Credit Crisis For Dummies

Disarmament In America's Energy Security Battles

Development of abundant power and fuel sources

is being restrained by regulatory headlocks

in favor of much higher-cost green alternatives

with relatively scant capacity prospects.

by Larry Bell

Current Obama administration battle strategies directed toward futile wars to control climate change and free America from fossil dependence are hindering, not advancing, progress toward lasting energy security. Development of abundant power and fuel sources--which we will continue to rely on--is being restrained by regulatory headlocks in favor of much higher-cost "renewable" and "green" alternatives with relatively scant capacity prospects.

Proponents of such policies would have us imagine an autonomous nation powered and fueled by limitless sunbeams, friendly breezes and amber waves of grain-producing-alcohol that sever reliance upon dirty coal mines, oil rigs and smokestacks (those ugly industries that presently heat our homes, fuel our cars and power our computers). How can we possibly resist such a vision? Well maybe it's a bit easier to do so after we observe European experiences.

The E.U., which like the U.S. relies heavily upon coal and oil, has found little salvation through enormous investments in renewable alternatives. This realization is now causing large measures of buyer's remorse and pain. Members are witnessing their already shaky economies further destabilized by rampant fuel hikes, menacing power shortages and costly, yet unsuccessful, CO2 emission reduction efforts.

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Black Friday, the Federal Reserve, & the Global House of Cards

Higher Taxes Won't Reduce the Deficit

by Stephen Moore
and Richard Vedder

The draft recommendations of the president's commission on deficit reduction call for closing popular tax deductions, higher gas taxes and other revenue raisers to drive tax collections up to 21% of GDP from the historical norm of about 18.5%. Another plan, proposed last week by commission member and former Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin, would impose a 6.5% national sales tax on consumers.

The claim here, echoed by endless purveyors of conventional wisdom in Washington, is that these added revenues—potentially a half-trillion dollars a year—will be used to reduce the $8 trillion to $10 trillion deficits in the coming decade. If history is any guide, however, that won't happen. Instead, Congress will simply spend the money.

In the late 1980s, one of us, Richard Vedder, and Lowell Gallaway of Ohio University co-authored a often-cited research paper for the congressional Joint Economic Committee (known as the $1.58 study) that found that every new dollar of new taxes led to more than one dollar of new spending by Congress. Subsequent revisions of the study over the next decade found similar results.

We've updated the research. Using standard statistical analyses that introduce variables to control for business-cycle fluctuations, wars and inflation, we found that over the entire post World War II era through 2009 each dollar of new tax revenue was associated with $1.17 of new spending. Politicians spend the money as fast as it comes in—and a little bit more.

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Value Added Tax (VAT) - Unfair and Insane

by Herman Cain

There’s one message from the 2010 elections that many so-called policy makers, political elites and analysts did not hear. Namely, the American people are not as uninformed and stupid as they think we are.

President Obama’s Debt Commission and the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force have both floated their ideas for reducing our nation’s runaway national debt. As CNNMoney.com reports, both sets of ideas echo each other in broad strokes. And both sets of ideas could confuse and confound the leaves off a tree.

These ideas are a long way from becoming law, but they are generating, as intended, much discussion about the merits of each idea.

The worst idea is a proposed national sales tax, which is a disguised VAT (value added tax) on top of everything we already pay in federal taxes.

A national retail sales tax on top of all the confusing and unfair taxes we have today is insane! It gives the out-of-control bureaucrats and politicians in denial one more tool to lie, deceive, manipulate and destroy this country.

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Ground Zero Mosque Applies for $5 Million Federal Grant

by John Hayward

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation was created by Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki in the aftermath of 9/11, to “ensure Lower Manhattan recovers from the attacks and emerges even better than it was before,” as their mission statement has it.

Guess who applied for a $5 million grant under the LMDC Community and Cultural Enhancement Program? That’s right: Park51, the group that wants to build its Cordoba House mosque and cultural center near Ground Zero. If the grant request is honored, Americans in all fifty states will get to become investors in Cordoba House, right alongside people who donate money to Hamas “charities.”

This move has sparked considerable outrage from opponents of the mosque. Fox News quotes Representative Peter King (R-NY) as saying, “It is entirely wrong for any taxpayer money to be used to fund the Ground Zero mosque. This is particularly true when it is being done in such a secretive way. This just further offends the memory of all those who were murdered on September 11th.”

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Click here for your free copy of Sharia Law For The Non Muslim...

'The Euro Game Is Up! Who the hell do you think you are?'

President feels your pain over TSA feeling your crotch

Unfortunately, he isn’t prepared to do anything about it.

by The Associated Press

President Barack Obama has asked security officials whether there's a less intrusive way to screen U.S. airline passengers than the pat-downs and body scans causing a holiday-season uproar.

For now, they've told him there isn't one, the president said Saturday in response to a question at the NATO summit in Lisbon.

"I understand people's frustrations," Obama said, while acknowledging that he's never had to undergo the stepped-up screening methods.

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Gov Jindal: ‘Make Congressmen Part-time’

Where are those 50 million environmental refugees?

50 million refugees fleeing impact of global warming.

What’s that? They’re not? Then just forget the UN said it.

by Andrew Bolt
The United Nations University’s warning in 2005:

Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of ‘refugee’.

Anyone seen those 50 million environmental refugees? Or was this just one more outrageous scare by alarmists who should be held to account?

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Upcoming NFL star, Glen Coffee, left football for Jesus

The Good Life is Found Only in Jesus Christ

by Ken Connor

"...I have learned to be content, whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:11-13)

Americans spend a lot of time and energy pursuing "the good life," and thanks to the "Mad Men" of the advertising world, we have a pretty good idea of what the good life looks like: A state-of-the-art home with all the amenities, a garage full of luxury automobiles, a closet full of designer clothes, all the latest technological gadgets, a well-diversified investment portfolio, an upwardly mobile career with cushy benefits... the list goes on and on. In a nutshell, we are told that the good life consists of feeling good, looking good, and having lots of stuff.

There's only one problem with this portrayal of the good life: It's not enough. It's never enough. It's like drinking salt water – the more you drink, the thirstier you get. And let's get real: the very purpose of advertising is to foster perpetual discontentment with the status quo. Remember that shiny new iPhone you waited hours in line for last year? It's now obsolete. Still in love with your LCD flat screen TV, or are you feeling behind the curve because you haven't joined the 3D technology bandwagon? Is the trusty family minivan a beloved symbol of family togetherness, or an embarrassing reminder that you haven't yet upgraded to an SUV replete with all the trimmings?

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Four year old met his mother’s miscarried child in Heaven

Stimulus: Still Not Working!

Unbelievably, the administration and its allies

keep insisting that a failed policy was a success.

by Veronique de Rugy

Imagine that I break my arm, but instead of getting a cast I take a big shot of morphine. The drug will make me feel better, but it won’t fix my arm. When the effect wears off, the pain will come back. And instead of being restored to their proper position, my bones will remain out of place, perhaps solidifying there, which will surely mean chronic pain in the long run.

Stimulus spending is like morphine. It might feel good in the short term for the beneficiaries of the money, but it doesn’t help repair the economy. And it causes more damage if it gets in the way of a proper recovery.

The stimulus isn’t working because it is based on faulty economics. Using historical spending data, the Harvard economist Robert Barro and recent Harvard graduate Charles Redlick have shown that in the best case scenario, a dollar of government spending produces much less than a dollar in economic growth—between 40 and 70 cents. They also found that if the government spends $1 and raises taxes to pay for it, the economy will shrink by $1.10. In other words, greater spending financed by tax increases hurts the economy. Even if the tax is applied in the future, taxpayers today adjust their consumption and business owners refrain from hiring based on the expectation of future tax increases, which worsen the economy today.

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10 Reasons to Protest…Against the Protesters

by The American TFP

1. Socialism and Communism Are the Same Ideology

2. Socialism Violates Personal Freedom

3. Socialism Violates Human Nature

4. Socialism Violates Private Property

5. Socialism Opposes Traditional Marriage

6. Socialism Opposes Parental Rights in Education

7. Socialism Promotes Class Struggle

8. Socialism Promotes Atheism

9. Socialism Promotes Relativism

10. Socialism Scorns Honor

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Is Illegal Immigration Moral?

by Victor Davis Hanson

We know illegal immigration is no longer really unlawful, but is it moral?

Usually Americans debate the fiscal costs of illegal immigration. Supporters of open borders rightly remind us that illegal immigrants pay sales taxes. Often their payroll-tax contributions are not later tapped by Social Security payouts.

Opponents counter that illegal immigrants are more likely to end up on state assistance, are less likely to report cash income, and cost the state more through the duplicate issuing of services and documents in both English and Spanish. Such to-and-fro talking points are endless.

So is the debate over beneficiaries of illegal immigration. Are profit-minded employers villains who want cheap labor in lieu of hiring more expensive Americans? Or is the culprit a cynical Mexican government that counts on billions of dollars in remittances from its expatriate poor that it otherwise ignored?

Or is the engine that drives illegal immigration the American middle class? Why should millions of suburbanites assume that, like 18th-century French aristocrats, they should have imported labor to clean their homes, manicure their lawns and watch over their kids?

Or is the catalyst the self-interested professional Latino lobby in politics and academia that sees a steady stream of impoverished Latin American nationals as a permanent victimized constituency, empowering and showcasing elite self-appointed spokesmen such as themselves?

Or is the real advocate the Democratic Party that wishes to remake the electoral map of the American Southwest by ensuring larger future pools of natural supporters? Again, the debate over who benefits and why is never-ending.

But what is often left out of the equation is the moral dimension of illegal immigration....

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States Raise Payroll Taxes to Repay Loans

by Sara Murray

State governments are borrowing heavily from the federal government to keep paying unemployment-insurance benefits and, even with the weak job market, most states are raising payroll taxes to pay off the loans.

Thirty one states, their unemployment-insurance funds empty, have borrowed nearly $41 billion from the federal government. California alone has borrowed nearly $8.8 billion as of mid-November, according to the Labor Department.

As states try to replenish the funds and begin to repay the loans, employers are facing increases in both state and federal payroll taxes, a potential barrier to new hiring.

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Patients Should Pay Their Own Bills

by IBD Editorials

Big Spenders: Increases in health care costs rival the rising of the sun for inevitably. Should we blame greedy doctors and drugmakers? No, blame should be placed on the system the government has promoted.

The tax code encourages employers to buy health care insurance plans with pretax dollars. Because these plans are exempt from federal income and payroll taxes, employers salaries. Nearly 60% of American adults are covered by an employer-based plan.

For most, these plans work well. But the arrangement that so many have become accustomed to has driven health care spending ever higher. The cost of medicine increased 98% between 1992 and 2008, a period when the consumer price index rose 53%. Health care spending now makes up 17% of the economy, a far bigger slice than it did before the 1965 creation of Medicare and Medicaid, when it never went beyond 6%.

Why has this happened? Devon Herrick from the National Center for Policy Analysis has the simple answer: We have become big spenders on health care because our motivation to be thrifty has been legislated away.

"A primary reason why health care costs are soaring is that most of the time when people enter the medical marketplace, they are spending someone else's money."

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Some Companies Shift Health Costs to Better-Paid

by Reed Abelson

With health care costs climbing even higher during this enrollment season, more employers are adopting a tiered system to pass on the bulk of those costs to their employees by assigning bigger contributions to workers in top salary brackets and offering some relief to workers who make less money.

For years, employees have seen what they pay toward health care go up as companies ask them to contribute more to premiums and deductibles. But now, as people enroll in health plans for the coming year, the sticker shock is more jolting than ever because so many companies are passing on to their workers most, if not all, of the higher costs.

A worker’s share of a family policy is approaching $4,000 a year on average, and is most certainly going to keep rising through the next few years. For lower-salaried workers, those costs have only compounded their struggle in a brutal economy.

More and more companies in the last year or so have begun signaling their recognition of the added burden shouldered by workers in low- and middle-income jobs by varying the premiums they pay based on salary. Consultants say the trend is likely to continue, as employers devise various ways of spreading increased health care costs among their staff and balancing that side of the ledger against fewer raises and other compensation.

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Joan Baez injured falling out of her treehouse

by Bruce Newman

1960s songbird Joan Baez had a treehouse built -- without walls -- 20 feet high in an oak tree behind her Woodside home because she wanted to sleep with birds.

The folksinging legend, who once performed the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" before a half-million people at Woodstock, fell from that treehouse Wednesday as she climbed down from the platform.

Paramedics drove the singer to Stanford Hospital, where she was treated and released after it was determined she had suffered only minor injuries.

"I sleep in a tree all summer long," Baez told an English blogger in 2008. "I climb up on a ladder, with ropes and things. The birds are right there in the morning. Sometimes they're flying so close to my head I can feel the wind.

"Those things are heaven to me."

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Ground Zero Mosque’s Hidden Websites: Follow the Shariah

by Christine Brim

Why don’t the 15 floors add up? How many floors does Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf need for the mosque portion of this triumphal Islamic command center planned for the two building sites at 45-47 Park Place in New York City?  Think about it: maybe 2 floors for the mosque itself and related offices.  A 3rd floor for the swimming pool, a 4th for the 500 seat auditorium, a 5th for the halal restaurant and halal culinary school, a 6th for the art studios, the childcare center and library, a 7th for the gym and basketball court.  Add an 8th floor for miscellaneous storage and offices.  And then add a 9th floor for the September 11 memorial, an after-thought that was recently added to the Imam’s plan, although that may in fact be more of a room off to one side than a whole floor.

That leaves six mystery floors empty – or dedicated to other activities. Six floors – that’s a lot of offices, a lot of employees, maybe more than half of the 150 full-time and 500 part-time jobs the Imam says he’ll bring to Lower Manhattan.   What are Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s plans for those six mystery floors?


Follow the Shariah Index Project to solve the puzzle of the 6 mystery floors: We found two hidden websites with  copiously deleted information, all about the Imam’s Cordoba Institute Shariah Index Project.  For reference, here’s the Imam’s most recent hidden website (also available here as a pdf).  And here’s the Imam’s earlier hidden website (also available here as a pdf).  The information on those websites – information that the Imam tried to hide with a new whitewashed version – suggests that the six mystery floors of the Ground Zero Mosque will be dedicated to the Imam’s long-term goal: the Shariah Index Project, designed to benchmark Shariah compliance, to distribute Shariah propaganda, and to enforce Shariah law in America and worldwide.

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Click here for your free copy of Sharia Law For The Non Muslim...

Marxism Inside the Churches

The State of Climate Science - Richard Lindzen

Jesus Billboard Stirring up Controversy

by Stephanie Bertini

DONNA, TX - It can be spotted from almost a mile away. It’s just off Expressway 83 near Donna. A big sign stretches over the rooftops of houses and businesses nearby, and it's causing a lot of chatter.

It's an image of Jesus on the cross. The billboard was put up Monday, and right away, people took note. They had a lot to say.

Calls to the CHANNEL 5 newsroom prompted us to go out and take a look. One woman said she found the image offensive because she says, “Jesus has no place on a billboard.” Others are referring to it as a divine inspiration.

"So people saying that's disrespect. I don't think that's disrespect. I think that is just a sign from god saying people need to change around here," one person said.

"It's awesome. It looks real,” another person said.

"People have been saying that it's against their religion or whatever. That's a big sign! For me, it doesn't bother me, but I guess for religious people, I think it bothers them," someone else opined.

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Atlas Shrugged: The Documentary

Rush Limbaugh: The True Story of Thanksgiving

Rush Limbaugh: George Washington's Thanksgiving address

Happy Starvation Day?

by John Stossel

Had today's political class been in power in 1623, today's holiday would have been called "Starvation Day" instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn't be alive to celebrate it.

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

When people can get the same return with less effort, most people make less effort. Plymouth settlers faked illness rather than working the common property. Some even stole, despite their Puritan convictions. Total production was too meager to support the population, and famine resulted. This went on for two years.

"So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue the next year also, if not some way prevented," wrote Gov. William Bradford in his diary. The colonists, he said, "began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length after much debate of things, (I) (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land."

In other words, the people of Plymouth moved from socialism to private farming. The results were dramatic.

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Soros: China Has ‘Better Functioning Government’ Than the U.S.

by Meredith Jessup

In accepting his Globalist of the Year award from the Canadian International Council Monday evening, billionaire and far-left political activist George Soros announced that China‘s grip on the global economy is getting tighter and compared the United States’ recent economic woes to the decline of the United Kingdom following World War II.

Because global economic power is shifting, Soros says China will need to change focus. “China has risen very rapidly by looking out for its own interests,” he said. “They have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well,” The Globe and Mail reports.

“[The Chinese] have now got to accept responsibility for world order and the interests of other people as well,” he said. “Today, China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States,” he said, condemning political gridlock on Capitol Hill for stalling U.S. economic reforms.

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How Liberalism self-destructed

by Joel Kotkin

Democrats are still looking for explanations for their stunning rejection in the midterms — citing everything from voting rights violations and Middle America’s racist orientation to Americans’ inability to perceive the underlying genius of President Barack Obama’s economic policy.

What they have failed to consider is the albatross of contemporary liberalism.

Liberalism once embraced the mission of fostering upward mobility and a stronger economy. But liberalism’s appeal has diminished, particularly among middle-class voters, as it has become increasingly control-oriented and economically cumbersome.

Today, according to most recent polling, no more than one in five voters call themselves liberal.

This contrasts with the far broader support for the familiar form of liberalism forged from the 1930s to the 1990s. Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton focused largely on basic middle-class concerns — such as expanding economic opportunity, property ownership and growth.

Modern-day liberalism, however, is often ambivalent about expanding the economy — preferring a mix of redistribution with redirection along green lines. Its base of political shock troops, public-employee unions, appears only tangentially interested in the health of the overall economy.

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TSA makes little boy remove shirt during pat down

Hillary Clinton admits she wouldn’t submit to TSA pat down

Welfare State: Europe’s Economic Armageddon coming to US?

TSA Takes Nail Clippers From Armed Soldier

by The Patriot Post

Several hundred National Guard troops were flying back home from Afghanistan when they ran into the TSA at Indianapolis. As one of the soldiers described it, "That's where the stupid started."

The soldier said, "It's probably important to mention that we were ALL carrying weapons. Everyone was carrying an M4 Carbine (rifle) and some, like me, were also carrying an M9 pistol. Oh, and our gunners had M-240B machine guns. Of course, the weapons weren't loaded. And we had been cleared of all ammo well before we even got to customs at Baghram, then AGAIN at customs."

Any sane person would be reasonably sure this contingent didn't include any would-be terrorists. Not the TSA.

One soldier had a Gerber multi-tool confiscated, and a TSA agent insisted that another turn over his finger nail clippers.

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George Soros Links to Leftist Catholic Groups

TSA forced cancer patient to show breast implant

Feds holding firm on intrusive airport security

by Eileen Sullivan

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite a deluge of complaints over intrusive pat-downs and revealing airport scans, the government is betting Americans would rather fly safe than untouched. "I'm not going to change those policies," the nation's transportation security chief declared Wednesday.

Responded a lawmaker: "I wouldn't want my wife to be touched in the way that these folks are being touched."

The debate over where to strike the balance between privacy and security, in motion since new safety measures took effect after the 2001 terrorist attacks, has intensified with the debut of pat-downs that are more thorough, and invasive, than before, and the spread of full-body image scans.

"The outcry is huge," Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison told the TSA administrator, John Pistole, at a Capitol Hill hearing. "I know that you're aware of it. But we've got to see some action."

The new hands-on searches are used for passengers who don't want the full-body scans, or when something suspicious shows in screening, or on rare occasions, randomly. They can take two minutes per passenger and involve sliding of the hands along the length of the body, along thighs and near the groin and breasts.

The new scans show naked images of the passenger's body, without the face, to a screener who is in a different location and does not know the identity of the traveler. The U.S. has nearly 400 of the advanced imaging machines deployed at 70 airports, growing to 1,000 machines next year.

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Ron Paul Responds to TSA with 'American Traveler Dignity Act'

Ron Paul: "If enhanced pat downs are good enough for the American people, they’re good enough for Congress."

Ciggarette tax hike creates total drag on sales

by Brendan Scott

ALBANY -- Sales of taxed cigarettes have plummeted a staggering 27 percent statewide since the highest cigarette tax in the nation took hold in July, a Post analysis has found.

Law-abiding cigarette dealers have sold an average of 30 million packs of smokes in each of the last four months -- some 11 million fewer than before Gov. Paterson and lawmakers raised the state tax on cigarettes to $4.35 a pack in a scramble to close a massive budget gap.

Such a drop in smoking would exceed even the wildest imaginations of anti-smoking advocates, who estimated the arrival of the $10 cigarette pack would trim sales by 8 to 10 percent as cash-squeezed smokers cut back or quit.

More likely, experts say, sales have simply shifted to nearby tax havens that allow New Yorkers to stockpile cut-rate smokes at the expense of the state treasury.

Both Pennsylvania and Vermont, which each have significantly lower cigarette taxes, have seen tobacco sales rise since New York's hike, The Post's analysis found.

The Post reported in August that retailers said sales were off by as much as 45 percent in stores bordering low-tax states like Pennsylvania and Vermont, as well as tax-free Indian reservations in western New York and on Long Island.

The hike raises the average price of a pack of Marlboros to $11.60 in New York City, compared to $5.93 in Matamoras, Pa.

Anecdotal reports suggest sales are booming on in-state Indian reservations, where tribes have so far stymied Paterson's efforts to collect taxes on cigarettes sold to non-Native Americans.

"That's what we warned would happen, and obviously it has come to fruition," said James Calvin, of the New York Association of Convenience Stores.

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Disabling Cell Phones in Cars?

by The Patriot Post

Apparently, virtual strip searches and "love pats" at airports aren't oppressive enough for the federal government. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood this week discussed government mandating cell phone scramblers in automobiles. "I think the technology is there and I think you're going to see the technology become adaptable in automobiles to disable these cell phones. We need to do a lot more if we're going to save lives." Indeed, it's never enough for big government advocates.

LaHood, who is a Republican (snort), is missing a few side effects of this Big Brother idea. Blogger Ed Morrissey lists them:

• The scrambler would also affect the passengers in a car that want to use their cell phones, which doesn't do anything to improve public safety.

• The presence of multitudinous scramblers in autos driving in a city will likely render cell phones used by pedestrians useless as well, or at least unreliable.

• Adding more required equipment to cars will make them more expensive, and increase the value of used cars without the scramblers.

• People who want to make calls from their cars or allow their passengers to do so will likely hold onto current vehicles longer.

• Anything installed in a car can be disabled by the owner, especially electronics. Will car owners have to submit to random searches, or annual verification of scrambler functionality? Will the federal government make that yet another unfunded mandate on the states?

• People also get distracted by eating, reading printed material, and applying make-up. Shall we ban drive-through restaurants, newspapers, and cosmetics, too?

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admitted in a report this week that they can't draw a statistical relationship between deaths in vehicles and cell phone use. But no matter, "safety" is the reason for all sorts of intrusion. Morrissey concludes, "Finally, we come to the most basic point, which is that traffic law enforcement is not a federal jurisdiction. It's a state and local jurisdiction."

There's also such a thing as personal responsibility. Bureaucrats hate that one, though -- it ruins all their fun.

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Obama's hand in your crotch

by The Washington Times

The Transportation Security Administration's demeaning new "enhanced pat-down" procedures are a direct result of the Obama administration's willful blindness to the threat from Islamic radicals. While better tools are available to keep air travelers safe, they would involve recognizing the threat for what it is, which is something the White House will never do.

El Al, Israel's national airline, employs a smarter approach. Any airline representing the state of Israel is a natural - some might say preeminent - target for terrorist attacks. Yet El Al has one of the best security records in the world and doesn't resort to wide-scale use of methods that would under other circumstances constitute sexual assault. The Israelis have achieved this track record of safety by employing sophisticated intelligence analysis which allows them to predict which travelers constitute a possible threat and which do not. Resources are then focused on the more probable threats with minimal intrusion on those who are likely not to be terrorists.

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"Obamacare is an abject failure.”

Did You Know Your Airport Can Opt Out of TSA Molestations?

by Byron York

Did you know that the nation's airports are not required to have Transportation Security Administration screeners checking passengers at security checkpoints? The 2001 law creating the TSA gave airports the right to opt out of the TSA program in favor of private screeners after a two-year period. Now, with the TSA engulfed in controversy and hated by millions of weary and sometimes humiliated travelers, Rep. John Mica, the Republican who will soon be chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is reminding airports that they have a choice.

Mica, one of the authors of the original TSA bill, has recently written to the heads of more than 150 airports nationwide suggesting they opt out of TSA screening. "When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy which was soon to grow to 67,000 employees," Mica writes. "As TSA has grown larger, more impersonal, and administratively top-heavy, I believe it is important that airports across the country consider utilizing the opt-out provision provided by law."

In addition to being large, impersonal, and top-heavy, what really worries critics is that the TSA has become dangerously ineffective. Its specialty is what those critics call "security theater" -- that is, a show of what appear to be stringent security measures designed to make passengers feel more secure without providing real security. "That's exactly what it is," says Mica. "It's a big Kabuki dance."

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GE to buy 25K electric fleet vehicles

Government-subsidized GE to buy government-mandated car from government-owned GM with government-confiscated money....

by Aaron Smith

GE said Thursday it will buy 25,000 electric vehicles for its fleet through 2015 in the largest-ever purchase of electric cars.

GE will begin with an initial purchase of 12,000 vehicles from General Motor Co., starting with Chevy Volt in 2011. The conglomerate said it "will add other vehicles as manufacturers expand their electric vehicle profiles."

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Commentary by I Hate The Media:

Unfortunately, we don’t have one of those handy Glenn Beck chalkboards, but please stick with us as do our best to explain this situation.

Corporation A (let’s say General Electric) heavily invests in green technology that no one wants. When this tech fails to generate revenue adequate to bankroll its own existence, stimulus funds are provided to help keep the company afloat.

Corporation B (let’s say General Motors) is effectively taken over by the government. At the government’s direction, an electric car is designed and manufactured. Although it is touted as an innovation in green technology, no one wants it.

Corporation A, which is awash with taxpayer stimulus cash, promises to buy at least 25,000 of these cars from Corporation B, which is awash in government ownership. The sticker price is $41,000 per unit, although it is possible that Corporation A will get a handsome quantity discount from Corporation B.

Simultaneously, congress is pursuing legislation that will force consumers to use green tech. The same sort that Corporation A is so heavily invested in.

Surprisingly, this story was not reported by Corporation A-owned MSNBC.

California's Destructive Green Jobs Lobby

by George Gilder

California officials acknowledged last Thursday that the state faces $20 billion deficits every year from now to 2016. At the same time, California's state Treasurer entered bond markets to sell some $14 billion in "revenue anticipation notes" over the next two weeks. Worst of all, economic sanity lost out in what may have been the most important election on Nov. 2—and, no, I'm not talking about the gubernatorial or senate races.

This was the California referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act, which ratchets the state's economy back to 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. That's a 30% drop followed by a mandated 80% overall drop by 2050. Together with a $500 billion public-pension overhang, the new energy cap dooms the state to bankruptcy.

The irony is that a century-long trend of advance in conventional "non-renewable" energy—from wood to oil to natural gas and nuclear—has already wrought a roughly 60% drop in carbon emissions per watt. Thus the long-term California targets might well be achieved globally in the normal course of technological advance. The obvious next step is aggressive exploitation of the trillions of cubic feet of low-carbon natural gas discovered over the last two years, essentially ending the U.S. energy crisis.

The massive vote against repeal of the California law—62% to 38%—supports an economy-crushing drive to suppress CO2 emissions from natural gas and everything else. In a parody of supply-side economics, advocates of AB 32 envisage the substitution of alternative energy sources that create new revenue sources, new jobs and industries. Their economic model sees new wealth emerge from jobs dismantling the existing energy economy and replacing it with a medieval system of windmills and solar collectors.

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A Muslim Student's True Opinion

Click here for your free copy of Sharia Law For The Non Muslim...

TSA Can Only Pat Down Muslim Women’s Head, Neck

by Meredith Jessup

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has issued a travel notice to Muslim airline passengers, warning them that new regulations from the Transportation Security Administration violate certain religious rules.

According to CAIR, the TSA’s new “enhanced pat down” policy should be limited to searching only around Muslim women’s head and neck if they are wearing a hijab and that Muslims objecting to the enhanced full-body scans have the right to request the pat-down procedure be done in a private place.

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The Idiots Guide to the Destructiveness of Public Spending

Global warming skeptic may take over Science Committee

by Robin Bravender

The likely next chairman of the House Science Committee says “reasonable people have serious questions” about the science connecting manmade greenhouse gas emissions to global warming.

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) on Wednesday vowed to investigate the Obama administration’s climate policies if he becomes chairman.

“This administration argues that cutting greenhouse emissions as a policy directive is justified by science,” Hall said at a hearing organized by Democrats and billed as a “rational discussion” on climate science before the GOP takes over. “I think this hearing today will demonstrate and should demonstrate that reasonable people have serious questions about our knowledge of the state of the science,” he added.

Hall, currently the science panel’s ranking member, criticized the administration for proceeding with regulations to slash greenhouse gas emissions despite a staggering national debt and raised doubts about whether those rules are necessary.

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Obama’s Organizing for America is guilty of voter fraud

Gerrymandering 101

by Zombie

Gerrymander: It’s a dirty word. Everyone knows it’s a political insult, but not everyone understands exactly what it means. And even many of those who know what gerrymandering is don’t fully grasp how it completely dominates American politics.

Welcome to Gerrymandering 101.

Pundits across the political spectrum are now noting that the 2010 Republican tsunami was bigger and more significant than it might appear on the surface, because the Republicans not only won a record number of federal races, they also utterly crushed the Democrats in local races, winning at least 675 seats in state legislatures. This spells doom for the Democrats because next year the states will re-draw the congressional district lines to accommodate the results of the 2010 census:

When the 2010 Census results are announced next month, the 435 House seats will be reapportioned to the states, and state officials will draw new district lines in each state. … Republicans look to have a bigger advantage in this redistricting cycle they’ve ever had before.

“Advantage”? Advantage in what? Isn’t drawing little squiggly lines on a map the most boring and least consequential job imaginable?

Think again. Remember this motto: He Who Draws The Lines Determines The Winners.

Yes, it’s that simple. If you can’t quite visualize how gerrymandering can possibly succeed — after all, the number of voters stays the same no matter how you group them, and if you exclude opposition voters from one district, you necessarily must include them in an adjacent district — keep reading. This essay explains in no uncertain terms how manipulating district boundaries can lead to a complete subversion of true representative government.

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Liberals Urging Obama to Ignore Voters and Congress

by Ed Morrissey

Former President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff John Podesta, now the head of the Center for American Progress, called on President Obama to push forward with his agenda using federal agencies and executive branch power Tuesday, even though Democrats were dealt a blow in the recent midterm elections. Podesta said the American people want the president to move forward with his agenda.

“I think most of the conversation since the election has been about how President Obama adjusts to the new situation on Capitol Hill,” Podesta said. “While that’s an important conversation, it simply ignores the president’s ability to use all levels of his power and authority to move the country forward.”

Citing his experience in Clinton’s White House after the GOP House takeover of 1994, Podesta said Obama’s administration “can and should take” the specific measures detailed in a report released by the Center for American Progress, utilizing all the tools at its disposal to circumvent Congress in a way to keep his agenda moving forward.

“One of the best ways for the Obama administration to achieve results of that nature, in the short term, is through substantial executive authority to make and implement policy,” Podesta said. “As noted in the Constitution and the laws of the United States give the president the ability and the responsibility to act as the chief executive using authorities granted to all presidents such as executive orders, rule-makings, agency management and public-private partnerships.”

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Woman Claims TSA Agent Violently Frisked Her

TX Gov. Perry Wants to Send Military Into Mexico

by Peggy Fikac

AUSTIN — GOP Gov. Rick Perry, who continues to insist he's not interested in the presidency, is nevertheless always ready to tell the federal government how to do a better job on such matters as border security — including indicating the U.S. should be open to sending military into Mexico to help fight the drug war.

Appearing on MSNBC on Thursday, Perry was asked, “Would you advocate military involvement in Mexico on the Mexico side of the border to help Mexico in this drug war?”

Perry answered: “I think we have to use every aspect of law enforcement that we have, including the military. I think you have the same situation as you had in Colombia. Obviously, Mexico has to approve any type of assistance that we can give them.

“But the fact of the matter is, these are people who are highly motivated with money. They are vicious. They are armed to the teeth. I want to see them defeated. And any means that we can to run these people off our border and to save Americans' lives we need to be engaged in.”

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Does ObamaCare Reduce Health Care Spending?

by Veronique de Rugy

Yesterday, former Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag had a piece in The New York Times claiming that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is an essential element to keeping future health care costs down. Worried that Republicans will make good on Election Night vows to repeal ObamaCare, Orszag's basic argument in summed up in his commentary's headline: "To Save Money, Save the Health Care Act."

He writes: “Sure, the health care law is not perfect, but it would cut the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance by a quarter and reduce the projected deficit within Medicare by three-quarters. That may seem fanciful, given how distorted the public discussion has become. But that’s what the projections show, as long as Congress sticks to its guns and the Obama administration does a good job carrying out the provisions of the law.”

However, Orszag's article amounts to little more than wishful thinking. Using Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data, the chart above shows that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 have left the cost curve of federal healthcare spending virtually unchanged over the next 25 years.

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Quantitative Easing Explained

School Choice in Canada: Lessons for America

by Mark Milke

In Canada, the province of Alberta has long encouraged school choice. Historically, Alberta has had two school systems between which parents may choose: the “public” system and a “separate” system. Other Alberta choices include charter, private, and French-language schools. Homeschooling is encouraged and supported by the provincial government, and “blended” programs are available where children can take some courses at home and others at school. This large variety of educational choice has led to positive results. International test results have placed Alberta students among the world’s top performers, including immigrant children who fare equal to or better than non-immigrant children. In Alberta, parents expect—and have—a wide variety of educational options for how to educate their children, a policy outcome that American states should emulate.

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John F Kennedy Warning America and The World

Uncertainty = Business Freeze = No Investment, No Jobs

Humanists' 'holiday' ads attack God & Bible

by Cathy Lynn Grossman

The American Humanist Association is going for the ugly -- in the name of no God.

Their newly announced 200,000 advertising campaign ditches last year's fairly benign good-without-God approach and rips into the nastiest quotes it can cherry-pick from Scripture. It's an attempt, says their web site...

"... to challenge the intolerant view that atheist and agnostic humanists can't be good without Bible derived morality. We're taking a hard look at what is included in religious texts."

So they'll contrast this passage from Hosea 13:16...

"The people of Samaria must bear their guilt because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground; their pregnant woman ripped open."

with a quote from Albert Einstein (and other "non-theist luminaries such as Katharine Hepburn and Richard Dawkins").

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the object of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is modeled after human frailty."

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Red Wave from the Nov 2010 elections

Donald Trump: I’d love a trade war with China!

More federal workers' pay tops $150,000

by Dennis Cauchon

The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

The fast-growing pay of federal employees has captured the attention of fiscally conservative Republicans who won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in last week's elections. Already, some lawmakers are planning to use the lame-duck session that starts Monday to challenge the president's plan to give a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to 2.1 million federal workers.

•Government-wide raises. Top-paid staff have increased in every department and agency. The Defense Department had nine civilians earning $170,000 or more in 2005, 214 when Obama took office and 994 in June.

•Long-time workers thrive. The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the government for 15 to 24 years. Since 2005, average salaries for this group climbed 25% compared with a 9% inflation rate.

•Physicians rewarded. Medical doctors at veterans hospitals, prisons and elsewhere earn an average of $179,500, up from $111,000 in 2005.

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Will masses embrace electric cars despite high prices?

by Chris Woodyard

The government and the auto industry are promoting electric transportation as a way to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil, ease the need for more U.S. oil drilling and cut carbon dioxide in the air. But the technology remains a colossal gamble, with billions invested by the industry and billions in subsidies from the government for research, factories and a direct-to-consumer rebate of $7,500 to partially offset the higher price of electrics.

Buyers still have to be convinced that being Earth-friendly is worth several trade-offs — beyond the cars' sticker prices, which can be double the cost of a similarly sized conventional car. Most prominently, most electric cars for now will have a range of about 100 miles before they need to be recharged. That process can take as few as 30 minutes with special chargers, but in most situations will take up to eight hours.

Even if you haven't paid attention to electric cars, you soon won't be able to escape hearing about them. Nissan has started its ad campaign for the fully electric Leaf. Chevrolet is about to crank up promotion for the Volt, a plug-in electric that also has an onboard generator powered by an auxiliary gas engine. Electric advocacy groups, such as Plug In America, plan their own public education campaigns.

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Soros Exposed: Research on the Progressive Puppet Master

by Glenn Beck

“Messianic Fantasies”

- “It is sort of a disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out,” (The Independent, June 3, 1993 “THE BILLIONAIRE WHO BUILT ON CHAOS - GEORGE SOROS.”)

- “I admit that I have always harbored an exaggerated view of my self-importance—to put it bluntly, I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes (each with his General Theory) or, even better, a scientist like Einstein (reflexivity sounds like relativity).” (The Alchemy of Finance, George Soros)

- According to friend Byron Wien (now with the Blackstone Group), “You must understand he thinks he’s been anointed by God to solve insoluble problems. The proof is that he has been so successful at making so much. He therefore thinks he has a responsibility to give money away,” (Time Magazine, Sept 1, 1997)

- “If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin. But when I made my way in the world I wanted to indulge myself in my fantasies to the extent that I could afford.” George Soros “Underwriting Democracy: Encouraging Free Enterprise And Democratic Reform Among the Soviets and in Eastern Europe”

- George Soros 60 Minutes Interview – 12/20/98 / Transcript:

KROFT: Are you religious?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: Do you believe in God?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: (Voiceover) Soros told us he believes God was created by man, not the other way around, which may be why he thinks he can smooth out the world’s imperfections.

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3 Year-Old Girl Accosted By TSA

A New Poster Boy for Greed & Arrogance

Students riot in London over raising university fees

Melissa Ohden: An Abortion Survivor

Hillary Clinton pledges $150 million to stimulate the economy?

– the Palestinian economy...

by Suzanne Presto

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced new funding to the Palestinian Authority and held talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Wednesday, a day before her scheduled meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York.

"It is important that we do everything we can at a particularly sensitive time in the region to try to redouble our efforts to achieve a two-state solution [to Israeli-Palestinian tensions], to help stabilize the situation in Sudan, and to work to ensure that the people of Lebanon can have accountability in the search for justice," said Hillary Clinton.

Earlier, Clinton announced that the United States has transferred $150 million in new aid to the Palestinian Authority to help close its budget gap.

"This new funding will help the Palestinian Authority pay down its debt, continue to deliver services and security to its people, and keep the progress going," she said. "It will support our work together to expand Palestinians' access to schools, clinics and clean drinking water in both the West Bank and Gaza [Strip]."

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