73% say government too powerful
Glenn Beck: POLL -- 73% say gov too powerful
GLENN: There is a new poll that is out. 62% of Americans think that the United States as a civilization is in decline. Does the government have too much power? 73% say yes. And yet, more power is coming their way. Listen to this: According to an internal U.S. citizenship and immigration service memo, it was obtained by the national review, the agency is considering ways in which it could enact meaningful immigration reform absent of legislative action. Translation? How do we give amnesty to people without having to go through congress?
What did I say a year and a half ago? Congress is going to become irrelevant. We are there. This memorandum offers administrative relief options to reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization. Also in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, U.S. CIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidelines and regulations. Eastbound regulations, who oversees the regulations? Who is the one that has a ‑‑ I'm trying to remember his name, the most dangerous man in America that I've been called insane by Republicans for saying it. The most dangerous man in America is... Cass Sunstein. Why? Because he is the regulatory czar. He's the guy that will set all the regulations. What is this memo? Don't worry. You have levers. You can just turn the knob here, turn the knob here and turn the knob here and then you can, in effect, grant amnesty to people.
Now, there is a statement that has been released by the Department of Homeland Security, and here it is. Internal draft memos do not and should not be equated with any official action or policy of the government.
Hey, can I ask you a question? Is it just me, Stu? Help me out on this. Do we generate a lot of memos that are very complex that show how to do things that we would be diametrically opposed to?
STU: Not typically. It would not be a main goal of ours.
GLENN: Do you know of anybody in any business that does that? Pat, do you know anybody?
PAT: I don't think so.
GLENN: You know what? Our ‑‑ here, let me give our lawyer friend, the biggest pain in the neck, Joe Kerry, who of course ‑‑
PAT: You know what he's going to ‑‑ well, look...
GLENN: Well, I'll tell you what this means, I tell you ‑‑
PAT: It's just that...
GLENN: Chief of staff, our attorney, Joe Kerry. This is ‑‑ can you hold this conversation in confidence, Joe?
JOE: Absolutely.
GLENN: Okay, good. Joe, do you know, do you know businesses that draft complex memos on ways to do things that they are diametrically opposed to? Here it comes. Watch. Here's the attorney. He's thinking.
JOE: Well, I do think that businesses do look at things and say, okay, what are the options that we have. Who was the one that said, you know, I really didn't believe in all this stuff I wrote but we were just looking at it from an educational debate, we were just trying to look at all the angles and the sides on these issues.
GLENN: Goebbels?
STU: No.
GLENN: Who was it? I don't know. Who was it?
STU: Didn't Holdren say something like that?
JOE: Yeah, in the book that he came out in the Seventies.
GLENN: Do you believe that?
STU: Yeah, no.
GLENN: I don't believe that for a second.
STU: But, like, if you said, for example, what can we do to increase this business line and we had some sort of memo that went out that had a bunch of options, that doesn't mean you are agreeing with our options that we're supplying you.
GLENN: You wouldn't do this, you wouldn't do this: Hey, guys, we're struggling in our web business and what can we do in our web business. You would not produce a memo that says, "Porn: We should do Glenn Beck porn sites." You'd never do that.
STU: (Laughing).
GLENN: I'd fire you! I'd look at my business partner and I'd say, this guy does not get it.
STU: Right, yes.
GLENN: That's the point here. You don't issue memos and, you know, long complex memos that say, this one would be like, "And here are the pictures that we would post online and here's another link of the kind of stuff I'm thinking ‑‑ you wouldn't do that.
STU: Here are twelve resumes for the girls.
GLENN: And I've got a few of them chained in my basement right now. I'm taking photos just in case we decide to do that.
STU: They are clearly not diametrically opposed from going around the normal processes to get what they want done.
GLENN: Okay.
STU: There's certainly no ‑‑ there's no argument on that, is there? This is what they do.
GLENN: Internal memoranda: Help us do the thinking that leads to important changes. Yes. That's why you don't have, "We should do porn sites." They help us do the thinking that leads to important changes. Some of them are adopted and others are rejected. Our goal is to implement policies wisely and well to strengthen all aspects of our mission. The choices we have made so far have strengthened both the enforcement and services side of USCIS. Nobody should mistake deliberation and exchange of ideas for final decisions. To be clear, the Department of Homeland Security ‑‑ you ready? ‑‑ will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation's entire illegal immigrant population.
See, now, this is something I've got a problem with. Something in that sentence sticks out to me: We will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation's entire illegal immigration population. Oh, well, I feel better. Then dismiss it. They are looking for ways with Cass Sunstein to grant amnesty, and they will do it one piece at a time. What are they doing with cap and trade? It's coming, one piece at a time. What are they doing with ‑‑ we didn't just turn into a dictatorship. We didn't ‑‑ we're not turning into a communist country. Nobody's voting on, "Hey, should we take all of the wealth and give it to somebody else?" We didn't even vote on that! And if we would have voted on redistribution of wealth, we would have said no. That's why they kept it under the table. That's why when I said healthcare is nothing more than redistribution of wealth, because that's what the president said, and then he denied it. Well, as soon as he starts to appoint somebody to redistribute healthcare, they talk about openly that it, of course, must, must be redistribution of wealth. Healthcare. He wouldn't have voted for it. They do it one piece at a time. That's why Cass Sunstein is so dangerous.
http://media.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/43671/
Friday, July 30, 2010
Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto
Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto
Product Description
This groundbreaking manifesto is essential reading for tea party activists—or any American seeking to understand what the Tea Party is fighting for and what's next for the movement
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe have been on the front lines of one of the fastest-growing and most influential political phenomena in recent memory: the Tea Party movement. As the leaders of the advocacy organization FreedomWorks, they have helped guide and give voice to hundreds of thousands of activists from across the country and have a strong vision for the future of this powerful grassroots uprising.
United by a strong belief in limited government and individual liberty, Tea Party members are changing the American political landscape. Unlike mainstream media accounts that observe the Tea Party movement from the outside looking in, Give Us Liberty chronicles the roots and rise of a new breed of taxpayer activism in the voices of those who were there. Discover the personalities that drove the first meetings, the unknown candidates whose principled stand earned them unlikely victories, the march that gathered more than a million activists, and the bedrock beliefs that brought them together.
In this national call to action, Armey and Kibbe provide an intimate history of the movement, explain how citizens can join the cause, and chart the future of the Tea Party—and America. Give Us Liberty also contains a battle-tested, step-by-step guide to organizing and effecting change in any community.
Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto
Product Description
This groundbreaking manifesto is essential reading for tea party activists—or any American seeking to understand what the Tea Party is fighting for and what's next for the movement
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe have been on the front lines of one of the fastest-growing and most influential political phenomena in recent memory: the Tea Party movement. As the leaders of the advocacy organization FreedomWorks, they have helped guide and give voice to hundreds of thousands of activists from across the country and have a strong vision for the future of this powerful grassroots uprising.
United by a strong belief in limited government and individual liberty, Tea Party members are changing the American political landscape. Unlike mainstream media accounts that observe the Tea Party movement from the outside looking in, Give Us Liberty chronicles the roots and rise of a new breed of taxpayer activism in the voices of those who were there. Discover the personalities that drove the first meetings, the unknown candidates whose principled stand earned them unlikely victories, the march that gathered more than a million activists, and the bedrock beliefs that brought them together.
In this national call to action, Armey and Kibbe provide an intimate history of the movement, explain how citizens can join the cause, and chart the future of the Tea Party—and America. Give Us Liberty also contains a battle-tested, step-by-step guide to organizing and effecting change in any community.
Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto
Cass Sunstein’s Thought Police
Cass Sunstein’s Thought Police
January 27, 2010
A journalist I know who’s somewhat more receptive than I am to conspiracy theory told me about a high-ranking official in the Obama administration who advocates using federal agents–covert or overt, employees of the government or secretly remunerated independent experts–to “cognitively infiltrate” conspiracy groups in order to correct their “crippled epistemologies.”
The worst of it, she said, is that he defines conspiracists so loosely–as people who believe “that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event.” Practically any organization of political dissidents would qualify. Like, people who believe that the Vietcong didn’t really attack a US destroyer in the Tonkin Gulf, or that Nixon knew more about the Watergate break in than he admitted. Who believe that Cheney and Bush lied about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction during the build-up to Desert Storm, that JFK’s assassination didn’t happen as the Warren Commission said it did, and that American officials sold missiles to Iran to raise funds for Nicaraguan contras. Who’s to say that Birthers and Teabaggers and Truthers aren’t being targeted already? “Cognitive infiltration” may just be a fancy word for chat room trolls–but it’s downright Orwellian too, summoning visions of disinformation campaigns, agents provocateurs, and domestic spies.
The official is Cass Sunstein, the long-time University of Chicago law professor (he has since moved on to Harvard), who is currently serving as director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a department of the Office of Management and Budget. No obscure wonk, Sunstein is the author of countless books and articles; in fact he is a kind of a rock star in the left-leaning intellectual/policy world. He has been the consort of a number of extravagantly glamorous and brainy women (English professor Lisa Ruddick and classicist Martha Nussbaum; he met Samantha Power during the Obama campaign and married her in the summer of 2008) and is frequently touted as a potential Obama nominee for the Supreme Court.
Though he is detested as a wild-eyed leftist by the likes of Glenn Beck, who ridiculed him for his advocacy of animal rights and his supposed hostility to the Second Amendment, and at one point dubbed him “the most dangerous man in America,” the conservative establishment has generally been well-disposed towards him. “Mr. Sunstein…is no conservative–far from it,” wrote The Wall Street Journal. “But his writings on regulation and the herd mentality deserve a voice in the incoming Administration. From his new post as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs inside the White House, he would have an opportunity to put into practice some of the ideas he has written about as an academic.” (Click here to read the whole thing.) Sunstein has frequently come under fire from hard-line progressives, who are appalled by the same “minimialist” approach to regulation that won over the WSJ, not to mention his support for John Roberts’ appointment to the Supreme Court, his defense of John Yoo, his pragmatic opposition to prosecutions of members of the Bush administration, his support for FISA’s grant of retroactive immunity to telecoms, and his openness to Internet “censorship.”
Co-authored with Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule and published in The Journal of Political Philosophy in 2008 (it can be downloaded as a PDF file here), “Conspiracy Theory” is a 30-page-long academic paper that
1) Surveys scholarship on the etiology of conspiracy theories (it takes a social science approach, concluding that they are formulated within closed cognitive communities that have limited access to alternative sources of information, and whose beliefs are self-reinforced by peer pressure–in short, that they are a product of distorted thought systems rather than psychoses, hallucinations, or demagoguery alone) and
2) Contemplates whether or not governments should try to contain or neutralize such theories, if and when they are presumed to pose a genuine threat to public safety.
Islamic conspiracism abroad, for example, drives Al Qaeda recruitment and encourages suicide bombers. Domestically, a white supremacist who believes that the US government has been hijacked by Satanic Zionists might feel justified in, say, blowing up the Federal building in Oklahoma City. Haitians who believe that HAARP was the cause of their recent woes might threaten US aid workers. But Sunstein and Vermeule aren’t interested in law enforcement per se–rather, they are asking (and “Conspiracy Theory” is no White Paper; its tone is subjunctive throughout) whether governments can effectively neutralize false ideas (and their presumption is always that the conspiracy theories that need to be combated are objectively false) by injecting correct ones into the thought systems that sustain them; whether information can be an antidote for a thought contagion. Here’s how they put it:
see more at...........
http://arthurgoldwag.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/cass-sunsteins-thought-police/
January 27, 2010
A journalist I know who’s somewhat more receptive than I am to conspiracy theory told me about a high-ranking official in the Obama administration who advocates using federal agents–covert or overt, employees of the government or secretly remunerated independent experts–to “cognitively infiltrate” conspiracy groups in order to correct their “crippled epistemologies.”
The worst of it, she said, is that he defines conspiracists so loosely–as people who believe “that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event.” Practically any organization of political dissidents would qualify. Like, people who believe that the Vietcong didn’t really attack a US destroyer in the Tonkin Gulf, or that Nixon knew more about the Watergate break in than he admitted. Who believe that Cheney and Bush lied about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction during the build-up to Desert Storm, that JFK’s assassination didn’t happen as the Warren Commission said it did, and that American officials sold missiles to Iran to raise funds for Nicaraguan contras. Who’s to say that Birthers and Teabaggers and Truthers aren’t being targeted already? “Cognitive infiltration” may just be a fancy word for chat room trolls–but it’s downright Orwellian too, summoning visions of disinformation campaigns, agents provocateurs, and domestic spies.
The official is Cass Sunstein, the long-time University of Chicago law professor (he has since moved on to Harvard), who is currently serving as director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a department of the Office of Management and Budget. No obscure wonk, Sunstein is the author of countless books and articles; in fact he is a kind of a rock star in the left-leaning intellectual/policy world. He has been the consort of a number of extravagantly glamorous and brainy women (English professor Lisa Ruddick and classicist Martha Nussbaum; he met Samantha Power during the Obama campaign and married her in the summer of 2008) and is frequently touted as a potential Obama nominee for the Supreme Court.
Though he is detested as a wild-eyed leftist by the likes of Glenn Beck, who ridiculed him for his advocacy of animal rights and his supposed hostility to the Second Amendment, and at one point dubbed him “the most dangerous man in America,” the conservative establishment has generally been well-disposed towards him. “Mr. Sunstein…is no conservative–far from it,” wrote The Wall Street Journal. “But his writings on regulation and the herd mentality deserve a voice in the incoming Administration. From his new post as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs inside the White House, he would have an opportunity to put into practice some of the ideas he has written about as an academic.” (Click here to read the whole thing.) Sunstein has frequently come under fire from hard-line progressives, who are appalled by the same “minimialist” approach to regulation that won over the WSJ, not to mention his support for John Roberts’ appointment to the Supreme Court, his defense of John Yoo, his pragmatic opposition to prosecutions of members of the Bush administration, his support for FISA’s grant of retroactive immunity to telecoms, and his openness to Internet “censorship.”
Co-authored with Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule and published in The Journal of Political Philosophy in 2008 (it can be downloaded as a PDF file here), “Conspiracy Theory” is a 30-page-long academic paper that
1) Surveys scholarship on the etiology of conspiracy theories (it takes a social science approach, concluding that they are formulated within closed cognitive communities that have limited access to alternative sources of information, and whose beliefs are self-reinforced by peer pressure–in short, that they are a product of distorted thought systems rather than psychoses, hallucinations, or demagoguery alone) and
2) Contemplates whether or not governments should try to contain or neutralize such theories, if and when they are presumed to pose a genuine threat to public safety.
Islamic conspiracism abroad, for example, drives Al Qaeda recruitment and encourages suicide bombers. Domestically, a white supremacist who believes that the US government has been hijacked by Satanic Zionists might feel justified in, say, blowing up the Federal building in Oklahoma City. Haitians who believe that HAARP was the cause of their recent woes might threaten US aid workers. But Sunstein and Vermeule aren’t interested in law enforcement per se–rather, they are asking (and “Conspiracy Theory” is no White Paper; its tone is subjunctive throughout) whether governments can effectively neutralize false ideas (and their presumption is always that the conspiracy theories that need to be combated are objectively false) by injecting correct ones into the thought systems that sustain them; whether information can be an antidote for a thought contagion. Here’s how they put it:
see more at...........
http://arthurgoldwag.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/cass-sunsteins-thought-police/
oh no another bailout with taxpayers $$$ ?
Why Democrats are Pushing the $165 Billion Union Pension Bailout
by LaborUnionReport
Somewhere lurking in the hot, putrid halls of Congress this summer is a union bailout bill of epic proportions and long-term ramifications. Whether or not Democrats can ultimately push it (or something like it) into passage is yet to be determined. However, with rumors that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) signed on as a co-sponsor on Thursday, it would appear that the union bailout is quietly creeping along. If it passes, though, its ramifications surpass the mere $165 billion-plus price tag, as it will influence the political landscape for decades to come. In sum, Democrats need the bailout desperately and Republicans should shun it like the plague.
Likely to surpass the touted $165 billion it is estimated to cost, Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act (S. 3157) was introduced on March 23rd by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and is designed to bailout unions’ underfunded pension funds by transferring the liability of those funds onto the backs of the taxpayers.
Under these bills, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) would, at the request of the plans, have the authority to take over the pension obligations of employers who have withdrawn from the plans, and pay the benefits out of taxpayer dollars, says Furchtgott-Roth:
Once the PBGC shoulders that obligation, it would keep making payments until the last retiree or designated survivor dies.
Since many multiemployer plans are in financial difficulty, this legislation, if enacted, could dramatically increase the federal deficit, putting even more pressure on the American taxpayer and the economy.
Depending on events, it might add billions to government spending — current underfunding levels are estimated at $165 billion-bumping up future deficits. According to a June 24th article published in the Bureau of National Affairs Construction Labor Report (subscription required):
If enacted into law, the bill would convert a private funding shortfall for collectively bargained multi-employer plans into a public obligation, said Brett McMahon, vice president of Miller and Long Concrete Construction and an ABC member.
The legislation would transfer a portion of multiemployer pension funding obligations to a new insurance program that would be operated by the PBGC and paid for with taxpayer dollars instead of employer-paid premiums, F. Vincent Vernuccio, a spokesman for the trade group’s advocacy organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said during the call.
At the heart of the union pension problem are companies that, in many cases, agreed to put retirement money for union workers into “multi-employer plans” but have since gone out of business. As the unionized workers in multi-employer plans are still entitled to a pension, the remaining employers are left funding the pensions of workers who, in many cases, they never employed.
http://biggovernment.com/laborunionreport/2010/07/30/why-democrats-are-pushing-the-165-billion-union-pension-bailout/
by LaborUnionReport
Somewhere lurking in the hot, putrid halls of Congress this summer is a union bailout bill of epic proportions and long-term ramifications. Whether or not Democrats can ultimately push it (or something like it) into passage is yet to be determined. However, with rumors that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) signed on as a co-sponsor on Thursday, it would appear that the union bailout is quietly creeping along. If it passes, though, its ramifications surpass the mere $165 billion-plus price tag, as it will influence the political landscape for decades to come. In sum, Democrats need the bailout desperately and Republicans should shun it like the plague.
Likely to surpass the touted $165 billion it is estimated to cost, Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act (S. 3157) was introduced on March 23rd by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and is designed to bailout unions’ underfunded pension funds by transferring the liability of those funds onto the backs of the taxpayers.
Under these bills, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) would, at the request of the plans, have the authority to take over the pension obligations of employers who have withdrawn from the plans, and pay the benefits out of taxpayer dollars, says Furchtgott-Roth:
Once the PBGC shoulders that obligation, it would keep making payments until the last retiree or designated survivor dies.
Since many multiemployer plans are in financial difficulty, this legislation, if enacted, could dramatically increase the federal deficit, putting even more pressure on the American taxpayer and the economy.
Depending on events, it might add billions to government spending — current underfunding levels are estimated at $165 billion-bumping up future deficits. According to a June 24th article published in the Bureau of National Affairs Construction Labor Report (subscription required):
If enacted into law, the bill would convert a private funding shortfall for collectively bargained multi-employer plans into a public obligation, said Brett McMahon, vice president of Miller and Long Concrete Construction and an ABC member.
The legislation would transfer a portion of multiemployer pension funding obligations to a new insurance program that would be operated by the PBGC and paid for with taxpayer dollars instead of employer-paid premiums, F. Vincent Vernuccio, a spokesman for the trade group’s advocacy organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said during the call.
At the heart of the union pension problem are companies that, in many cases, agreed to put retirement money for union workers into “multi-employer plans” but have since gone out of business. As the unionized workers in multi-employer plans are still entitled to a pension, the remaining employers are left funding the pensions of workers who, in many cases, they never employed.
http://biggovernment.com/laborunionreport/2010/07/30/why-democrats-are-pushing-the-165-billion-union-pension-bailout/
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