulted by, the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg or any anchor on any network, any columnist in any paper, or any blogger on any Web site.

The people on the Mall and the millions more who watched the gathering with satisfaction rather than fear are quite simply sick of the left, and of its vast sneer toward the traditions, values and, yes, faith of the American middle class.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks has quite accurately described America as a 70/30 nation, with the 70 percent presently massively underrepresented in the federal government, the Manhattan-Beltway media elite and academia.

The 70 percent is appalled by the placebo economics practiced by the president and the Congress over the past two years, shocked by its profligacy with the wealth of the republic, and sickened by the looting of the next generation’s opportunities.

The 70 percent did not want Obamacare, but it has been thrust upon them.

The 70 percent did not want federal judges to declare “game over” in the complex discussion of what marriage is and means.

The 70 percent want a fence on the border that works, and do not want their concern over unregulated immigration dismissed as nativisim.

The 70 percent are not ashamed of their belief in God, deeply resent being labeled bigots because they view ground zero as land that ought not to be exploited for “messaging” of any sort by any group, and are enraged by the scorn which they encounter everywhere in media except Fox News and talk radio.

The 70 percent believe that the federal government is remote and clueless, and that the Constitution’s principles of enumerated and limited powers and the sovereignty of the states are vibrant, important core values to the republic.

The 70 percent think Iran is in the grip of an evil, theocratic fascism, and that Israel is our true friend and ally deserving of our full-throated support.

We are in the middle of a perilous economic passage to a new competitiveness across the globe. We are watching other countries across the globe respond to the new demands of competitiveness by shrinking the public sector and encouraging private-sector growth. But American education is crippled by bureaucracy and burdened by the inability of a political class to demand reform of the practices and pensions of the public sector. Children have been hostages of this countrywide collapse of common sense for a generation, despite wave after wave of “reform”.

Two years into what had been sold as a new politics and a new approach, the 70 percent are fully aware that they have been conned, suckered, and taken to the cleaners by a hyper-ideological amalgam of leftist public intellectuals, snarling bloggers, career politicians with limited abilities who are often corrupt, and a president wholly inexperienced in the management of complex problems who is in way over his head and prisoner to slogans and schemes that make for great campus debates — but for disaster in the real world.

The people on the Mall were saying much more than “this far and no farther.” They were saying “rewind and restart.” They will hold that thought and that purpose as they peacefully, but with great passion and purpose, insist on real change come Nov. 2.
Read the original article Washington Examiner:

Fri. night news dump: W.H. says 51% of company health plans won’t meet Obamacare guidelines

Mark Hemingway

Top Companies Consider Dropping Employee Health Coverage

In a stunning revelation Wednesday, several top U.S. corporations are seriously considering dropping employee health insurance coverage in light of what they see as the inevitable consequence of ObamaCare–skyrocketing costs.
 
The companies state that after their legal experts poured over the thousands of pages in the new law, it will cost them less to pay the fines for not providing healthcare coverage for employees than continuing to provide employer-paid health insurance benefits.
 
As a side-note to the announcement, the companies maintain that ObamaCare will result in a dramatic increase in expenses for providing employee coverage, with added costs skyrocketing to multi-billions of dollars.
 
According to Business Record:
 
“Additionally, the penalties to businesses for not offering coverage are less expensive than the cost of providing insurance, she said. “But for those that aren’t providing coverage now, this is a huge burden to them. And for employers that have a lot of employees working 30 hours (the threshold to be considered full- ime), you may have a lot of businesses cutting them back to 29 hours.”
 
Business Record maintains that despite this fact most companies will probably try to continue to provide coverage.
 
But a report issued today in Fortune Magazine and reported by CNN indicates that the dire warnings of ObamaCare critics concerning the consequences of approving the costly legislation are in fact well-founded.
 
The report points to internal documents from AT&T, Verizon, John Deere, and several other large corporations which show that executives are, in fact, looking at the option of dropping healthcare coverage for employees due to what they are sure will be unsustainable increases in costs.  These costs will be so prohibitive that it would benefit the corporations to pay the government fines instead.

Read the full story Examiner

Fed says Florida can’t opt out of Obamacare

 Carol Gentry and Jim Saunders
Only hours after the Florida House and Senate voted to “opt out” of the new federal health law, the top U.S. health official said Thursday night that will not be permitted.

Without mentioning any particular state or going into detail, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that state and local officials can vent all they want about a so-called “federal takeover” of health care. But they cannot deny their citizens access to its benefits or requirements, she told the Association of Health Care Journalists.
“They may want to opt out, but they don’t get to opt out all of their citizens who want and need health care,” Sebelius said.

Florida has an estimated 4 million uninsured, most of whom will be covered when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) takes full effect in 2014.

At least 30 states have passed state constitutional amendment legislation similar to that approved by the Florida Legislature, according to theNational Conference of State Legislatures. 

Sebelius said the backlash against the ACA has been ginned up by “misinformation,” much of it deliberate. Thus HHS will be setting up an Internet site to answer frequent questions and a toll-free helpline, similar to that operated for Medicare beneficiaries. HHS staff members present at the conference said they hope to have the Internet site up by July 1 and the help desk soon after. 

The opt-out measure passed in the House and Senate on Thursday, a proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution, will go before voters in the November election. The proposal says, in part, that Floridians may not be forced by law to “participate in any health-care system.”

Dividing along almost strict party lines, the House passed the proposal 74-42, and the Senate followed in a 26-11 vote. Republican supporters say the issue is a matter of freedom and preventing encroachment by the federal government.

“The fact that we have to have this debate in the United States of America is troubling and bizarre,” said Rep. Mike Horner, R-Kissimmee.

Democrats said the proposal’s supporters have spent more time trying to prevent expansion of coverage than they have on solving the state’s health-care problems.

“That is the folly of this moment, and this constitutional amendment is misguided in the extreme,” said Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach.

The measure is primarily aimed at part of the health-reform law that will eventually require people to buy health insurance or face financial penalties — a concept known as the “individual mandate.” Republicans in Tallahassee and other state capitals have launched numerous efforts to allow people to opt out of the requirement since the Democrat-controlled Congress passed it last month.

At the same time, Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum has launched a separate legal battle challenging the federal law. That lawsuit is pending.

Democrats have repeatedly argued that the legislative attempts to allow Floridians to opt out of the federal law would violate the so-called “supremacy clause” of the U.S. Constitution. That clause generally gives precedence to federal law over state law when conflicts occur.

“We should not step on the United States Constitution, and that’s what you are doing now,” Davie Democrat Martin Kiar said during the House debate today.

But supporters dispute that the supremacy clause bars the state from allowing people to avoid the individual mandate. “The supremacy clause does not say the feds control the states,” Melbourne Republican Ritch Workman said.

Supporters also say that even if the proposal ultimately is found to violate the supremacy clause, it would remain in place to protect Floridians from future state health-care requirements. As an example, it would prevent Florida from approving coverage requirements similar to those in Massachusetts.

More broadly, however, Palm Harbor Republican Peter Nehr said it is the Legislature’s duty to “step up and reassert the rights of Floridians.”

Read the original article Health News Florida

Marine’s Facebook Comments About Obamacare Fuel Free Speech Debate

A Marine’s comments about Obama has fueled a free-speech debate about whether troops are allowed to criticize the president’s policies while serving in the military.
SAN DIEGO – A Camp Pendleton Marine has removed his Facebook page after his comments fueled a free-speech debate about whether troops are allowed to criticize President Barack Obama’s policies while serving in the military.

Sgt. Gary Stein said he was asked by his superiors to review the Pentagon’s directive on political activities after he criticized Obama’s health care reform efforts and then was asked this week to talk about his views on MSNBC.
Stein said his supervisor told him of his right to an attorney about the matter. He said he decided to close his Facebook page and review his military code obligations. He also contacted private attorneys who told him he had done nothing wrong.

“There’s this illusion that when we sign our contract and voluntarily commit, that we lose our right to speak out,” Stein told the San Diego Union-Tribune in a story published Wednesday.

The local American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement Wednesday that it has sent a letter to Camp Pendleton’s commanding officer urging the Marine Corps to protect Stein’s right to freedom of speech.

Camp Pendleton spokeswoman Maj. Gabrielle Chapin said the Marine Corps is not considering filing charges and simply wanted him to be aware of the rules so he did not break them.

The Pentagon’s directive states that military personnel are not allowed to write anything to solicit votes for a political cause, sponsor 

a political club or speak before any gathering that promotes a political movement.

“Marines take care of Marines,” Chapin wrote in an e-mail. “Sergeant Stein’s supervisor was concerned that his activities could give the appearance or impression that the Marine Corps is endorsing the group and its messages.”

Stein, 24, a meteorologist for the base’s 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said it was ire over Obama’s health care reform efforts that pushed him to launch the Facebook page, “Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots,” three weeks ago.

The tea party is a grass-roots political phenomenon that supports lower taxes and less government involvement. It formed in part as a reaction to public bailouts of the banking and automotive industries.  

The recently passed health care law is another popular target of the movement.

Stein, who lives in Temecula with his wife and their 2-year-old daughter, said he has not commented on military matters on any social-network site.

News of the military’s response to his comments sparked an intense debate among Stein’s more than 400 Facebook “fans” about whether troops have the right to speak out about the policies of their commander in chief.

Former Marine Corps attorney Patrick Callahan, who now specializes in military law as a civilian lawyer in Texas, said the Pentagon’s directive is aimed at preventing military members from appearing as if they are trying to thwart the public process or plot a coup.

“There are restrictions on time, place and manner. For instance, service members can’t go to political rallies in uniform,” Callahan said.

But he added: “I have never seen the military go after a junior service member for making disparaging remarks about any politician.

Read the original article on FOXNews

Robin of Berkeley:The Rape of America

Robin of Berkeley.
Let’s start by analyzing the mind of a rapist. 
His goal:  Domination and absolute power, through any means necessary.

His motivation:  punishing another, degrading her, feeling superior and God-like.  Making her feel like an object, nothing, a no-thing.
What else propels him?  Taking what he wants just because he wants it.  Feeling the surge of power, the adrenaline rush, the thrill of stealing a piece of her.
Anything else?  Feeding primitive, twisted impulses; expressing sadistic needs; the savage excitement of subjugating and controlling another.
Those most likely to rape?  Someone who was sexually abused himself; an outsider;  a person robbed of a normal childhood. A man who has carved an identity out of rage and envy and resentment.  Someone who feels entitled to take whatever he wants. What fosters rape?  Parents missing in action.  A culture that thumbs its nose at God.
And a society that minimizes crime, that even heralds certain criminals as heroes.  (Some Black Panthers were rapists, yet they’re revered as idols.)   A culture where punishment is weak, and politicians are moral cowards, fearful of the ACLU. What else?  A media that celebrates debauchery, that entertains through degrading and objectifying.   Popular rap songs and cool hip-hop artists whose words slice and dice women.   Films where anything goes, where hot lesbian sex scenes are as omnipresent as those boneheaded authority figures. And the aftermath of rape?  The destruction of something in the victim that will never return:  a feeling of safety in the world, in her own body.   The nightmare of being treated as an animal; no, worse than this, since animals are now venerated.   And from this nightmare she will never completely awaken.
This, in a nutshell, is how rape works.  But words alone can never capture the enormity, the horror, the soul crushing evil of rape.  And not only females can be victims; men and little boys are violated,  with women, on rare occasions, the perpetuator. The word “rape” has an intriguing history.  It originally denoted the violent seizure of property.   I’m going to use the term in both the historic and modern sense to convey what is happening today. This country is being raped. It’s no coincidence that the race for Presidency began with vile behavior against Hillary Clinton, a high tech wilding of sorts, with her body and sexuality defiled.
But the abuse of Clinton was a walk in the park compared to what has been done to Sarah Palin.  Because she’s a conservative, and an attractive, younger woman, the has been at a fever pitch.   And, just like in a gang rape, people who could have done something about it, didn’t.  In fact, the liberal media and many Democrats have stood around watching, egging on the players.
Can someone explain to me how the Democrats’ complicity is any different than what happened a few months ago at Richmond High School?  There a gang of boys raped and beat a girl, as a crowd not only snickered but filmed the assault.  We also have the economic rapes, the constant shrieks of, “Gimme, gimme.”  Give me what you have because I want it.   Whether it’s the iPod torn from your ear, or a big chunk of your income, or your standard of living, no matter.  I want it, I demand it, give it to me. Or the intrusions into our very bodies by ObamaCare’s Biggest of Big Brothers. Our medical records, our personal information, our physician/patient relationship, our DNA — they want it, they will take it from us. And now that the Left has finally appropriated our health care and our student loans, our banks and newspapers and automobile companies, are they happy?  Satisfied?  Grateful, for God’s sake? No, the mocking continues, the outright threats and the violence escalate.  Suddenly conservatives are not simply opponents exercising First Amendment rights.  We’re delusional, crazy, violent, not quite human. This is what happens when miscreants get away with immoral behavior.  In the criminal arena, when the bad guys are given a wink-wink, or a “boys will be boys,” or, “He’s a victim of white privilege,” the perp becomes more emboldened.  And he’s even more contemptuous of a culture that lets him get away with, quite literally at times, murder. Still not convinced that what’s going on is a Rape of America? What about the queering of children, our School Czar having a history of teaching kids about fisting and water sports?    Or school children being subjected to graphic talks by transsexuals or transvestites or  promoters of the sexuality-du jour?
What about forcing their way into young, impressionable minds, teaching them to hate?  Like Palestinian children programmed to despise Israelis, our kids also learn animosity — but toward America.
Still not sure that the sexualization of children, the wilding of women, the looting of the economy, and the intrusions into our bodies constitute the Rape of America? I have one final piece of evidence.  A majority of citizens are shouting, “No” from the rooftops.  No! to ObamaCare.  No! to socialism.  No! to trashing the Constitution.
And yet, to Obama and the Left, the assertion of “No” does not matter.   Smug and entitled, drunk with power and giddy when they see our fear, they take what they want anyway.

Read the original article American Thinker

‘Tea Partiers’ understand the link between taxes and freedom.

Jonah Goldberg

How much taxation is enough?

‘Tea Partiers’ understand the link between taxes and freedom. Somehow, liberals just don’t get it.

Congratulations! This is your last week working for the man — at least for this year. The Tax Foundation calculates that Tax Freedom Day for 2010 is April 9, which means that by Friday, Americans will have spent nearly 100 days working just to pay their taxes. If Democrats have their way, Tax Freedom Day will keep getting later and later.

Hold that thought. Imagine for a moment that Tax Freedom Day was Dec. 31. In other words, picture working 365 days a year for the government. Now, the government would “give” you a place to sleep, food to eat and clothes to wear, but all your income would really be Washington’s income to allocate as it saw fit. Some romantics might call this sort of arrangement “socialism” or “communism.” But another perfectly good word for it is “slavery” or, if you prefer, involuntary servitude.

Unjust taxation

Now, no one is proposing any such arrangement. But it’s an important point conceptually. A 100% tax rate would be tyrannical not just because you have a right to own what you create, but because the government would necessarily decide what you can and can’t have. Reasonable people can of course differ about where a tax rate becomes tyrannical, and we’re far from that line in historical terms. But any amount of taxation can be unjust if it is being used for bad reasons, is applied discriminatorily or if it’s taken without representation. (That’s how the American Revolution started, after all.)

Individual liberty is far from the only concern, either. The kind of country we want to be is deeply bound up in taxation. The Tax Foundation estimates that some 60% of American families already get more from the government than they pay in taxes (and the top 10% of earners pay more than 70% of the income taxes). If all of President Obama’s plans are enacted, that percentage will increase. We are heading toward being a country where instead of the people deciding how much money the government should have, the government decides how much money the people should have.

Only after they passed “ObamaCare” did Democrats clarify that this was one of their motives. ObamaCare’s appeal has less to do with saving money — which it won’t do — and more to do with spreading the wealth around. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., recently admitted that alleviating the “maldistribution of income in America” from the haves to the have-nots is one of the legislation’s real benefits.

Taxes choke growth

Of course, this will fuel the national debt, which has soared on both parties’ watches ($12 trillion now and heading for $20 trillion in a decade), choking liberty in another way. We are levying tax obligations for generations to come. Our grandchildren didn’t have much representation in that taxation.

There’s also the simple fact that taxes impede growth, and low economic growth curtails the pursuit of happiness for everyone. Democrats are increasingly skeptical about this transcendently obvious point because they have convinced themselves that since government is better than the private sector when it comes to spending money wisely, it only makes sense to take money from the dumb private sector and let the smart government sector decide what to do with it. Well, no matter how dumb America’s wealth-creators might be, they’re smart enough to respond to incentives and disincentives. Indeed, since 1950, no matter where their tax rates have been, from as low as 28% to as high as 91%, the government’s take has held at about 19.5% of GDP, suggesting that squeezing taxpayers harder doesn’t necessarily yield more juice.

Personally, I have never understood liberalism’s blind spot for liberty when it comes to taxation. A 24-hour waiting period before a teenager can have an abortion is an allegedly grotesque violation of individual freedom, but a federal government that takes vast amounts of your money — the means by which you exercise your every freedom — to distribute as it sees fit is “progressive”? The USA Patriot Act, whose threat to privacy was somewhere between entirely theoretical and non-existent for the overwhelming majority of Americans, shocked the liberal conscience. But our income tax system — made idiotically complex by both parties — demands countless hours of preparation and requires law abiding citizens to reveal (and document!) many of their most private decisions to government inspectors every year is “reasonable.” Yet many liberals even think complaining about this is a sign of right-wing dementia.

Now, under ObamaCare, the IRS is going to branch out into the field of health care, enforcing mandates and collecting fees. Perhaps it’s not entirely paranoid to fear that this will make the IRS’ past intrusions of proctological exactitude even less metaphorical.

I bring this up because many in the Democratic Party and in the news media have a hard time understanding what the “Tea Party” crowd is talking about when it complains of incipient tyranny and intrusive government. This might be why much of the media keep making up motives for the Tea Partiers rather than taking them at their word (as when a CNN reporter told viewers that the Tea Parties were driven by “anti-CNN” passions). Again, reasonable people can disagree with where the line between necessary taxation and injustice lies. But the line exists. Tax Freedom Day is going to come later and later, no matter what. Maybe we should figure out now where on the calendar we should mark down that line.

Read the original article USA Today Opinion

KING: 100 percent repeal of Obamacare

By Rep. Steve King

President Obama, speaking at a rally in Iowa City on March 25, challenged opponents of Obamacare who have vowed repeal. To repeal advocates, the President said, “Go for it.”

Before the first light of dawn on the morning after this Pelosi Congress sent Obamacare to the President’s desk, I started the process to repeal.My decision to take this fight to and through the next election and probably through the presidential election in 2012 was not a knee jerk response to a legislative defeat.It is a commitment to the Constitution, fiscal responsibility, real health care reform and American Liberty.

President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid – the troika that controls America today – have long had designs to shove America into the abyss of socialism. Their philosophy, political power and cynical effort to expand the dependency class all lined up to make Obamacare the law of the land. The highest price every generation of Americans will pay is not measured in dollars but in lost liberty.

America is a unique nation with unmatched vitality. The rights and liberties which transformed the “Dream” into the reality of American Exceptionalism are written on our hearts. We have a vitality that is unmatched because we have skimmed the cream of the crop off every donor civilization.

Millions have flocked to America because of the promise of liberty. They have joined natural born Americans to form the most vigorous culture on the planet. Every preceding generation has had the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail.

Obamacare is a reversal of the formula that has produced the world’s unchallenged greatest nation. For these reasons, 100 percent of Obamacare must be repealed.

With the massive costs of Obamacare, we cannot hope to pay our debts in our lifetimes or our children’s. Under Obamacare, costs will go up and quality will go down. Under Obamacare, we must go all the way to the Supreme Court to reestablish the Constitution as a pact limiting the reach of the federal government.

However, all of the aforementioned will not crush our national spirit like the oppressive weight of mandated dependency. Obamacare takes away the American right to manage our own lives.

The rights to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” are prioritized rights. No one has the right to kill in the name of liberty just as no one has the right to take your liberty in pursuit of their happiness. Obamacare is a “taking” of our liberty.

We the People understand this intuitively and reject this injustice which will, if not repealed, bring about the American decline. We cannot “hide the decline” or “manage the decline.” We must decline the decline by repealing 100 percent of Obamacare.

Every provision of Obamacare must be repealed – not selective parts of it. Not by preserving a short list of less egregious components. Obamacare must be ripped out completely, lock, stock and barrel – root and branch – no vestige left behind – not a DNA particle of Obamacare retained.

The toxic stew of Obamacare would taint every effort to reform and give the next generation of leftist politicians their talking points for another assault on our liberty. Republicans will either stand unanimously together for 100 percent repeal, as we did against the bill, or our ranks will be split and our effort defeated.

The voracious appetite of the leftists to consume American Liberty has spontaneously created a new class of activists whom I define as the “constitutional conservatives.” They are the 9-12 Project groups, all the Tea Party groups, and the organizations who join in their efforts.

Constitutional conservatives are emerging as the new majority makers and will not support a partial repeal. They stood in the streets, town halls and capitols of our states and nation to “Kill the bill.”

No one demonstrated to “kill the most egregious aspects” or “preserve the least egregious aspects” of Obamacare. This is an all or nothing fight from this point forward. Either we will be unified, energized and resolute for 100 percent repeal or we will be divided and deservedly conquered by Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

This is a life or death struggle for the soul of America. We are the redoubt of Western Civilization. It is our charge to set the standard for the world.

From an upstart nation formed on the profound belief that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” we have, over the past century assumed “among the Powers of the Earth,” the responsibility of sole superpower. We have defeated our enemies and saved Western civilization for the world.

We are not a nation created to mimic mediocrity. Our charge is to take this nation upwards to a new level of liberty and prosperity built upon the pillars of american exceptionalism.

Goldberg:The Same Old Drill

Too little, too late, too clever and for the wrong reasons. That’s a good way to describe President Obama’s decision to allow a little offshore drilling.

Of course, most of the environmentalist base of the Democratic Party sees it the other way around: too much, too soon (since “never” is their preferred timeline), too dumb but for the right reasons.

Obama justified his decision to allow drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the southern Atlantic and some coastal regions of northern Alaska on the grounds that it would create jobs and serve as a “bridge” to the carbon-free Brigadoon we’ve long been promised. The reality is that his decision was entirely political. Aiming to win vital Republican support in the Senate for some kind of bipartisan cap-and-trade legislation, he lifted the ban where the polling was in favor of doing so. Sound science, energy policy and economics were the last things on his mind. On that, there’s widespread consensus.

Back when oil cost $140 per barrel, President George W. Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore oil drilling. Once elected, Obama quietly reinstated it. Since then, Obama’s Interior Department has been doing just about everything it can to slow, hamper and prevent oil and gas exploration in the U.S. and offshore. There’s no reason to believe the administration won’t keep doing that. Besides, Obama’s announcement actually bans more promising oil and gas reserves from exploration than it opens up: nothing in the Pacific, nothing in the western Gulf of Mexico, nothing in southern Alaska.

But there’s an unintended irony to Obama’s decision, one that he probably has not considered since the passage of health-care reform has only reinforced his ideological hubris. The welfare state that Obama is trying to create needs money, desperately. The federal debt is currently around $12 trillion, and the Congressional Budget Office expects it to hit $20 trillion by 2020. Throw in the unfunded liabilities — i.e. promises to citizens — in our existing entitlements system and the debt creeps over $100 trillion.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Steven Hayward thinks this is something of a ticking time bomb for the left’s overlapping coalition of environmentalists and welfare-state liberals. For years, environmentalists have been selling snake oil about energy policy, claiming that we can give up on nasty but affordable carbon-based energy such as coal, oil and gas, and embrace wind, solar and geothermal (but not nuclear!) for little to no cost. In fact, if you listen to people such as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, switching to solar panels and wind farms will make us richer and more competitive, if not cause unicorns to poop “green jobs” and rainbows for as far as the eye can see.

Obama’s arguments for health-care reform were similarly otherworldly. We can give 32 million more people coverage, without preconditions, and save money. It’s already clear that this have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too pitch was bogus, as big corporations are announcing that ObamaCare will either cost them millions (if not billions) or force them to drop coverage.

It turns out that there’s no free lunch, not on health care and not on energy policy.

And that’s the irony. Obama and his Democratic successors will keep trying to squeeze the rich to pay for their schemes. But that won’t raise anything close to the revenue they need. They’ll try for a value-added tax, which will raise lots of money but also stifle growth. Eventually, if they want to avoid bankruptcy and keep the welfare state afloat, never mind pay for all of these environmental white elephants, they’ll need more revenue, and that’s where oil comes in.

Environmentalists who estimate that we only have six months’ worth of oil in the Arctic or offshore don’t know what they’re talking about, because nobody knows how much untapped oil we have.

Many of the estimates are 30 years old, and they were made before radical leaps in seismic exploration and drilling technology. We could have tens of trillions of dollars worth of oil and gas under our soil or off our coasts. (One American Petroleum Institute study suggests that government revenues alone from untapped resources could be $1.7 trillion over 20 years.) Oil-industry jobs already pay twice the national average and are pretty much impossible to send overseas.

Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere for decades. Even if we don’t drill, other countries certainly will. No country in the world with significant oil or gas resources is abstaining from exploiting them — except for America. Environmentalists say that makes us a leader; the rest of the world says that makes us a sucker.

Read the original article TownHall

York:Poll: Majority says Dem health care tactics an ‘abuse of power’