Maine Fines Group for ‘Inflammatory Anti-Muslim Message’
The Christian Action Network runs afoul of bureaucratic political correctness.
June 25, 2009 - by Patrick Poole
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/maine-fines-group-for-inflammatory-anti-muslim-message/
An organization in the national spotlight recently for producing a documentary identifying several dozen potential terrorist training compounds in the U.S. has offended the sensibilities of Maine bureaucrats, who have fined the organization $4,000, alleging among other things that the group sent out mailings containing an “inflammatory anti-Muslim message.”
The group in question, the Christian Action Network (CAN), received notice of the fines and the fundraising ban in a May 6 letter from Elaine Thibodeau of the State of Maine’s Department of Professional and Financial Regulation. Enclosed in the letter was a prepared consent agreement for CAN to sign agreeing to all of the state’s allegations, waiving all rights to appeal, and agreeing to pay the $4,000 fine. As part of the consent agreement, CAN is required to agree to all of the state’s allegations, including their assertion that their mailing amounted to hate speech.
“These bogus charges and fines the State of Maine has imposed are nothing but an attempt to stifle our free speech and silence our organization from speaking out about the steady creep of radical Islam in America,” CAN president Martin Mawyer told Pajamas Media. “We fully intend to appeal the state’s penalties because if they successfully silence us here, we will quickly find that we won’t be able to speak out anywhere.”
CAN was in the news earlier this year following the release of their documentary, Homegrown Jihad, which details dozens of compounds across the U.S. operated by Pakistani Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, who has previously been identified in State Department reports as a terrorist leader, and his group, Jamaat al-Fuqra. The documentary looks into the past terrorist acts of the group in the U.S., including the assassination of two moderate Muslim leaders, the firebombing of non-Muslim religious facilities, and an investigation by Colorado authorities that led to convictions and lengthy prison sentences. These activities have been covered in several FBI domestic terrorism reports and a more recent assessment by the Center for Policing Terrorism. Other prominent convicted terrorists, including “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid, D.C. Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad, and NYC landmarks bomb plotter Clement Rodney Hampton-El, have been identified as former members.
But what has Maine bureaucrats roiling is a fundraising mailing sent by CAN (a copy of which was provided to Pajamas Media) regarding a public school curriculum used in California requiring students to pray to Allah, dress up as Muslims, adopt Muslim names, and learn the five pillars of Islam. Since Christians and Jews are not given similar accommodations, CAN encouraged their supporters to send a petition to Maine Gov. John Baldacci asking him to prevent such instruction in Maine public schools.
Among the stated allegations in Thibodeau’s letter and the consent agreement is that this amounted to hate speech, claiming:
5. The correspondence contained an inflammatory anti-Muslim message.
In two separate rounds of correspondence with Thibodeau, I inquired what basis the state used to determine that the mailing was “inflammatory,” but she refused to address that question on both occasions.
In addition to running afoul of ideological sensibilities of Maine state employees, Thibodeau makes two regulatory claims that prompted the $4,000 in fines. The first claim made by the state is that CAN was not properly registered when the mailings were sent. The second is that CAN used Maine Gov. John Baldacci’s name without his permission.
CAN responds that they made all efforts to comply with state law and promptly provided additional information requested by Thibodeau’s office. And they provided Pajamas Media with documentation that seems to flatly contradict the State of Maine’s allegations. While Thibodeau’s letter claims that CAN’s charitable solicitation license expired in November 2007, CAN produced copies of canceled checks cashed by the Maine state treasurer that accompanied their 2008 renewal and registration.
Nothing in what the state has sent to CAN indicates that 2008 registration was in any way defective (or even mentions it), which creates problems for the state’s position, for if the previous year’s registration was in order, and CAN claims to have received nothing to indicate otherwise, their fundraising mailing would have fallen within the 90-day renewal period when the mailing was sent. The state’s claim that their 2009 registration was out of order and that they were fundraising without a license would therefore be moot as the mailing was sent prior to the renewal period’s expiration.
In support of their position that CAN was not properly registered this past April, Thibodeau’s office claims that several pages of CAN’s annual audit were not properly transmitted with their application and notified them of the error by email on April 6. Her letter acknowledges that they received the missing pages on April 21, postmarked on April 13. This constitutes the grounds for the state’s $1,000 fine. Thibodeau confirmed that the state doesn’t send out any official notice that an organization’s application has been approved.
“They have created a black box registration process where if they don’t like what you’re saying, they will go back through your application and determine that your application wasn’t correct, and suddenly you’re violating the law,” Mawyer said. “That’s what we believe has happened in this case.”
Perhaps more troubling for free speech advocates is the state’s claim that CAN needed the governor’s permission in order to use his name on the petition that the group urged supporters to send to him:
8. Governor John Baldacci did not give written consent, or any other consent, to the Christian Action Network to use his name for the purpose of soliciting contributions.
This was the stated basis for assessing the heavier $3,000 fine. Thibodeau’s letter and the consent agreement also allege that the use of Baldacci’s name was intended to suggest his endorsement of CAN. But Mawyer notes that the U.S. Postal Service examines all of their fundraising solicitations, including looking for any implied endorsements, before they are mailed.
“It would be a violation of federal law for us to make any false representation concerning any endorsements, which is one reason why we submit all of our fundraising letters to the Post Office for their approval prior to anything being sent out under our non-profit mailing permit, as was the case with this fundraising package,” Mawyer said. “We have had the Post Office reject packages in the past, and we have rewritten them to get their go-ahead. Now Maine is telling us in essence that even if we get federal approval beforehand, the state retains the right to reject their interpretation and impose their own standard if they disagree with the content of your mailing.”
It is particularly telling that while the state claims that CAN implied the governor’s endorsement, they did not assess any fines based on this allegation, perhaps with the problem of the Postal Service’s prior approval of the CAN mailing in view. But the free speech chilling effect from Maine could be enormous as their interpretation of state law could virtually outlaw any issue mentioning government officials without obtaining their prior written consent. As Mawyer observes, “Imagine not being able to criticize a public official without their express written permission or without any reference to them whatsoever.”
One important outstanding issue following the rounds of correspondence between Pajamas Media and Thibodeau concerns a public complaint received by her office about the content of CAN’s mailing cited in her May 6 letter. Her letter gives specific dates on all other matters except this one. Mawyer’s concern is that the complaint may have not only preceded the state’s notification of the missing pages to the application, but also their decision to consider CAN’s solicitation license invalid. I specifically asked twice on what date the complaint was received and Thibodeau refused to address the question both times.
“There’s little doubt that our documentary on Islamic terrorist camps operating inside the U.S. and our statements of concern about the spread of radical Islam is at the heart of the state’s actions. And we can’t help but conclude based on the available evidence that if we were ACORN, or any other group advocating some left-wing cause, they would be using a less-than-rigorous scrutiny in their interpretation of the law,” Mawyer said. “Would they ever dare consider applying these standards to CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations]?”
CAN is appealing the fines issued by the State of Maine and is also considering a lawsuit to prevent bureaucrats from using rulings after the fact to go after charitable organizations running afoul of political correctness. If Maine were to prevail in this case, they fear that it would not only be used by groups like CAIR to attempt to discredit CAN’s investigative work, but also be an invitation for Maine and other states to use bureaucratic interpretations to go after other organizations making similar “inflammatory anti-Muslim messages.”
Monday, June 29, 2009
ACORN and the Census
Acorn Role in Census Challenged
By JAKE SHERMAN
WASHINGTON -- Some Republican members of Congress want the U.S. Census Bureau to end a 2010 Census partnership with Acorn, the community organizing group that was hit by accusations of voter-registration fraud in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Acorn, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, signed up in February with the bureau to be a "2010 Census Partner," which includes, among other things, identifying job candidates, encouraging its members to participate in the count and distributing literature explaining the importance of the census.
But in the wake of accusations that some former Acorn employees engaged in voter registration fraud in the 2006 and 2008 elections, the partnership isn't sitting well with some Republicans on Capitol Hill who worry that Acorn could skew results. There's a lot at stake since the census is used to dole out money to states and localities and to allocating seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the ranking Republican on the panel that oversees the Census Bureau, is demanding that the bureau explain how the partnership with Acorn fits its stated mission of selecting partners that will not "distract from the Census Bureau's mission."
Several other conservatives would like to see the Census Bureau sever its ties to Acorn altogether. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) said in an interview that he plans to introduce a bill that would require mail carriers to count the population as a way of keeping Acorn out of the process.
Stephen Buckner, a Census Bureau spokesman, said the partners program is voluntary and unpaid, and that Acorn employees won't be paid to knock on doors and enumerate as part of that organization, although it is impossible to know if the federal government would ultimately hire someone associated Acorn.
Census Bureau officials said Acorn is one of 40,000 participants in its partners program. Other partners include Target Corp., Goodwill Industries and Telemundo, the Spanish-language TV network. The partnerships, Mr. Buckner said, are meant to promote the count and boost the number of responses among traditionally hard-to-count populations. Mr. Buckner said Acorn represents some hard-to-count communities.
Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said earlier this month that she wouldn't answer certain questions on the 2010 Census form partially because of concerns about Acorn. A spokeswoman for Ms. Bachmann didn't make her available for comment.
Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa) tried unsuccessfully to attach an amendment to a must-pass appropriations bill to forbid any Acorn involvement in the 2010 Census. The outspoken Mr. King is perhaps the most vocal critic of the organization, introducing a host of bills that would limit Acorn's affairs in federal governance.
As for allegations of voter registration fraud -- some Acorn employees were accused of signing up voters using names like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys -- Acorn spokesman Scott Levenson said his organization has cooperated fully with authorities, and promptly dismissed people accused of with wrongdoing.
At the time, many of the potentially faulty registrations were flagged to election officials as a result of the group's own internal controls.
That hasn't dispelled the distrust. "There is a trust issue when you mention Acorn and the census together, regardless of what they're doing. It casts doubt on the accuracy that would come out" of the headcount, said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R., Ga.).
The Census Bureau remains without a director, and as a result, it has been difficult for the bureau to put forward a unified public front on a host of issues, including public assurances that Acorn won't be intricately involved in the count. At this time, the Census' director would likely be traveling around the country discussing the count.
Republicans have been blocking the confirmation vote on President Barack Obama's choice to head the bureau, Robert Groves. There were initial concerns about Dr. Groves in part because he is an expert in statistical sampling and conservatives say the Constitution bars sampling for the decennial count. The Obama administration and Dr. Groves assured Congress sampling wouldn't be used. Republicans have declined to comment on why the nomination has been held up.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday called for Dr. Groves' immediate confirmation.
By JAKE SHERMAN
WASHINGTON -- Some Republican members of Congress want the U.S. Census Bureau to end a 2010 Census partnership with Acorn, the community organizing group that was hit by accusations of voter-registration fraud in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Acorn, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, signed up in February with the bureau to be a "2010 Census Partner," which includes, among other things, identifying job candidates, encouraging its members to participate in the count and distributing literature explaining the importance of the census.
But in the wake of accusations that some former Acorn employees engaged in voter registration fraud in the 2006 and 2008 elections, the partnership isn't sitting well with some Republicans on Capitol Hill who worry that Acorn could skew results. There's a lot at stake since the census is used to dole out money to states and localities and to allocating seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the ranking Republican on the panel that oversees the Census Bureau, is demanding that the bureau explain how the partnership with Acorn fits its stated mission of selecting partners that will not "distract from the Census Bureau's mission."
Several other conservatives would like to see the Census Bureau sever its ties to Acorn altogether. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) said in an interview that he plans to introduce a bill that would require mail carriers to count the population as a way of keeping Acorn out of the process.
Stephen Buckner, a Census Bureau spokesman, said the partners program is voluntary and unpaid, and that Acorn employees won't be paid to knock on doors and enumerate as part of that organization, although it is impossible to know if the federal government would ultimately hire someone associated Acorn.
Census Bureau officials said Acorn is one of 40,000 participants in its partners program. Other partners include Target Corp., Goodwill Industries and Telemundo, the Spanish-language TV network. The partnerships, Mr. Buckner said, are meant to promote the count and boost the number of responses among traditionally hard-to-count populations. Mr. Buckner said Acorn represents some hard-to-count communities.
Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said earlier this month that she wouldn't answer certain questions on the 2010 Census form partially because of concerns about Acorn. A spokeswoman for Ms. Bachmann didn't make her available for comment.
Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa) tried unsuccessfully to attach an amendment to a must-pass appropriations bill to forbid any Acorn involvement in the 2010 Census. The outspoken Mr. King is perhaps the most vocal critic of the organization, introducing a host of bills that would limit Acorn's affairs in federal governance.
As for allegations of voter registration fraud -- some Acorn employees were accused of signing up voters using names like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys -- Acorn spokesman Scott Levenson said his organization has cooperated fully with authorities, and promptly dismissed people accused of with wrongdoing.
At the time, many of the potentially faulty registrations were flagged to election officials as a result of the group's own internal controls.
That hasn't dispelled the distrust. "There is a trust issue when you mention Acorn and the census together, regardless of what they're doing. It casts doubt on the accuracy that would come out" of the headcount, said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R., Ga.).
The Census Bureau remains without a director, and as a result, it has been difficult for the bureau to put forward a unified public front on a host of issues, including public assurances that Acorn won't be intricately involved in the count. At this time, the Census' director would likely be traveling around the country discussing the count.
Republicans have been blocking the confirmation vote on President Barack Obama's choice to head the bureau, Robert Groves. There were initial concerns about Dr. Groves in part because he is an expert in statistical sampling and conservatives say the Constitution bars sampling for the decennial count. The Obama administration and Dr. Groves assured Congress sampling wouldn't be used. Republicans have declined to comment on why the nomination has been held up.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday called for Dr. Groves' immediate confirmation.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Another Reason Why Gays Should NOT Be Allowed To Adopt Or Even Raise Children
Little Boy Blue Devil
by Mike Adams
It looks like Duke University has another rape case on its hands. This one may hurt the university nearly as much as the one that rocked its campus back in 2006. Unlike the previous case, this one appears to involve a credible confession of sexual abuse. Like the previous case, crucial facts are already being filtered through the prism of identity politics.
Frank Lombard is the associate director of Duke’s Center for Health Policy. The university administrator was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old son for sex. I tried to contact Frank Lombard over the weekend to probe his expertise regarding the health benefits of raping small children. So far, he’s declined to comment.
University administrator Lombard is accused of logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a “perv dad for fun.” The detective who wisely looked into the suspicious screen name says that Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son. All this was before allegedly inviting a stranger to travel to North Carolina from another state to statutorily rape his already-molested adopted son.
If Lombard is convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. His arrest comes about a year after the Court decided that child rapists cannot be executed because “society” has “evolved” to the point where such executions would be “indecent.”
If this case goes to trial, it could be an interesting one to watch. But it will be just as interesting to watch the Duke faculty respond to these allegations. It didn’t take them long to respond when several white Duke Lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper. A whopping 88 professors signed a statement accusing the players of both racism and rape. Such was their regard for the presumption of innocence.
Perhaps even more stunning was the response of some professors after it became apparent that the white lacrosse players were innocent. After that became so obvious the school had to readmit the students, Professor Kate Holloway resigned her committee assignments in protest. By the way, the most common form of faculty protest these days is to refuse to work. Most people think this kind of protest is caused by arrogance. But the actual cause is a thing called “tenure.”
So it will be interesting to see how Duke faculty members respond to Frank Lombard. Because he is white, Lombard is fair game at Duke, isn’t he? But Lombard is also gay, so will that complicate things?
Unfortunately for Frank Lombard, the affidavit in support of his arrest warrant shows that this second Duke rape case will also have a strong racial component. According to a confidential source (CS) a man using the user name “cooper2” or “cooperse” logged onto an internet-based video chat room. CS saw him perform oral sex on an African-American child under the age of ten. He also performed other acts on the child, which are too obscene to be described in this column.
The user name “cooper2” has now been linked to Frank Lombard, the associate director Duke University’s Center for Health Policy. A second source has now alleged that “cooper2” has confessed to being “into incest” and that he has adopted two African American children.
The only good news coming out of this story is about Frank Lombard’s live-in homosexual partner. The affidavit in support of Lombard’s arrest warrant shows that he made special arrangements when molesting the child – sometimes even by drugging the child – to make sure his partner did not find out.
Records also indicate that Frank Lombard made a contribution to the Genesis Home in 2003. The Genesis Home is an organization that assists needy families in making a transition out of homelessness, in part by maintaining a child care center. The organization’s website features numerous photographs of African-American children under the age of ten.
The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.
I wrote this column because I believe that certain coalitions must be broken. And certain movements must be harmed. Let the political fallout begin.
by Mike Adams
It looks like Duke University has another rape case on its hands. This one may hurt the university nearly as much as the one that rocked its campus back in 2006. Unlike the previous case, this one appears to involve a credible confession of sexual abuse. Like the previous case, crucial facts are already being filtered through the prism of identity politics.
Frank Lombard is the associate director of Duke’s Center for Health Policy. The university administrator was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old son for sex. I tried to contact Frank Lombard over the weekend to probe his expertise regarding the health benefits of raping small children. So far, he’s declined to comment.
University administrator Lombard is accused of logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a “perv dad for fun.” The detective who wisely looked into the suspicious screen name says that Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son. All this was before allegedly inviting a stranger to travel to North Carolina from another state to statutorily rape his already-molested adopted son.
If Lombard is convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. His arrest comes about a year after the Court decided that child rapists cannot be executed because “society” has “evolved” to the point where such executions would be “indecent.”
If this case goes to trial, it could be an interesting one to watch. But it will be just as interesting to watch the Duke faculty respond to these allegations. It didn’t take them long to respond when several white Duke Lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper. A whopping 88 professors signed a statement accusing the players of both racism and rape. Such was their regard for the presumption of innocence.
Perhaps even more stunning was the response of some professors after it became apparent that the white lacrosse players were innocent. After that became so obvious the school had to readmit the students, Professor Kate Holloway resigned her committee assignments in protest. By the way, the most common form of faculty protest these days is to refuse to work. Most people think this kind of protest is caused by arrogance. But the actual cause is a thing called “tenure.”
So it will be interesting to see how Duke faculty members respond to Frank Lombard. Because he is white, Lombard is fair game at Duke, isn’t he? But Lombard is also gay, so will that complicate things?
Unfortunately for Frank Lombard, the affidavit in support of his arrest warrant shows that this second Duke rape case will also have a strong racial component. According to a confidential source (CS) a man using the user name “cooper2” or “cooperse” logged onto an internet-based video chat room. CS saw him perform oral sex on an African-American child under the age of ten. He also performed other acts on the child, which are too obscene to be described in this column.
The user name “cooper2” has now been linked to Frank Lombard, the associate director Duke University’s Center for Health Policy. A second source has now alleged that “cooper2” has confessed to being “into incest” and that he has adopted two African American children.
The only good news coming out of this story is about Frank Lombard’s live-in homosexual partner. The affidavit in support of Lombard’s arrest warrant shows that he made special arrangements when molesting the child – sometimes even by drugging the child – to make sure his partner did not find out.
Records also indicate that Frank Lombard made a contribution to the Genesis Home in 2003. The Genesis Home is an organization that assists needy families in making a transition out of homelessness, in part by maintaining a child care center. The organization’s website features numerous photographs of African-American children under the age of ten.
The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.
I wrote this column because I believe that certain coalitions must be broken. And certain movements must be harmed. Let the political fallout begin.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Cap and Trade Explained
The Economic Impact of the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade Bill
by Ben Lieberman
Testimony before the
Senate Republican Conference
June 22, 2009
My name is Ben Lieberman, and I am the Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.
I would like to thank the Senate Republican Conference for extending me the privilege of participating in today's hearing. I'll be discussing the costs of the cap-and-trade approach to addressing global warming and The Heritage Foundation's economic analysis of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Waxman-Markey). As you know, the House is currently considering this bill, which is similar to but has more stringent targets and timetables than the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill that was rejected by the Senate last June.
It is clear that cap-and-trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates--and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted--the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met.
The only entities directly regulated by Waxman-Markey would be the electric utilities, oil refiners, natural gas producers, and some manufacturers that produce energy on site. So, the good news for the rest of us--homeowners, car owners, small-business owners, farmers--is that we won't be directly regulated under this bill. The bad news is that nearly all the costs will get passed on to us anyway.
What are those costs? According to the analysis we conducted at The Heritage Foundation, which is attached to my written statement, the higher energy costs kick in as soon as the bill's provisions take effect in 2012. For a household of four, energy costs go up $436 that year, and they eventually reach $1,241 in 2035 and average $829 annually over that span. Electricity costs go up 90 percent by 2035, gasoline by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55 percent by 2035. The cumulative higher energy costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000.
But direct energy costs are only part of the consumer impact. Nearly everything goes up, since higher energy costs raise production costs. If you look at the total cost of Waxman-Markey, it works out to an average of $2,979 annually from 2012-2035 for a household of four. By 2035 alone, the total cost is over $4,600.
Beyond the cost impact on individuals and households, Waxman-Markey also affects employment, and especially employment in the manufacturing sector. We estimate job losses averaging 1,145,000 at any given time from 2012-2035. And note that those are net job losses, after the much-hyped green jobs are taken into account. Some of the lost jobs will be destroyed entirely, while others will be outsourced to nations like China and India that have repeatedly stated that they'll never hamper their own economic growth with energy-cost boosting global warming measures like Waxman-Markey.
Since farming is energy intensive, that sector will be particularly hard-hit. Higher gasoline and diesel fuel costs, higher electricity costs, and higher natural gas-derived fertilizer costs all erode farm profits, which are expected to drop by 28 percent in 2012 and average 57 percent lower through 2035. As with American manufacturers, Waxman-Markey also puts American farmers at a global disadvantage, as other food-exporting nations would have no comparable energy-price raising measures in place.
Overall, Waxman-Markey reduces gross domestic product by an average of $393 billion annually between 2012 and 2035, and cumulatively by $9.4 trillion. In other words, the nation will be $9.4 trillion poorer with Waxman-Markey than without it.
It should also be noted that the costs are not distributed evenly. Low-income households spend a disproportionate share of their incomes on energy, and thus would be hit harder than average by Waxman-Markey. Of course, the bill has provisions to give back some revenues to low-income households, but it is likely that these rebates will amount only to some portion of each dollar that was taken away from them in the first place in the form of higher energy costs and higher costs for other goods and services. Waxman-Markey also disproportionately burdens those states, especially in the Midwest and South, that still have a substantial number of manufacturing jobs to lose, as well as those that rely more heavily than others on coal for electric generation. In addition, because the bill raises energy costs, it hurts rural America much more than urban America. Rural Americans, farmers and non-farmers, spend an average of 58 percent more on energy as a percentage of income than their urban counterparts, and those costs would go up.
In conclusion, it's not surprising that support for Waxman-Markey is heaviest in those parts of the country, the urban centers in the West Coast and Northeast, that are least harmed by it. Even there, the economic damage would be bad enough, but the citizens in the rest of the country and their representatives should really be asking many tough questions about the economic impact of cap and trade. Thank you.
by Ben Lieberman
Testimony before the
Senate Republican Conference
June 22, 2009
My name is Ben Lieberman, and I am the Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are my own, and should not be construed as representing any official position of The Heritage Foundation.
I would like to thank the Senate Republican Conference for extending me the privilege of participating in today's hearing. I'll be discussing the costs of the cap-and-trade approach to addressing global warming and The Heritage Foundation's economic analysis of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Waxman-Markey). As you know, the House is currently considering this bill, which is similar to but has more stringent targets and timetables than the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill that was rejected by the Senate last June.
It is clear that cap-and-trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates--and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted--the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met.
The only entities directly regulated by Waxman-Markey would be the electric utilities, oil refiners, natural gas producers, and some manufacturers that produce energy on site. So, the good news for the rest of us--homeowners, car owners, small-business owners, farmers--is that we won't be directly regulated under this bill. The bad news is that nearly all the costs will get passed on to us anyway.
What are those costs? According to the analysis we conducted at The Heritage Foundation, which is attached to my written statement, the higher energy costs kick in as soon as the bill's provisions take effect in 2012. For a household of four, energy costs go up $436 that year, and they eventually reach $1,241 in 2035 and average $829 annually over that span. Electricity costs go up 90 percent by 2035, gasoline by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55 percent by 2035. The cumulative higher energy costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000.
But direct energy costs are only part of the consumer impact. Nearly everything goes up, since higher energy costs raise production costs. If you look at the total cost of Waxman-Markey, it works out to an average of $2,979 annually from 2012-2035 for a household of four. By 2035 alone, the total cost is over $4,600.
Beyond the cost impact on individuals and households, Waxman-Markey also affects employment, and especially employment in the manufacturing sector. We estimate job losses averaging 1,145,000 at any given time from 2012-2035. And note that those are net job losses, after the much-hyped green jobs are taken into account. Some of the lost jobs will be destroyed entirely, while others will be outsourced to nations like China and India that have repeatedly stated that they'll never hamper their own economic growth with energy-cost boosting global warming measures like Waxman-Markey.
Since farming is energy intensive, that sector will be particularly hard-hit. Higher gasoline and diesel fuel costs, higher electricity costs, and higher natural gas-derived fertilizer costs all erode farm profits, which are expected to drop by 28 percent in 2012 and average 57 percent lower through 2035. As with American manufacturers, Waxman-Markey also puts American farmers at a global disadvantage, as other food-exporting nations would have no comparable energy-price raising measures in place.
Overall, Waxman-Markey reduces gross domestic product by an average of $393 billion annually between 2012 and 2035, and cumulatively by $9.4 trillion. In other words, the nation will be $9.4 trillion poorer with Waxman-Markey than without it.
It should also be noted that the costs are not distributed evenly. Low-income households spend a disproportionate share of their incomes on energy, and thus would be hit harder than average by Waxman-Markey. Of course, the bill has provisions to give back some revenues to low-income households, but it is likely that these rebates will amount only to some portion of each dollar that was taken away from them in the first place in the form of higher energy costs and higher costs for other goods and services. Waxman-Markey also disproportionately burdens those states, especially in the Midwest and South, that still have a substantial number of manufacturing jobs to lose, as well as those that rely more heavily than others on coal for electric generation. In addition, because the bill raises energy costs, it hurts rural America much more than urban America. Rural Americans, farmers and non-farmers, spend an average of 58 percent more on energy as a percentage of income than their urban counterparts, and those costs would go up.
In conclusion, it's not surprising that support for Waxman-Markey is heaviest in those parts of the country, the urban centers in the West Coast and Northeast, that are least harmed by it. Even there, the economic damage would be bad enough, but the citizens in the rest of the country and their representatives should really be asking many tough questions about the economic impact of cap and trade. Thank you.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Cap and Trade Threat Looms
EPA's Game of Global Warming Hide-and-Seek
by Michelle Malkin
\
The Obama administration doesn't want to hear inconvenient truths about global warming. And they don't want you to hear them, either. As Democrats rush on Friday to pass a $4 trillion, thousand-page "cap and trade" bill that no one has read, environmental bureaucrats are stifling voices that threaten their political agenda.
The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama's willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of "consensus." In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health "endangerment finding" covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin's study didn't fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn't make the cut.
On March 12, Carlin's director, Al McGartland, forbade him from having "any direct communication" with anyone outside his office about his study. "There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc." On March 16, Carlin urged his superiors to forward his work to EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, which runs the agency's climate change program. A day later, McGartland dismissed Carlin and showed his true, politicized colors:
"The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. … I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."
Contrary comments, in other words, would interfere with the "process" of ramming the EPA's endangerment finding through. Truth in science took a back seat to protecting eco-bureaucrats from "a very negative impact."
In another follow-up e-mail, McGartland warned Carlin to drop the subject altogether: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate."
But, of course, the e-mails show that EPA had already predetermined what it was going to do -- "move forward on endangerment." Which underscores the fact that the open public comment period was all for show. In her message to the public about the radical greenhouse gas rules, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson requested "comment on the data on which the proposed findings are based, the methodology used in obtaining and analyzing the data, and the major legal interpretations and policy considerations underlying the proposed findings." Jackson, meet Carlin.
The EPA now justifies the suppression of the study because economist Carlin (a 35-year veteran of the agency who also holds a B.S. in physics) "is an individual who is not a scientist." Neither is Al Gore. Nor is energy czar Carol Browner. Nor is cap-and-trade shepherd Nancy Pelosi. Carlin's analysis incorporated peer-reviewed studies and, as he informed his colleagues, "significant new research" related to the proposed endangerment finding. According to those who have seen his study, it spotlights EPA's reliance on out-of-date research, uncritical recycling of United Nations data and omission of new developments, including a continued decline in global temperatures and a new consensus that future hurricane behavior won't be different than in the past.
But the message from his superiors was clear: La-la-la, we can't hear you.
In April, President Obama declared that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over." Another day, another broken promise. Will Carlin meet the same fate as inspectors general who have been fired or "retired" by the Obama administration for blowing the whistle and defying political orthodoxy? Or will he, too, be yet another casualty of the Hope and Change steamroller? The bodies are piling up.
by Michelle Malkin
\
The Obama administration doesn't want to hear inconvenient truths about global warming. And they don't want you to hear them, either. As Democrats rush on Friday to pass a $4 trillion, thousand-page "cap and trade" bill that no one has read, environmental bureaucrats are stifling voices that threaten their political agenda.
The free market-based Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington (where I served as a journalism fellow in 1995) obtained a set of internal e-mails exposing Team Obama's willful and reckless disregard for data that undermine the illusion of "consensus." In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. EPA has proposed a public health "endangerment finding" covering CO2 and five other gases that would trigger costly, extensive new regulations of motor vehicles. The open comment period on the ruling ended this week. But Carlin's study didn't fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn't make the cut.
On March 12, Carlin's director, Al McGartland, forbade him from having "any direct communication" with anyone outside his office about his study. "There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc." On March 16, Carlin urged his superiors to forward his work to EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, which runs the agency's climate change program. A day later, McGartland dismissed Carlin and showed his true, politicized colors:
"The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. … I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."
Contrary comments, in other words, would interfere with the "process" of ramming the EPA's endangerment finding through. Truth in science took a back seat to protecting eco-bureaucrats from "a very negative impact."
In another follow-up e-mail, McGartland warned Carlin to drop the subject altogether: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate."
But, of course, the e-mails show that EPA had already predetermined what it was going to do -- "move forward on endangerment." Which underscores the fact that the open public comment period was all for show. In her message to the public about the radical greenhouse gas rules, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson requested "comment on the data on which the proposed findings are based, the methodology used in obtaining and analyzing the data, and the major legal interpretations and policy considerations underlying the proposed findings." Jackson, meet Carlin.
The EPA now justifies the suppression of the study because economist Carlin (a 35-year veteran of the agency who also holds a B.S. in physics) "is an individual who is not a scientist." Neither is Al Gore. Nor is energy czar Carol Browner. Nor is cap-and-trade shepherd Nancy Pelosi. Carlin's analysis incorporated peer-reviewed studies and, as he informed his colleagues, "significant new research" related to the proposed endangerment finding. According to those who have seen his study, it spotlights EPA's reliance on out-of-date research, uncritical recycling of United Nations data and omission of new developments, including a continued decline in global temperatures and a new consensus that future hurricane behavior won't be different than in the past.
But the message from his superiors was clear: La-la-la, we can't hear you.
In April, President Obama declared that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over." Another day, another broken promise. Will Carlin meet the same fate as inspectors general who have been fired or "retired" by the Obama administration for blowing the whistle and defying political orthodoxy? Or will he, too, be yet another casualty of the Hope and Change steamroller? The bodies are piling up.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Women Who Convert To Islam Must Not Be Thinking
Top 10 Quran quotes every woman MUST SEE
January 11, 2008 by Infidelesto on • Comments
http://infidelsarecool.com/2008/01/11/top-10-quran-quotes-every-woman-must-see/
Tell every woman you know about these verses. The oppression of women that Islam advocates is not only disturbing, but is direct contrast with everything that Western civilization stands for when it comes to the rights of women.
These are referenced from an article published from the American Thinker in 2005. Each one goes into much greater detail if you are interested in reading more on each verse. The article is here: Top 10 rules in the Quran that oppress women
10. A husband has sex with his wife, as a plow goes into a field.
The Quran in Sura (Chapter) 2:223 says:
Your women are your fields, so go into your fields whichever way you like . . . . (MAS Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an, Oxford UP, 2004)
9. Husbands are a degree above their wives.
The Quran in Sura 2:228 says:
. . . Wives have the same rights as the husbands have on them in accordance with the generally known principles. Of course, men are a degree above them in status . . . (Sayyid Abul A’La Maududi, The Meaning of the Qur’an, vol. 1, p. 165)
8. A male gets a double share of the inheritance over that of a female.
The Quran in Sura 4:11 says:
The share of the male shall be twice that of a female . . . . (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 311)
7. A woman’s testimony counts half of a man’s testimony.
The Quran in Sura 2:282 says:
And let two men from among you bear witness to all such documents [contracts of loans without interest]. But if two men be not available, there should be one man and two women to bear witness so that if one of the women forgets (anything), the other may remind her. (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 205).
6. A wife may remarry her ex-husband if and only if she marries another man and then this second man divorces her.
The Quran in Sura 2:230 says:
And if the husband divorces his wife (for the third time), she shall not remain his lawful wife after this (absolute) divorce, unless she marries another husband and the second husband divorces her. [In that case] there is no harm if they [the first couple] remarry . . . . (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 165)
5. Slave-girls are sexual property for their male owners.
The Quran in Sura 4:24 says:
And forbidden to you are wedded wives of other people except those who have fallen in your hands [as prisoners of war] . . . (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 319).
4. A man may be polygamous with up to four wives.
The Quran in Sura 4:3 says:
And if you be apprehensive that you will not be able to do justice to the orphans, you may marry two or three or four women whom you choose. But if you apprehend that you might not be able to do justice to them, then marry only one wife, or marry those who have fallen in your possession. (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 305)
3. A husband may simply get rid of one of his undesirable wives.
The Quran in Sura 4:129 says:
It is not within your power to be perfectly equitable in your treatment with all your wives, even if you wish to be so; therefore, [in order to satisfy the dictates of Divine Law] do not lean towards one wife so as to leave the other in a state of suspense. (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 381)
2. Husbands may hit their wives even if the husbands merely fear highhandedness in their wives (quite apart from whether they actually are highhanded).
The Quran in Sura 4:34 says:
4:34 . . . If you fear highhandedness from your wives, remind them [of the teaching of God], then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them. If they obey you, you have no right to act against them. God is most high and great. (Haleem, emphasis added)
1. Mature men are allowed to marry prepubescent girls.
The Quran in Sura 65:1, 4 says:
65:1 O Prophet, when you [and the believers] divorce women, divorce them for their prescribed waiting—period and count the waiting—period accurately . . . 4 And if you are in doubt about those of your women who have despaired of menstruation, (you should know that) their waiting period is three months, and the same applies to those who have not menstruated as yet. As for pregnant women, their period ends when they have delivered their burden. (Maududi, vol. 5, pp. 599 and 617, emphasis added)
January 11, 2008 by Infidelesto on • Comments
http://infidelsarecool.com/2008/01/11/top-10-quran-quotes-every-woman-must-see/
Tell every woman you know about these verses. The oppression of women that Islam advocates is not only disturbing, but is direct contrast with everything that Western civilization stands for when it comes to the rights of women.
These are referenced from an article published from the American Thinker in 2005. Each one goes into much greater detail if you are interested in reading more on each verse. The article is here: Top 10 rules in the Quran that oppress women
10. A husband has sex with his wife, as a plow goes into a field.
The Quran in Sura (Chapter) 2:223 says:
Your women are your fields, so go into your fields whichever way you like . . . . (MAS Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an, Oxford UP, 2004)
9. Husbands are a degree above their wives.
The Quran in Sura 2:228 says:
. . . Wives have the same rights as the husbands have on them in accordance with the generally known principles. Of course, men are a degree above them in status . . . (Sayyid Abul A’La Maududi, The Meaning of the Qur’an, vol. 1, p. 165)
8. A male gets a double share of the inheritance over that of a female.
The Quran in Sura 4:11 says:
The share of the male shall be twice that of a female . . . . (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 311)
7. A woman’s testimony counts half of a man’s testimony.
The Quran in Sura 2:282 says:
And let two men from among you bear witness to all such documents [contracts of loans without interest]. But if two men be not available, there should be one man and two women to bear witness so that if one of the women forgets (anything), the other may remind her. (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 205).
6. A wife may remarry her ex-husband if and only if she marries another man and then this second man divorces her.
The Quran in Sura 2:230 says:
And if the husband divorces his wife (for the third time), she shall not remain his lawful wife after this (absolute) divorce, unless she marries another husband and the second husband divorces her. [In that case] there is no harm if they [the first couple] remarry . . . . (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 165)
5. Slave-girls are sexual property for their male owners.
The Quran in Sura 4:24 says:
And forbidden to you are wedded wives of other people except those who have fallen in your hands [as prisoners of war] . . . (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 319).
4. A man may be polygamous with up to four wives.
The Quran in Sura 4:3 says:
And if you be apprehensive that you will not be able to do justice to the orphans, you may marry two or three or four women whom you choose. But if you apprehend that you might not be able to do justice to them, then marry only one wife, or marry those who have fallen in your possession. (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 305)
3. A husband may simply get rid of one of his undesirable wives.
The Quran in Sura 4:129 says:
It is not within your power to be perfectly equitable in your treatment with all your wives, even if you wish to be so; therefore, [in order to satisfy the dictates of Divine Law] do not lean towards one wife so as to leave the other in a state of suspense. (Maududi, vol. 1, p. 381)
2. Husbands may hit their wives even if the husbands merely fear highhandedness in their wives (quite apart from whether they actually are highhanded).
The Quran in Sura 4:34 says:
4:34 . . . If you fear highhandedness from your wives, remind them [of the teaching of God], then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them. If they obey you, you have no right to act against them. God is most high and great. (Haleem, emphasis added)
1. Mature men are allowed to marry prepubescent girls.
The Quran in Sura 65:1, 4 says:
65:1 O Prophet, when you [and the believers] divorce women, divorce them for their prescribed waiting—period and count the waiting—period accurately . . . 4 And if you are in doubt about those of your women who have despaired of menstruation, (you should know that) their waiting period is three months, and the same applies to those who have not menstruated as yet. As for pregnant women, their period ends when they have delivered their burden. (Maududi, vol. 5, pp. 599 and 617, emphasis added)
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
House Voting on Energy Tax!
Nancy Pelosi Schedules Household Energy Tax Vote this Week!
Late last night, during yet another closed-door meeting in the House of Representatives, the liberal Majority maneuvered to bring the highly unpopular 946-page energy-rationing bill, better known as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill, to the House floor for a vote by the end of this week!
Sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, H.R. 2454 imposes a system of "cap-and-tax" in order to combat so-called "global warming." This massive, across-the-board household energy tax is being disguised by congressional liberals and is being sold under the slogan "cap-and-trade," which simply means giving the government power to put a cap on the amount of carbon emissions (CO2) produced by the production of electricity, gasoline, and heating oil, and forcing businesses to actively lobby Congress for higher cap levels and to buy permits for the emissions they are allowed.
Rather than calling it "cap-and-trade," it should be called "cap-and-tax"-as it caps Americans' standard of living and taxes our use of products whose manufacture emits CO2.
If passed and signed into law, H.R. 2454 will further cripple our economy and drain your pockets in the following ways:
• It will raise your household electricity rates by 90 percent, gasoline by 74 percent, and residential natural gas prices by 55 percent by 2035, after adjusting for inflation.
• It imposes an annual burden of $144.8 billion per year on U.S. households, and it will reduce household earnings by a projected $37.8 billion.
• It will further cut U.S. employment levels by 965,000 jobs by reducing economic output by $136 billion per year-this translates to a $1,145 increase in energy costs per American household.
• It will force low-income households to disproportionately bear the across-the-board energy cost increase, as a larger percentage of the poor's income goes toward energy costs, as opposed to wealthier households.
• It sets the stage to effectively kill the coal industry as it will be taxed so heavily, it will not be able to sustain itself.
If enacted, H.R. 2454 would be the biggest government takeover of the economy since the Second World War, which is the last time energy, food, and other basic commodities were rationed. Waxman-Markey amounts to a $2 trillion tax increase on middle-class Americans. Not only would this be the biggest tax increase in the history of the world, but it is yet another example of President Barack Obama violating his campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. This cap-and-tax bill is simply an underhanded way of facilitating a colossal transfer of wealth from consumers to big businesses.
Household energy taxation with the ultimate goal of energy-rationing is dangerous, not only for your pocketbook, but also for the well-being of your family and your standard of living.
H.R. 2454 is a hidden tax and it must be defeated this week in the House!
Late last night, during yet another closed-door meeting in the House of Representatives, the liberal Majority maneuvered to bring the highly unpopular 946-page energy-rationing bill, better known as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill, to the House floor for a vote by the end of this week!
Sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, H.R. 2454 imposes a system of "cap-and-tax" in order to combat so-called "global warming." This massive, across-the-board household energy tax is being disguised by congressional liberals and is being sold under the slogan "cap-and-trade," which simply means giving the government power to put a cap on the amount of carbon emissions (CO2) produced by the production of electricity, gasoline, and heating oil, and forcing businesses to actively lobby Congress for higher cap levels and to buy permits for the emissions they are allowed.
Rather than calling it "cap-and-trade," it should be called "cap-and-tax"-as it caps Americans' standard of living and taxes our use of products whose manufacture emits CO2.
If passed and signed into law, H.R. 2454 will further cripple our economy and drain your pockets in the following ways:
• It will raise your household electricity rates by 90 percent, gasoline by 74 percent, and residential natural gas prices by 55 percent by 2035, after adjusting for inflation.
• It imposes an annual burden of $144.8 billion per year on U.S. households, and it will reduce household earnings by a projected $37.8 billion.
• It will further cut U.S. employment levels by 965,000 jobs by reducing economic output by $136 billion per year-this translates to a $1,145 increase in energy costs per American household.
• It will force low-income households to disproportionately bear the across-the-board energy cost increase, as a larger percentage of the poor's income goes toward energy costs, as opposed to wealthier households.
• It sets the stage to effectively kill the coal industry as it will be taxed so heavily, it will not be able to sustain itself.
If enacted, H.R. 2454 would be the biggest government takeover of the economy since the Second World War, which is the last time energy, food, and other basic commodities were rationed. Waxman-Markey amounts to a $2 trillion tax increase on middle-class Americans. Not only would this be the biggest tax increase in the history of the world, but it is yet another example of President Barack Obama violating his campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. This cap-and-tax bill is simply an underhanded way of facilitating a colossal transfer of wealth from consumers to big businesses.
Household energy taxation with the ultimate goal of energy-rationing is dangerous, not only for your pocketbook, but also for the well-being of your family and your standard of living.
H.R. 2454 is a hidden tax and it must be defeated this week in the House!
EDNA A Violation of the Constitution On So Many Levels
It’s Baaackkk: ENDA!
If a business is forced to hire someone like Diego, would she use the women’s restroom or the men’s restroom? If the company has a gym, would Diego use the women’s shower stalls or the men’s?
Andrea Lafferty
It’s Baaackkk: ENDA!Gay activist Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) is a busy man these days. With a pro-gay President in the White House, Frank is certain that he can push through his favorite legislation, known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Frank has introduced H.R. 2981, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009.
When President Bush occupied the White House, Frank knew that Bush would veto ENDA because of its danger to Christians, religious institutions, faith-based groups, and Christian-owned businesses.
What made the ENDA debate almost enjoyable during the last Congress was the major “drama-rama” over which version of ENDA to bring to the floor for a vote.
For months gays and transgender activists fought among themselves over whether or not to include “gender identity” in the bill. The drag queens and transsexuals wanted “gender identity,” but Frank finally agreed to remove “gender identity” from the legislation in order to try to get it passed.
However, this is a new Congress and a new President who is a big supporter of all things LGBT. This new bill will include “gender identity,” because Frank knows that Obama is cozy with the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) crowd and can be counted on to push the LGBT agenda.
Frank’s senior policy advisor on ENDA is Diego Sanchez, who is described as a “transgender.”Frank’s senior policy advisor on ENDA is Diego Sanchez, who is described as a “transgender.” Sanchez is a woman who either went through a sex change operation; or is living as a man, but hasn’t had any surgery, or is a she-male who went through half of the operation. If this is the case, Diego had his breasts surgically removed, but still maintains female characteristics below the waist.
Diego Sanchez, who is described as a “transgender.”If ENDA passes, businesses all over the United States would have to cope with troubled individuals like Diego who has self-hatred for her birth sex. If a business is forced to hire someone like Diego, would she use the women’s restroom or the men’s restroom? If the company has a gym, would Diego use the women’s shower stalls or the men’s? Or, would the business have to set up a private restroom for Diego to protect her right to “pee in peace”?
Diego’s Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is a real-life example of what businesses will face if ENDA passes.
Diego Sanchez testified at an ENDA hearing in 2007. TVC leadership was there and released an in-depth report of the hearing.
TVC’s extensive resources on ENDA provide background information from 2007 on why ENDA must never be passed:
If a business is forced to hire someone like Diego, would she use the women’s restroom or the men’s restroom? If the company has a gym, would Diego use the women’s shower stalls or the men’s?
Andrea Lafferty
It’s Baaackkk: ENDA!Gay activist Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) is a busy man these days. With a pro-gay President in the White House, Frank is certain that he can push through his favorite legislation, known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Frank has introduced H.R. 2981, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009.
When President Bush occupied the White House, Frank knew that Bush would veto ENDA because of its danger to Christians, religious institutions, faith-based groups, and Christian-owned businesses.
What made the ENDA debate almost enjoyable during the last Congress was the major “drama-rama” over which version of ENDA to bring to the floor for a vote.
For months gays and transgender activists fought among themselves over whether or not to include “gender identity” in the bill. The drag queens and transsexuals wanted “gender identity,” but Frank finally agreed to remove “gender identity” from the legislation in order to try to get it passed.
However, this is a new Congress and a new President who is a big supporter of all things LGBT. This new bill will include “gender identity,” because Frank knows that Obama is cozy with the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) crowd and can be counted on to push the LGBT agenda.
Frank’s senior policy advisor on ENDA is Diego Sanchez, who is described as a “transgender.”Frank’s senior policy advisor on ENDA is Diego Sanchez, who is described as a “transgender.” Sanchez is a woman who either went through a sex change operation; or is living as a man, but hasn’t had any surgery, or is a she-male who went through half of the operation. If this is the case, Diego had his breasts surgically removed, but still maintains female characteristics below the waist.
Diego Sanchez, who is described as a “transgender.”If ENDA passes, businesses all over the United States would have to cope with troubled individuals like Diego who has self-hatred for her birth sex. If a business is forced to hire someone like Diego, would she use the women’s restroom or the men’s restroom? If the company has a gym, would Diego use the women’s shower stalls or the men’s? Or, would the business have to set up a private restroom for Diego to protect her right to “pee in peace”?
Diego’s Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is a real-life example of what businesses will face if ENDA passes.
Diego Sanchez testified at an ENDA hearing in 2007. TVC leadership was there and released an in-depth report of the hearing.
TVC’s extensive resources on ENDA provide background information from 2007 on why ENDA must never be passed:
Monday, June 22, 2009
Obama's Excuses For America's Greatness
Top 10 Obama Apologies
by Human Events
06/17/2009
Excerpted from article by Niles Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.
1. Apology to Europe: Speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3. “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe‘s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”
2. Apology to the Muslim world: Interview with Al Arabiya, January 27. “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.”
3. Apology to the Summit of the Americas: Address to the Summit of the Americas, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, April 17. “While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms.”
4. Apology at the G-20 Summit of World Leaders: News conference in London, April 2. “I just think in a world that is as complex as it is, that it is very important for us to be able to forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions.”
5. Apology for the War on Terror: Speech in Washington, D.C., May 21. “Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight, that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.”
6. Apology for Guantanamo in France: Speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3. “In dealing with terrorism, we can’t lose sight of our values and who we are. That’s why I closed Guantanamo. That’s why I made very clear that we will not engage in certain interrogation practices. I don’t believe that there is a contradiction between our security and our values. And when you start sacrificing your values, when you lose yourself, then over the long term that will make you less secure.”
7. Apology for America before the Turkish Parliament: Speech to the Turkish Parliament, Ankara, Turkey, April 6. “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. Facing the Washington Monument that I spoke of is a memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution. Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.”
8. Apology for U.S. Policy toward the Americas: Editorial “Choosing a Better Future in the Americas,” April 16. “Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas.”
9. Apology for the Mistakes of the CIA: Remarks to CIA employees at Langley, Va., April 29. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes.”
10. Apology for Guantanamo: Speech in Washington, D.C., May 21. “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.”
by Human Events
06/17/2009
Excerpted from article by Niles Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation.
1. Apology to Europe: Speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3. “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe‘s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”
2. Apology to the Muslim world: Interview with Al Arabiya, January 27. “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.”
3. Apology to the Summit of the Americas: Address to the Summit of the Americas, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, April 17. “While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms.”
4. Apology at the G-20 Summit of World Leaders: News conference in London, April 2. “I just think in a world that is as complex as it is, that it is very important for us to be able to forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions.”
5. Apology for the War on Terror: Speech in Washington, D.C., May 21. “Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight, that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.”
6. Apology for Guantanamo in France: Speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3. “In dealing with terrorism, we can’t lose sight of our values and who we are. That’s why I closed Guantanamo. That’s why I made very clear that we will not engage in certain interrogation practices. I don’t believe that there is a contradiction between our security and our values. And when you start sacrificing your values, when you lose yourself, then over the long term that will make you less secure.”
7. Apology for America before the Turkish Parliament: Speech to the Turkish Parliament, Ankara, Turkey, April 6. “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. Facing the Washington Monument that I spoke of is a memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution. Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.”
8. Apology for U.S. Policy toward the Americas: Editorial “Choosing a Better Future in the Americas,” April 16. “Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas.”
9. Apology for the Mistakes of the CIA: Remarks to CIA employees at Langley, Va., April 29. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes.”
10. Apology for Guantanamo: Speech in Washington, D.C., May 21. “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.”
Republicans Expose the Democrats Hypocrisy On Slavery
Only Democrats should pay blacks reparations
By Roger Hedgecock
Drenched in blood of slavery
The U.S. Senate voted unanimously last week to adopt a resolution apologizing for slavery.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, lead sponsor of the resolution, said, "You wonder why we didn’t do it 100 years ago. It is important to have a collective response to a collective injustice."
Only after decades of public education ignoring and distorting U.S. history can such a huge lie be said with a straight face.
Senator, you didn’t do it 100 years ago because 100 years ago you Democrats were enforcing Jim Crow segregation laws, poll taxes to keep blacks from voting, and riding around in sheets and pointy hats just in case blacks didn’t get the message.
You say "It’s important to have a collective response" because you want to bury the origins, purposes, and historical practices of your own party.
The worst part is, Republicans in the Senate let you get away with it.
Principled Republicans knowing their history would have authored a resolution reciting the facts that the Republican Party was formed, among other reasons, to oppose slavery and that the Republican Party and its first President Abraham Lincoln responded to Southern, Democrat-led secession with a successful war that preserved the union and freed the slaves.
After Lincoln’s assassination (by a Democrat), the Republican-led Congress (over the objections of the Democratic Party minority) amended the Constitution to confirm the liberation of the slaves (13th Amendment: slavery abolished), and the 14th Amendment (freed slaves are citizens equal to all citizens), and the15th Amendment (right to vote guaranteed to freed slaves).
Southern Democrats spent the next 100 years trying to keep freed slaves down with segregation laws, poll taxes to deny the right to vote, and lynching to enforce the social order. The KKK was formed by a Democrat; no Republican has ever been a member of the KKK. This is the heritage of the Democratic Party.
In fact, the Democratic Party was formed in the first place to defend and expand slavery.
In 1840, the very first national nominating convention of the Democratic Party adopted a platform which read in part:
Resolved, That Congress has no power ... to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states ... that all efforts by abolitionists ... made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery ... are calculated ... to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union.
Got that, Sen. Harkin? Your party was born defending slavery as necessary for the happiness of the people and threatening secession and war if slavery were challenged.
The same party platform language was used in 1844, 1848, 1852 and 1856. In 1860, the Democrat commitment to slavery took a harsher tone.
The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Congress in 1850. This monstrous law provided that, since slaves were the personal property of their masters, runaway slaves must be returned to their owners. The law required all law enforcement officers to assist in the recapture of runaway slaves or risk a fine of $1,000 (about $100,000 in today’s dollars)!
The Republican Party was formed in the 1850s in part as a political reaction to this unjust law.
In their national convention of 1860, Democrats harshly responded to certain Northern (Republican) states that were passing state laws to evade the Fugitive Slave Law by adopting a plank in the Democratic Party Platform which read:
Resolved, That the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.
Senator, your Democratic Party has much to be apologetic about on the slavery issue.
During the civil war, the Southern Democrats led the Confederacy out of the Union; Northern Democrats formed a separate party which opposed the war. The 1864 (Northern) Democratic Party platform adopted a "peace" plank which read in part:
... after four years of failure to restore the union by the experiment of war ... justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand ... a cessation of hostilities ... to the end that ... peace may be restored ...
Here is the origin of today’s Democratic Party "Peace at any Price, Better Red than Dead, Why Can’t we all just get Along" foreign policy.
The war was started by Democrat secessionists, and just as President Lincoln was on the verge of victory, the Northern Democrats wanted to save the South and slavery with "peace talks"! Voters knew better in 1864 and re-elected Lincoln.
But the Democrats weren’t through. In 1868, Sen. Harkin’s party condemned the Republican Party in its party platform as the "Radical Party," and condemned Reconstruction in these unforgettable words:
Instead of restoring the Union, it (the Radical Party) has dissolved it, and subjected ten states (the former Confederate states) ... to military despotism and negro supremacy.
And, senator, don’t tell me this is all ancient history in a lame attempt to evade the true origins of your party.
As recently as 1964, when the Senate debated the Civil Rights Act, Southern Democrats (including Al Gore’s father) voted no. While Northern Democrats voted yes, their votes were not enough. The deciding votes to pass this landmark bill were provided by Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., and the Republicans.
Republicans should be proud of their heritage of liberation of the slaves and civil rights voting record.
It’s Harkin and the Democrats who should apologize and pay reparations.
By Roger Hedgecock
Drenched in blood of slavery
The U.S. Senate voted unanimously last week to adopt a resolution apologizing for slavery.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, lead sponsor of the resolution, said, "You wonder why we didn’t do it 100 years ago. It is important to have a collective response to a collective injustice."
Only after decades of public education ignoring and distorting U.S. history can such a huge lie be said with a straight face.
Senator, you didn’t do it 100 years ago because 100 years ago you Democrats were enforcing Jim Crow segregation laws, poll taxes to keep blacks from voting, and riding around in sheets and pointy hats just in case blacks didn’t get the message.
You say "It’s important to have a collective response" because you want to bury the origins, purposes, and historical practices of your own party.
The worst part is, Republicans in the Senate let you get away with it.
Principled Republicans knowing their history would have authored a resolution reciting the facts that the Republican Party was formed, among other reasons, to oppose slavery and that the Republican Party and its first President Abraham Lincoln responded to Southern, Democrat-led secession with a successful war that preserved the union and freed the slaves.
After Lincoln’s assassination (by a Democrat), the Republican-led Congress (over the objections of the Democratic Party minority) amended the Constitution to confirm the liberation of the slaves (13th Amendment: slavery abolished), and the 14th Amendment (freed slaves are citizens equal to all citizens), and the15th Amendment (right to vote guaranteed to freed slaves).
Southern Democrats spent the next 100 years trying to keep freed slaves down with segregation laws, poll taxes to deny the right to vote, and lynching to enforce the social order. The KKK was formed by a Democrat; no Republican has ever been a member of the KKK. This is the heritage of the Democratic Party.
In fact, the Democratic Party was formed in the first place to defend and expand slavery.
In 1840, the very first national nominating convention of the Democratic Party adopted a platform which read in part:
Resolved, That Congress has no power ... to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states ... that all efforts by abolitionists ... made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery ... are calculated ... to diminish the happiness of the people, and endanger the stability and permanency of the union.
Got that, Sen. Harkin? Your party was born defending slavery as necessary for the happiness of the people and threatening secession and war if slavery were challenged.
The same party platform language was used in 1844, 1848, 1852 and 1856. In 1860, the Democrat commitment to slavery took a harsher tone.
The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Congress in 1850. This monstrous law provided that, since slaves were the personal property of their masters, runaway slaves must be returned to their owners. The law required all law enforcement officers to assist in the recapture of runaway slaves or risk a fine of $1,000 (about $100,000 in today’s dollars)!
The Republican Party was formed in the 1850s in part as a political reaction to this unjust law.
In their national convention of 1860, Democrats harshly responded to certain Northern (Republican) states that were passing state laws to evade the Fugitive Slave Law by adopting a plank in the Democratic Party Platform which read:
Resolved, That the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.
Senator, your Democratic Party has much to be apologetic about on the slavery issue.
During the civil war, the Southern Democrats led the Confederacy out of the Union; Northern Democrats formed a separate party which opposed the war. The 1864 (Northern) Democratic Party platform adopted a "peace" plank which read in part:
... after four years of failure to restore the union by the experiment of war ... justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand ... a cessation of hostilities ... to the end that ... peace may be restored ...
Here is the origin of today’s Democratic Party "Peace at any Price, Better Red than Dead, Why Can’t we all just get Along" foreign policy.
The war was started by Democrat secessionists, and just as President Lincoln was on the verge of victory, the Northern Democrats wanted to save the South and slavery with "peace talks"! Voters knew better in 1864 and re-elected Lincoln.
But the Democrats weren’t through. In 1868, Sen. Harkin’s party condemned the Republican Party in its party platform as the "Radical Party," and condemned Reconstruction in these unforgettable words:
Instead of restoring the Union, it (the Radical Party) has dissolved it, and subjected ten states (the former Confederate states) ... to military despotism and negro supremacy.
And, senator, don’t tell me this is all ancient history in a lame attempt to evade the true origins of your party.
As recently as 1964, when the Senate debated the Civil Rights Act, Southern Democrats (including Al Gore’s father) voted no. While Northern Democrats voted yes, their votes were not enough. The deciding votes to pass this landmark bill were provided by Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., and the Republicans.
Republicans should be proud of their heritage of liberation of the slaves and civil rights voting record.
It’s Harkin and the Democrats who should apologize and pay reparations.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Manuel of Hate Distributed To American Muslims
An example of what Islamic leaders endorse
This 81 page manual was obtained next door to Imam Siraj Wahhaj, Brooklyn, NY. Not only is the manual filled with hate and racism, but is also a violent message to our law enforcement by Islamic leaders who distribute this to Muslims across America.
What concerns me more is that our senior law enforcement in many departments (local, state, federal) conduct liaison with the same Islamic leaders who advocate violence against them. It concerns me even more the IRS provides these Islamic leaders the status of a non profit organization. And lastly it concerns me even more that the U.S. State Department has a fast track program to allow Saudi, Egyptian, Iranian, and Pakistani 'Islamic 'Religious' leaders entry into our country to distribute hate, treason, and sedition against our country. Who are the victims? Your children and mine. Respectfully, Dave G..
ACORN Designed To`Support Democrats Only
Insider: ACORN ‘always been Democrat operation’
‘They’ve never made any secrets about who they support’
Web News WorldNetDaily
While the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, remains under investigation for voter registration fraud and related allegations in at least 14 states, one former insider told WND the organization acted as unofficial arm of the Democratic Party during the recent election and used cash operations to keep some financial transactions under wraps.
In 2005, Anita Moncrief began working in the Strategic Writing and Research Department of ACORN Political Operations and its affiliate Project Vote. She said she conducted voter fraud research and census research and worked with political organizers. Moncrief left the organization in January 2008.
"It has always been a Democrat operation," she told WND. "They’ve never made any secrets about who they support. Their political action committees are usually set up to support these Democratic candidates."
She said political action committees support Democrat candidates, and the at the same time voter registration drives were being conducted, the group was putting out propaganda in communities telling people not to vote for Republicans.
"They are registering you to vote and then telling you who to vote for and then they pick you up and take you to the polls to do it," she said. "If you need an absentee ballot, they would get them for you. But there’s no guarantee that the ballots they were getting for the people were ever making it to them."
She said ACORN officials often used workers from poor and marginalized communities – sometimes people addicted to drugs – who go to welfare and Job Corps programs. They recruited them to conduct the registration drives.
"Anyone who is on senior staff is usually a liberal white with a credit card – which is what they like to say – someone who can afford to go out there and organize people," she said. "As far as senior staff goes, it is not representative of the actual community they serve in."
The voter drives garner up to $28 million each year, she said.
Moncrief said Kathleen Barr, former communications director for ACORN, told her that on Election Day there were ACORN employees standing in front of 20 vans that were capable of holding 15 people each. The ACORN employees would send workers out into communities to pick people up and take them to the polls.
"She told me [an ACORN employee] was standing outside on the street corner with $8,000 with two bodyguards handing out money on Election Day," Moncrief said. "She didn’t give me a lot of details. She was just telling me how weird it was to stand there as the organizers were coming up to her and she was handing them wads of cash at the end of the day for what they had been doing. They did a lot of stuff with cash operations in order to keep things from showing up on records."
Moncrief said she was in contact with a New York Times reporter who was covering the ACORN embezzlement scandal from July to October 2008. The reporter was allegedly investigating a story about ACORN’s Project Vote receiving a donor list from the Barack Obama campaign, the DNC, the John Kerry campaign and Hillary Clinton campaign so it could mine them for aid.
"This was not the list that was turned over to the FEC," Moncrief said. "This was the list that included the smaller donors like the $25 or $50 amounts that weren’t required to be turned over. So this was a complete list that was given to ACORN that was not given to the FEC."
She claims the reporter, Stephanie Strom, went to Washington to uncover e-mail evidence of communication between the campaigns and ACORN.
"She had several nasty run-ins with the campaigns were she decided to back off of the story," Moncrief said. "She told me her editors told her to stand down."
While Moncrief said she had been willing to be quoted on record as a source, the Times released a "watered-down version" that didn’t even mention ACORN’s partisanship and spiked half of the story before the election.
"It just kind of glossed over it," Moncrief said.
The New York Times article references a 14-page report written by ACORN attorney Elizabeth Kingsley.
"I’ve seen that report," Moncrief said. "The parts she chose to include in her article were not really the most damning things in the report. She could have used it to basically bring down ACORN at the time because it would have shown everything people were saying about them they admitted and their lawyer gave them instructions on how to avoid criminal prosecution and how to avoid having the IRS taking away their 501c3 status."
Moncrief said she also did a three-tape interview with CNN in November 2008. It never aired.
She has worked with the press to get her story out and has faced opposition from several mainstream media outlets.
"There are some things that are not being put out in the public in the interest of defending ACORN," she said. "I’m not about that."
Meanwhile, ACORN has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Moncrief.
While calls for investigation of ACORN have been met with opposition in Congress, Moncrief told Fox News’ Megan Kelly that more must be done to purge the organization of its corrupt leaders.
"ACORN needs to be investigated and almost everyone at the top level needs to be removed," she said. "The ACORN local offices do a lot of good work, but ACORN national has become corrupt and almost like a cancer on American society."
‘They’ve never made any secrets about who they support’
Web News WorldNetDaily
While the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, remains under investigation for voter registration fraud and related allegations in at least 14 states, one former insider told WND the organization acted as unofficial arm of the Democratic Party during the recent election and used cash operations to keep some financial transactions under wraps.
In 2005, Anita Moncrief began working in the Strategic Writing and Research Department of ACORN Political Operations and its affiliate Project Vote. She said she conducted voter fraud research and census research and worked with political organizers. Moncrief left the organization in January 2008.
"It has always been a Democrat operation," she told WND. "They’ve never made any secrets about who they support. Their political action committees are usually set up to support these Democratic candidates."
She said political action committees support Democrat candidates, and the at the same time voter registration drives were being conducted, the group was putting out propaganda in communities telling people not to vote for Republicans.
"They are registering you to vote and then telling you who to vote for and then they pick you up and take you to the polls to do it," she said. "If you need an absentee ballot, they would get them for you. But there’s no guarantee that the ballots they were getting for the people were ever making it to them."
She said ACORN officials often used workers from poor and marginalized communities – sometimes people addicted to drugs – who go to welfare and Job Corps programs. They recruited them to conduct the registration drives.
"Anyone who is on senior staff is usually a liberal white with a credit card – which is what they like to say – someone who can afford to go out there and organize people," she said. "As far as senior staff goes, it is not representative of the actual community they serve in."
The voter drives garner up to $28 million each year, she said.
Moncrief said Kathleen Barr, former communications director for ACORN, told her that on Election Day there were ACORN employees standing in front of 20 vans that were capable of holding 15 people each. The ACORN employees would send workers out into communities to pick people up and take them to the polls.
"She told me [an ACORN employee] was standing outside on the street corner with $8,000 with two bodyguards handing out money on Election Day," Moncrief said. "She didn’t give me a lot of details. She was just telling me how weird it was to stand there as the organizers were coming up to her and she was handing them wads of cash at the end of the day for what they had been doing. They did a lot of stuff with cash operations in order to keep things from showing up on records."
Moncrief said she was in contact with a New York Times reporter who was covering the ACORN embezzlement scandal from July to October 2008. The reporter was allegedly investigating a story about ACORN’s Project Vote receiving a donor list from the Barack Obama campaign, the DNC, the John Kerry campaign and Hillary Clinton campaign so it could mine them for aid.
"This was not the list that was turned over to the FEC," Moncrief said. "This was the list that included the smaller donors like the $25 or $50 amounts that weren’t required to be turned over. So this was a complete list that was given to ACORN that was not given to the FEC."
She claims the reporter, Stephanie Strom, went to Washington to uncover e-mail evidence of communication between the campaigns and ACORN.
"She had several nasty run-ins with the campaigns were she decided to back off of the story," Moncrief said. "She told me her editors told her to stand down."
While Moncrief said she had been willing to be quoted on record as a source, the Times released a "watered-down version" that didn’t even mention ACORN’s partisanship and spiked half of the story before the election.
"It just kind of glossed over it," Moncrief said.
The New York Times article references a 14-page report written by ACORN attorney Elizabeth Kingsley.
"I’ve seen that report," Moncrief said. "The parts she chose to include in her article were not really the most damning things in the report. She could have used it to basically bring down ACORN at the time because it would have shown everything people were saying about them they admitted and their lawyer gave them instructions on how to avoid criminal prosecution and how to avoid having the IRS taking away their 501c3 status."
Moncrief said she also did a three-tape interview with CNN in November 2008. It never aired.
She has worked with the press to get her story out and has faced opposition from several mainstream media outlets.
"There are some things that are not being put out in the public in the interest of defending ACORN," she said. "I’m not about that."
Meanwhile, ACORN has reportedly filed a lawsuit against Moncrief.
While calls for investigation of ACORN have been met with opposition in Congress, Moncrief told Fox News’ Megan Kelly that more must be done to purge the organization of its corrupt leaders.
"ACORN needs to be investigated and almost everyone at the top level needs to be removed," she said. "The ACORN local offices do a lot of good work, but ACORN national has become corrupt and almost like a cancer on American society."
Friday, June 19, 2009
Health Care Horror Obama Won't Admit or Too Stupid To See
The Obamacare Horror Story You Won't Hear
by Michelle Malkin
The White House, Democrats and MoveOn liberals are spreading health care sob stories to sell a government takeover. But there's one health care policy nightmare you won't hear the Obamas hyping. It's a tale of poor minority patient-dumping in Chicago -- with first lady Michelle Obama's fingerprints all over it.
Both Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois have raised red flags about the outsourcing program run by the University of Chicago Medical Center. The hospital has nonprofit status and receives lucrative tax breaks in exchange for providing charity care.
Yet, in fiscal year 2007, when Mrs. Obama was employed there, it spent a measly $10 million on charity care for the poor -- 1.3 percent of its total hospital expenses, according to an analysis performed for The Washington Post by the nonpartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The figure is below the 2.1 percent average for nonprofit hospitals in surrounding Cook County.
Rep. Rush called for a House investigation last week in response to months of patient-dumping complaints, noting: "Congress has a duty to expend its power to mitigate and prevent this despicable practice from continuing in centers that receive federal funds."
Don't expect the president to support a probe. While a top executive at the hospital, Mrs. Obama helped engineer the plan to offload low-income patients with non-urgent health needs. Under the Orwellian banner of an "Urban Health Initiative," Mrs. Obama sold the scheme to outsource low-income care to other facilities as a way to "dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents."
In truth, it was old-fashioned cost-cutting and favor-trading repackaged as minority aid. Clearing out the poor freed up room for insured (i.e., more lucrative) patients. If a Republican had proposed the very same program and recruited black civic leaders to front it, Michelle Obama and her grievance-mongering friends would be screaming "RAAAAAAAAACISM!" at the top of their lungs.
Joe Stephens of The Washington Post wrote, "To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Axelrod's firm (ASK Public Strategies) recommended an aggressive promotional effort modeled on a political campaign -- appoint a campaign manager, conduct focus groups, target messages to specific constituencies, then recruit religious leaders and other third-party 'validators.' They, in turn, would write and submit opinion pieces to Chicago publications."
Some health care experts saw through Mrs. Obama and PR man Axelrod -- yes, the same Axelrod who is now President Obama's senior adviser. But the University of Chicago Medical Center hired ASK Public Strategies to promote Mrs. Obama's initiative. Axelrod had the blessing of Chicago political guru Valerie Jarrett -- now a White House senior adviser.
Axelrod's great contribution: re-branding! His firm recommended renaming the initiative after "internal and external respondents expressed the opinion that the word 'urban' is code for 'black' or 'black and poor.' … Based on the research, consideration should be given to re-branding the initiative." Axelrod and the Obama campaign refused to disclose how much his firm received for its genius re-branding services.
In February 2009, outrage in the Obamas' community exploded upon learning that a young boy covered by Medicaid had been turned away from the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dontae Adams' mother, Angela, had sought emergency treatment for him after a pit bull tore off his upper lip. Mrs. Obama's hospital gave the boy a tetanus shot, antibiotics and Tylenol, and shoved him out the door. The mother and son took an hour-long bus ride to another hospital for surgery.
I'll guarantee you this: You'll never see the Adams family featured at an Obama policy summit or seated next to the first lady at a joint session of Congress to illustrate the failures of the health care system.
Following the Adams incident, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) blasted Mrs. Obama and Axelrod's grand plan. The group released a statement expressing "grave concerns that the University of Chicago's policy toward emergency patients is dangerously close to 'patient dumping,' a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)" -- signed by President Reagan, by the way -- "and reflected an effort to 'cherry pick' wealthy patients over poor."
Rewarding political cronies at the expense of the poor while posing as guardians of the downtrodden? Welcome to Obamacare.
by Michelle Malkin
The White House, Democrats and MoveOn liberals are spreading health care sob stories to sell a government takeover. But there's one health care policy nightmare you won't hear the Obamas hyping. It's a tale of poor minority patient-dumping in Chicago -- with first lady Michelle Obama's fingerprints all over it.
Both Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois have raised red flags about the outsourcing program run by the University of Chicago Medical Center. The hospital has nonprofit status and receives lucrative tax breaks in exchange for providing charity care.
Yet, in fiscal year 2007, when Mrs. Obama was employed there, it spent a measly $10 million on charity care for the poor -- 1.3 percent of its total hospital expenses, according to an analysis performed for The Washington Post by the nonpartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The figure is below the 2.1 percent average for nonprofit hospitals in surrounding Cook County.
Rep. Rush called for a House investigation last week in response to months of patient-dumping complaints, noting: "Congress has a duty to expend its power to mitigate and prevent this despicable practice from continuing in centers that receive federal funds."
Don't expect the president to support a probe. While a top executive at the hospital, Mrs. Obama helped engineer the plan to offload low-income patients with non-urgent health needs. Under the Orwellian banner of an "Urban Health Initiative," Mrs. Obama sold the scheme to outsource low-income care to other facilities as a way to "dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents."
In truth, it was old-fashioned cost-cutting and favor-trading repackaged as minority aid. Clearing out the poor freed up room for insured (i.e., more lucrative) patients. If a Republican had proposed the very same program and recruited black civic leaders to front it, Michelle Obama and her grievance-mongering friends would be screaming "RAAAAAAAAACISM!" at the top of their lungs.
Joe Stephens of The Washington Post wrote, "To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Axelrod's firm (ASK Public Strategies) recommended an aggressive promotional effort modeled on a political campaign -- appoint a campaign manager, conduct focus groups, target messages to specific constituencies, then recruit religious leaders and other third-party 'validators.' They, in turn, would write and submit opinion pieces to Chicago publications."
Some health care experts saw through Mrs. Obama and PR man Axelrod -- yes, the same Axelrod who is now President Obama's senior adviser. But the University of Chicago Medical Center hired ASK Public Strategies to promote Mrs. Obama's initiative. Axelrod had the blessing of Chicago political guru Valerie Jarrett -- now a White House senior adviser.
Axelrod's great contribution: re-branding! His firm recommended renaming the initiative after "internal and external respondents expressed the opinion that the word 'urban' is code for 'black' or 'black and poor.' … Based on the research, consideration should be given to re-branding the initiative." Axelrod and the Obama campaign refused to disclose how much his firm received for its genius re-branding services.
In February 2009, outrage in the Obamas' community exploded upon learning that a young boy covered by Medicaid had been turned away from the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dontae Adams' mother, Angela, had sought emergency treatment for him after a pit bull tore off his upper lip. Mrs. Obama's hospital gave the boy a tetanus shot, antibiotics and Tylenol, and shoved him out the door. The mother and son took an hour-long bus ride to another hospital for surgery.
I'll guarantee you this: You'll never see the Adams family featured at an Obama policy summit or seated next to the first lady at a joint session of Congress to illustrate the failures of the health care system.
Following the Adams incident, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) blasted Mrs. Obama and Axelrod's grand plan. The group released a statement expressing "grave concerns that the University of Chicago's policy toward emergency patients is dangerously close to 'patient dumping,' a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)" -- signed by President Reagan, by the way -- "and reflected an effort to 'cherry pick' wealthy patients over poor."
Rewarding political cronies at the expense of the poor while posing as guardians of the downtrodden? Welcome to Obamacare.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Obama's Treason
Why Commander Fitzpatrick Is NOT Guilty of Mutiny!
By JB Williams Saturday, June 13, 2009
On June 10, 2009, I released a column titled ”Is Obama Guilty of Treason?‚” - That column details the criminal charges of “treason‚” filed against President Barack Hussein Obama, by Retired Naval Commander Walter Fitzpatrick III in March of 2009. [1]
Commander Fitzpatrick is a retired career Naval Officer who has served his country with great honor and distinction and continues to today. An Eagle Scout of 40 years, the son of Captain Fitzpatrick - Naval Medical Officer, a graduate of St. Thomas Aquinas and Villanova Preparatory School in California…—“Walter enlisted in the Navy in 1969 directly after graduating Villanova. After boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, Walter attended the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Bainbridge, MD. After one year he entered the U.S. Naval Academy. He graduated with the Class of 1975 with top military honors.‚”—From Commander Fitzpatrick’s Official Bio.
Stand Commander Fitzpatrick’s r√©sum√© next to that of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid, or most any other American for that matter, and tell me who you trust to tell the truth? We all know the motives of politicians, money and power. But what does Commander Fitzpatrick stand to gain from his recent actions?
In my last column I point out the simple fact that one of two things is definitely true… Either Mr. Obama is indeed guilty of “treason‚” as the Commander has charged; (or) the good Commander in guilty of mutiny solely on the basis of accusing a sitting Commander-in-Chief with the high crime of “treason.‚”
However, in order to be guilty of mutiny, Commander Fitzpatrick’s charges would have to be proven false. In order to be proven false, Obama’s secret files would have to be opened up for discovery, which explains why Obama has not charged the Commander with mutiny. Any defensive legal action on Obama’s part will result in “discovery‚” of the events and facts involved, and that is the last thing Obama wants at this point…
So instead of a legal defense, every effort will be made to defeat Commander Fitzpatrick in the court of public opinion, by attacking his character, a standard operating procedure of the left. Unlike a court of law, in the court of public opinion, judgments are made on the basis of the most “popular‚” propaganda, without any regard for truth or facts.
EXAMPLE: - Following the lead of his leftist friends at the alphabet networks, FOX News anchor Shepard Smith recently looked to capitalize on the alleged white supremacist [James von Brunn] shooting of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum by using a “guilt by association‚” attack on anyone trying to uphold the US Constitution, specifically Article II—Section I.
Two American soldiers were gunned down in Little Rock by an American born and recruited Muslim Jihadist, and the press including Smith, couldn’t care less. No member of the press used the incident to incite anger towards or fear of American Jihadists.
But one nutty old anti-Semitic crackpot shoots a security guard out of pure hate towards Jews and Christians alike, and Shep Smith chose to paint every American constitutionalist a James von Brunn, stating—“these kinds of crazed conspiracies whether they’re about the president, or we’re hearing things like FEMA setting up camps to round up Americans and put them in. I’m getting bad sort of deja-vu from the 1990s when anti-government militias were on the rise, when Tim McVeigh committed that [bombing] in Oklahoma City and I really am hoping that we’re not going through a repeat of that.‚”
By “these kinds of crazies,‚” Smith was not referring to von Brunn, but rather to “Americans challenging the eligibility of Barack Obama to hold the office of president,‚” which he boldly labels “crazies,‚” stating unequivocally that “there is no truth whatsoever to the suggestion Obama is not a “natural born citizen.‚”
As if a well-known forgone conclusion to in-depth investigative efforts which have never taken place, Lord Shep casually proclaimed Obama’s constitutional eligibility a dead issue, completely ignoring all related facts and millions of Americans deeply concerned with what is happening to their beloved Constitution, not to mention their Representative Republic.
Despite Shepard Smith’s baseless proclamation, there are some very disturbing facts on the subject as well as some very interesting evidence to suggest that Smith might actually be the one who is “crazy!‚”
What do we know for Certain?
• We know that Article II—Section I of the US Constitution was very important to liberals when they challenged John McCain’s eligibility for POTUS on the basis that he was born in Panama, albeit on a US Naval base in Panama, to a well regarded US Naval Commander stationed in Panama at the time.
• We know that the same issue is of no interest whatsoever to liberals, when concerning Barack Obama.
• We know that even if the COLB (Certificate of Live Birth) presented by Obama to demonstrate his status as a “natural born citizen,‚” is not a forgery as it has been alleged to be by document authentication experts, it still does not prove where Obama was born as it provides none of the key “witness to the birth‚” information only available on a true long form birth certificate.
• We know that Obama family members have signed a legal affidavit stating that they were present at Obama’s birth, in Kenya.
• We know that Hawaii had a practice of issuing COLBs to children known to be born outside of the US.
• We know that Barack Obama’s stated father, Barack Obama Sr. was NOT a US citizen. So even if Jr. was born in Hawaii, he would still not qualify as one without “dual loyalties‚” as the son of a Kenyan British subject.
• We know that Barack Jr. was adopted by Lolo Soetoro, a citizen of Indonesia, and attended school in Jakarta registered as a Muslim citizen of Indonesia, which was only possible as the adopted son of Soetoro and legal citizen of Indonesia, which at the time did not allow dual citizenship with the US.
• We know that Barack Jr. remained the legal adopted son of Soetoro at least until his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, filed for divorce on June 15, 1980, when she listed Barack as the son of both her and Lolo Soetoro, then over the age of 18, but still dependent upon both parties in the divorce, for his continuing education. [2]
• Since Barack Jr. entered college at Occidental in the fall of 1979 and remained at Occidental until the spring of 1981, we know that he must have entered Occidental under the name Barry Soetoro, the name used since his adoption in Indonesia.
• We know that Occidental has stated that - “Neither Obama’s image nor name appear in any Occidental yearbooks or weekly student newspaper for the years he attended,‚” Which means that there is NO hard public evidence which proves that Barack Obama ever attended Occidental College. Likely because they had him as Barry Soetoro… a legal citizen of Indonesia, which is how his mother identified him in her 1980 divorce filing. [3]
• We know that he traveled to Pakistan with a college acquaintance during the same time frame, a trip not possible on a US passport at the time, as Pakistan was off-limits to US travelers on a US passport.
• We know that to reconstitute himself as a citizen of the US after becoming a citizen of Indonesia, he would have had to do so through the standard naturalization process, no evidence of which seems to exist.
• We know that his mother was an employee of the US government, specifically USAID, the US Agency for International Development, a government agency providing US economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide for more than 40 years, which paid for her four bedroom home in Hawaii, and two live-in domestic servants. [4]
• We know that she met Barack’s alleged father in a Russian Language class, immediately after leaving High School.
• We know that his connections to anti-American evil-doers like domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, the Black Nationalist racist Rev. Wright, Saudi Royal Family international front-man Dr. Khalid al-Mansour (aka Don Warden), Chicago thug Tony Rezko, Communist Frank Marshall Davis and many others, spans beyond his life and into that of his mother’s.
• We know that Obama has thus far spent approximately $1 million in cold cash to keep his birth, college and passport records sealed, Top Secret.
• We know that Article II—Section I of the Constitution means exactly what it says or the Constitution means absolutely nothing at all to any American.
• We know that no matter how you come at the subject, there is more than ample evidence to justify a full blown investigation into just who and what Barack Hussein Obama really is, but that not one major news agency, not one US court, and not one member of the US Congress wants to touch this thing with a ten foot pole.
Now these are not things we think, but things we know. The implications are obvious, but the official answers remain locked up with Obama’s entire past.
On the basis of all that we know, we also know that Commander Walter Fitzpatrick is never going to be charged with mutiny for charging a sitting president with the high crime of “treason.‚” We know this because charging Commander Fitzpatrick with mutiny would open up all of these Obama files and many more, to discovery.
Ridiculed, his character assassinated, he and his friends interrogated and intimidated by Secret Service or FBI agents, called a “crazy‚” by incompetent reporters like Shep Smith and his boy friend Cooper Anderson, sure.... But charged with any form of a crime that would open Obama up to full discovery.... never!
Where that leaves us...
Since adequate evidence exists to support Commander Fitzpatrick’s case against Obama, the implication is that Obama is indeed guilty of “treason‚” just as Fitzpatrick has charged. Obama can’t defend against the charges without opening the files he has spent a millions bucks to keep sealed.
Along with Citizen Grand Jury indictments and civil suits, individual criminal charges of treason against Obama are being filed across the country and sooner or later, by sheer critical mass alone, everyone is going to get the truth about who and what Barack Hussein Obama really is…
The man had a blank resume, a laundry list of evil associates, a past more secret than your average CIA agent, nothing on his resume that screams “leader‚” of anything, and after an uneventful freshman year as a US Senator, managed to become President of the United States.
He ran for office as a “moderate‚” but has governed like a Marxist third world dictator since before the counting was finished last November. It is only a matter of time before the cat is out of the bag and Obama can surely feel the walls closing in by now.
What can YOU do?
You can accelerate the process… You can personally take part in one or more of the following very important people’s initiatives.
• You can follow Commander Fitzpatrick’s lead and file a criminal complaint of your own. [1]
• You can join the American Grand Jury initiative. [5]
• You can sign the US Justice Foundation petition for TRUTH. [6]
• You can participate in the TEA Party Movement.
American freedom and liberty is under attack on every front under this administration and to stop them, we will have to confront them on every front.
Your silence has been your consent and even whining and complaining will be interpreted as your reluctant consent. If you want to stop the destruction of this country, you are going to have to take action while there is time left for peaceful solutions.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. - Any questions?
Key Evidence & Links
1. —Commander Fitzpatrick - http://jaghunters.blogspot.com/
2. -- Soetoro Divorce - http://www.scribd.com/doc/9940006/Soetoro-Divorce-1980-9-Pages-Merged
3. —Occidental Statement - http://www.oxy.edu/x7992.xml
4. -- USAID - http://www.usaid.gov/
5. —Citizen Grand Jury - http://americangrandjury.org/
6. —US Justice Foundation Petition - https://secure.conservativedonations.com/usjf_demandproof_wnd/?a=2523
By JB Williams Saturday, June 13, 2009
On June 10, 2009, I released a column titled ”Is Obama Guilty of Treason?‚” - That column details the criminal charges of “treason‚” filed against President Barack Hussein Obama, by Retired Naval Commander Walter Fitzpatrick III in March of 2009. [1]
Commander Fitzpatrick is a retired career Naval Officer who has served his country with great honor and distinction and continues to today. An Eagle Scout of 40 years, the son of Captain Fitzpatrick - Naval Medical Officer, a graduate of St. Thomas Aquinas and Villanova Preparatory School in California…—“Walter enlisted in the Navy in 1969 directly after graduating Villanova. After boot camp at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, Walter attended the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Bainbridge, MD. After one year he entered the U.S. Naval Academy. He graduated with the Class of 1975 with top military honors.‚”—From Commander Fitzpatrick’s Official Bio.
Stand Commander Fitzpatrick’s r√©sum√© next to that of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid, or most any other American for that matter, and tell me who you trust to tell the truth? We all know the motives of politicians, money and power. But what does Commander Fitzpatrick stand to gain from his recent actions?
In my last column I point out the simple fact that one of two things is definitely true… Either Mr. Obama is indeed guilty of “treason‚” as the Commander has charged; (or) the good Commander in guilty of mutiny solely on the basis of accusing a sitting Commander-in-Chief with the high crime of “treason.‚”
However, in order to be guilty of mutiny, Commander Fitzpatrick’s charges would have to be proven false. In order to be proven false, Obama’s secret files would have to be opened up for discovery, which explains why Obama has not charged the Commander with mutiny. Any defensive legal action on Obama’s part will result in “discovery‚” of the events and facts involved, and that is the last thing Obama wants at this point…
So instead of a legal defense, every effort will be made to defeat Commander Fitzpatrick in the court of public opinion, by attacking his character, a standard operating procedure of the left. Unlike a court of law, in the court of public opinion, judgments are made on the basis of the most “popular‚” propaganda, without any regard for truth or facts.
EXAMPLE: - Following the lead of his leftist friends at the alphabet networks, FOX News anchor Shepard Smith recently looked to capitalize on the alleged white supremacist [James von Brunn] shooting of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum by using a “guilt by association‚” attack on anyone trying to uphold the US Constitution, specifically Article II—Section I.
Two American soldiers were gunned down in Little Rock by an American born and recruited Muslim Jihadist, and the press including Smith, couldn’t care less. No member of the press used the incident to incite anger towards or fear of American Jihadists.
But one nutty old anti-Semitic crackpot shoots a security guard out of pure hate towards Jews and Christians alike, and Shep Smith chose to paint every American constitutionalist a James von Brunn, stating—“these kinds of crazed conspiracies whether they’re about the president, or we’re hearing things like FEMA setting up camps to round up Americans and put them in. I’m getting bad sort of deja-vu from the 1990s when anti-government militias were on the rise, when Tim McVeigh committed that [bombing] in Oklahoma City and I really am hoping that we’re not going through a repeat of that.‚”
By “these kinds of crazies,‚” Smith was not referring to von Brunn, but rather to “Americans challenging the eligibility of Barack Obama to hold the office of president,‚” which he boldly labels “crazies,‚” stating unequivocally that “there is no truth whatsoever to the suggestion Obama is not a “natural born citizen.‚”
As if a well-known forgone conclusion to in-depth investigative efforts which have never taken place, Lord Shep casually proclaimed Obama’s constitutional eligibility a dead issue, completely ignoring all related facts and millions of Americans deeply concerned with what is happening to their beloved Constitution, not to mention their Representative Republic.
Despite Shepard Smith’s baseless proclamation, there are some very disturbing facts on the subject as well as some very interesting evidence to suggest that Smith might actually be the one who is “crazy!‚”
What do we know for Certain?
• We know that Article II—Section I of the US Constitution was very important to liberals when they challenged John McCain’s eligibility for POTUS on the basis that he was born in Panama, albeit on a US Naval base in Panama, to a well regarded US Naval Commander stationed in Panama at the time.
• We know that the same issue is of no interest whatsoever to liberals, when concerning Barack Obama.
• We know that even if the COLB (Certificate of Live Birth) presented by Obama to demonstrate his status as a “natural born citizen,‚” is not a forgery as it has been alleged to be by document authentication experts, it still does not prove where Obama was born as it provides none of the key “witness to the birth‚” information only available on a true long form birth certificate.
• We know that Obama family members have signed a legal affidavit stating that they were present at Obama’s birth, in Kenya.
• We know that Hawaii had a practice of issuing COLBs to children known to be born outside of the US.
• We know that Barack Obama’s stated father, Barack Obama Sr. was NOT a US citizen. So even if Jr. was born in Hawaii, he would still not qualify as one without “dual loyalties‚” as the son of a Kenyan British subject.
• We know that Barack Jr. was adopted by Lolo Soetoro, a citizen of Indonesia, and attended school in Jakarta registered as a Muslim citizen of Indonesia, which was only possible as the adopted son of Soetoro and legal citizen of Indonesia, which at the time did not allow dual citizenship with the US.
• We know that Barack Jr. remained the legal adopted son of Soetoro at least until his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, filed for divorce on June 15, 1980, when she listed Barack as the son of both her and Lolo Soetoro, then over the age of 18, but still dependent upon both parties in the divorce, for his continuing education. [2]
• Since Barack Jr. entered college at Occidental in the fall of 1979 and remained at Occidental until the spring of 1981, we know that he must have entered Occidental under the name Barry Soetoro, the name used since his adoption in Indonesia.
• We know that Occidental has stated that - “Neither Obama’s image nor name appear in any Occidental yearbooks or weekly student newspaper for the years he attended,‚” Which means that there is NO hard public evidence which proves that Barack Obama ever attended Occidental College. Likely because they had him as Barry Soetoro… a legal citizen of Indonesia, which is how his mother identified him in her 1980 divorce filing. [3]
• We know that he traveled to Pakistan with a college acquaintance during the same time frame, a trip not possible on a US passport at the time, as Pakistan was off-limits to US travelers on a US passport.
• We know that to reconstitute himself as a citizen of the US after becoming a citizen of Indonesia, he would have had to do so through the standard naturalization process, no evidence of which seems to exist.
• We know that his mother was an employee of the US government, specifically USAID, the US Agency for International Development, a government agency providing US economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide for more than 40 years, which paid for her four bedroom home in Hawaii, and two live-in domestic servants. [4]
• We know that she met Barack’s alleged father in a Russian Language class, immediately after leaving High School.
• We know that his connections to anti-American evil-doers like domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, the Black Nationalist racist Rev. Wright, Saudi Royal Family international front-man Dr. Khalid al-Mansour (aka Don Warden), Chicago thug Tony Rezko, Communist Frank Marshall Davis and many others, spans beyond his life and into that of his mother’s.
• We know that Obama has thus far spent approximately $1 million in cold cash to keep his birth, college and passport records sealed, Top Secret.
• We know that Article II—Section I of the Constitution means exactly what it says or the Constitution means absolutely nothing at all to any American.
• We know that no matter how you come at the subject, there is more than ample evidence to justify a full blown investigation into just who and what Barack Hussein Obama really is, but that not one major news agency, not one US court, and not one member of the US Congress wants to touch this thing with a ten foot pole.
Now these are not things we think, but things we know. The implications are obvious, but the official answers remain locked up with Obama’s entire past.
On the basis of all that we know, we also know that Commander Walter Fitzpatrick is never going to be charged with mutiny for charging a sitting president with the high crime of “treason.‚” We know this because charging Commander Fitzpatrick with mutiny would open up all of these Obama files and many more, to discovery.
Ridiculed, his character assassinated, he and his friends interrogated and intimidated by Secret Service or FBI agents, called a “crazy‚” by incompetent reporters like Shep Smith and his boy friend Cooper Anderson, sure.... But charged with any form of a crime that would open Obama up to full discovery.... never!
Where that leaves us...
Since adequate evidence exists to support Commander Fitzpatrick’s case against Obama, the implication is that Obama is indeed guilty of “treason‚” just as Fitzpatrick has charged. Obama can’t defend against the charges without opening the files he has spent a millions bucks to keep sealed.
Along with Citizen Grand Jury indictments and civil suits, individual criminal charges of treason against Obama are being filed across the country and sooner or later, by sheer critical mass alone, everyone is going to get the truth about who and what Barack Hussein Obama really is…
The man had a blank resume, a laundry list of evil associates, a past more secret than your average CIA agent, nothing on his resume that screams “leader‚” of anything, and after an uneventful freshman year as a US Senator, managed to become President of the United States.
He ran for office as a “moderate‚” but has governed like a Marxist third world dictator since before the counting was finished last November. It is only a matter of time before the cat is out of the bag and Obama can surely feel the walls closing in by now.
What can YOU do?
You can accelerate the process… You can personally take part in one or more of the following very important people’s initiatives.
• You can follow Commander Fitzpatrick’s lead and file a criminal complaint of your own. [1]
• You can join the American Grand Jury initiative. [5]
• You can sign the US Justice Foundation petition for TRUTH. [6]
• You can participate in the TEA Party Movement.
American freedom and liberty is under attack on every front under this administration and to stop them, we will have to confront them on every front.
Your silence has been your consent and even whining and complaining will be interpreted as your reluctant consent. If you want to stop the destruction of this country, you are going to have to take action while there is time left for peaceful solutions.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. - Any questions?
Key Evidence & Links
1. —Commander Fitzpatrick - http://jaghunters.blogspot.com/
2. -- Soetoro Divorce - http://www.scribd.com/doc/9940006/Soetoro-Divorce-1980-9-Pages-Merged
3. —Occidental Statement - http://www.oxy.edu/x7992.xml
4. -- USAID - http://www.usaid.gov/
5. —Citizen Grand Jury - http://americangrandjury.org/
6. —US Justice Foundation Petition - https://secure.conservativedonations.com/usjf_demandproof_wnd/?a=2523
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Carter Is A Fool
Carter to Obama: Remove Hamas From Terror List
Former President Jimmy Carter will urge the Obama administration to remove Hamas from the terrorist list, FOX News has learned.
Carter, a chief defender of the U.S.-designated terror group, said Tuesday he will meet with officials in the Obama administration in two days to discuss his latest trip to the Middle East.
Meanwhile, two Palestinian sources told FOX News that the group had discovered two roadside bombs planted near a crossing between Israel and Gaza on a path Carter's convoy took to meet with the group's leaders -- Hamas advisers, though, reportedly cast doubt on claims that extremists were trying to kill Carter.
Carter was granted special waivers by the U.S. Secret Service allowing him to enter Gaza. Employees of the U.S. executive branch are not allowed into the strip since a roadside bomb killed three U.S. security personnel in 2003.
Carter was visiting with Hamas leaders to try to persuade them to accept the international community's conditions for ending its boycott of the Islamic militant group.
The international community has asked Hamas to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace deals as part of ongoing efforts for Palestinians overall to acquire their own country. Hamas has refused.
Carter said he feels personally responsible that American weapons were used to fight in Gaza Strip last year, when Israeli Defense Forces entered the strip to stop the launch of rockets from there into Israel.
Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and Europe and has been shunned by much of the world. Israel and Egypt have kept Gaza's borders virtually closed since Hamas overran the territory in 2007, two years after Israel withdrew from Gaza in a handover to Palestinians.
According to two eyewitnesses, including a 15-year-old boy, the bombs that were found were intended to hit Carter's vehicle as he exited Gaza. There is some suspicion that Hamas extremists linked to Al Qaeda may be behind the attempt.
The boy told FOX News he saw three Palestinian men planting bombs, four of which were later found near a mound less than a mile from the Israel-Gaza border. The boy said he notified Hamas police, who detonated the bombs and took the three men into custody.
But two Hamas advisers, in interviews with WorldNetDaily, denied reports that extremists were potentially behind such an alleged assassination attempt.
"Nobody in Gaza will touch this man," Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef said. "He is on a noble mission. Everyone here respects him."
Former President Jimmy Carter will urge the Obama administration to remove Hamas from the terrorist list, FOX News has learned.
Carter, a chief defender of the U.S.-designated terror group, said Tuesday he will meet with officials in the Obama administration in two days to discuss his latest trip to the Middle East.
Meanwhile, two Palestinian sources told FOX News that the group had discovered two roadside bombs planted near a crossing between Israel and Gaza on a path Carter's convoy took to meet with the group's leaders -- Hamas advisers, though, reportedly cast doubt on claims that extremists were trying to kill Carter.
Carter was granted special waivers by the U.S. Secret Service allowing him to enter Gaza. Employees of the U.S. executive branch are not allowed into the strip since a roadside bomb killed three U.S. security personnel in 2003.
Carter was visiting with Hamas leaders to try to persuade them to accept the international community's conditions for ending its boycott of the Islamic militant group.
The international community has asked Hamas to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace deals as part of ongoing efforts for Palestinians overall to acquire their own country. Hamas has refused.
Carter said he feels personally responsible that American weapons were used to fight in Gaza Strip last year, when Israeli Defense Forces entered the strip to stop the launch of rockets from there into Israel.
Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and Europe and has been shunned by much of the world. Israel and Egypt have kept Gaza's borders virtually closed since Hamas overran the territory in 2007, two years after Israel withdrew from Gaza in a handover to Palestinians.
According to two eyewitnesses, including a 15-year-old boy, the bombs that were found were intended to hit Carter's vehicle as he exited Gaza. There is some suspicion that Hamas extremists linked to Al Qaeda may be behind the attempt.
The boy told FOX News he saw three Palestinian men planting bombs, four of which were later found near a mound less than a mile from the Israel-Gaza border. The boy said he notified Hamas police, who detonated the bombs and took the three men into custody.
But two Hamas advisers, in interviews with WorldNetDaily, denied reports that extremists were potentially behind such an alleged assassination attempt.
"Nobody in Gaza will touch this man," Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef said. "He is on a noble mission. Everyone here respects him."
Monday, June 15, 2009
Obama Investigated for Corruption. WOW! Who'd a Thunk?
Judicial Watch
MEMORANDUM
March 9, 2009
To: Tom Fitton, President
From: Chris Farrell, Director of Research and Investigations
Re: Judicial Watch Obama Records Investil.zation Status UDdate
The following updates our Obama Records investigation and findings to date.
Note that several of our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests remain unanswered and responses are overdue. I plan to refer, as noted, certain of these FOIAs to our legal staff for review and consideration for prompt legal action.
As you know, these thirteen (13) FOIA requests for information are only a part of our investigative efforts to date. We are also looking into questionable facts about his (Obama’s) stock transactions. Two months after he took his Senate seat in 2005, the Senator purchased $50,000 worth of stock in highly speculative ventures, whose major investors were some of his biggest campaign contributors. One of the companies was a biotech concern that benefited from legislation that Senator Obama pushed just two weeks after purchasing $5,000 worth of its stock. When he was working to pass that legislation, we are attempting to determine whose interest was the Senator advancing ... his constituents', the company's, or his own?
We continue to explore certain facts about his connections to terrorists, e.g. the notorious leftist William Ayers, a founding member of the terrorist group Weather Underground (this group engaged in domestic terrorism in the 1970's and 1980's, most notably when they set off bombs in the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon). They ultimately claimed “credit” for a total of 25 bombings. Ayers and his fellow
Weatherman girlfriend (now his wife), Bernadine Dohrn, turned themselves into federal authorities in 1981, but most charges against them were dropped due to alleged prosecutorial misconduct. Ayers was quoted in the New York Times as saying "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. We have learned that Obama and Ayers sat together on the board of the Woods Fund a few years back, which reportedly voted grants totaling $75,000 in 2001 and 2002 to the Arab-American Action Network, a radical organization with terrorist ties. They also collaborated on an education "reform" project called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Ayers ran the CAC operational arm and Obama chaired the board. Together, they were responsible for distributing over $100 million - to great delight of their ideological allies. We have dispatched an investigative team to pursue our open FOIA requests and review records - to include the Annenberg files. What's more, Ayers and his terrorist wife hosted an intimate political affair for Obama, helping launch his political career.
Finally, we now have a better understanding as to why our longstanding corruption investigation and ongoing open records litigation concerning the sale of government jobs by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for which he was arrested have taken two years. He had clearly been stonewalling us and refusing to turn over documents to Judicial Watch that could have alerted the American people to his corruption.
Since the criminal complaint that was filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office indicates that Mr. Obama and his team knew about Blagojevich's efforts to sell Obama's U.S. Senate seat. we will be adding FOIA requests concerning the "pay to play" scheme for Obama's former U.S. Senate seat.
Please see FOIA action details below, and advise with any questions or additional areas of interest.
Illinois State Archives (ISA)
Missing Records. Requested any and all public documents related to legislative action involving Barack Obama during his two terms (1997-2004) served as Illinois State Senator.
No documents received. Despite Senator Obama's statement to the media to the contrary, "Well, lets be clear. In the state Senate, every single piece of information, every document related to state government was kept by the State of Illinois and has been disclosed and is available and has been gone through with a fine-toothed comb by news outlets in Illinois ... every document related to my interactions with government is available right now." Illinois State Legislature responded that they do not archive documents related to state legislators, nor have they received any requests from Senator Obama to archive any of his records. His statement that they are available is false.
Illinois Housing Development Authority
Influence Peddling. Seeking connections between "earmarks" authored by Illinois State Senator Obama and various Chicago area housing projects.
Some documents have been produced and are currently being examined by our investigative staff. The key question is whether Obama sold inflluence in exchange for earmarks.
Office of the Secretary of Defense/Joint Staff (OSD/JS)
Congressional Travel Junket. We filed a FOIA request with the Defense Department requesting important information about the highly- publicized taxpayer-funded congressional delegation trip Senator Obama took to Iraq in July. We want to know the facts surrounding this controversial trip.
Thus far, no documents have been provided. Our legal team is considering a lawsuit.
Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
Improper Earmarks. To determine if Senator Obama, when he was serving in the
Illinois State Senate, "earmarked" spending projects to benefit friends, family members or political contributors like convicted felon Tony Rezko. The relationship between Rezko and Senator Obama is so close that the Senator and Rezko went in on a real estate deal together. In fact, Obama's dealings with Rezko may have allowed Obama to pay $300,000 below the asking price for his $1.65 million Chicago mansion.
According to records provided, Barack Obama helped secure a $25,000 grant for Blue Gargoyle in August 2000, an organization that was headed by Capers C. Funnye, Jr., Michelle Obama's first cousin once removed. Obama also secured a $100,000 grant for volunteers, Kenny Smith, to build a garden project. The project was never completed. Smith instead distributed $65,000 of the funds directly to his wife and another $20,000 to a construction company set up by his wife that is now no longer in business.
Cook County Assessor’s Office (Chicago, Illinois)
Preferential Treatment. Requested tax assessed value of Obama's mansion and other comparable residential properties to confirm or deny a report Judicial Watch received that his home was assessed for taxes at a value lower than market value while serving as an Illinois State Senator.
Documents received and our analysis is ongoing.
City of Chicago Department of Housing
Influence Peddling. Allegations have been made that contracts issued by that office relating to construction and maintenance of certain buildings and businesses, including a bank and public housing projects, were improperly influenced by close Obama friend and fundraiser, and now convicted felon, Antoin "Tony" Rezko.
Documents uncovered by Judicial Watch show Barack Obama supported a housing development project known as Cottage View Terrace, which yielded $900,000 in developers' fees for convicted felon (and former Obama fundraiser) Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Obama's former employer, lawyer Allison Davis.
Office of Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich
Influence Peddling. Allegations have been made that contracts issued by that office relating to construction and maintenance of certain buildings and businesses, including a bank and public housing projects, were improperly influenced. Our FOIA request seeks documents pertaining to the Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs, the Developing Communities Project and correspondence with Barack Obama. Documents were received and are currently under review by our investigations team.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Influence Peddling. Requested documents on housing projects that Obama was involved with relating to his time as Illinois State Senator.
Overdue. Response deadline was September 17. Lawsuit under consideration.
Illinois Secretary of State
Influence Peddling. Request for documents relating to Obama's time as an Illinois State Senator and involvement with Project Vote, the Fund for Community Development, and other projects.
Documents uncovered by Judicial Watch confirm that Obama served as Director of Project Vote in 1992. Project Vote is a project of ACORN, a radical leftist organization with a long history of voter fraud.
Office of the Mayor, Chicago, Illinois
Influence peddling. Requested documents on any involvement in the Fund for Community Development during Obama's terms as an Illinois State Senator. Overdue. Response deadline was August 29. Lawsuit under consideration.
Office of Illinois State Senator Emil Jones, Jr.
Influence Peddling. Requested documents related to the Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs and other organizations for which Obama may have improperly set aside earmarks.
Judicial Watch continues to battle with the office of Senator Jones over these documents. Lawsuit under consideration.
University of Illinois at Chicago
Terrorist Ties. Requested documents related to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational "reform" project where Obama as chairman of this non-profit group collaborated with domestic terrorist William Ayers.
Response deadline was September 1 and was denied. An appeal was filed by Judicial Watch for items #2 through #4 and was approved. These documents indicate that Obama served as Chairman of the Annenberg Challenge for eight years (1995-2002). The documents include a fund-raising letter signed by Obama requesting a $22,500 grant noting "we [meaning the Annenberg Challenge] are launched." Clearly, Obama and Ayers worked together closely on this "educational project," despite Obama's repeated denials.
Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois
Corruption. Requested records on Joseph Carl and Stuart Levine, who allegedly attempted to embezzle money from the Teachers' Retirement system. Joseph Cari may have ties to Tony Rezko and is a financial supporter of then U.S. Senator and now Vice President Joe Biden.
Our investigations team is currently reviewing documents provided.
MEMORANDUM
March 9, 2009
To: Tom Fitton, President
From: Chris Farrell, Director of Research and Investigations
Re: Judicial Watch Obama Records Investil.zation Status UDdate
The following updates our Obama Records investigation and findings to date.
Note that several of our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests remain unanswered and responses are overdue. I plan to refer, as noted, certain of these FOIAs to our legal staff for review and consideration for prompt legal action.
As you know, these thirteen (13) FOIA requests for information are only a part of our investigative efforts to date. We are also looking into questionable facts about his (Obama’s) stock transactions. Two months after he took his Senate seat in 2005, the Senator purchased $50,000 worth of stock in highly speculative ventures, whose major investors were some of his biggest campaign contributors. One of the companies was a biotech concern that benefited from legislation that Senator Obama pushed just two weeks after purchasing $5,000 worth of its stock. When he was working to pass that legislation, we are attempting to determine whose interest was the Senator advancing ... his constituents', the company's, or his own?
We continue to explore certain facts about his connections to terrorists, e.g. the notorious leftist William Ayers, a founding member of the terrorist group Weather Underground (this group engaged in domestic terrorism in the 1970's and 1980's, most notably when they set off bombs in the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon). They ultimately claimed “credit” for a total of 25 bombings. Ayers and his fellow
Weatherman girlfriend (now his wife), Bernadine Dohrn, turned themselves into federal authorities in 1981, but most charges against them were dropped due to alleged prosecutorial misconduct. Ayers was quoted in the New York Times as saying "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
Ayers is now a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. We have learned that Obama and Ayers sat together on the board of the Woods Fund a few years back, which reportedly voted grants totaling $75,000 in 2001 and 2002 to the Arab-American Action Network, a radical organization with terrorist ties. They also collaborated on an education "reform" project called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Ayers ran the CAC operational arm and Obama chaired the board. Together, they were responsible for distributing over $100 million - to great delight of their ideological allies. We have dispatched an investigative team to pursue our open FOIA requests and review records - to include the Annenberg files. What's more, Ayers and his terrorist wife hosted an intimate political affair for Obama, helping launch his political career.
Finally, we now have a better understanding as to why our longstanding corruption investigation and ongoing open records litigation concerning the sale of government jobs by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for which he was arrested have taken two years. He had clearly been stonewalling us and refusing to turn over documents to Judicial Watch that could have alerted the American people to his corruption.
Since the criminal complaint that was filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office indicates that Mr. Obama and his team knew about Blagojevich's efforts to sell Obama's U.S. Senate seat. we will be adding FOIA requests concerning the "pay to play" scheme for Obama's former U.S. Senate seat.
Please see FOIA action details below, and advise with any questions or additional areas of interest.
Illinois State Archives (ISA)
Missing Records. Requested any and all public documents related to legislative action involving Barack Obama during his two terms (1997-2004) served as Illinois State Senator.
No documents received. Despite Senator Obama's statement to the media to the contrary, "Well, lets be clear. In the state Senate, every single piece of information, every document related to state government was kept by the State of Illinois and has been disclosed and is available and has been gone through with a fine-toothed comb by news outlets in Illinois ... every document related to my interactions with government is available right now." Illinois State Legislature responded that they do not archive documents related to state legislators, nor have they received any requests from Senator Obama to archive any of his records. His statement that they are available is false.
Illinois Housing Development Authority
Influence Peddling. Seeking connections between "earmarks" authored by Illinois State Senator Obama and various Chicago area housing projects.
Some documents have been produced and are currently being examined by our investigative staff. The key question is whether Obama sold inflluence in exchange for earmarks.
Office of the Secretary of Defense/Joint Staff (OSD/JS)
Congressional Travel Junket. We filed a FOIA request with the Defense Department requesting important information about the highly- publicized taxpayer-funded congressional delegation trip Senator Obama took to Iraq in July. We want to know the facts surrounding this controversial trip.
Thus far, no documents have been provided. Our legal team is considering a lawsuit.
Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
Improper Earmarks. To determine if Senator Obama, when he was serving in the
Illinois State Senate, "earmarked" spending projects to benefit friends, family members or political contributors like convicted felon Tony Rezko. The relationship between Rezko and Senator Obama is so close that the Senator and Rezko went in on a real estate deal together. In fact, Obama's dealings with Rezko may have allowed Obama to pay $300,000 below the asking price for his $1.65 million Chicago mansion.
According to records provided, Barack Obama helped secure a $25,000 grant for Blue Gargoyle in August 2000, an organization that was headed by Capers C. Funnye, Jr., Michelle Obama's first cousin once removed. Obama also secured a $100,000 grant for volunteers, Kenny Smith, to build a garden project. The project was never completed. Smith instead distributed $65,000 of the funds directly to his wife and another $20,000 to a construction company set up by his wife that is now no longer in business.
Cook County Assessor’s Office (Chicago, Illinois)
Preferential Treatment. Requested tax assessed value of Obama's mansion and other comparable residential properties to confirm or deny a report Judicial Watch received that his home was assessed for taxes at a value lower than market value while serving as an Illinois State Senator.
Documents received and our analysis is ongoing.
City of Chicago Department of Housing
Influence Peddling. Allegations have been made that contracts issued by that office relating to construction and maintenance of certain buildings and businesses, including a bank and public housing projects, were improperly influenced by close Obama friend and fundraiser, and now convicted felon, Antoin "Tony" Rezko.
Documents uncovered by Judicial Watch show Barack Obama supported a housing development project known as Cottage View Terrace, which yielded $900,000 in developers' fees for convicted felon (and former Obama fundraiser) Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Obama's former employer, lawyer Allison Davis.
Office of Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich
Influence Peddling. Allegations have been made that contracts issued by that office relating to construction and maintenance of certain buildings and businesses, including a bank and public housing projects, were improperly influenced. Our FOIA request seeks documents pertaining to the Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs, the Developing Communities Project and correspondence with Barack Obama. Documents were received and are currently under review by our investigations team.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Influence Peddling. Requested documents on housing projects that Obama was involved with relating to his time as Illinois State Senator.
Overdue. Response deadline was September 17. Lawsuit under consideration.
Illinois Secretary of State
Influence Peddling. Request for documents relating to Obama's time as an Illinois State Senator and involvement with Project Vote, the Fund for Community Development, and other projects.
Documents uncovered by Judicial Watch confirm that Obama served as Director of Project Vote in 1992. Project Vote is a project of ACORN, a radical leftist organization with a long history of voter fraud.
Office of the Mayor, Chicago, Illinois
Influence peddling. Requested documents on any involvement in the Fund for Community Development during Obama's terms as an Illinois State Senator. Overdue. Response deadline was August 29. Lawsuit under consideration.
Office of Illinois State Senator Emil Jones, Jr.
Influence Peddling. Requested documents related to the Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs and other organizations for which Obama may have improperly set aside earmarks.
Judicial Watch continues to battle with the office of Senator Jones over these documents. Lawsuit under consideration.
University of Illinois at Chicago
Terrorist Ties. Requested documents related to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational "reform" project where Obama as chairman of this non-profit group collaborated with domestic terrorist William Ayers.
Response deadline was September 1 and was denied. An appeal was filed by Judicial Watch for items #2 through #4 and was approved. These documents indicate that Obama served as Chairman of the Annenberg Challenge for eight years (1995-2002). The documents include a fund-raising letter signed by Obama requesting a $22,500 grant noting "we [meaning the Annenberg Challenge] are launched." Clearly, Obama and Ayers worked together closely on this "educational project," despite Obama's repeated denials.
Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois
Corruption. Requested records on Joseph Carl and Stuart Levine, who allegedly attempted to embezzle money from the Teachers' Retirement system. Joseph Cari may have ties to Tony Rezko and is a financial supporter of then U.S. Senator and now Vice President Joe Biden.
Our investigations team is currently reviewing documents provided.
Inexperience of a Fool To Destroy Healthcare
A Public Health Disaster in the Making
By John E. Calfee
Congress is poised to pass one of the worst public health laws ever conceived.
Congress is poised to pass one of the worst public health laws ever conceived. There is no getting around the awfulness of HR 1256, which was passed by the House last month and is now being debated before the full Senate. The topic is Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation of tobacco. HR 1256 would create a new FDA division, supported by industry user fees, which would exercise sweeping control over the introduction, manufacturing, and marketing of all tobacco products. Existing products would be grandfathered in—no worries for the Marlboro Man—but new entrants would face something like the FDA’s famously demanding new drug approval standards, except the standards would be even tougher in one very important way to be described later.
HR 1256 pays almost no attention to the most fundamental point in all of tobacco control, if not all of public health: the distinction between tobacco smoke, which causes almost all the harms from smoking, and nicotine, whose dangers are roughly on the order of those from caffeine. Most smokers are interested in the nicotine, a fact that opens the door to all sorts of ways to reduce or practically eliminate the health harms from tobacco. HR 1256 goes in the wrong direction by encouraging the FDA to reduce nicotine yield, which would mean deeper inhaling and more harm rather than less.
Fortunately, there are already some products on the market that pose no more than a tiny proportion of the risks of traditional cigarettes. Smokeless cigarettes heat tobacco rather than burn it, delivering mainly nicotine and flavorings. And there are “smokeless tobacco” products, which are made from tobacco but are delivered by means of tiny pouches that usually dissolve in the mouth. The best-known smokeless niche is occupied by snus (rhymes with moose), which has been widely used in Sweden and is available in the United States but almost nowhere else because of prohibitions. Years of research have shown that the risks of snus are roughly 1 percent or 2 percent of the risks of traditional cigarettes, and maybe less, while both male smoking and lung cancer are at lower levels in Sweden than just about anywhere else. There has also been extensive research on improving traditional cigarettes by, for example, using better filters and altering tobacco itself to remove well-known carcinogens.
All these products involve trade-offs in the sense of sacrificing sensory experience or rapid, controlled flow of nicotine. Those things are greatly valued by many smokers. (Full disclosure: I’ve never smoked, so I’m relying on second-hand accounts.) That is one reason smoking rates have stuck stubbornly at about 15 percent to 20 percent in the United States and other advanced nations despite decades of antismoking information and campaigns and mammoth tax increases.
Most smokers are interested in the nicotine, a fact that opens the door to all sorts of ways to reduce or practically eliminate the health harms from tobacco.
The problem now is that it is almost impossible for manufacturers of safer products to tell consumers about why they are safer and why smokers should switch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which regulates advertising, has resolutely enforced the prevailing views in the public health community, which has invested itself almost exclusively in a decades-long gamble to get smokers to quit rather than resort to safer tobacco use. Any suggestion in marketing materials that a product is safer—even one that emits no smoke whatsoever—is inevitably attacked by the antismoking watchdogs with FTC and FDA action a constant threat. The FDA does not have jurisdiction over tobacco products, of course, but products that are marketed (even indirectly) as a method to quit smoking are classified by the FDA as drugs, which cannot be sold until they pass through years of clinical trials and so forth. The nearly complete suppression of informative marketing of safer tobacco use has two consequences, both profoundly deleterious to the health of current and future smokers. It makes it almost impossible for manufacturers to provide the “reason why” messages that are the primary means for informing smokers of ways to reduce the harm from a difficult-to-quit habit. That impedes massive health-improving switching to safer products.
The upstream effects are even worse, because incentives to develop safer products are severely undermined if (to borrow a quote from the infinitely complicated history of cigarettes and health) “you build a better mousetrap and then they say you can't mention mice or traps.” The federal government has made the problem far worse by promoting the idea that all tobacco products, even smokeless ones, are equally unsafe.
Enter HR 1256, hundreds of pages of it. Two features would have devastating effects. One is the new tobacco product approval apparatus. Manufacturers would have to demonstrate that their products are not merely safer than some of the existing alternatives. They would have to demonstrate that once the products enter the market, they would not have undesirable second-order effects such as encouraging smokers to switch instead of quit, or encouraging non-smokers to start who otherwise would not have started.
Meeting this kind of standard would be extraordinarily difficult; it is nearly a recipe to discourage the development of almost any new product no matter how much safer it would be than what smokers now use. It moves the FDA far beyond the contours of drug regulation. Imagine that a dramatically effective new HIV drug could not be approved until the manufacturer demonstrated that the entry of the drug would not tempt some people into unsafe sex because they knew a better treatment could be used if worse came to worse. Suppose a better diabetes drug was kept on the sidelines while the manufacturer figured out how to show that the availability of the drug would not encourage obesity by discouraging weight loss and the like. No one wants the FDA to do that for drugs because we want better drugs, and we are willing to let consumers make their own decisions about how to revamp their lives accordingly. The imposition of this bizarre standard for new tobacco products reveals an intention to largely dispense with the task of reducing tobacco harm while demeaning the choices of smokers and potential smokers.
The product approval process would be greatly complicated by another of HR 1256’s innovations, the insertion of an outside board to participate in these decisions. The board almost certainly would be dominated by public health representatives who share a long-standing opposition to safer tobacco products and especially to any information about relative safety, stoked by the fear that even the safest products can wreak harm by impeding cessation and indirectly encouraging smoking.
None of this would apply to existing products, of course. The bigger the brand, the greater the benefit of this grandfathering arrangement. No wonder HR 1256 is called the “Marlboro Brand Protection Act.” No wonder the political breakthrough in getting FDA tobacco regulation came in 2004 when Philip Morris (now Altria) came out in support of FDA regulation; Altria remains a bulwark of support for HR 1256.
Imagine that a dramatically effective new HIV drug could not be approved until the manufacturer demonstrated that the entry of the drug would not tempt some people into unsafe sex because they knew a better treatment could be used if worse came to worse.
The same hostility to harm reduction infuses HR 1256’s provisions on marketing. Needless to say, advertising would become even rarer than it is today. The most important information—about the product’s risks and why it might be safer than something else—would be hemmed in by requirements of unknown rigor. Of course manufacturers would have to demonstrate to some degree the relative safety of their product. But most important, there would be another beyond-FDA-drug-regulation requirement to demonstrate that if smokers are told about a safer product, they will not react by failing to quit smoking and so on. Again, one wonders about how the pharmaceutical market would work if heart drug manufacturers had to prove whether telling consumers how to reduce the risk of heart attacks would adversely affect their lifestyle choices about diet and exercise.
Again, the grandfathering effect comes into play. What dominant brands fear most is aggressive marketing by competitors, especially competitors with a good safety story to tell. “Marlboro Brand Protection,” indeed.
Fortunately, there is dissent from all sorts of otherwise incompatible sources. Altria’s biggest competitors have been running full-page newspaper ads in opposition to HR 1256. But some stalwart antismoking figures are also in opposition. Professor Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health has a piece in today’s Los Angeles Times opposing HR 1256. The American Association of Public Health Physicians has vocally opposed HR 1256. So has William Godshall’s advocacy organization, Smokefree Pennsylvania, which logically enough is against measures that impede the substitution of smokeless for smoked.
Senators Richard Burr and Kay Hagan of North Carolina have introduced a bill that avoids the worst features of HR 1256 and has the virtue of lodging tobacco regulation in a separate agency and therefore avoiding the FDA, whose snail-like pacing in approving wider use of pure nicotine products has been deplorable. An even better alternative would be to unleash the FTC, whose regulatory philosophy is the simple toleration if not encouragement of truthful information in marketing. The FTC could regulate tobacco marketing like it regulates marketing for automobiles, computers, and just about everything else. It would require a reasonable basis for health claims. The standard can be tough when the stakes are high; you do not want to claim your car can stop in 100 feet from 60 mph unless you have solid evidence. But if the FTC were free of an implicit obligation to enforce what public health gurus want (sometimes including FDA staff), we could see an extraordinarily fruitful unleashing of methods for safer tobacco use and a consequent decline in the lamentable toll of cigarette smoking.
By John E. Calfee
Congress is poised to pass one of the worst public health laws ever conceived.
Congress is poised to pass one of the worst public health laws ever conceived. There is no getting around the awfulness of HR 1256, which was passed by the House last month and is now being debated before the full Senate. The topic is Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation of tobacco. HR 1256 would create a new FDA division, supported by industry user fees, which would exercise sweeping control over the introduction, manufacturing, and marketing of all tobacco products. Existing products would be grandfathered in—no worries for the Marlboro Man—but new entrants would face something like the FDA’s famously demanding new drug approval standards, except the standards would be even tougher in one very important way to be described later.
HR 1256 pays almost no attention to the most fundamental point in all of tobacco control, if not all of public health: the distinction between tobacco smoke, which causes almost all the harms from smoking, and nicotine, whose dangers are roughly on the order of those from caffeine. Most smokers are interested in the nicotine, a fact that opens the door to all sorts of ways to reduce or practically eliminate the health harms from tobacco. HR 1256 goes in the wrong direction by encouraging the FDA to reduce nicotine yield, which would mean deeper inhaling and more harm rather than less.
Fortunately, there are already some products on the market that pose no more than a tiny proportion of the risks of traditional cigarettes. Smokeless cigarettes heat tobacco rather than burn it, delivering mainly nicotine and flavorings. And there are “smokeless tobacco” products, which are made from tobacco but are delivered by means of tiny pouches that usually dissolve in the mouth. The best-known smokeless niche is occupied by snus (rhymes with moose), which has been widely used in Sweden and is available in the United States but almost nowhere else because of prohibitions. Years of research have shown that the risks of snus are roughly 1 percent or 2 percent of the risks of traditional cigarettes, and maybe less, while both male smoking and lung cancer are at lower levels in Sweden than just about anywhere else. There has also been extensive research on improving traditional cigarettes by, for example, using better filters and altering tobacco itself to remove well-known carcinogens.
All these products involve trade-offs in the sense of sacrificing sensory experience or rapid, controlled flow of nicotine. Those things are greatly valued by many smokers. (Full disclosure: I’ve never smoked, so I’m relying on second-hand accounts.) That is one reason smoking rates have stuck stubbornly at about 15 percent to 20 percent in the United States and other advanced nations despite decades of antismoking information and campaigns and mammoth tax increases.
Most smokers are interested in the nicotine, a fact that opens the door to all sorts of ways to reduce or practically eliminate the health harms from tobacco.
The problem now is that it is almost impossible for manufacturers of safer products to tell consumers about why they are safer and why smokers should switch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which regulates advertising, has resolutely enforced the prevailing views in the public health community, which has invested itself almost exclusively in a decades-long gamble to get smokers to quit rather than resort to safer tobacco use. Any suggestion in marketing materials that a product is safer—even one that emits no smoke whatsoever—is inevitably attacked by the antismoking watchdogs with FTC and FDA action a constant threat. The FDA does not have jurisdiction over tobacco products, of course, but products that are marketed (even indirectly) as a method to quit smoking are classified by the FDA as drugs, which cannot be sold until they pass through years of clinical trials and so forth. The nearly complete suppression of informative marketing of safer tobacco use has two consequences, both profoundly deleterious to the health of current and future smokers. It makes it almost impossible for manufacturers to provide the “reason why” messages that are the primary means for informing smokers of ways to reduce the harm from a difficult-to-quit habit. That impedes massive health-improving switching to safer products.
The upstream effects are even worse, because incentives to develop safer products are severely undermined if (to borrow a quote from the infinitely complicated history of cigarettes and health) “you build a better mousetrap and then they say you can't mention mice or traps.” The federal government has made the problem far worse by promoting the idea that all tobacco products, even smokeless ones, are equally unsafe.
Enter HR 1256, hundreds of pages of it. Two features would have devastating effects. One is the new tobacco product approval apparatus. Manufacturers would have to demonstrate that their products are not merely safer than some of the existing alternatives. They would have to demonstrate that once the products enter the market, they would not have undesirable second-order effects such as encouraging smokers to switch instead of quit, or encouraging non-smokers to start who otherwise would not have started.
Meeting this kind of standard would be extraordinarily difficult; it is nearly a recipe to discourage the development of almost any new product no matter how much safer it would be than what smokers now use. It moves the FDA far beyond the contours of drug regulation. Imagine that a dramatically effective new HIV drug could not be approved until the manufacturer demonstrated that the entry of the drug would not tempt some people into unsafe sex because they knew a better treatment could be used if worse came to worse. Suppose a better diabetes drug was kept on the sidelines while the manufacturer figured out how to show that the availability of the drug would not encourage obesity by discouraging weight loss and the like. No one wants the FDA to do that for drugs because we want better drugs, and we are willing to let consumers make their own decisions about how to revamp their lives accordingly. The imposition of this bizarre standard for new tobacco products reveals an intention to largely dispense with the task of reducing tobacco harm while demeaning the choices of smokers and potential smokers.
The product approval process would be greatly complicated by another of HR 1256’s innovations, the insertion of an outside board to participate in these decisions. The board almost certainly would be dominated by public health representatives who share a long-standing opposition to safer tobacco products and especially to any information about relative safety, stoked by the fear that even the safest products can wreak harm by impeding cessation and indirectly encouraging smoking.
None of this would apply to existing products, of course. The bigger the brand, the greater the benefit of this grandfathering arrangement. No wonder HR 1256 is called the “Marlboro Brand Protection Act.” No wonder the political breakthrough in getting FDA tobacco regulation came in 2004 when Philip Morris (now Altria) came out in support of FDA regulation; Altria remains a bulwark of support for HR 1256.
Imagine that a dramatically effective new HIV drug could not be approved until the manufacturer demonstrated that the entry of the drug would not tempt some people into unsafe sex because they knew a better treatment could be used if worse came to worse.
The same hostility to harm reduction infuses HR 1256’s provisions on marketing. Needless to say, advertising would become even rarer than it is today. The most important information—about the product’s risks and why it might be safer than something else—would be hemmed in by requirements of unknown rigor. Of course manufacturers would have to demonstrate to some degree the relative safety of their product. But most important, there would be another beyond-FDA-drug-regulation requirement to demonstrate that if smokers are told about a safer product, they will not react by failing to quit smoking and so on. Again, one wonders about how the pharmaceutical market would work if heart drug manufacturers had to prove whether telling consumers how to reduce the risk of heart attacks would adversely affect their lifestyle choices about diet and exercise.
Again, the grandfathering effect comes into play. What dominant brands fear most is aggressive marketing by competitors, especially competitors with a good safety story to tell. “Marlboro Brand Protection,” indeed.
Fortunately, there is dissent from all sorts of otherwise incompatible sources. Altria’s biggest competitors have been running full-page newspaper ads in opposition to HR 1256. But some stalwart antismoking figures are also in opposition. Professor Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health has a piece in today’s Los Angeles Times opposing HR 1256. The American Association of Public Health Physicians has vocally opposed HR 1256. So has William Godshall’s advocacy organization, Smokefree Pennsylvania, which logically enough is against measures that impede the substitution of smokeless for smoked.
Senators Richard Burr and Kay Hagan of North Carolina have introduced a bill that avoids the worst features of HR 1256 and has the virtue of lodging tobacco regulation in a separate agency and therefore avoiding the FDA, whose snail-like pacing in approving wider use of pure nicotine products has been deplorable. An even better alternative would be to unleash the FTC, whose regulatory philosophy is the simple toleration if not encouragement of truthful information in marketing. The FTC could regulate tobacco marketing like it regulates marketing for automobiles, computers, and just about everything else. It would require a reasonable basis for health claims. The standard can be tough when the stakes are high; you do not want to claim your car can stop in 100 feet from 60 mph unless you have solid evidence. But if the FTC were free of an implicit obligation to enforce what public health gurus want (sometimes including FDA staff), we could see an extraordinarily fruitful unleashing of methods for safer tobacco use and a consequent decline in the lamentable toll of cigarette smoking.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Coming To A Town Near You, A Bulldoser To Shrink Your City
US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive
Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.
By Tom Leonard
The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.
Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.
The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.
Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.
Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.
Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.
In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.
"The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."
Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was "both a cultural and political taboo" about admitting decline in America.
"Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," she said.
Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000.
Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.
The exodus – particularly of young people – coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.
In the city centre, the once grand Durant Hotel – named after William Durant, GM's founder – is a symbol of the city's decline, said Mr Kildee. The large building has been empty since 1973, roughly when Flint's decline began.
Regarded as a model city in the motor industry's boom years, Flint may once again be emulated, though for very different reasons.
But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that "big is good" and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.
He said: "The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there's an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they're shrinking, they're failing."
But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.
If the city didn't downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, he added.
Flint's recovery efforts have been helped by a new state law passed a few years ago which allowed local governments to buy up empty properties very cheaply.
They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.
The local authority has restored the city's attractive but formerly deserted centre but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.
Mr Kildee estimated another 3,000 needed to be demolished, although the city boundaries will remain the same.
Already, some streets peter out into woods or meadows, no trace remaining of the homes that once stood there.
Choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious, he said.
The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.
"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution "defeatist" but he insisted it was "no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again".
Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.
By Tom Leonard
The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.
Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.
The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.
Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.
Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.
Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.
In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.
"The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."
Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was "both a cultural and political taboo" about admitting decline in America.
"Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," she said.
Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000.
Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.
The exodus – particularly of young people – coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.
In the city centre, the once grand Durant Hotel – named after William Durant, GM's founder – is a symbol of the city's decline, said Mr Kildee. The large building has been empty since 1973, roughly when Flint's decline began.
Regarded as a model city in the motor industry's boom years, Flint may once again be emulated, though for very different reasons.
But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that "big is good" and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.
He said: "The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there's an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they're shrinking, they're failing."
But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.
If the city didn't downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, he added.
Flint's recovery efforts have been helped by a new state law passed a few years ago which allowed local governments to buy up empty properties very cheaply.
They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.
The local authority has restored the city's attractive but formerly deserted centre but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.
Mr Kildee estimated another 3,000 needed to be demolished, although the city boundaries will remain the same.
Already, some streets peter out into woods or meadows, no trace remaining of the homes that once stood there.
Choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious, he said.
The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.
"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution "defeatist" but he insisted it was "no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again".
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