This is just too good.
Many of you know that in a few days the federal ban on conventional incandescent light bulbs will go into effect. And while House Republicans included a provision in a recent spending bill that will block funding for the ban's enforcement, it's said that it will have little effect; manufacturers have prepared for the new standards and will no doubt abide by the law. So does this mean we'll be forced to buy more expensive LED (light emitting diode) or CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs, the latter being those squiggly things said to be loaded with mercury? Not if we follow the lead of German businessman Siegfried Rotthaeuser.
After the European Union banned conventional incandescent bulbs, Rotthaeuser's entrepreneurial spirit was sparked. He started selling another product: heatballs.
What's a heatball? According to this Teutonic Knight of Freedom and Light, it is a "small heating device" that compensates for the loss of heat a home experiences when conventional light bulbs are swapped for more energy efficient ones.
At his English-version website, Rotthaeuser points out the convenience of his invention, writing, "A HEATBALL® is not a light bulb, but fits into the same socket!"
He then touts the new product as "The most original invention since the electric light bulb!" and explains, "Although a heatball is technically very similar to a light bulb, it is a heater rather than a source of light." Elaborating, he also states, "By using heatballs, the heating effort of a normal house is effectively assisted. A heatball is a source of heat. Or do you use your toaster as a desk lamp?"
A businessman with a conscience, however, Rotthaeuser also believes in truth in advertising. He thus is forthcoming about a certain unintended byproduct of his heating element, writing, "During its use as a heater, HEATBALLS have an unavoidable emission of light in the visible spectrum." Pity that. But if heatballs are anything at all like incandescent light bulbs, they should be very efficient little space heaters, indeed.
So maybe you believe that the ban on conventional incandescent bulbs is far afield from the government's rightful scope; perhaps you fret about how such a regulation is blatantly unconstitutional when instituted by the feds. If so, I can't help you. But if you have a tropical plant or pet hamster that needs a space heater - or if you simply want to save on oil or gas used for heating during the winter - buy some HEATBALLS®.
And, hey, something just occurred to me. With heatballs' unintended byproduct of light, you just might be able to forego buying those LED and CFL bulbs.
Contact Selwyn Duke
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/upset_about_big_brothers_ban_on_incandescent_bulbs_buy_a_heatball.html
PROMINENT DEM: DEMS NEED TO
'GET REAL' ON ENERGY
Thomas Lifson, November 30, 2011
Another defection from the gospel
of renewable energy, and it's a biggie: no less than the head of the Brookings
Institution's energy initiative. Brookings is the most prestigious of the
liberal think tanks in Washington, and carries considerable weight in elite
media and political circles. Charles K. Ebinger writes in the LA Times:
Let me say upfront that I have always been a Democrat. However, I also vote my conscience and have supported independent candidates. Today, energy policy is one area where I think my party is wrong. (snip)
Today's Democratic leadership has reached a nadir in rational energy policymaking. In the last several years, congressional party leaders have squandered opportunities for a nuclear waste management storage program and have shown opposition to shale gas production. This month, the party reached a new low: The Obama administration's delay of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, in spite of its promise of an additional 750,000 barrels of oil per day and the thousands of new jobs it would create, was an inexcusable political decision unbecoming of a pragmatic leader.
The former generation of Democratic legislators would have embraced the energy opportunities before the United States today. Whoever is president in 2013, it will be the first time in 40 years that the United States has a serious chance to transform its energy landscape. The previously accepted inexorable decline in U.S. oil and gas production is being reversed: New "tight oil" - resources trapped in low-porosity formations such as shale rock - could provide the country with several million barrels of oil per day in the coming decades, and the country's abundant and accessible shale gas reserves may leave us gas independent for up to a century. There also are still conventional reserves to be tapped, most notably in Alaska, where the Beaufort and Chukchi seas and the North Slope hold an abundance of hydrocarbon reserves.
The insanity of borrowing money from China to send money to OPEC nations to provide energy, while squandering untold billions on doomed "green" energy initiatives like windmills (which serve as blenders for migratory birds, though greenie groups avert their eyes from the carnage) is so self-evident that even a Democrat can see it. The prospect of high paying jobs in energy production, of even becoming an energy exporter, driving down world energy prices and thus weakening Iran and other Islamist states is simply too obvious.
Ebinger's op-ed can be best understood as a warning to Democrats elected officials to reverse course, or else suffer the consequences at the polls in 2012. The cascading scandals undermining the legitimacy of the warmist movement, the scandal of funneling taxpayer money to Solyndra and other doomed green schemes, and the rising energy bills troubling consumers as utilities hike electricity prices to pay for uneconomical "green" power sources they are required to purchase, all signal that the con game is coming to end.
Hat tip: Abby Schacter, New York Post.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/11/prominent_dem_dems_need_to_get_real_on_energy.html
FEDERAL FEVER
By Bruce Walker, August 31, 2011
If the body politic is
sick, blame federal fever, a delusional ailment causing swelling of the federal
element of the Republic. Most of the problems caused by politics and government
in America today are caused by the federalization of government power and by the
unnatural elevation of the judiciary over the elected branches of government.
This surely does not mean that lousy folks and dirty crooks cannot win state and
local elections and cannot create political machines. What it does mean,
however, is that Americans and their businesses can pull up and move to states
that are friendlier or more honest.
The vital importance of sovereign states is, perhaps, the salient feature of our Constitution. Each state has its own Bill of Rights, sometimes with more protection than in the federal Bill of Rights, but each state also retains the power to do things which would make modern Americans nervous. Homicide, for example, is defined by state law. Rape is too. Any state could pass a law which effectively decriminalized either crime, but although state criminal laws all vary in different ways, no state has ever come close to legalizing murder or rape.
By the same token, the issue of religion and government was left by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, completely up to state governments. The dismantling of state churches took place voluntarily in the decades following adoption of the Constitution and without any recourse to federal rights at all. This marketplace of states allows the people of each state to resolve thorny social issues. If in Vermont school prayer is viewed with horror while in Nebraska school prayer is considered critical to moral education, the values of both states' citizens, in a truly federal republic, get what they want. (That is also the quid pro quo of federalism: we accept the decisions of other states even when those seem wrong to us.)
State governments provide a marketplace for Americans. Although some parts of the nation have natural advantages, like San Francisco and Boston, these advantages tend to become less important over time or to be balanced by advantages in other regions. After air conditioning became standard, the oppressive heat of the Gulf region became less important than the very mild winters.
State governments are also much closer to the people. A state house member in North Dakota, for example, has fewer than 7,000 constituents which mean that there are about 2,000 homes in his district. In an election, a candidate can visit every single home in the district and voters can size him up personally. Shoe leather means as much as campaign money in this sort of race.
Perhaps just as important, local media can cover state issues and politicians. These local media are close, often very close, to the lives of ordinary people. Viewers and listeners have direct sources of information: gossip at work, talk at church, discussions at civic groups, and visiting with neighbors. Any local media that presented the news poorly, either by incompetence or ideology, finds its credibility eroding from the ground up.
The greatest problem our nation faces is the usurpation of state power by the federal government. Polls suggest that voters now get that truth. Pew Research has published in late August a poll which shows that 84% of Americans are either "frustrated" or "angry" with the federal government, which is the highest in the fifty-three years since Pew Research polled the issue, and only 11% of Americans are "content" with the federal government.
Gallup has an equally damning poll which shows that the federal government is dead last among twenty-five "institutions" with 64% of respondents having a "somewhat negative" or "very negative" view of the federal government, while only 17% of Americans have a "very positive" or "somewhat positive" view of the federal government. Gallup, which shows polling data over the last eight years, also reveals that this is a dramatic drop in support for the federal government.
Rasmussen asked a slightly different question. Which level of government respondents did a better job? Local government was the choice of 33% of respondents; state government was 23%; and the federal government was 15%, and 13% were not sure. When asked if the federal government had too much power over the states, 50% agreed, 11% thought the federal government needed more control; 26% thought the balance was about right; and 13% were not sure.
The Tenth Amendment is possibly poised for a revival in the Supreme Court jurisprudence. Liberal writer Jeffrey Toobin of the liberal New Yorker has written an important reconsideration of the work of Justice Clarence Thomas, making the case that he has been the intellectual mainspring for moving the Court in the direction of weighing the Tenth Amendment more heavily. Walter Russell Meade of the American Prospect lays out where this could take us
Washington and its denizens, those who profit off the hyper-concentration of power in this federal district far away from most Americans, are increasingly -- and quite correctly -- seen as the problem. Candidates who campaign on that theme will be in tune with the national mood and those who defend Washington and federal overlordship will find themselves alone except for the elites who love centralized power.
The real victory, though, will not be who wins the White House and who controls Congress, but who actually begins to reverse the steady, sickly accretion of federal power and to restore to sovereign states those rights which are crucial to a happy and healthy republic. "Washington Fever" has infected America, and unless we are cured, things will never get better.
Page reprinted with permission from the American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/08/federal_fever.html
GREAT MYTHS ABOUT THE GREAT
DEPRESSION STILL ABOUND
By Tom Gantert,| Aug. 19, 2011
Many
historians say president Franklin D. Roosevelt made the Great Depression worse.
“FDR fixed the economy with make-work jobs,” a recent Mlive.com headline stated.
Jennie Phipps, an Mlive.com contributor, wrote in her Aug. 15 story: “When I was growing up, my mother thought Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat at the right hand of God, mostly because he found a way out of the Great Depression by putting people to work through such government programs as the Civilian Conservation Corp. and the Works Projects Administration.” (Editor's Note: The actual names of the programs were the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration.)
But some economic historians believe Phipps has bought into one of the biggest myths of American politics – that FDR’s New Deal actually worked.
Franklin D. Roosevelt started his 12-year run as president in 1933, four years after the stock market crash of 1929. Historians agree the New Deal and the Second New Deal were a series of government-backed economic programs that were launched from 1933 through 1936.
From 1932 through 1939, the country’s unemployment rate ranged from 23.6 percent (1932) to 20.7 percent (mid-1939).
“The New Deal was a gigantic failure in revitalizing the U.S. economy,” said Burt Folsom, a professor of history at Hillsdale College and senior fellow in economic education with the Mackinac Center.
Lawrence Reed, president emeritus of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, chronicled the harmful impacts of FDR’s New Deal in “Great Myths of the Great Depression.”
The Great Depression was four consecutive downturns rolled into one, according to Reed, who says that the country had had several other depressions, but none lasted more than four years and most were over in two years.
“The calamity that began in 1929 lasted at least three times longer than any of the country’s previous depressions because the government compounded its initial errors with a series of additional and harmful interventions,” Reed wrote.
Reed examined the damage on the American economy via government policies by looking at the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, passed in June 1930 under the Herbert Hoover administration. The stock market dropped 20 points on the day Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley into law and continued dropping the next two years, Reed wrote.
“The most protectionist legislation in U.S. history, Smoot-Hawley virtually closed the borders to foreign goods and ignited a vicious international trade war,” Reed wrote.
There were 887 tariffs that were sharply increased and significantly raised the rates on agricultural products and other consumables. Officials in the administration and Congress thought raising trade barriers would make Americans buy more American products and help employ more people, Reed wrote.
But foreign governments soon put up their own trade barriers and pulled back on buying U.S. goods. American agriculture suffered as farm prices plummeted and tens of thousands of farmers went bankrupt, Reed wrote.
A bushel of wheat that sold for $1 in 1929 was selling for 30 cents just three years later.
Reed wrote that with the collapse of agriculture, rural banks closed. Some 9,000 banks closed between 1930 and 1933.
And Phipps appears to have forgotten about President Barack Obama’s attempt to create jobs through government money.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed into law in February 2009 when the nation’s unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. Over the next 29 months, the nation’s unemployment rate has ranged between 8.6 percent and 10.1 percent. In July of 2011, it was 9.1 percent.
Tad DeHaven, a federal budget analyst for the Cato Institute, said the Congressional Budget Office has the ARRA costing $821 billion.
“Spending accounts for about 65 percent and tax cuts 35 percent," DeHaven said. "Among the tax provisions of the bill were a $400 per person 'Making Work Pay' tax credit, a patch of the Alternative Minimum Tax, numerous temporary breaks for businesses, an expansion of several tax credits, and a number of provisions to reduce taxation on public bonds. These weren’t 'pro-growth' tax cuts that effect long-term decision making. These were short-term Keynesian styled tax cuts."
"As for make work programs, there’s no free lunch," DeHaven continued. "Every dollar the federal government spends paying somebody to do something is one less dollar for the private sector. The fundamental question therefore is: Which do we want allocating economic resources, politicians and bureaucrats or the marketplace? Those who would answer affirmative to the former ought to read up on the defunct Soviet Union.”
Permission to reprint this article in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited. http://www.mackinac.org
THE GOVERNMENT HAS RIGHTS?
Charlotte Cushman, August 20, 2011
On Friday, August 12, 2011
the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the individual mandate that
requires all Americans to buy health insurance under ObamaCare. What I found
interesting was this statement:
"The Justice Department countered that Congress had the power to require most people to buy health insurance or face tax penalties because Congress has the authority to regulate interstate business. It said the legislative branch was exercising its 'quintessential' rights when it adopted the new law."
Since when does the government have rights? A right is defined as "a moral
principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social
context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its
consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life." Ayn Rand
The government has one purpose and one purpose only and that is to protect our
rights, not to jam laws down our throats for the "common good." The only thing
that is good is what is good for the individual and what is good for the
individual is to protect his right to his life, his liberty and his pursuit of
his own happiness.
Charlotte Cushman is a Montessori educator at Minnesota Renaissance School,
Anoka, Minnesota. She has been involved in the study of Ayn Rand's philosophy
since 1970.
Page reprinted with permission from the American Thinker:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/the_government_has_rights.html
THE LIGHT BULB POLICE
Rick Moran , June 8, 2011
Are you stockpiling
incandescent light bulbs for the coming ban on January 1, 2012?
I am. You should. What the government is ordering you to buy - fluorescent light bulbs - contain hazardous materials that, if broken, threaten you and your family. Not only that, but the government ordered bulbs are less illuminating and give some people headaches - like my Zsu-Zsu who gets terrible migraines from fluorescents.
It's time to start pressuring Republicans to sign on to a bill that would stop this nanny state nonsense before it starts. The Wall Street Journal:
On January 1, 2012, seven months from this week, Washington will effectively ban the sale of conventional 100 watt incandescent light bulbs that Americans have used nearly since the days of Thomas Edison. Instead we will all be required to buy compact fluorescent lights, or CFLs. We'd like to believe that when the government decrees what kind of light bulbs you can screw into the lamp in your own bedroom, even liberals would be nervous about the nanny state.
Yet Republicans have so far shown little interest in voting on the "Bulb Act" cosponsored by Republicans Mike Enzi of Wyoming in the Senate and Joe Barton of Texas in the House. This would repeal the 2007 law, signed in one of his all-too typical late-term decisions by George W. Bush, that turns incandescent bulbs into contraband. The ban passed at the height of the global warming fad-scare when all proper thinkers were supposed to sacrifice to the anticarbon gods.
The greens and the Obama Administration assert that the new light bulbs are good for the lumpen bourgeoisie because they will cut electricity use and save the average household $50 a year. Mr. Obama's Energy Department told Congress recently that to repeal the ban would "detrimentally affect the nation's economy, energy security, and environmental imperatives." Yes, and cause the seas to rise to swamp Miami and New York too.
I'd like to see those studies that prove all of that bullcrap the Energy Department is throwing around. Congress should demand to see them too.
But that's only half the problem. The other half is disposing of these monstrosities. What happens if you drop one on the floor and break it?
Fluorescent lights also carry their own environmental risks because they contain small amounts of mercury and other toxic materials. The EPA website contains three pages of consumer directions about what to do if you break a CFL bulb in your home: "Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more. Shut off the central heating and air conditioning system. Carefully scoop up glass fragments and powder using stiff paper or cardboard and place them in a glass jar with a metal lid.''
Congressman Ted Poe of Texas has poked fun at these EPA guidelines by holding up a fluorescent bulb on the House floor asking: "If I dropped this, would we all have to evacuate the Capitol?" If fluorescent bulbs weren't all the rage among greens, the Consumer Product Safety Commission might ban them as a home health hazard. The question an (allegedly) free society should ask is if CFL bulbs are so clearly superior, why does the government have to force people to buy them?
And that, gentle reader, is the bottom line. Not only do whale oil lamps give off more light, but the hazard to your family that compels the EPA to give you three pages of instructions on how to get rid of the poisonous contents in these bulbs proves the government doesn't care about you or your family's well being.
I understand that most incandescent bulb assembly lines have already shut down. The time to act is now so we can retool and hire back those lost workers to start making a decent electric bulb again.
Page reprinted from with permission from the American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/06/the_light_bulb_police.html
CONFESSION OF THE OKLAHOMA
CITY BOMBER: JOHN DOE 2 EXISTS
By Jayna Davis, April 11, 2011
The conviction of American
terrorists, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, symbolizes the FBI's crown jewel
of criminal prosecutions. So why do questions linger? Does the official account
of what transpired on April 19, 1995 reveal all that certain federal
investigators know? In the wake of the 1995 bombing, national polls showed 80
percent of Americans believed additional conspirators evaded capture. Today, as
the 16th anniversary approaches, the prospect of shadowy terrorists walking free
still pervades the country's psyche. This time, however, the FBI itself is
fueling the flames of public distrust.
Last week the vault of top-secret bombing evidence cracked open. The Department of Justice, responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, released a declassified report detailing the May 26, 2005 interrogation of Terry Nichols. According to the record, Nichols broke his decade-long silence, acknowledging his hands-on role in constructing the massive truck bomb that demolished the Oklahoma City Murrah Building. While this revelation was all but academic, what Nichols said next threatens to rewrite history.
During the interview, the convicted bomber unleashed a startling admission: John Doe 2 exists. The FBI report states, "Nichols advised that John Doe 2's name had not been mentioned during the (FBI) investigation, and therefore, he feared for his life and his family's well-being should it become public."
One seemingly innocuous statement in this recently declassified FBI memo effectively shatters the government myth that two angry white males singlehandedly pulled off the crime of the 20th century. To begin, Nichols clearly implied that he knew the identity of John Doe 2 when asserting that his co-conspirator's name "had not been mentioned" during the prodigious FBI investigation. Keep in mind, the bomber had direct access to sealed court files and classified discovery materials that federal prosecutors were legally required to disclose to his defense lawyers during the state and federal trials. As a result, Nichols was informed about every suspect that surfaced on law enforcement's radar screen.
More significantly, Nichols expressed fear that John Doe 2 posed a grave threat to his family and him personally should the suspect's name be publicly disclosed. One can reasonably conclude that the Oklahoma City terrorist did not trust federal authorities would investigate or arrest John Doe 2 if he divulged his identity. And finally, the obvious bears repeating. The man who helped execute the deadliest attack on U.S. soil prior to 9-11 perceives the formidable John Doe 2 as omnipotent, with the ability to kill his family, and even him, in a maximum security lockup. Why?
And what did the FBI do in response to the Oklahoma City bomber's unnerving confession that John Doe 2 exists? Nothing.
A month after Nichols told the FBI that a third man participated in the bombing, he repeated this same daunting revelation to a U.S. congressman. An FBI agent was present during the June 2005 Colorado prison cell interview with California Representative Dana Rohrabacher, scribbling handwritten notes of what was discussed. But Bureau policy strictly forbids the recording of suspect interrogations; therefore, the most trustworthy account of Nichols' earthshaking testimony rests with the congressman.
Upon exiting the meeting, Rohrabacher phoned me and candidly recounted the details of Nichols' stunning disclosures. To insure accuracy, I taped the conversation. Rohrabacher described the prisoner as apprehensive and hesitant to name the infamous third terrorist, but he offered not-so-subtle hints of foreign complicity in a crime that the government has classified as domestically inspired. When Rohrabacher bluntly asked Nichols to assess the plausibility of the multiple eyewitness sightings placing Timothy McVeigh in the presence of Iraqi soldiers in Oklahoma City, Nichols shockingly conceded that the central theory presented in my 2004 book, The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing, "could be correct."
Dispelling the image of Timothy McVeigh as the bombing mastermind, Nichols resolutely confirmed that the decorated Gulf War veteran had numerous liaisons with men of Arab extraction, boldly proclaiming, "McVeigh talked about Middle Easterners on a number of occasions, and quite frequently," but Nichols claimed that he "could not remember the context of those discussions." Once again, Nichols refused to reveal the third terrorist, terrified of retribution.
This incriminating declaration from the country's most notorious mass murderer should have been the FBI's top investigative priority. After all, the implications were enormous. This was the first time the FBI learned directly from the Oklahoma City bomber that John Doe 2 exists. While Nichols declined to name the mystery accomplice, he dropped an unmistakable clue as to his identity when implying to the congressman that the premise of my book, The Third Terrorist, could be accurate.
Now, we connect the dots further. If McVeigh did, indeed, collaborate with Saddam Hussein's former soldiers, then John Doe 2 has escaped justice for slaughtering 171 innocent Americans. But, not surprisingly, the FBI's final summary of the prison interview, which was declassified and published last week, redacted Nichols' damning statements that McVeigh associated with Middle Easterners in the very city where the terrorist bombing took place.
For 16 years, the FBI has brazenly refused to speak to two dozen Oklahomans who encountered Timothy McVeigh colluding with Iraqi ex-enemy combatants in an act of terror that murdered more civilians within our borders than all the U.S. soldiers who perished on the sands of the Persian Gulf War. Now their sworn testimonies, identifying eight specific Middle Eastern collaborators, have been validated as "correct," ironically, through the unwitting confession of McVeigh's partner in crime, Terry Nichols.
Despite the Justice Department's herculean effort to airbrush John Doe 2 from the American landscape, history has appointed Dana Rohrabacher the star witness to Terry Nichols' affirmation that the third terrorist lives. It seems the government's monolithic wall of resistance has fractured, but the crushing injustice still stands. That is, until our elected officials exercise their constitutional authority to "correct" the historical record. The American people expect it. The truth demands it.
Jayna Davis is the author of The Third Terrorist: The Middle East connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Page Reprinted with permission from the American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/04/confession_of_the_oklahoma_cit.html
FOOD SAFETY BILL PASSES --
OR DOES IT
Liberty Matters, December 2, 2010
On Tuesday, November 30th, the Senate passed S 510 73-25 with the Tester-Hagan amendment.
However, it was discovered on Thursday that it contained taxing authority in Section 107, which is unconstitutional because all revenue-generating bills must originate in the House of Representatives not the Senate. It was determined to cost $1.4 billion to implement this bill.
Since the Senate has passed S 510 with this provision, the House can either send the bill back to the Senate to remove the provision or pass the companion bill, HR 2749. Either way, this opens the door for changes to be made to the bill and increases the chances that the bill dies. It all depends on the majority party and how they decide to handle this issue. Odds are, they will figure out a way to either combine the two and substitute HR 2749 with S 510, effectively claiming the revenue part of the bill came from the House and send it back to the Senate for an up or down vote or, they will find another devious way to pass their bill.
Makes you wonder why this wasn’t “discovered” before the Senate passed the bill. Maybe this is like the House where they have to pass the bill first to know what’s in it.
Regardless of the outcome of the bill, the Tester-Hagan amendment exempted producers grossing under $500,000 (adjusted for inflation) and selling more than half of their products directly to “qualified end users” from the HACCP-type requirements and the produce safety standards.
HACCP stands for Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Point and is a preventative approach used in the food industry to identify potential food safety hazards and reduce or eliminate the risks. “Qualified end users” means individual consumers (with no geographic limitation), or restaurants and retail food establishments that are either located in the same state or within 275 miles of the producer.
The Tester-Hagan amendment, although somewhat confusing, effectively carves out small-scale producers who are selling in-state or to local foodsheds from two of the most burdensome provisions of the bill. There is still concern about how the Food and Drug Administration will exercise its new powers granted in the bill. But, the amendment provides “critical protections for producers who sell at farmers’ markets, through CSAs, and at local co-ops and groceries,” according to Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance that fought for the Tester-Hagan Amendment and succeeded.
HR 2749, discussed above, passed the House last summer and procedure rules may now kill both of them. Prior to the “discovery,” the House leadership had agreed to vote on S 510 and pass it without any amendments and send it to the President for his signature. But, as they say in politics; “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.”
Reprinted by permission from American Stewards of Liberty, Copyright 2010 https://americanstewards.us/news-publications/archive/liberty-matters
THE FOOD SAFETY MODERNIZATION ACT
Liberty Matters, October 7, 2010
On
September 29, 2010, Senator Harry Reid attempted to end debate on
S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, by filing a Motion for Cloture
to circumvent Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) objections to the bill.
Filing cloture begins the process of moving the bill to the floor under restricted debate, removing the possibility of a filibuster and ending Coburn's objection to bringing the bill to the floor. The procedure requires 60 votes, which Reid claims he has nearly 90 to do.
S 510 provides for extreme enlargement of the regulatory authority of agencies regarding the safety of food products. Even though it’s early provisions exempt farms and ranches, close attention must be paid to this bill and others like it.
The Natural Solutions Foundation claimed a deal was struck to push this bill through during the September-December session on a “unanimous consent” agenda.
The vague language of the bill has caused many to object to S 510 fearing that increased power for the Food and Drug Administration and the Health and Human Services agencies will also mean increased costs, paperwork and strict regulations that could bring down the axe on the already dwindling numbers of small farms.
In a recent action alert, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) summarizes, “The new regulations could erect new barriers to these important markets for small and mid-scale farmers unable to bear the expense of compliance.”
The main concern with any such food safety legislation is whether or not it actually solves the real problems inherent within our food system. Many don’t believe that giving an already overloaded government agency the power to create and enforce new food regulations will make our industrial, centralized food production system safer or healthier.
Reid’s move assures the bill will be one of the first bills up for consideration in November when Congress reconvenes after the election, although it will compete with a variety of high profile issues, including a defense authorization bill and whether to extend the Bush tax cuts.
Reprinted by permission from American Stewards of Liberty, Copyright 2010 https://americanstewards.us/news-publications/archive/liberty-matters
PREPARE FOR THE MOST
DANGEROUS SESSION IN CONGRESS
Liberty Matters, Sept 1, 2010
The final weeks of the
2010 second session of the 111th Congress could be the most dangerous in our
history. In view of the current outlook for mid-term elections, this may be the
last chance Senator Reid has to push through Cap ‘n Trade, the Clean Water
Restoration Act, the Wildlife Corridors Act, the CLEAR Act, and Food Health
bills that will strangle the farming industry.
The Senate will reconvene September 13th and adjourn October 8th. They return after the election recess on November 15th and work until the week of Thanksgiving. Then work continues in December. While these bills can be brought up any time during the critical days ahead, our property rights and interests are most vulnerable during the sessions following election.
During that November-December session, many, if not all of the anti-private property bills may be bundled together much like the Omnibus Public Lands bill that was enacted in 2009. Such “bundling” is a Senator Harry Reid trademark. He combines bills that include legislation desired by enough Senators to secure the necessary votes for passage. It is a devious tactic, but one for which we must be prepared.
This issue of Liberty Matters has been prepared to give you a heads up on the key anti-private property bills we expect to come up for passage during the final quarter of this critical year.
The Clean Water Restoration Act (SB 787):
The most devastating
element of this bill is the way it amends the Pollution Control Act to expand
Corps of Engineers authority over all land that is “adjacent to, near, is
affected by, or affects” any body of water. In other words, every piece of land
in the United States would be put under Corps permit authority.
It would be the most inclusive, all encompassing land use control ever attempted by Congress. Under such authority, the Corps could require permits to mow residential lawns. Proponents of the bill say that such statements are ridiculous because the “agency would never attempt such local control.” We believe if a bureaucrat is allowed to do something by Congress, he will eventually or immediately carry this out.
This Act removes the “navigable” element currently required to establish a body of water as “waters of the United States.” The new definition would destroy the precedents set in the Cook County Solid Waste decision of the U. S. Supreme Court that set aside a Corps of Engineers regulation imposed on a non-interstate, non-navigable quarry in Cook County, Illinois because migrating birds landed in the quarry.
The definition of “waters” will include even “dry desert potholes” and any location that has water, or might have water even for a temporary period of time.
The bill is sponsored by Senator Feingold (WI). It passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee but, Senator Mike Crapo (ID) placed a hold on the bill keeping it from receiving a vote on the Senate floor earlier this year.
The Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act of 2010 (HR 5101):
The bill establishes a
“Corridor Information Program” to gather data as to wildlife migratory patterns
in order to establish and develop corridors. HR 5101 not so subtly implements a
concept first proposed by radical environmentalists over twenty years ago known
as the Wildlands Project that advocates minimum or no human activity within
these wildlife corridors.
The bill calls for federal and state governments to “avoid, minimize, and mitigate the impacts on fish and wildlife habitat and corridors in siting energy development, water, transmission, transportation and other land use projects,” to “assess the impacts of existing development on habitats and corridors” and to “develop management strategies to enhance the ability of native fish, wildlife, and plant species to migrate or respond to shifting habitats within existing habitats and corridors.”
The Bill specifically amends forest management acts, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and Transportation Acts.
It amends FLPMA by making the corridors “critical areas of environmental concern,” or ACE’s which are highly restrictive. This will undermine every grazing and recreational use of the corridors. In addition, it amends forest acts to make the corridors an integral part of every forest management plan to be preserved and protected in their “natural state.” The bill itself does not set forth its power; it simply amends existing law in such a way that the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management becomes the “hit men” to keep the wildlife corridors free of human use.
Also, by amending the Transportation funding acts, it makes the wildlife corridors an integral part of all funding for highway construction, so that animals can safely cross highways. Still, the real impact is the provision that highway designs have to provide for linkage and continuity of corridors themselves.
In plain words, the bill will endanger every farming, ranching, housing, water, and energy project, even those uses existing when the Bill is passed.
The CLEAR Act (HR 3534):
This Bill has already passed the House, been placed on general orders in the Senate and can be brought up and voted on at any time. The legislation appropriates $360 Billion dollars over 40 years without requiring any further annual appropriation. The money is set aside to buy private property and place this into government ownership. A call to action was issued and the bill summarized by American Stewards during the last days of the August session.
The House bill, as introduced, included provisions that would extend protection to species that are neither special, threatened nor endangered. During the final debate, this provision was removed from the House Bill, but this can be easily added back in by the Senate, to be finalized in Conference.
Lobbying watchdog organizations reported that 38 different organizations, from oil companies to conservation groups lobbied on this bill. The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, Trust for Public Land, Environment America, Southern Environmental Law Center, National Parks Conservation Association, and Open Space Institute all lobbied strongly for passage.
Clean Energy Technology Act (SB 3738):
Last session, Senator Reid announced that “cap ‘n trade is dead.” His statement followed the failure by Senators Kerry, Liebermann and Graham to put together a bill that could get the necessary 60 votes to end a filibuster. However, Senator Kerry’s new strategy is to take smaller bites at the apple making his new bill, the Clean Energy Technology Leadership Act of 2010, an ideal vehicle to slip back into legislation the “Cap ‘n Trade” concept that will tax carbon emissions.
The 73 page bill is represented to be simply a tax incentive for clean energy. However, Politico, a Capitol Hill political blog, reported on August 6, 2010 that:
“He [Senator Kerry] simply won’t quit: In the wake of his failed climate change push, John Kerry today drops a clean energy financing bill, which extends tax incentives for energy efficient buildings, natural gas vehicles and biodiesel, and provides an additional $3.5 billion for renewable energy bonds. His ‘Clean Energy Technology Act’ will likely be one in a long line of bills in the coming year from climate control advocates who recognize that the political landscape will make it impossible to move a comprehensive bill before 2012, and will in the meantime take smaller bites at the apple.”
Those “smaller bites” can be disastrous to ranchers, farmers and all landowners. The bill will have to be watched very carefully for amendments that add taxes on carbons that will devastate agricultural production.
Farm Bill Legislation:
The Environmental Defense
Fund has urged inclusion of financing for preserving wildlife corridors in
various pieces of farm legislation. They point with pride to the funding in last
session’s farm bill of activities that will put private land into government
ownership or control.
The Fund’s Report, “The Need for Greater Attention to Wildlife ‘Corridors’,” states that “the Western Governors’ Association, state and federal agencies, conservation groups, sportsmen and many others recognize the importance of these vital wildlife corridors and are taking action to protect them. The urgency of taking action on corridors is highlighted by the fact that climate is indeed warming and the creation of linkages between large blocks of habitat is among the most important adaptation strategies for wildlife.”
The Fund recommends support by conservation groups of government purchase or condemnation of private lands, the extension of conservation easements, financing of “stewardship practices” (as in habitat management plans) and retirement of agricultural uses through long-term contracts.
Every agricultural related bill must be reviewed carefully for amendments even in very technical language that can accommodate the attack on private ownership and control of land use.
The Food Safety Modernization Act (SB 510):
This 118 page bill provides for extreme enlargement of the regulatory authority of agencies regarding the safety of food products. Even though it’s early provisions exempt farms and ranches, close attention must be paid to this bill and others like it.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has issued an “Action Alert” based on a report they have that a deal has been struck to push this bill through during the September-December session on a “unanimous consent” agenda. We will be carefully reviewing and analyzing this bill and other “food safety” bills that are pending in various stages of the Congressional Process from which they could spring on to an agenda for passage.
Reprinted by permission from Liberty Matters e-News Service, published by American Stewards of Liberty. https://americanstewards.us
HARRY REID PULLS A FAST ONE TO SABOTAGE SHALE
GAS DEVELOPMENT
Ed Lasky, August 03, 2010
Shale Gas has the potential to bring manifold benefits to
Americans: cheap and plentiful, relatively green and clean burning, located in
vast swaths underneath our feet (and not offshore or in foreign lands filled
with people happy to take our money but who also hate us and who can who can
turn the spigot off at will).
All good reasons in Majority Leader Harry Reid's mind to sabotage our tapping of this vast reserve of energy:
The fight over the Senate offshore drilling "spill bill" shifted Wednesday from the Gulf of Mexico to the mountains of western Pennsylvania, as Republicans slammed the last-minute inclusion of language to regulate a controversial technique to extract onshore natural gas.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) added the language last night requiring natural gas drillers to disclose the chemicals they pump into the ground as part of the hydraulic fracturing, or hydro-fracking, process.
Republicans are wary of the addition, which comes on page 404 of the 409-page spill response bill Reid wants the Senate to take up before the recess. GOP objections to any portion of the larger bill could stall its progress, since it appears likely that Reid will not allow any amendments to be offered.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said the new requirements could effectively end onshore natural gas production. He noted that some states already have hydro-fracking safety and disclosure regulations, but that taking the requirements national would freeze the industry.
Why does Reid have to pull these un-democratic stunts? Because he can? Because powerful Democratic donors (including the Democratic party Sugar Daddy George Soros) wants to kill off carbon and spend tens of billions of dollars on green schemes that reward their "clean" energy ventures . These ventures only "work" (i.e., become profitable for their investors) when carbon energy becomes very expensive (hence cap and tax); or when billions in taxpayer dollar subsidies are funneled to them; or when government-ordered mandates require utilities, companies and consumers to buy "renewable" energy. And when powerful Democrats pull fast ones behind closed doors to sabotage the tapping of a treasure our nation has been blessed to have in abundance.
A primer on the benefits of shale gas appeared in the Washington Post ("Shale Gas: Hope for our energy future").
A quote from the column:
Until recently, scarce U.S. natural gas reserves suggested increasing dependence on expensive foreign supplies of liquefied natural gas. No more. Also, natural gas emits about 50 percent less carbon dioxide -- the major greenhouse gas -- than coal. Substituting gas for coal in electricity plants could temper emissions. Finally, shale gas in Europe and Asia has huge geopolitical implications. It could reduce dependence on Russian natural gas and frustrate any gas cartel mimicking OPEC.
How much shale gas exists is unknown, but estimates are huge. The Potential Gas Committee is a group of geologists who regularly estimate future U.S. gas supplies. In 2000, the group's estimate equaled about 54 years of present annual consumption; by 2008, it was almost 90 years. "This isn't the end," says Colorado School of Mines geologist John Curtis. Globally, one study estimated the recoverable supply at 16,200 trillion cubic feet, more than 150 times today's annual world gas use).
Page Reprinted from the American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/08/harry_reid_pulls_a_fast_one_to.html
DOE'S SEARCH AND SEIZURE
By Louis Case, April 12, 2010
The feds are coming to inspect your home if you want to sell it, according to
regulations buried in cap-and-trade legislation and standards decreed by the
Secretary of Energy. But there are numerous legal difficulties inherent in DOE
"inspections." Here are a few:
First, the regulations purportedly require homeowners to submit to a
warrantless search of their property. The result of this inspection ("looking
in") of their home would be to condemn real property (fixtures and things
attached to the land are real estate in many states) and/or personal property.
There has been a controversy about whether so-called regulatory searches
require a warrant. But whatever the state of the law is now, one should consider
the truth of the words of the Supreme Court in Camara v. Municipal Court, a case
about a warrantless regulatory search:
We may agree that a routine inspection of the physical condition of private property is a less hostile intrusion than the typical policeman's search for the fruits and instrumentalities of crime. ... But we cannot agree that the Fourth Amendment interests at stake in these inspection cases are merely "peripheral." It is surely anomalous to say that the individual and his private property are fully protected by the Fourth Amendment only when the individual is suspected of criminal behavior.
The Supreme Court goes on to suggest that there are indeed criminal
consequences in many cases involving regulatory searches. But consider the
logical consequences of such an argument. If a warrantless regulatory search
results in eventual criminal prosecution, then it is prohibited. If that were
true, then it would mean that warrantless searches not resulting in dire
consequences are permissible. Following such logic, the government's ability to
make warrantless searches is commensurate with the unserious consequences
resulting from the warrantless search. Thus, the most law-abiding citizens would
have the least protection from warrantless searches.
The second legally problematic issue of these regulations involves their
attempt to alter property law. There is no federal property law, and there has
never been any federal property law. Real and personal property law is
exclusively state law. This fact is confirmed daily in federal civil
(bankruptcy) and criminal (theft, robbery) courts across the land.
Practically, there can never be any federal property law. Creating and
imposing federal property law would mean that existing property rights would
have to be altered. If the federal government federalizes property law, then it
would necessarily have to take existing property. If it takes existing property,
the Fifth Amendment requires payment of just compensation. In our march to true
communism, it seems theoretically possible for the federal government to
nationalize all property if it could borrow enough money to pay for it. But if
the government paid all the current property owners for the property taken,
those owners would have the money but no property to buy, since all property
would be owned by the state and the state would not have to sell the property to
private citizens.
By ordering the replacement of existing and working personal and real
property (like electrical appliances and light bulbs), the DOE is condemning the
owner's property. When the government condemns property, the Fifth Amendment
requires just compensation. This fact has been recognized in years of precedent
in non-conforming uses.
Suppose a community with no zoning laws finally adopts one requiring a
twenty-foot setback line for structures; that is, buildings must be at least
twenty feet back from the street. What about a building constructed ten feet
back before the zoning code was adopted? That landowner built the structure
relying on the law at that time, which had no such restrictions. The
municipality can surely force the landowner to move the building, but the
municipality will have to pay because it is taking the landowner's property --
the right to have the property ten feet from the street.
If regulations like the DOE's are enforced and upheld, there appears to be no
limit to the federal government's authority to terminate or alter one's property
rights. Furthermore, the ability to alter one's property rights then derives
from the seller of the product in question. Suppose GM builds a car that is
safer than last year's model. Why could the Department of Transportation not
require the property (car) owner to retrofit last year's model, or prohibit its
sale completely? You can bet that General Electric (and other manufacturers)
will start building appliances with planned energy obsolescence.
These are just a few of the legal challenges to the DOE's regulations. Nevertheless, the DOE rules might be implemented, and here's how: In most communities, the local realtor and bar associations get together to draft a form for real estate sales. It is simply a fact that neither the realtors nor the lawyers get paid unless there is a closing, and they do not want any hassles to delay those closings. So what they might do is put a paragraph in the sales agreement in which both parties agree to let federal DOE agents perform a warrantless search and agree that the appliances will conform to the federal regulations or be replaced. Let buyers (and sellers) of property beware -- and be prepared.
Reprinted from the American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/does_search_and_seizure.html
IS THE HOLDER DOJ IMPLODING
Clarice Feldman, December 08, 2009
The
Washington Times suggests in an editorial that the fallout from the Department's
refusal to proceed with the New Black Panther party's criminal prosecution for
voter intimidation is causing an implosion in the Holder Department of Justice.
DOJ has already lost three top officials ; Gregory Craig, Cassandra Butts,
and now David Ogden:
[T]he Justice Department has, for now, ordered two key career attorneys not to comply with a subpoena about the case issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission, by law, has explicit power to issue subpoenas, and the law mandates that "all federal agencies shall cooperate fully with the commission." The Justice Department, however, is citing internal regulations stemming from a 1951 case to support its order to ignore the subpoena.
One of the attorneys, J. Christian Adams, has been advised by his personal attorney, former South Carolina Secretary of State Jim Miles, that failure to comply with the subpoena could put him at risk of prosecution. "I can't imagine," Mr. Miles told The Washington Times, "that a statute that gives rise to the power of a subpoena would be subjugated to some internal procedural personnel rule being promulgated by DoJ." In short, the department is stiffing the commission and unfairly putting its own employee in a legal bind.
Second, that same day, the two Republican House members with top-ranking jurisdiction over the Justice Department, Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia and Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, issued a joint statement calling Justice Department delays "a cover-up," and "a pretense to ignore inquiries from Congress and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights." At a hearing on Thursday, Mr. Smith said that "continued silence by the Justice Department is an implied admission of guilt that the case was dropped for purely political reasons."
Third, at the same hearing, Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, accused Justice Department Civil Rights Division chief Thomas Perez of not being "truthful" while under oath, to such an extent that "there are people who have gone to jail" for such a level of purported "dishonest[y]."
I believe that normally, government agency subpoena enforcement is handled by the Department of Justice. Who will be selected to enforce these subpoenas against the Department itself?
Page Reprinted by permission from the American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/is_the_holder_doj_imploding.html
THE
WHIFF OF FASCISM BECOMES A STENCH
Clarice Feldman, October 27, 2009
Herb Denenberg, once Pennsylvania's Commissioner of Insurance and a Professor at the Wharton School, describes in The Bulletin, how the whiff of fascism in this Administration is turning into the stench of fascism. He starts with a reminder of the many ways Obama has acted to stifle opposition views and manipulate public opinion and concludes:
I've emphasized one aspect of fascism -- its objective of the forcible suppression of opposition. But it also qualifies under the other elements, including the suppression of private enterprise and putting it under centralized government control. That is one hallmark of the Obama Administration, it expands government, contracts the private sector and places new and unprecedented power in the hands of a centralized, expanding government bureaucracy.
This government expansion also is a restriction of our freedom because as the government gets bigger, the individual citizen gets smaller. Consider some of the belief systems of his Czars. Ron Bloom, the manufacturing czar thinks the "free market is nonsense."
He also agrees with Chinese tyrant Mao Tse Tung that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Anita Dunn, a communications director, also a big fan of Mao, expresses those views even when speaking to young students. And there is Mark Lloyd, Chief Diversity Officer at the FCC, who views tyrant Hugo Chavez in Venezuela as his model. The White House is brimming with socialists, communists, radicals and hate-America types. The only ideology not found there is one that respects American values and believes in American exceptionalism.
hat tip:Lucianne.com
Page Reprinted by permission from The American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/the_whiff_of_fascism_becomes_a.html
ZOGBY POLL OF MEXICANS
RAISES CONCERNS OVER MEXICAN IMMIGRATION
David Paulin, October 15, 2009
Why
do many Mexican immigrants -- legal and illegal -- have trouble assimilating
into American culture? Most of the 10 to 12 million Hispanics estimated to be
here illegally are from Mexico. How would granting them amnesty affect future
illegal immigration -- especially from Mexico?
Recently, polling firm Zogby International surveyed more than 1,000 Mexican adults across Mexico. The idea was to get the opinions of the average man and woman on the street - all to better understand America's immigration debate from a Mexican point of view, according to the Center for Immigration Studies of Washington, D.C. The conservative think tank is now reporting the results of the Zogby poll.
According to CIS, the survey was the first of its kind to get the opinions of Mexicans, including those entertaining the possibility of immigrating to America illegally.
Many Americans may find the views that Mexicans have on immigration and America unsettling -- and even disturbing.
Critics of an amnesty for illegal immigrants contend it would only encourage more illegal immigration. Well, surprise, surprise: That's just what the average Mexican on the street thinks, too.
According to CIS: "A clear majority of people in Mexico, 56 percent, thought giving legal status to illegal immigrants in the United States would make it more likely that people they know would go to the United States illegally."
In addition, the think tank stated that: "Of Mexicans with a member of their immediate household in the United States, 65 percent said a legalization program would make people they know more likely to go to America illegally."
And that raises another question: Just how many more Mexicans would like to immigrate to America? According to CIS: "Interest in going to the United States remains strong even in the current recession, with 36 percent of Mexicans (39 million people) saying they would move to the United States if they could. At present, 12 to 13 million Mexico-born people live in the United States."
Most Americans would be shocked by how the majority of Mexicans felt about America. According to CIS:
* "An overwhelming majority (69 percent) of people in Mexico thought that the primary loyalty of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) should be to Mexico. Just 20 percent said it should be to the United States. The rest were unsure."
* "Also, 69 percent of people in Mexico felt that the Mexican government should represent the interests of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) in the United States."
CIS noted that "the perspective of people in Mexico is important because Mexico is the top sending country for both legal and illegal immigrants.
"In 2008, one of six new legal immigrants was from Mexico and, according to the Department of Homeland Security, six out of 10 illegal immigrants come from that country."
CIS noted there are now "10 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, seven million of whom are estimated to have come from Mexico. But this poll suggests that many people who might like to come have not done so. This could be seen as an indication that enforcement efforts are effective."
The results of the survey are sure to add to concerns raised by Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in his 2005 book "Who are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity."
He wrote: "The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves-from Los Angeles to Miami-and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril."
He also published a related essay, "The Hispanic Challenge," in Foreign Policy magazine. It promoted liberals to all but accuse him of being a racist and xenophobe.
The Zogby survey had a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent, "for a 95 percent confidence level," CIS noted.
Page Reprinted by permission from The American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/10/zogby_poll_of_mexicans_raises.html
DID THE CIA 'COOK THE BOOKS'
ON IRAN?
By Herbert E. Meyer, July 28, 2009
Do you remember that 2007 U.S.
National Intelligence Estimate which concluded -- to virtually everyone's
astonishment -- that four years earlier Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons
program?
Publication of that NIE cut the ground out from under the Bush administration's efforts to prevent Iran from getting its hands on a nuclear bomb. After all, why pressure the mullahs in Teheran to stop a program they'd already abandoned? And, of course, the NIE's conclusion was cited by President Bush's political enemies as (further) evidence that the President and his team were so driven by their hard-line ideology that they (as usual) ignored the evidence provided by our country's senior intelligence analysts.
Now, thanks to a brilliant piece of journalism by German investigative reporter Bruno Schirra published in the July 20 edition of The Wall Street Journal Europe, we have evidence to suggest that the 2007 NIE's conclusion about Iran's nuclear bomb program wasn't merely wrong, but corrupt.
Here's a summary of Schirra's explosive article:
Over in Germany the Federal Prosecutor had charged a German-Iranian businessman with brokering supplies for Iran's nuclear bomb program, thus violating the country's War Weapons Control Law and its Foreign Trade Act. But a lower court in Frankfurt refused to try the case on grounds that at the time of the businessman's alleged activities, Iran didn't have a nuclear weapons program. According to Shirra, the court actually cited the 2007 U.S. NIE as evidence of its conclusion.
But the Federal Prosecutor appealed the lower court's decision to Germany's Federal Supreme Court -- and that's when Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) stepped in by submitting what's called an "office testimony," which Schirra defines as "factual statements about the Iranian program that can be proved in a court of law."
According to Schirra:
The BND...has amassed evidence of a sophisticated Iranian nuclear weapons program that continued after 2003....In a 30-page legal opinion on March 26 and a May 27 press release in a case about possible illegal trading with Iran, a special national security panel of the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe cites from a May 2008 BND report, saying the agency "showed comprehensively" that "development work on nuclear weapons can be observed in Iran even after 2003.
According to the judges, the BND supplemented its findings on August 28, 2008, showing "the development of a new missile launcher and the similarities between Iran's acquisition efforts and those of countries with already known nuclear weapons programs, such as Pakistan and North Korea".....In their May press release, the judges come out even more clear [sic], stating unequivocally that "Iran in 2007 worked on the development of nuclear weapons."
Simply put, while our country's intelligence service believed that Iran had
abandoned its nuclear bomb program in 2003, Germany's intelligence service was
amassing evidence that the Iranian bomb program was ongoing.
This raises three obvious and crucially important questions:
Was our country's intelligence service aware of the BND's evidence and conclusions when its analysts wrote that 2007 NIE about Iran?
If not, why not?
If our intelligence service was aware of the BND's evidence and conclusions, then how and why did the authors of that 2007 NIE reach the opposite conclusion about Iran's nuclear bomb program?
To answer these questions, you need a bit of background about how National
Intelligence Estimates are produced, and of how our country's intelligence
service works with our allies' intelligence services. What follows is based on
my own experience during the Reagan Administration, as Special Assistant to the
Director of Central Intelligence and then as Vice Chairman of the National
Intelligence Council.
Our country's intelligence service is actually a collection of more than a
dozen agencies including the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, the intelligence services of each military service, the
Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and a few others we won't talk about.
Even after all the reorganizations of the last few years -- it's now so screwed
up that if my life depended on it I couldn't draw an accurate chart -- there's a
unit that sits in the office of the Director of National Intelligence called the
National Intelligence Council. The NIC is comprised of the intelligence
community's most senior analysts, and it's the NIC that produces the National
Intelligence Estimates.
These NIEs reflect the overall, coordinated judgments and conclusions of all
the various agencies and components of our country's intelligence service. They
include the evidence on which these key judgments are based, and when properly
done they even include dissents by one or another agency, for instance if
there's a disagreement about the evidence itself or about the meaning of the
evidence. All this explains why NIEs are so highly classified, and why they
carry so much weight. And it explains why the release of an NIE's key judgments
-- such as those of that 2007 Iran NIE -- is such a big deal.
In times of national emergency, the President can ask for a special NIE to be
produced within days, or even overnight. But as a general rule, it takes weeks
or even months to produce an NIE -- to amass the evidence, sift through it, and
to coordinate both the evidence and its implications with senior members of all
the agencies and entities that comprise our country's intelligence service. And
the individuals who actually produce the NIEs -- the members and leaders of the
National Intelligence Council -- can get their hands on anything our
intelligence service knows.
Of course, we aren't the only country with an intelligence service. Our
allies also have services of their own, and some of them are very, very good.
That's why senior officials of our country's intelligence service stay in close
touch with their counterparts in, say, London, Paris - and Berlin.
It is inconceivable to me that senior officials of our intelligence service
were unaware of the BND's evidence and conclusions about Iran's nuclear bomb
program. Indeed, if the BND's officials withheld what they knew from our
officials that constitutes an act of allied betrayal whose implications for
US-German relations are, well, staggering.
On the other hand, if our intelligence officials were aware of the BND's
evidence and conclusions, why did we reach the opposite conclusion? Did our
analysts judge the BND's evidence to be invalid? Or did they just ignore the
BND's evidence because they didn't like it and because our intelligence
officials wanted to throw a banana peel under President Bush's feet?
I don't know the answers to these questions. What I do know is that a
nuclear-armed Iran threatens our national survival, and that to meet this threat
President Obama and his advisers need the best possible intelligence. Only the
House and Senate intelligence oversight committees can get to the bottom of all
this. But right now leading members of these committees, and the Speaker of the
House, are blathering on -- and on -- about the phony issue of whether former
Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to not testify about some program to
wipe out the leaders of al Qaeda that never actually got off the ground.
This isn't politics; this is suicide. God help us if our enemies conclude
that the United States is no longer capable of being serious about intelligence.
Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council. He is widely credited with being the first senior U.S. intelligence official to forecast the Soviet Union's collapse, for which he later was awarded the U.S. National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. He is author of How to Analyze Information and The Cure for Poverty.
Page Reprinted by permission from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/did_the_cia_cook_the_books_on.html at July 28, 2009
WHAT
THE GOVERNMENT WORKER UNIONS KNOW
By Greg Richards, March 10, 2009
The government wants to
take over the provision of more and more services. Those who know the government
best have a warning for the rest of us.
The budgets submitted so far by the new Administration show that the central theme of Obamanomics is the expansion of government. Indeed, if the 27% share of GDP projected by the 2010 budget actually materializes, this will break all previous constraints on government spending absent world war.
There is a theory behind this spending that liberals consider so self-evident that they feel they don't have to articulate it. This is that government is (a) benevolent, meaning it has everybody's best interests at heart and can act in accord with those sentiments; and (b) that it is omniscient, or, if that is too argumentative, that it is at least knowledgeable about the activities it undertakes.
There is a whole school of economics called "Public Choice" devoted to debunking the first point. Public Choice economics demonstrates that government is populated by self-interested utility maximizers just as are other sectors of the economy, and, as Thomas Sowell has observed, the primary self-interest of politicians is to get reelected. That is Job One.
We have another channel of insight into the competence and benevolence of government through the existence of public sector unions, the fastest-growing part of the union movement.
What does the demand for public sector unions tell us?
The purpose of a union is to interpose itself between the employer and the employee to the benefit of the employee. The existence of public sector unions tells us that the people most intimately familiar with government, those who experience it every moment of every work day, don't trust it!
And yet the basis of liberalism in general and Obamanomics in particular is that we should turn over to government some of our most important, intimate and consequential activities, such as retirement, education and health care.
But the significance of public sector unions is that the people who know government best and deal with it most often don't trust it to be either benevolent or knowledgeable in dealing with their interests.
The prescription of Obamanomics is that we, the public, should do what government employees refuse to do! Turn over our destinies to the government! As the Romans would say, note bene (pronounced know-tay bay-nay) -- note well -- this discrepancy. It can save us from the grief of lying for hours or days in our own excrement waiting for medical attention, or having our children indoctrinated with the latest Leftist (anti-American) fad in our schools, or....well, you fill in the blank.
Maybe the public should form a union. Oops. We already have one. Obamanomics is trying to bust our union.
Page Reprinted by permission from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/what_the_government_worker_uni.html
THE FINAL CHAPTER
The story of John Rapanos’ fight against the federal government
has come to a close. After 14 years of court battles and hundreds of thousands
of dollars spent defending himself from the federal government, Mr. Rapanos
agreed to end the persecution by paying the government nearly $1 million in
fines and mitigation fees.
The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency accused Rapanos of polluting “waters of the U.S.” by spreading sand on his property twenty miles from the nearest navigable waterway. When Rapanos told them to “take a hike” they retaliated at his lack of respect for their omnipotence and sued him, criminally and civilly. One judge remarked during one of the many trials that his “crime” appeared to be “moving sand from one end of his property to another.”
Federal regulators have never used consistent standards when bringing complaints under the Clean Water Act and have been scolded for their inconsistencies by the U.S. Supreme Court. One judge commented that bizarre federal wetlands regulations were akin to the upside down logic of “Alice in Wonderland.” The feds argued the government had jurisdiction over Rapanos’ land because the Clean Water Act extended its authority to all waters that could be used by migratory birds. The U.S. Supreme Court shot down that argument in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Army Corps of Engineers decision in 2001. The government then claimed the Clean Water Act covered all waters, no matter how remote or insignificant.
The Supreme Court finally agreed to hear the Rapanos civil case and in the 2006 decision, Rapanos v United States ruled in his favor, sort of, but left the door open for further lawsuits. Rapanos finally had enough and agreed to settle. Reed Hopper, with the Pacific Legal Foundation, who represented Rapanos through his struggles, wrote regarding the outcome; “…it is an alarming demonstration of the erosive effect of heavy-handed government. When ordinary citizens can be beaten down so their only viable choice is to minimize their losses by the very process designed to protect their rights, everyone loses.”
Reprinted by permission from the Feb. 3, 2009 edition of Liberty Matters News Service. www.libertymatters.org
GLOBAL POVERTY ACT HEADED TO SENATE FLOOR
A bipartisan bill, the
Global Poverty Act is headed for a full Senate vote. The bill is sponsored by
Republicans Richard Lugar, and Chuck Hagel and Democrats Barack Obama, Joseph
Biden, Maria Cantwell, Chris Dodd, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Dianne
Feinstein, and Robert Mendez.
The bill compels every American to sacrifice their security in a futile attempt to eradicate world poverty. The House version, H.R. 1302, passed last September by voice vote. The Senate version, S 2433, passed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also by voice vote.
The bill would require the president “to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to develop programs to spend more tax dollars on foreign assistance. It would require the U.S. to implement the U.N. Millennium Development Goal that calls for ‘the eradication of poverty’ by ‘redistribution of wealth and land.’”
Jeffery Sachs, a Columbia University economist, in 2005, presented then- Secretary General, Kofi Annan with a 3,000 page document detailing what must be done to cure the world poverty problem. The United States, currently forking over $16.5 billion on world poverty programs, he declared, must increase poverty spending to at least $30 billion a year. Adoption of S 2433 could “result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States,” says Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media. The measure would dedicate “0.7 percent of the U.S. gross national product to foreign aid, which over 13 years would amount to $845 billion ‘over and above what the U.S. already spends.’”
The bill would force the U.S. to accept a multitude of U.N. treaties and protocols, including the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming), the Convention on Biological Diversity (Wildlands) and on and on. It would allow the U.N. to charge license fees to use air, water and natural resources and it would regulate all corporate environmental issues as provided in the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). It would ban “small arms and light weapons,” a long-time dream of liberals. It would authorize a standing U.N. army and require registration of all arms, if there remained any, of course. It is not clear when this bill could face a vote.
Reprinted by permission from the August 6, 2008 edition of Liberty Matters News Service. www.libertymatters.org
If this is not enough impetus to vote for Jack Hoogendyk and McCain/Palin, I don't know what is.
CLEAN WATER "RESTORATION ACT"
The House Transportation
and Infrastructure Committee held a hearing Wednesday, April 16, on HR 2421, the
Clean Water Restoration Act, (CWRA) and the opposition was wide and deep. Rep.
John L. Mica (R-FL), Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Republican
Leader, issued a statement following the hearing. “There is significant
nationwide opposition to this unprecedented and historic federal jurisdiction
grab… Multiple witnesses testified to the confusion, costs, delays, and endless
litigation that will result should this overreaching bill become law…HR 2421 and
its companion bill in the Senate could lead to the regulation of virtually every
wet area in the country…”
Senator James Inhofe, (R-OK), Ranking member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, also had harsh criticism of the bills. “Both Committees heard repeatedly in testimony that clean water is critical for our well being; however,” said Inhofe, “this bill does not lead to cleaner water and is nothing more than a federal land grab attempt. We should not propose, let alone pass legislative language that increases uncertainly, burdens local government, and challenges the sanctity of private property rights.” Sen. Inhofe continued, “If Congress is to amend the Clean Water Act, any changes must provide clarity and reduce lawsuits.