ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100331

ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100331
Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable

Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!



This is all about "Salvation": The "Son Rising" at "Sunday Sunrise".



"Daily Motivations"

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make
them otherwise." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Failure lies not in falling down. Failure lies in not getting up." -- Chinese proverb

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. -- Napoleon Hill

People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily. -- Zig Ziglar



"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. (Romans 16:20)

God is more powerful than all the rulers on earth. Do the nuclear capabilities, chemical weapons, and military strength of other countries frighten you? We do not need to fear. The prophet Isaiah writes, "All the nations of the world are nothing in comparison with Him. They are but a drop in the bucket, dust on the scales." (Isaiah 40:15)

We need not fear that any one person or nation will put God to the test. He is so far above our earthly governments that they can do nothing outside His power. No ruler or army can change any plan that God has made.

God is also infinitely more powerful than Satan and his evil legions. God is not intimidated by the devil's rebellious hatred. God is the Creator; Satan is a created being who can operate only within the prescribed limits God places on him.

The Book of Matthew records Jesus' encounter with two men who were demon-possessed. The demons immediately recognized the Son of God's power by saying, "Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?" They requested that He let them go into a nearby herd of pigs. He said one powerful word---"Go!" And they did. In response, the pigs ran over a cliff to their deaths. (Matthew 8:28-32, NIV).

As Christians, sometimes we feel that the forces of evil have the upper hand. But our almighty God fights for us. How encouraging it is to know that God is all-powerful!

Your View of God Really Matters …

What do you fear most? Where has evil touched your life? If you really believed God was all-powerful, what impact would it have in this area? Today, choose to find true freedom as you rely on God's power rather than your own.



"The Patriot Post"

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791

"We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge." --Fisher Ames, speech in the United States House of Representatives, 1789

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." --Samuel Adams



Upright

"The more we come to rely on government, the fewer freedoms we will enjoy. Government will start dictating what we can own, eat and drive, how much of our money they will let us keep, how we run our businesses, how many -- if any -- guns we can own, and what we may and may not say. Oh, wait! They are already doing that. To preserve freedom we must fight for it." --columnist Cal Thomas

"True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another." --economist Walter E. Williams

"With their backs to the wall, Democratic leaders are preparing a complicated plan to pass their national health care bill. Standing in the way are Democrats who oppose the bill, whether on principle or out of fear that voting for a wildly unpopular measure will spell defeat for them in November. If you think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going to let them off easy, allowing them to kill the party's top policy priority in more than a generation -- well, that's not gonna happen. Democrats who are considering voting against the bill are about to experience arm-twisting, threats, and pressure like they've never experienced." --columnist Byron York

"In my entire career, I have never been as confounded as I am over President Obama and the Democratic leadership's obsession with a piece of legislation that not one major national poll has shown to be popular. ... So I have to ask, why are the president and the leaders of Congress willing to see their entire party and a multitude of other policy proposals go down in flames over something that the public can't stand? ... Folks, this is nothing more than a power grab. It's an effort to take one of the most essential elements of every person's life -- their health -- and put it under the control of government." --columnist Matt Towery

"The president cannot show us he is looking out for our interests and our future by forcing a quick, partisan vote on an issue that will impact not only this time but generations to come. This is especially true since he was so adamant in his opposition to using this very parliamentary measure in governance during his campaign. And he cannot show us that he is listening when polls show that only 35-40 percent of Americans support this bill." --radio talk-show host Michael Reagan



Dezinformatsia

Delusions from a parallel universe: "Campaign promises are about getting elected; once there, they are quickly forgotten. Courage is not a word you hear very often in discussions about politics. Not Barack Obama. Whether or not you support or even understand his health care plan -- and the polls suggest that right now most Americans don't -- you must admit this: Obama is a man who does everything humanly possible to keep his promises. He promised health care reform, and he is risking his presidency to deliver it. If that's not courage, what is?" --political commentator Susan Estrich (Try blind ideology.)

Oh no! "Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama's signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn't make good on a year's worth of false starts. And it won't even be the opposition's fault. If too many Democrats in the House defect, health care will be dead." --New York Times columnist Frank Rich

Propaganda FAIL: "John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings." --Christian Science Monitor staff writer Peter Grier (Oops, Bedell was a registered Democrat and an anti-Bush 9/11 "truther.")

Rather racist: "One, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. 'Listen he just hasn't been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death.' And a version of, 'Listen he's a nice person, he's very articulate' -- this is what's been used against him -- 'but he couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.'" --HDNet's Dan Rather trying to put words in Republicans' mouths



Village Idiots

You don't say: "I have thus far failed, and our world has thus fair failed to respond adequately to this crisis." --Algore on his efforts to educate the world about climate change

Unsolicited advice: "I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff. I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement. I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that's been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp. And I will help you get done what the American people sent you there to do." --from an open letter to BO from crockumentarian Michael Moore

Useful idiot: "Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. ... [T]ruly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies." --actor Sean Penn on his buddy Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan dictator (No wonder they get along so well!)

In need of remedial history: "Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?" --actor Tom Hanks promoting his upcoming HBO miniseries "The Pacific"

Somehow not comforting: "Believe me, if we were charting this administration as a political exercise, the first thing we would have done would not have been a massive recovery act, stabilizing the banks and helping to keep the auto companies from collapsing. Those would not even be the first hundred things he would want to do." --White House adviser David Axelrod



Short Cuts

"Nancy Pelosi, the speaker and leader of the San Francisco Democrats, says her members 'are very excited about what comes next.' For many of them, that's 'excited' as in 'hysterical.'" --Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden

"So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that 'now is the hour when we must seize the moment,' the same moment he's been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats." --columnist Mark Steyn

"President Obama met with ten House Democrats opposed to the health care bill. He did all he could to get their votes. He promised to campaign for them in their districts and when that didn't work, he threatened to campaign for them in their districts." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"These self-anointed intellectuals are people who think that those who believe in God and Jesus Christ, those who 'cling to their guns and their religion,' are a lower form of animal life, while they, themselves, have no problem whatever accepting Obama as a messiah and, in the past, deifying the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Let's face it, when you kneel in a church, you're accepting that there is something greater and wiser than yourself in the universe. When, on the other hand, you kneel to a left-wing politician, you're merely emulating Monica Lewinsky." --columnist Burt Prelutsky



"ACU"

ACORN is playing dead.

Since ACU began taking on ACORN we have scored a number of victories.

We have helped expose their federal funding, to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars. We exposed their connection to the mortgage meltdown that led our nation into financial crisis and their connection to Barack Obama's campaign - remember our ACU videos?
It didn't take long before other brave people stepped forward to expose them for what they had been up to: criminal enterprises masked as community efforts.

So when Congress finally had the will power to start removing their federal funding we cheered, and we supported their efforts.

Now our newspapers are reporting that ACORN is dead.

But, it is critical that as ACU activists you know ACORN is not gone, they are merely rolling over and playing dead like a dog in our nation's backyard.

They are trying to hide under other names so they can come back stronger than ever.

We need to keep the pressure on Congress and the liberal Democrats who supported them to not fund any ACORN spin offs. Tax dollars do not belong with ACORN related subsidiaries!

TELL CONGRESS: DO NOT FUND ANY ACORN-RELATED GROUPS. WE DO NOT WANT OUR TAX DOLLARS BEING SPENT WITH ACORN OR THEIR SPIN-OFFS. WE ARE WATCHING!

Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet..." However, every rose has its thorn we know ACORN, and their related groups, for who they are.

The Metro section of the Washington post recently wrote, "ACORN's Capitol Hill office is shutting down... National group making broad closures but it hasn't dissolved."

The story continued that, "The Capitol Hill office which had become an increasingly important location for ACORN is shutting down... after the organization was hammered by scandal." However, Michael McCray, a member of a breakaway group of ACORN leaders said, "they're looking forward to replacing ACORN with something that is an effective advocate."

The key words are "it hasn't dissolved." ACORN is claiming to some they are going away, while telling others they are staying put if even operating under a different name.

We need to nip them in the bud.

TELL CONGRESS: DO NOT FUND ANY ACORN-RELATED GROUPS. WE DO NOT WANT OUR TAX DOLLARS BEING SPENT WITH ACORN OR THEIR SPIN-OFFS. WE ARE WATCHING!

Time is of the essence.

Another election is approaching. Their leaders will try to corrupt this election process just like they did in the past. Our economy is just beginning to recover from the disastrous policies they pushed for subprime mortgages. The criminal enterprises they encouraged will look for an outlet.

As USA Today's headline recently screamed: "Vows to pick up where ACORN left off are made," and quoting critic Matthew Vadum who said he truly "believes it will re-emerge."

Call your local talk radio and tell them that ACORN isn't dead. Write on blogs to tell people that ACORN isn't dead. Send letters to the editor exposing the group's leaders and keep the pressure on to tell people that ACORN isn't dead.

And help ACU tell Congress: DO NOT FUND ANY ACORN-RELATED GROUPS. WE DO NOT WANT OUR TAX DOLLARS BEING SPENT WITH ACORN OR THEIR SPIN-OFFS. WE ARE WATCHING!

Sincerely,

Dennis Whitfield
Executive Vice President, ACU
Former Reagan Deputy Secretary of Labor

P.S. FOXNews recently reported, "The Chicago office for the community activist group, known as ACORN, seems to have disappeared. (BUT) In its place; a company called Affordable Housing Centers of America, [is] located in the same office, with apparently many of the same employees. Like we said, ACORN isn't dead. Help keep the pressure on Congress to stop any funding of ACORN or ACORN-related groups. Sign the Petition Letter effort here!



"The Web"

RecallCongressNow.org

http://www.theacru.org/acru/mark_levin_on_recallcongressnoworg_328/

Our long national ObamaCare nightmare is just beginning

Conn Carroll - Guest Columnist

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=955292

If you are tired of our nation's year-long healthcare debate and you were hoping that the passage of President Barack Obama's healthcare bill would settle anything, then Politico has some bad news for you: the real fight is just getting started.

This week, a coalition of leftist groups began to sink millions of dollars into television advertising and astroturf events selling the plan to the American people. But as a Washington Post poll conducted after passage last week shows, the Obama administration and their leftist allies face a steep climb.

The top line numbers are bad but not daunting for the pro-ObamaCare forces: 50 percent of Americans oppose the changes in the new law while 46 percent support them. But the numbers also show that most Americans believe the new law will cause "the overall healthcare system in this country" to get worse, "the quality of the healthcare you receive" to get worse, and "your health insurance coverage" to get worse. The poll also shows that most Americans believe the law will weaken Medicare and that there is "too much government involvement in the nation's healthcare system." And strong majorities of Americans believe ObamaCare will increase the federal budget deficit (65%), increase "your healthcare costs" (55%), and increase "overall costs of healthcare in this country" (60%). The American people are right on all counts. And if the events of last week are any indication, these beliefs will only harden over time.

Pitching his failed stimulus plan back in February of last year, President Obama told a factory in East Peoria, Illinois, "So what's happening at this company tells us a larger story about what's happening with our nation's economy, because, in many ways, you can measure America's bottom line by looking at Caterpillar's bottom line."

Well, Caterpillar was quick to inform the markets exactly what ObamaCare meant for its bottom line. Caterpillar announced that ObamaCare would raise its insurance costs by at least 20 percent -- or more than $100 million -- just in the first year of the healthcare overhaul program. And Caterpillar was not alone. Other Fortune 500 firms quickly followed suit announcing ObamaCare hits to their bottom line including: Deere & Co., $150 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; Valero Energy, $20 million; and AT&T, $1 billion. The consulting firm Towers Watson tells the Wall Street Journal that the total hit this year will reach nearly $14 billion. America's employers simply can't sustain losses like these, so many of these companies, including Verizon, have informed their employees to expect significant changes to their current healthcare benefits.

The leftist majorities in Congress were incensed that America's employers would dare warn their investors about the costs of ObamaCare at the same time as the Obama administration's national sales pitch was set to begin. So using the full force of the federal government to bully and harass America's job creators, House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-California) sent letters to the CEOs of Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon, and AT&T demanding all documents "from January 1, 2009, through the present" regarding "any analyses related to the projected impact of healthcare reform" and "any documents, including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of healthcare reform." Waxman intends to haul these CEOs in front of the Subcommitte on Oversight and Investigations, which just happens to be chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Michigan), for a hearing on April 21.

While it is unfortunate that the left in Congress believes our nation's business leaders' time is best spent being browbeaten by congressmen for not doing more to support their policy preferences, the American public should look forward to these hearings. The more information the American public is given about ObamaCare, the more they will oppose it. The more they oppose it, the easier it will be to repeal it. We have a long road ahead of us, but eventually the ObamaCare nightmare will end.

Conn Carroll is the assistant director for The Heritage Foundation's Strategic Communications and he serves as editor of The Foundry, the think tank's rapid-response policy blog. This column is posted with permission.

Steele Takes Fire for RNC Sex Club, High-End Expenses

http://newsmax.com/Headline/sex-club-republican-expenses/2010/03/29/id/354165?s=al&promo_code=9A97-1

WASHINGTON – The Republican National Committee spent $1,946 last month at a sex-themed Hollywood club that features topless dancers and bondage outfits. Now the GOP wants its money back.

Listed in a monthly financial report, the amount is itemized as expenses for meals at Voyeur West Hollywood.

RNC spokesman Doug Heye said Monday the committee doesn't know the details of how the money was spent, all who may have attended or the nature of the outing, except to say it was an unauthorized event and that the expenditure was inappropriate.

The RNC will be reimbursed by Erik Brown of Orange, Calif., the donor-vendor who billed the committee for the club visit, Heye said.

Brown did not respond to an e-mail and phone message seeking comment.

Since November, the RNC has paid Brown's company, Dynamic Marketing Inc., about $19,000 for printing and direct-mail services, campaign spending reports show. He has contributed several thousand dollars to the party.

The most recent financial disclosure report said the RNC spent more than $17,000 for private planes in February and nearly $13,000 for car services. Heye said such services are used only when needed.

The $1,946 for meals at Voyeur West Hollywood was the most eye-catching item in the monthly report. RNC Chairman Michael Steele, whose spending decisions have angered some donors in this midterm election year, had nothing to do with the nightclub expenditure, Heye said.

The conservative group Concerned Women for America said the RNC should disclose more about the episode.

"Did they really agree to reimburse nearly $2,000 for a bondage-themed night club?" group president Penny Nance asked in a statement. "Why would a staffer believe that this is acceptable, and has this kind of thing been approved in the past?"

Much of the most lavish spending by the major political parties is associated with fundraisers, which often target wealthy people.

The RNC spent $144,549 for rooms at the Four Seasons Resort in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 2009. On March 19, 2009, it spent $31,980 for catering by the Breakers Palm Beach in Florida.

The RNC paid $18,361 over the past several months to the "Tiny Jewel Box" in Washington for "office supplies," which may have included trinkets or gifts for big donors. It spent $13,622 at Dylan's Candy Bar in New York City.

Some Republican officials and donors have complained about Steele's spending decisions, saying the party should devote every available dollar to trying to win House and Senate races this fall. He held this year's four-day winter meeting at a beachfront hotel in Hawaii, although it often takes place in Washington.

Some donors grumbled when Steele spent more than $18,000 to redecorate his office. Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor, also has received substantial fees for making speeches, even though the RNC pays him a full-time salary.

The expenses were first brought to light by the Web site Daily Caller. The article led with Steele's expenses on charter aircraft and the suggestion by an unnamed source that he was looking for the RNC to buy an airplane to accommodate his travel.

Heye told Fox News the article was misleading because it did not distinguish Steele's expenses from finance and fundraising expenses associated with the purpose of the travel. He added that the story "willfully and erroneously suggests" that Steele was at the club.

"The chairman was never at the location in question, he had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location at all acceptable. ... Good reporting would make that distinction crystal clear," Heye said in his statement.

After the rebuke, Jonathan Strong, the reporter who wrote the Daily Caller article, told MSNBC that he never said Steele was at Voyeur, but "I hope to find out whether that's the case in the coming days."

Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson also offered a statement. "To be clear: We did not claim that Michael Steele personally visited Voyeur West Hollywood. In fact, and unfortunately, we still know almost nothing about that trip, including its purpose. If the RNC provides details, we’ll put them on the site immediately."

Steele's supporters say he has brought a refreshing frankness and energy to the party's leadership.



Obama Ignores Senate Republicans, Uses Recess Appointment to Place Embattled Union Lawyer Craig Becker on NLRB

By Pete Winn, Senior Writer/Editor

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/63503

(CNSNews.com) – Flouting Senate Republicans, President Obama used his constitutional authority to make recess appointments on Saurday and placed two Democratic nominees -- union lawyer Craig Becker and labor attorney Mark Pearce -- on the National Labor Relations Board.

Becker, the associate general counsel for both the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, had been blocked for confirmation on Feb. 9, when all 41 Senate Republicans and two Senate Democrats, Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), voted against removing a filibuster against his nomination.

The Pearce nomination was considered less controversial, and Senate Republicans had offered to approve Pearce, a former union attorney in private practice, if Becker’s name was withdrawn. A third nominee, a Republican, was not appointed.

“The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis,” Obama said in a statement released Saturday by the White House.

Becker and Pearce were two of 15 recess appointments the president made Saturday, the day after Congress left Washington for its Easter recess.

But the Becker appointment was widely seen as a slap in the face to the entire Senate Republican Conference, which sent a letter last week to the president calling on him not to circumvent the Senate by making an appointment while Congress was away on Easter recess.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who, with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), led Senate opposition to Becker, said he was “very disappointed” that the president chose to appoint Becker to the NLRB post while Congress was in recess.

“The U.S. Senate rejected this highly controversial and partisan nominee, and once again the administration showed that it had little respect for the time-honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress,” McCain said in a statement issued Saturday. “This is clear payback by the administration to organized labor.”

Organized labor lauded the president for doing an end-run around the Senate.

“The appointment of Becker and Pearce to the NLRB is a major step towards renewing access to justice for America's workers,” AFL-CIO spokesman Josh Goldstein told CNSNews.com.

“For more than two years, the NLRB has been crippled by its unnecessary vacancies, leaving working families at a major disadvantage. The hardworking people who make this country run deserve better.”

Employers groups, who opposed Becker’s nomination, warned of the repercussions.

“This recess appointment disregards the Senate’s bipartisan rejection of Craig Becker’s nomination to the NLRB,” Katie Packer, president of the Workforce Fairness Institute, told CNSNews.com.

“Overriding the will of the Senate and providing this special interest payback contradicts the President’s claim to change the tone in Washington. The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America’s job creators to compete.”

Biased or Well-Qualified?

Becker is the first attorney to be appointed to the board while still working directly for a union. He currently serves as associate general counsel to both the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

A summa cum laude graduate of Yale, Becker has practiced and taught labor law for 27 years, serving as a law professor at UCLA, University of Chicago and Georgetown law schools.

But in their letter, the GOP senators said Becker never sufficiently answered questions posed to him by Republican members of the Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee – especially Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah.)

“Time and again questions have been raised over Mr. Becker's ability to serve in an honest and impartial manner on the NLRB, yet this administration chose to ignore the questions and concerns and instead forced their will on the American people," McCain said.

McCain and Hatch say that Becker won’t give clear answers about whether, as a member of the president’s transition team, he helped draft President Obama’s pro-union executive orders shortly after the inauguration -- even though he was still an employee of the SEIU.

When asked by Sen. Hatch during his confirmation hearing if he was “involved or responsible in any way” for the executive orders, Becker responded: “As a member of the Presidential Transition Team, I was asked to provide advice and information concerning a possible executive order of the sort described. I was involved in researching, analyzing, preliminary drafting, and consulting with other members of the Transition team.”

Becker is also known for writing that employers should be barred from placing observers at the polls to challenge union ballots -- and should have no right to be heard in unfair labor practices cases.

In a 1993 article in the University of Minnesota Law Review, “Democracy In The Workplace: Union Representation. Elections And Federal Labor Law,” the then-UCLA professor wrote (pages 451-453): “On these latter issues employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practices case, even though Board rulings might indirectly affect their duty to bargain.”

He also wrote. “(E)mployers should neither have legal standing as parties to the representation proceeding nor have rights tantamount to those of candidates in union elections”

The abstract for the article states: "(T)his Article illuminates fundamental differences between the systems of political and labor representation. In light of these differences, it concludes that employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees' election of representatives."

Becker has also stated that his opinion that the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to form a union, simply by signing a union card -- could be implemented as an administrative matter by the NLRB.

“Craig Becker stands far outside the mainstream of NLRB nominees,” Hatch said. “There is no place on this powerful board for someone who believes that card-check legislation – getting rid of the secret union ballot – can be enacted surreptitiously through regulation.”

The AFL-CIO’s Goldstein dismissed the Senate Republican response.

“Cynical attempts to paint them as biased or radical could not be more dishonest. They are both highly qualified and respected experts,” Goldstein said.

“For eight months the Republican minority blocked these nominations and hypocritically condemned the use of recess appointments ignoring the fact that Bush did so seven times to the NLRB. Putting the NLRB back on track to being a fully functioning Board is a big win for working families,” he added.

Meanwhile, attorneys for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Council say they are filing motions in 12 pending cases they are involved in seeking Becker to step aside and "recuse" himself from participating in the decisions because of his public advocacy of union positions on those issues.



The Vat Cometh

by Charles Krauthammer

http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2010/03/26/the_vat_cometh?page=full&comments=true

WASHINGTON -- As the night follows the day, the VAT cometh.

With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.

We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks -- the unfunded $200 billion-plus doctor fix, the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight-of-hand (counting 10 years of revenue and only 6 years of outflows) -- is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement.

It will vastly increase the debt. But even if it were revenue-neutral, Obamacare pre-empts and appropriates for itself the best and easiest means of reducing the existing deficit. Obamacare's $500 billion of cuts in Medicare and $600 billion in tax hikes are no longer available for deficit reduction. They are siphoned off for the new entitlement of insuring the uninsured.

This is fiscally disastrous because, as President Obama himself explained last year in unveiling his grand transformational policies, our unsustainable fiscal path requires control of entitlement spending, the most ruinous of which is out-of-control health care costs.

Obamacare was sold on the premise that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, "health care reform is entitlement reform. Our budget cannot take this upward spiral of cost." But the bill enacted on Tuesday accelerates the spiral: It radically expands Medicaid (adding 15 million new recipients/dependents) and shamelessly raids Medicare by spending on a new entitlement the $500 billion in cuts and the yield from the Medicare tax hikes.

Obama knows that the debt bomb is looming, that Moody's is warning that the Treasury's AAA rating is in jeopardy, that we are headed for a run on the dollar and/or hyperinflation if nothing is done.

Hence his deficit reduction commission. It will report (surprise!) after the November elections.

What will it recommend? What can it recommend? Sure, Social Security can be trimmed by raising the retirement age, introducing means testing and changing the indexing formula from wage growth to price inflation.

But this won't be nearly enough. As Obama has repeatedly insisted, the real money is in health care costs -- which are now locked in place by the new Obamacare mandates.

That's where the value-added tax comes in. For the politician, it has the virtue of expediency: People are used to sales taxes, and this one produces a river of revenue. Every 1 percent of VAT would yield up to $1 trillion a decade (depending on what you exclude -- if you exempt food, for example, the yield would be more like $900 billion).

It's the ultimate cash cow. Obama will need it. By introducing universal health care, he has pulled off the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. And the most expensive. Which is why all of the European Union has the VAT. Huge VATs. Germany: 19 percent. France and Italy: 20 percent. Most of Scandinavia: 25 percent.

American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.

Obama set out to be a consequential president, on the order of Ronald Reagan. With the VAT, Obama's triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan's strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes -- then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.

Obama's strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast, and then feed it. Spend first -- which then forces taxation. Now that, with the institution of universal health care, we are becoming the full entitlement state, the beast will have to be fed.

And the VAT is the only trough in creation large enough.

As a substitute for the income tax, the VAT would be a splendid idea. Taxing consumption makes infinitely more sense than taxing work. But to feed the liberal social-democratic project, the VAT must be added on top of the income tax.

Ultimately, even that won't be enough. As the population ages and health care becomes increasingly expensive, the only way to avoid fiscal ruin (as Britain, for example, has discovered) is health care rationing.

It will take a while to break the American populace to that idea. In the meantime, get ready for the VAT. Or start fighting it.




Vote Democrats out of Congress

Lisa Miller

545 PEOPLE

By Charlie Reese

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=25403709686&topic=6590

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, *if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?*

Have you ever wondered why, *if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes,

WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?*

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices, 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi.

She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ .

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them
con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you.



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