THE DARK SIDE OF HILLARY CLINTON'S HEALTH CARE PLAN
The public face of Hillary Clinton's new health care plan is sunny, filled with choices for consumers and bright with promises for better health care for all. But a close examination of the proposal alongside other initiatives of Sen. Clinton in the past few years reveals a dark side she wants to hide from public view until after the election is over.
In her program, she speaks of how health care is the right of every "American" — but she has a rather expansive definition of "American." In 2005, Hillary co-sponsored legislation in the United States Senate to offer free health insurance, under the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to the children of illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for five years. So, those who have dodged the immigration cops for five years successfully would be rewarded not only with legal status and a path to citizenship, but with immediate free health care for their children.
Indeed, when Democrats and liberals speak of the 50,000,000 uninsured Americans, more than one fifth of those are illegal immigrants. Thus, about one in five of the beneficiaries of her program for universal health insurance are illegal aliens. (Illegal immigrants are a disproportionately large segment of the uninsured population because legal immigrants and citizens who live in poverty are eligible for Medicaid, but illegal immigrants are not.)
Would Americans like to reward those whose only connection to our country is that they flouted our laws to come here with free health insurance for themselves and their children? Doubtless Hillary knows the answer is no, so she is determined to hide that aspect of her plan from the public.
Hillary speaks of the importance of stopping health insurance companies from raising premiums on those who are sick. But she does not mention the inevitable flip side of her proposal — to raise premiums on those who are well. On the one hand, she would cover all those with chronic conditions with low cost health insurance and, on the other, would stop insurance companies from "cherry picking" healthy and young people for their insurance plans. The net effect would be a major increase in health insurance premiums for the vast majority of Americans.
In effect, her plan would turn "insurance" into "subsidy." The concept of insurance is that one pays a relatively low premium to guard against catastrophic expenses that are outside of our ability to meet financially. But Hillary's program would really be nothing more than a cash transfer from the healthy to the sick, not an insurance program at all.
Hillary says that her program would provide "universal" coverage for all. In order to achieve universality, one must make the program compulsory. The bulk of the uninsured do not want to have to pay for insurance. They are healthy and don't want the added burden of health insurance. That is why about half of those who are eligible for free or low cost insurance under the State Child Health Insurance Program have not signed up. Their parents don't want to.
So Hillary's program, as she freely admits, would require health insurance as a pre-condition of employment. Not having health insurance would be a violation just as driving a car without automobile insurance is illegal. The resulting coercion would force millions to pay for coverage they do not want and feel they don't need. But to pay for her national program, Hillary needs everyone to be covered so she can use their revenues to subsidize the coverage of those who are ill.
But the main defect of Hillary's program is that it leaves out any attempt at cost control. With health care absorbing 16 percent of our economy, Bill Clinton's warnings of economic disaster if its share of our national income passed 12 percent back in 1993 sound almost quaint today. Cost control is a vital part of any plan for universal coverage. Indeed, without it, extending coverage just offers a blank check to patients and providers which would drive even higher the share of our economy that goes to health care.
It was Hillary herself who explained this concept to Dick in 1993. The reality has not changed. Hillary will be forced to control costs as the implicit and vital element of any health care reform. This control of costs belies her contention that she would leave the health care system untouched except to extend coverage to those who now lack it. Because she would need to limit utilization and lower costs, she would be forced to ration health care and to impose government mandated and controlled managed care on all Americans.
For the first time, the word "no" would come into our system. Do you need open heart surgery? Are you a poor risk because of smoking or diabetes or age? No longer would the bureaucrat at the other end of the phone say "we won't pay for it" or "you don't need it" or "we can't fit you in at our facility." The answer would simply be no — even if you pay for it yourself, you may not have one. It is this type of coercion that drives Canadians over the border to the U.S. in search of medical options denied them at home under their socialized medical structure. Now it would operate on both sides of the border.
Finally, Hillary seeks to finance the system by ending tax breaks for the wealthy, by which she means any household with $250,000 or more in income. Never mind that she has spent that money several times over. But why use income taxes to finance her system? Why not do what Democrats and Republicans are now pushing in Congress — to finance it by raising cigarette taxes? That way we get a double impact: higher tobacco prices cut smoking, particularly among teenagers, and reduce health costs and the revenues pay for her expansion of the system. The current Congress is passing legislation to raise cigarette taxes 61 cents per pack to pay for a $35 billion expansion of the State Child Health Insurance Program. Why not raise them $2 per pack to raise the $110 billion Hillary says her health care proposal will need?
In selling her program, Hillary seems to imply that she was under the hypnotic control of her advisers (presumably Ira Magaziner) in 1993 when she designed her previous health care reform. Now she says she is in charge. "I'm the decision maker now," she told The New York Times. "I have a plan that is 100 percent my plan." But what was the 1993 initiative but her plan, concocted in secret and foisted in toto on a Congress which wouldn't pass it?
Now she says she would not "have approached [health care reform] in the same way" as she did in 1993. Now she will be informed by "a greater dose of humility and empathy and understanding of what it takes to get things done in our political system."
That and a determination to conceal the true implications of her proposal until after she is elected.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
new method to promote your political blog........
interesting new method to promote your political blog........
how will this John Reese's new venture be treated by Google / Adwords ?
very exciting new ideal
new blogrush
www.blogrush.com/r29559027
get traffic tfor your blog
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Poenix area Arizona to report illegals tips Hotline 602-876-4154
to report illegal aliens in the Phoenix / Mari Copa county area
MCSO Enforcement Hotline 602-876-4154
MCSO Enforcement Hotline 602-876-4154
Monday, September 17, 2007
Polling Shows Mr. Undecided Leads GOP Race
Polling Shows Mr. Undecided Leads GOP Race
Monday, September 17, 2007 10:02 AM
By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size
As many as 26 percent of likely Republican voters in key states have not decided which candidate will get their vote in 2008.
That conclusion comes from ccAdvertising, which conducts polls for a range of candidates and members of Congress.
“Undecided is winning,” Gabriel Joseph III, president of ccAdvertising, tells me. “The largest group of voters are people who just haven’t made up their minds yet.”
According to ccAdvertising’s latest poll, Rudy Giuliani challenges Mr. Undecided. Giuliani leads with support from 25.5 percent of those who say they will vote in Republican caucuses or primaries in California, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, New York, and South Carolina. Th next three candidates are essentially tied — Fred Thompson with 15.4 percent, Mitt Romney with 14.2 percent, and John McCain with 13.2 percent. Final results will be released Wednesday.
Most pollsters do not emphasize how many people are undecided. Given that recent presidential elections have been won by a margin of 5 percent of the tally or less, the number of undecided votes spotlights how ephemeral polls are.
Confirming that, pollster Joseph notes that polls are nothing more than a quick snapshot of voter sentiment. In fact, he says that polls right now mostly measure name recognition.
“What you’re seeing at this point is a popularity contest,” Joseph says. “The polls are measuring name-awareness. I believe that people are telling our surveys who they’re going to vote for by what they hear. Whether it’s good or bad right now, all they do is hear the names. Fred Thompson’s name has been bandied about a lot. People have heard Fred Thompson, Fred Thompson, Fred Thompson. So they’re more likely to say they’ll vote for him.”
Romney campaign operatives have been banking on Joseph’s take. They point out that in the states where they have focused their efforts — Iowa and New Hampshire — Romney is winning. But only 64 percent of Americans have heard of him.
On the other hand, John McCain’s name recognition is 87 percent, according to a Gallup Poll, and the fact that McCain has been going down in the polls suggests that more than name recognition is at stake. Just before he declared his candidacy, Thompson’s name recognition was a surprisingly low 56 percent.
Early presidential front-runners litter the political landscape — Elizabeth Dole, Howard Dean, and Edward M. Kennedy, to name a few. But it’s not in the interests of either political reporters or pollsters to emphasize their uncertainty in calling the horse race.
On top of these considerations, polling has been facing growing voter concerns about privacy.
“Pollsters right now are struggling to get people to respond to their surveys,” Joseph says. “Because fewer and fewer people are responding to their surveys, two things are happening: They’re going back to a pre-existing survey base — people that have answered before, will answer again. Number two, because when they get somebody willing to talk to them, they want to gather a lot of other data at the same time, the surveys are getting longer.”
When surveys become longer, fewer people complete them, and the results are not counted. So, Joseph says, polls are becoming less reliable as more responses are discarded. Joseph’s company asks a limited number of questions over the telephone using a computerized voice-recognition system for calling people.
“We have the databases and the speed to just keep going until we get the number of respondents that our company and our clients need,” Joseph says.
“What we are doing is measuring what people’s attitudes are today,” he says. “And right now, Mr. Undecided is the winner.”
Alan Greenspan’s Confusion
Alan Greenspan may have been a great Federal Reserve Board chairman, but his take on national security issues seems confused at best. First, Bob Woodward reported last week that Greenspan’s new book "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World" refers to what Greenspan calls the “politically inconvenient” fact that the Iraq war was “largely about oil.”
Subsequently, Woodward interviewed Greenspan, who said it was he who believed that removal of Saddam Hussein was “essential” to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan told Woodward for a Washington Post story. “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”
Now, in a Wall Street Journal interview, Greenspan says he is puzzled over President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s continued advocacy of aggressive anti-terrorism policies that he says have the effect of curtailing civil liberties. If there had been additional terrorist attacks in the U.S. after Sept. 11, he said, “Cheney’s and Bush’s view would be now far more prevalent" in the U.S. But “when events changed, they held the views that they previously held.” He added that while he doesn’t like their stance, “I don’t know what should have been done otherwise” because he lacks the access to classified information that they have.
It doesn’t require a security clearance to know that al-Qaida and its franchises are plotting to wipe out the U.S. As FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has told me, bin Laden and his terrorist group desperately want to obtain nuclear devices and explode them in American cities, especially New York and Washington, D.C.
The primary reason we have not been attacked in more than six years is Bush’s aggressive policies and the hard work of the FBI and CIA, which constantly roll up plots and terrorists. Thus, the fact that we have not been attacked points to the success of Bush administration policies. Presumably, if Greenspan’s home alarm system never went off, he would drop the service because events had changed, and he no longer perceived a threat from intruders.
If Greenspan had applied the same heads-in-the-sand approach to the economy, we would be in big trouble.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of NewsMax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-ma
Monday, September 17, 2007 10:02 AM
By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size
As many as 26 percent of likely Republican voters in key states have not decided which candidate will get their vote in 2008.
That conclusion comes from ccAdvertising, which conducts polls for a range of candidates and members of Congress.
“Undecided is winning,” Gabriel Joseph III, president of ccAdvertising, tells me. “The largest group of voters are people who just haven’t made up their minds yet.”
According to ccAdvertising’s latest poll, Rudy Giuliani challenges Mr. Undecided. Giuliani leads with support from 25.5 percent of those who say they will vote in Republican caucuses or primaries in California, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, New York, and South Carolina. Th next three candidates are essentially tied — Fred Thompson with 15.4 percent, Mitt Romney with 14.2 percent, and John McCain with 13.2 percent. Final results will be released Wednesday.
Most pollsters do not emphasize how many people are undecided. Given that recent presidential elections have been won by a margin of 5 percent of the tally or less, the number of undecided votes spotlights how ephemeral polls are.
Confirming that, pollster Joseph notes that polls are nothing more than a quick snapshot of voter sentiment. In fact, he says that polls right now mostly measure name recognition.
“What you’re seeing at this point is a popularity contest,” Joseph says. “The polls are measuring name-awareness. I believe that people are telling our surveys who they’re going to vote for by what they hear. Whether it’s good or bad right now, all they do is hear the names. Fred Thompson’s name has been bandied about a lot. People have heard Fred Thompson, Fred Thompson, Fred Thompson. So they’re more likely to say they’ll vote for him.”
Romney campaign operatives have been banking on Joseph’s take. They point out that in the states where they have focused their efforts — Iowa and New Hampshire — Romney is winning. But only 64 percent of Americans have heard of him.
On the other hand, John McCain’s name recognition is 87 percent, according to a Gallup Poll, and the fact that McCain has been going down in the polls suggests that more than name recognition is at stake. Just before he declared his candidacy, Thompson’s name recognition was a surprisingly low 56 percent.
Early presidential front-runners litter the political landscape — Elizabeth Dole, Howard Dean, and Edward M. Kennedy, to name a few. But it’s not in the interests of either political reporters or pollsters to emphasize their uncertainty in calling the horse race.
On top of these considerations, polling has been facing growing voter concerns about privacy.
“Pollsters right now are struggling to get people to respond to their surveys,” Joseph says. “Because fewer and fewer people are responding to their surveys, two things are happening: They’re going back to a pre-existing survey base — people that have answered before, will answer again. Number two, because when they get somebody willing to talk to them, they want to gather a lot of other data at the same time, the surveys are getting longer.”
When surveys become longer, fewer people complete them, and the results are not counted. So, Joseph says, polls are becoming less reliable as more responses are discarded. Joseph’s company asks a limited number of questions over the telephone using a computerized voice-recognition system for calling people.
“We have the databases and the speed to just keep going until we get the number of respondents that our company and our clients need,” Joseph says.
“What we are doing is measuring what people’s attitudes are today,” he says. “And right now, Mr. Undecided is the winner.”
Alan Greenspan’s Confusion
Alan Greenspan may have been a great Federal Reserve Board chairman, but his take on national security issues seems confused at best. First, Bob Woodward reported last week that Greenspan’s new book "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World" refers to what Greenspan calls the “politically inconvenient” fact that the Iraq war was “largely about oil.”
Subsequently, Woodward interviewed Greenspan, who said it was he who believed that removal of Saddam Hussein was “essential” to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan told Woodward for a Washington Post story. “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”
Now, in a Wall Street Journal interview, Greenspan says he is puzzled over President Bush’s and Vice President Cheney’s continued advocacy of aggressive anti-terrorism policies that he says have the effect of curtailing civil liberties. If there had been additional terrorist attacks in the U.S. after Sept. 11, he said, “Cheney’s and Bush’s view would be now far more prevalent" in the U.S. But “when events changed, they held the views that they previously held.” He added that while he doesn’t like their stance, “I don’t know what should have been done otherwise” because he lacks the access to classified information that they have.
It doesn’t require a security clearance to know that al-Qaida and its franchises are plotting to wipe out the U.S. As FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has told me, bin Laden and his terrorist group desperately want to obtain nuclear devices and explode them in American cities, especially New York and Washington, D.C.
The primary reason we have not been attacked in more than six years is Bush’s aggressive policies and the hard work of the FBI and CIA, which constantly roll up plots and terrorists. Thus, the fact that we have not been attacked points to the success of Bush administration policies. Presumably, if Greenspan’s home alarm system never went off, he would drop the service because events had changed, and he no longer perceived a threat from intruders.
If Greenspan had applied the same heads-in-the-sand approach to the economy, we would be in big trouble.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of NewsMax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-ma
Stand up against defeat
Senator Clinton said recently that believing General Petraeus' testimony requires a 'willing suspension of disbelief.' I think it willingly suspends disbelief to not repudiate an advertisement run by a radical left wing organization that impugns and dishonors the integrity of a man who has served his nation with dedication all of his life. If you're not tough enough to repudiate a scurrilous, outrageous attack such as that, then I don't know how you're tough enough to be President of the United States.
I am prepared to be Commander-in-Chief and tough enough to face the challenges presented by a dangerous world. In fact, I'm the only candidate in this race prepared to be Commander-in-Chief from day one.
The choice we are presented with could not be more clear. Will we continue to support our new strategy in Iraq and the fight against Islamic extremists, as I've long advocated, or will we surrender in disgrace as the Democrats want us to do? For four years I've fought for more troops in Iraq, fought for the right strategy, and I will not give up the fight today as we are finally making progress on the ground. I will lead.
Right now I'm traveling through Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina talking about the success of the surge and countering the shameless propaganda being put forth by the extreme left, and I need your financial support to continue. I believe it is critical for voters to hear the truth about this new strategy and the success of our troops in Iraq, and your help will allow me to continue bringing this message to voters.
Unlike my opponents in the Democratic Party, I have absolutely no trouble denouncing this ad for what it is - an ill-informed, partisan attack ad that has no place in this serious debate about the safety and security of our nation.
America needs serious leaders ready to stand up to the tough challenges facing our nation. I'm running for President of the United States because I am prepared to lead and I understand the grave threats our nation must face.
I am out on the road, on the No Surrender Tour, spreading this message of support for our troops and support for the surge, and I need your help to get this message out. With your support, I will continue to stand strong.
Sincerely,
John McCain
I am prepared to be Commander-in-Chief and tough enough to face the challenges presented by a dangerous world. In fact, I'm the only candidate in this race prepared to be Commander-in-Chief from day one.
The choice we are presented with could not be more clear. Will we continue to support our new strategy in Iraq and the fight against Islamic extremists, as I've long advocated, or will we surrender in disgrace as the Democrats want us to do? For four years I've fought for more troops in Iraq, fought for the right strategy, and I will not give up the fight today as we are finally making progress on the ground. I will lead.
Right now I'm traveling through Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina talking about the success of the surge and countering the shameless propaganda being put forth by the extreme left, and I need your financial support to continue. I believe it is critical for voters to hear the truth about this new strategy and the success of our troops in Iraq, and your help will allow me to continue bringing this message to voters.
Unlike my opponents in the Democratic Party, I have absolutely no trouble denouncing this ad for what it is - an ill-informed, partisan attack ad that has no place in this serious debate about the safety and security of our nation.
America needs serious leaders ready to stand up to the tough challenges facing our nation. I'm running for President of the United States because I am prepared to lead and I understand the grave threats our nation must face.
I am out on the road, on the No Surrender Tour, spreading this message of support for our troops and support for the surge, and I need your help to get this message out. With your support, I will continue to stand strong.
Sincerely,
John McCain
DEMS' GREAT SENATE HOPES
DEMS' GREAT SENATE HOPES
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published in the New York Post on September 12, 2007.
Democrats may hold up to 57 U.S. Senate seats after the 2008 election - almost enough to block a Republican filibuster and likely enough to assure passage of most of the Democratic program.
Last week was a bad one for the GOP. Longtime Sens. John Warner (R-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) announced that they wouldn't seek re-election in '08, joining Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) in voluntary retirement. Add to that Sen. Larry Craig's (R-Idaho) involuntary retirement.
Republicans may well lose the Warner seat - Sen. George Allen lost in '06 to Democrat Jim Webb in Virginia. The most likely Democratic candidate, ex-Gov. Mark Warner, probably can't be beaten.
The Colorado seat is likely to go Democratic, too. The strongest GOP candidates aren't running; ex-Rep. Bob Schaffer will likely face off against the Democrats' Rep. Mark Udall. With major Hispanic immigration, Colorado has become more and more blue: Witness the election of Democrat Ken Salazar to the Senate in '04.
The GOP should hold Nebraska and Idaho. Only popular ex-Sen. Bob Kerrey could win Nebraska for Democrats, and he'd have to leave his job at the New School University. Idaho's in play only if Craig recants his resignation and stays in office until his term is up in '08.
But four other GOP incumbents are in big danger next year. Oregon's Sen. Gordon Smith boasts a job approval below 50 percent. He's already the only Republican senator on the West Coast.
Nearly as endangered a species is the New England Republican. Sens. John Sununu of New Hampshire and Susan Collins of Maine face '08 jeopardy, too. Sununu narrowly defeated ex-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen in '02; she might well win in '08. In the American Research Group poll, she beats Sununu by 57 percent to 29 percent; in the University of New Hampshire poll, it's 54-38.
Collins will face a tough challenge from Democratic Rep. Tom Allen. Her support of the Iraq War will likely cost her in Maine, one of the most liberal states.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Democrat-turned-Republican Sen. Norm Coleman faces a tough fight for his second term. He has backed the war and opposed abortion, unpopular positions in liberal Minnesota. His approval rating has dropped below 50 percent, with only 43 percent having a favorable opinion of him. And it looks like he won't be lucky enough to draw comedian Al Franken as his opponent after all: Attorney Mike Ciresi will likely beat Franken in the Democratic primary.
Finally, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) may be under federal indictment by next November. The FBI recently raided his home in a bribery scandal. His seat would likely stay Republican, but might slip away.
The GOP might pick up some Democratic seats, too - as long as the presidential race is not a Democratic landslide. Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) could all be in danger. And Joe Biden (D-Del.) may retire. But, in a Democratic year, all these seats may be safe.
If the Republicans lose Virginia, Nebraska, Colorado, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon and Minnesota - and pick up no new seats - the Democrats will have 57 votes in the Senate (counting Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, who votes with them). It's enough to let a new Democratic president have her way legislatively without too much trouble.
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published in the New York Post on September 12, 2007.
Democrats may hold up to 57 U.S. Senate seats after the 2008 election - almost enough to block a Republican filibuster and likely enough to assure passage of most of the Democratic program.
Last week was a bad one for the GOP. Longtime Sens. John Warner (R-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) announced that they wouldn't seek re-election in '08, joining Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) in voluntary retirement. Add to that Sen. Larry Craig's (R-Idaho) involuntary retirement.
Republicans may well lose the Warner seat - Sen. George Allen lost in '06 to Democrat Jim Webb in Virginia. The most likely Democratic candidate, ex-Gov. Mark Warner, probably can't be beaten.
The Colorado seat is likely to go Democratic, too. The strongest GOP candidates aren't running; ex-Rep. Bob Schaffer will likely face off against the Democrats' Rep. Mark Udall. With major Hispanic immigration, Colorado has become more and more blue: Witness the election of Democrat Ken Salazar to the Senate in '04.
The GOP should hold Nebraska and Idaho. Only popular ex-Sen. Bob Kerrey could win Nebraska for Democrats, and he'd have to leave his job at the New School University. Idaho's in play only if Craig recants his resignation and stays in office until his term is up in '08.
But four other GOP incumbents are in big danger next year. Oregon's Sen. Gordon Smith boasts a job approval below 50 percent. He's already the only Republican senator on the West Coast.
Nearly as endangered a species is the New England Republican. Sens. John Sununu of New Hampshire and Susan Collins of Maine face '08 jeopardy, too. Sununu narrowly defeated ex-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen in '02; she might well win in '08. In the American Research Group poll, she beats Sununu by 57 percent to 29 percent; in the University of New Hampshire poll, it's 54-38.
Collins will face a tough challenge from Democratic Rep. Tom Allen. Her support of the Iraq War will likely cost her in Maine, one of the most liberal states.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Democrat-turned-Republican Sen. Norm Coleman faces a tough fight for his second term. He has backed the war and opposed abortion, unpopular positions in liberal Minnesota. His approval rating has dropped below 50 percent, with only 43 percent having a favorable opinion of him. And it looks like he won't be lucky enough to draw comedian Al Franken as his opponent after all: Attorney Mike Ciresi will likely beat Franken in the Democratic primary.
Finally, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) may be under federal indictment by next November. The FBI recently raided his home in a bribery scandal. His seat would likely stay Republican, but might slip away.
The GOP might pick up some Democratic seats, too - as long as the presidential race is not a Democratic landslide. Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) could all be in danger. And Joe Biden (D-Del.) may retire. But, in a Democratic year, all these seats may be safe.
If the Republicans lose Virginia, Nebraska, Colorado, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon and Minnesota - and pick up no new seats - the Democrats will have 57 votes in the Senate (counting Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, who votes with them). It's enough to let a new Democratic president have her way legislatively without too much trouble.
Alert! Bill would eliminate birthright citizenship!
Alert! Bill would eliminate birthright citizenship!
HR 1940 would end the practice of granting automatic citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens. Nearly every other country, including all members of the European Union, requires that at least one parent be a citizen or permanent resident for a child to automatically become a citizen.
The Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007, by Representative Nathan Deal (R-GA), would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate birthright citizenship.
Our current policy results in over 300,000 additional citizens from anchor babies each year. The demographic impact is far greater because their families stay and bring in additional relatives. Anchor babies are eligible to sponsor their illegal alien parents and other relatives when they turn 21. Moreover, taxpayers pick up the tab for the medical costs and subsequent welfare outlays because of the child's citizenship status.
HR 1940 would end the practice of granting automatic citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens. Nearly every other country, including all members of the European Union, requires that at least one parent be a citizen or permanent resident for a child to automatically become a citizen.
The Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007, by Representative Nathan Deal (R-GA), would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate birthright citizenship.
Our current policy results in over 300,000 additional citizens from anchor babies each year. The demographic impact is far greater because their families stay and bring in additional relatives. Anchor babies are eligible to sponsor their illegal alien parents and other relatives when they turn 21. Moreover, taxpayers pick up the tab for the medical costs and subsequent welfare outlays because of the child's citizenship status.
85,000 petitions to be delivered to save American jobs!
Alert! 85,000 petitions to be delivered to save American jobs!
AMERICAN WORKERS TO DELIVER 85,000 PETITIONS TO
HILLARY CLINTON AND JOHN EDWARDS SATURDAY
Will Call For Clinton And Edwards To Sign Petition And
Stand Up For The American Worker
Saturday, American workers will gather in front of Presidential candidates John Edwards Des Moines, Iowa campaign headquarters and Hillary Clinton's Columbia, South Carolina campaign headquarters to deliver 85,000 petitions to save American jobs. The workers will ask the candidates to sign the petition and stand up for the American worker.
The petitions were signed by Americans across the country who object to Big Business hiring foreign workers here at home without even giving American workers a fair chance at the jobs. The petitions were gathered over a short period around Labor Day as the result of a Coalition for the Future American Worker TV ad. The TV ad shows actual footage of a Pittsburgh law firm teaching its corporate clients how to hire foreign workers and avoid American workers with no consequences. The petitions are being delivered as 27 million US jobs are occupied by foreign workers here at home, millions of Americans can’t find jobs and many are losing their homes.
AMERICAN WORKERS TO DELIVER 85,000 PETITIONS TO
HILLARY CLINTON AND JOHN EDWARDS SATURDAY
Will Call For Clinton And Edwards To Sign Petition And
Stand Up For The American Worker
Saturday, American workers will gather in front of Presidential candidates John Edwards Des Moines, Iowa campaign headquarters and Hillary Clinton's Columbia, South Carolina campaign headquarters to deliver 85,000 petitions to save American jobs. The workers will ask the candidates to sign the petition and stand up for the American worker.
The petitions were signed by Americans across the country who object to Big Business hiring foreign workers here at home without even giving American workers a fair chance at the jobs. The petitions were gathered over a short period around Labor Day as the result of a Coalition for the Future American Worker TV ad. The TV ad shows actual footage of a Pittsburgh law firm teaching its corporate clients how to hire foreign workers and avoid American workers with no consequences. The petitions are being delivered as 27 million US jobs are occupied by foreign workers here at home, millions of Americans can’t find jobs and many are losing their homes.
Monday, September 10, 2007
do Mexican trucks entering the US have to comply with emissions standards ?
do Mexican trucks entering the US have to comply with emissions standards ?
should we have an EPA study, halting these inbound trucks ?
www.mccainalert.com
should we have an EPA study, halting these inbound trucks ?
www.mccainalert.com
Friday, September 07, 2007
Oprah playing the race card or affirmative presidential politicing ?
Oprah playing the race card or affirmative presidential politicing ?
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Students to McCain: Too old to be prez?
Students to McCain: Too old to be prez?
An unflinching John McCain was told Tuesday by New Hampshire high school
students that he might be too old to be president and too conservative
to be respected. McCain, the Arizona senator whose presidential bid
has stumbled through the summer, countered the Concord High School
students with humor.
"Thanks for the question, you little jerk," McCain joked back to one
student who asked the 71-year-old about his age. "You're drafted."
McCain's two-day trip to New Hampshire launches his fall campaign for
the GOP nomination. During a morning visit with students, he explained
why he was not shrinking from his support for a temporary increase of
troops in Iraq and why students should pay attention.
"If this war continues much longer, there will be people in this audience
who will serve in the military, who also may be going over there
(in Iraq) or to Afghanistan," McCain told them.
He said they should watch the upcoming report on Iraq from Gen. David
Petraeus.
"It may be a seminal debate. It may be one of the most important debates
in history and it may directly affect your lives," he warned.
"He's going to say: Whether it was or was not in the beginning,
if we lose Iraq, it will be part of this struggle against radical,
Islamic extremism because al-Qaida will take over and the area
will deteriorate into chaos and destruction."
But during a town hall-style meeting, students were more interested in
pushing McCain on the environment, his support for gay rights and even his age.
"If elected, you'd be older than Ronald Reagan, making you the oldest
president. Do you ever worry you might die in office or get
Alzheimer's or some other disease that might affect your judgment?" one
student asked.
The audience groaned; McCain slid into a joke.
"I think it was one of my sons that alleged I'm getting to the point
I hide my own Easter eggs," McCain said to laughter. "When you
saw my 95-year-old mother (on a video introduction), you saw the
kind of genes I have."
He said he's a hard campaigner and his age won't be an issue.
Another student pushed him on gay rights; McCain repeated his pledge
to oppose discrimination but support for traditional marriage.
"I came here looking to see a good leader," 16-year-old William
Sleaster told McCain, earning boos from his classmates. "I don't."
McCain, a veteran of such candid exchanges in New Hampshire, smoothly
pushed forward and told the crowd not to disrespect its peer.
"I understand. I thank you," McCain said. "That's what America is all about."
At a later town hall-style event in a Bow fire station, McCain
told voters that evenings like the one they were spending are the
reason he still stands a chance.
"Money doesn't buy elections in New Hampshire, my friends. ... Questions
and comments and face to face with voters wins votes in New Hampshire,"
he said.
McCain knows. It worked for him in 2000 when he beat then-Texas Gov.
George W. Bush by 19 percentage points.
He ultimately lost the nomination to Bush.
see more at............
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070905/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_students_9
An unflinching John McCain was told Tuesday by New Hampshire high school
students that he might be too old to be president and too conservative
to be respected. McCain, the Arizona senator whose presidential bid
has stumbled through the summer, countered the Concord High School
students with humor.
"Thanks for the question, you little jerk," McCain joked back to one
student who asked the 71-year-old about his age. "You're drafted."
McCain's two-day trip to New Hampshire launches his fall campaign for
the GOP nomination. During a morning visit with students, he explained
why he was not shrinking from his support for a temporary increase of
troops in Iraq and why students should pay attention.
"If this war continues much longer, there will be people in this audience
who will serve in the military, who also may be going over there
(in Iraq) or to Afghanistan," McCain told them.
He said they should watch the upcoming report on Iraq from Gen. David
Petraeus.
"It may be a seminal debate. It may be one of the most important debates
in history and it may directly affect your lives," he warned.
"He's going to say: Whether it was or was not in the beginning,
if we lose Iraq, it will be part of this struggle against radical,
Islamic extremism because al-Qaida will take over and the area
will deteriorate into chaos and destruction."
But during a town hall-style meeting, students were more interested in
pushing McCain on the environment, his support for gay rights and even his age.
"If elected, you'd be older than Ronald Reagan, making you the oldest
president. Do you ever worry you might die in office or get
Alzheimer's or some other disease that might affect your judgment?" one
student asked.
The audience groaned; McCain slid into a joke.
"I think it was one of my sons that alleged I'm getting to the point
I hide my own Easter eggs," McCain said to laughter. "When you
saw my 95-year-old mother (on a video introduction), you saw the
kind of genes I have."
He said he's a hard campaigner and his age won't be an issue.
Another student pushed him on gay rights; McCain repeated his pledge
to oppose discrimination but support for traditional marriage.
"I came here looking to see a good leader," 16-year-old William
Sleaster told McCain, earning boos from his classmates. "I don't."
McCain, a veteran of such candid exchanges in New Hampshire, smoothly
pushed forward and told the crowd not to disrespect its peer.
"I understand. I thank you," McCain said. "That's what America is all about."
At a later town hall-style event in a Bow fire station, McCain
told voters that evenings like the one they were spending are the
reason he still stands a chance.
"Money doesn't buy elections in New Hampshire, my friends. ... Questions
and comments and face to face with voters wins votes in New Hampshire,"
he said.
McCain knows. It worked for him in 2000 when he beat then-Texas Gov.
George W. Bush by 19 percentage points.
He ultimately lost the nomination to Bush.
see more at............
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070905/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_students_9
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Mexican truckers to replace YS Teamster drivers ?
Mexican truckers to replace Teamster driver ?
holy shit, the potential for trouble and problem is huge.
I hope the Teamsters pervail.
best of luck
holy shit, the potential for trouble and problem is huge.
I hope the Teamsters pervail.
best of luck
Monday, August 27, 2007
KATRINA'S ROUGH RIDE
KATRINA'S ROUGH RIDE
Volume XII No. 22 - August 23, 2007
Without a doubt, Hurricane Katrina was the most devastating hurricane to ever hit U.S. shores. Hurricane Camille was stronger and the Galveston hurricane was more deadly, but Katrina did more than damage property and take lives. It shook the nation’s confidence in the state of our infrastructure and revealed a stunning incompetence in our disaster preparedness, recovery and reconstruction.
Now, with the two-year anniversary of this disaster just a few days away, the nation is again suffering the collective emotional hangover from yet another infrastructure tragedy – the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. And once again, politicians have clamored for a clichéd response: more money will solve our problems. It is as if there is a sign in the Capitol: “In Case of Emergency Grab Cash.” But levees aren’t built with bags of money and you can’t construct a bridge with bricks of gold, as evidenced by the fact that much of the money initially provided after Katrina has not been spent. As we’ve learned time and again, getting the money is easy; rebuilding smarter and better is not.
Several factors have combined to reduce the effectiveness of the money spent rebuilding in the Gulf. One major problem is that reconstruction efforts have been sullied by too many examples of waste, fraud, and abuse to enumerate. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provided several of the most famous examples of these problems. In the days and weeks after Katrina, FEMA spent millions shipping thousands of pounds of excess ice back and forth across the nation, then stored it for nearly two years, before finally getting rid of it last month when it was determined the ice was contaminated and couldn’t be used again anyway. FEMA also purchased far too many travel trailers to use as temporary homes, some of which had to be left in storage in Arkansas because they weren’t suitable for use in the Gulf Coast environment. Some of the extra trailers are now being dumped on the market returning pennies on the dollar to taxpayers.
Federal efforts to benefit local economies by directing reconstruction contracts to local firms have also been undercut. National firms have used all kinds of tricks to pull down these lucrative contracts, sometimes turning to the local firms who lost out in the bidding to be subcontractors. In many instances, the federal government hires a large prime contractor who hires a subcontractor who in turn hires a subcontractor, with taxpayers losing money all the way down the line and the final subcontractor who actually hammers the nail receiving a pittance of what the initial contractor was paid for the job.
Cronyism has significantly impacted what and who benefits from Katrina aid. Just last week, a Bloomberg News investigation found that Governor Haley Barbour's (R-MS) family has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from Katrina-related work, including a nephew who made a pirate’s booty in lobbying fees after his uncle Governor appointed him to a Katrina reconstruction panel
Finally, Congress continues to have its own problems prioritizing how our nation’s infrastructure dollars should be spent. Twice since Katrina, lawmakers have rejected attempts to prioritize water infrastructure funding to ensure that the most critical projects—like increased flood and storm protection in populated areas—get to the front of the line. And earlier this year, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) attempted to add more than $600 million to the Iraq emergency spending bill to build a new boondoggle navigation lock on New Orleans’s Industrial Canal. This project was vehemently opposed by the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward because their homes were flooded when the levee lining the same Industrial Canal failed in the wake of Katrina.
Volume XII No. 22 - August 23, 2007
Without a doubt, Hurricane Katrina was the most devastating hurricane to ever hit U.S. shores. Hurricane Camille was stronger and the Galveston hurricane was more deadly, but Katrina did more than damage property and take lives. It shook the nation’s confidence in the state of our infrastructure and revealed a stunning incompetence in our disaster preparedness, recovery and reconstruction.
Now, with the two-year anniversary of this disaster just a few days away, the nation is again suffering the collective emotional hangover from yet another infrastructure tragedy – the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. And once again, politicians have clamored for a clichéd response: more money will solve our problems. It is as if there is a sign in the Capitol: “In Case of Emergency Grab Cash.” But levees aren’t built with bags of money and you can’t construct a bridge with bricks of gold, as evidenced by the fact that much of the money initially provided after Katrina has not been spent. As we’ve learned time and again, getting the money is easy; rebuilding smarter and better is not.
Several factors have combined to reduce the effectiveness of the money spent rebuilding in the Gulf. One major problem is that reconstruction efforts have been sullied by too many examples of waste, fraud, and abuse to enumerate. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provided several of the most famous examples of these problems. In the days and weeks after Katrina, FEMA spent millions shipping thousands of pounds of excess ice back and forth across the nation, then stored it for nearly two years, before finally getting rid of it last month when it was determined the ice was contaminated and couldn’t be used again anyway. FEMA also purchased far too many travel trailers to use as temporary homes, some of which had to be left in storage in Arkansas because they weren’t suitable for use in the Gulf Coast environment. Some of the extra trailers are now being dumped on the market returning pennies on the dollar to taxpayers.
Federal efforts to benefit local economies by directing reconstruction contracts to local firms have also been undercut. National firms have used all kinds of tricks to pull down these lucrative contracts, sometimes turning to the local firms who lost out in the bidding to be subcontractors. In many instances, the federal government hires a large prime contractor who hires a subcontractor who in turn hires a subcontractor, with taxpayers losing money all the way down the line and the final subcontractor who actually hammers the nail receiving a pittance of what the initial contractor was paid for the job.
Cronyism has significantly impacted what and who benefits from Katrina aid. Just last week, a Bloomberg News investigation found that Governor Haley Barbour's (R-MS) family has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from Katrina-related work, including a nephew who made a pirate’s booty in lobbying fees after his uncle Governor appointed him to a Katrina reconstruction panel
Finally, Congress continues to have its own problems prioritizing how our nation’s infrastructure dollars should be spent. Twice since Katrina, lawmakers have rejected attempts to prioritize water infrastructure funding to ensure that the most critical projects—like increased flood and storm protection in populated areas—get to the front of the line. And earlier this year, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) attempted to add more than $600 million to the Iraq emergency spending bill to build a new boondoggle navigation lock on New Orleans’s Industrial Canal. This project was vehemently opposed by the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward because their homes were flooded when the levee lining the same Industrial Canal failed in the wake of Katrina.
Indiana's delegates take care of donors
August 20, 2007
Indiana's delegates take care of donors
9 House members have added $148M in pet projects into bills
By Maureen Groppe
Star Washington Bureau
August 20, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Democratic Congressman Pete Visclosky, who represents part of Northwest Indiana, has used his seat on the committee that appropriates federal dollars to steer $12.5 million to out-of-state defense companies that contributed to his campaign either through their employees or lobbyists.
His colleague on the other side of the aisle, Republican Dan Burton, is asking for $2.5 million in defense spending for a local autism center named for his grandson.
Both requests are among the $148 million in projects Indiana's nine U.S. House members have inserted into federal spending bills. Called "earmarks," the projects must survive the process of reconciling the House and Senate versions of the spending legislation. They also must survive veto threats by President Bush, who says most of the bills cost too much.
Although recent influence-peddling scandals have focused more attention on funding for special projects, the fundamental nature of earmarks hasn't changed. They are distributed based more on clout -- including lawmakers' committee assignments, whether their party is in the majority and whether they face a competitive re-election bid -- than on comparative merit. And those in the best position to get earmarks are magnets for campaign contributions.
Visclosky, a 12-term House member who sits on the Appropriations Committee that writes the annual spending bills, requested $89.5 million -- 61 percent of the money Indiana delegation members inserted into the spending bills. His portion is about $22 million more than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., got included in the bills.
The state's four other Democrats didn't do as well as Visclosky did, but each got about $10 million worth of projects into the bills, putting them ahead of the state's four Republicans.
The largest Indiana earmark in the legislation -- $6.8 million for White River flood damage reduction in Indianapolis -- was inserted by Rep. Julia Carson, D-Indianapolis. Rep. Baron Hill, D-Seymour, was responsible for the smallest -- $11,000 for security cameras and door locks for the Sellersburg Police Department.
Among Republican delegation members, the projects requested by Rep. Mike Pence, who has criticized earmarks and is not facing a tough re-election, are worth the least -- $3.2 million.
The Senate is further behind in the budget process. But early versions of some Senate budget bills show Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., have won approval for $17.6 million in projects they've requested together and $2.8 million in projects they requested individually.
Visclosky's power surge
Visclosky, who heads an appropriations subcommittee that produces one of the 12 annual spending bills, has collected $728,493 in campaign contributions so far this year.
That's about twice what he raised in an equivalent period in 2005 when he didn't chair the subcommittee responsible for funding energy and water projects. Only 25 lawmakers in the House raised more through June, according to disclosure reports.
Visclosky's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Nearly two-thirds of the $19.5 million Visclosky earmarked for companies outside Indiana is destined for seven firms represented by PMA Group, a top defense lobbying shop whose roster includes many former congressional and Pentagon aides. A former top Visclosky aide, Richard Kaelin, is now a lobbyist at PMA Group.
Visclosky's campaign committee received $137,750 from PMA Group and its employees from 1989 through 2006, the largest amount the committee has received from a single source, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions.
The lobbying company, which declined to comment, has given another $40,000 to Visclosky's personal campaign and political action committees so far this year, according to disclosure reports. In addition, the 13 companies both inside and outside Indiana that are represented by the PMA Group and would receive earmarks requested by Visclosky gave at least $96,900 to Visclosky through June.
Applied Global Technologies, headquartered in Florida, got $2.5 million at Visclosky's request for video teletraining for the military. Executive Vice President Mike Garvey said the company sought Visclosky's help, even though the project doesn't have an Indiana connection.
"We go on the Hill with some folks that we use on Capitol Hill and we look for folks that like to support different types of military operations," Garvey said.
Garvey said he doesn't know whether campaign contributions from company officials make it easier to get earmarks.
"I'm not one of the people that actually contribute to his campaign," he said.
However, Visclosky's campaign disclosure report shows Garvey gave the maximum $2,300 contribution in April, and two other company officers did the same in May.
General Atomics, another out-of-state company that benefited from Visclosky's help -- and gave to his campaign -- said the special project money earmarked for the company would benefit Indiana.
Gary Hopper, vice president of the company's Washington operations, said some of the $1 million it would receive would go to Purdue University, which is helping develop a fuel cell soldiers could carry on their belts.
PMA Group's clients include companies that are part of a high-tech business incubator in northwest Indiana created by Purdue University with money Visclosky secured in previous years' spending bills.
Visclosky got $6.9 million for construction of the Purdue Technology Center of Northwest Indiana, which opened in 2005. Five of the seven initial companies were PMA clients whose headquarters were elsewhere but who opened operations in Northwest Indiana.
Visclosky has continued to look out for the five companies, getting at least $12 million for them in this year's defense spending bill.
One company, 21st Century Systems, which has offices in nine states, said it commonly works with universities like Purdue. A company official said its involvement in the center is not due to Visclosky.
Spokesman Larry Jackson said the small company needs help from Congress because, although it won competitive rounds of funding for its intelligent software security system, it's difficult to get funding for the final phase.
Jackson said the $19,500 company employees have contributed to Visclosky this year is common for companies that work with the government.
"It is the way the nation's system is set up," Jackson said. "It is kind of a cost of doing business in some ways."
Burton, who requested $7.6 million for earmarks, leads the delegation's Republicans in the dollar value of special projects in the spending bills. The largest chunk, $2.5 million, would go to the Christian Sarkine Autism Treatment Center, a project included in the spending bill for the Defense Department.
"It's not that autism or cancer isn't laudable research," said Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "It's just unclear that it's something that the Defense Department should be spending its dollars on when men and women are in harm's way."
A high priority for Burton
Burton spokesman Clark Rehme responded: "Helping autistic children is one of Congressman Burton's highest priorities."
Burton also requested $200,000 for the center in the bill that funds health programs. Ellis said it's possible that Burton went after funding in both bills because the panel writing the defense bill was being more generous with earmarks.
Jon Mills, spokesman for Clarian Health Partners, the Indianapolis-based hospital system that includes the autism center, said the federal funding Burton has gotten for the center over the years has been crucial.
"Financially, it's very tough to treat these children," Mills said. "We just want to tip our hat to him and extend our gratitude."
Indiana's delegates take care of donors
9 House members have added $148M in pet projects into bills
By Maureen Groppe
Star Washington Bureau
August 20, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Democratic Congressman Pete Visclosky, who represents part of Northwest Indiana, has used his seat on the committee that appropriates federal dollars to steer $12.5 million to out-of-state defense companies that contributed to his campaign either through their employees or lobbyists.
His colleague on the other side of the aisle, Republican Dan Burton, is asking for $2.5 million in defense spending for a local autism center named for his grandson.
Both requests are among the $148 million in projects Indiana's nine U.S. House members have inserted into federal spending bills. Called "earmarks," the projects must survive the process of reconciling the House and Senate versions of the spending legislation. They also must survive veto threats by President Bush, who says most of the bills cost too much.
Although recent influence-peddling scandals have focused more attention on funding for special projects, the fundamental nature of earmarks hasn't changed. They are distributed based more on clout -- including lawmakers' committee assignments, whether their party is in the majority and whether they face a competitive re-election bid -- than on comparative merit. And those in the best position to get earmarks are magnets for campaign contributions.
Visclosky, a 12-term House member who sits on the Appropriations Committee that writes the annual spending bills, requested $89.5 million -- 61 percent of the money Indiana delegation members inserted into the spending bills. His portion is about $22 million more than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., got included in the bills.
The state's four other Democrats didn't do as well as Visclosky did, but each got about $10 million worth of projects into the bills, putting them ahead of the state's four Republicans.
The largest Indiana earmark in the legislation -- $6.8 million for White River flood damage reduction in Indianapolis -- was inserted by Rep. Julia Carson, D-Indianapolis. Rep. Baron Hill, D-Seymour, was responsible for the smallest -- $11,000 for security cameras and door locks for the Sellersburg Police Department.
Among Republican delegation members, the projects requested by Rep. Mike Pence, who has criticized earmarks and is not facing a tough re-election, are worth the least -- $3.2 million.
The Senate is further behind in the budget process. But early versions of some Senate budget bills show Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., have won approval for $17.6 million in projects they've requested together and $2.8 million in projects they requested individually.
Visclosky's power surge
Visclosky, who heads an appropriations subcommittee that produces one of the 12 annual spending bills, has collected $728,493 in campaign contributions so far this year.
That's about twice what he raised in an equivalent period in 2005 when he didn't chair the subcommittee responsible for funding energy and water projects. Only 25 lawmakers in the House raised more through June, according to disclosure reports.
Visclosky's office did not respond to requests for comment.
Nearly two-thirds of the $19.5 million Visclosky earmarked for companies outside Indiana is destined for seven firms represented by PMA Group, a top defense lobbying shop whose roster includes many former congressional and Pentagon aides. A former top Visclosky aide, Richard Kaelin, is now a lobbyist at PMA Group.
Visclosky's campaign committee received $137,750 from PMA Group and its employees from 1989 through 2006, the largest amount the committee has received from a single source, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions.
The lobbying company, which declined to comment, has given another $40,000 to Visclosky's personal campaign and political action committees so far this year, according to disclosure reports. In addition, the 13 companies both inside and outside Indiana that are represented by the PMA Group and would receive earmarks requested by Visclosky gave at least $96,900 to Visclosky through June.
Applied Global Technologies, headquartered in Florida, got $2.5 million at Visclosky's request for video teletraining for the military. Executive Vice President Mike Garvey said the company sought Visclosky's help, even though the project doesn't have an Indiana connection.
"We go on the Hill with some folks that we use on Capitol Hill and we look for folks that like to support different types of military operations," Garvey said.
Garvey said he doesn't know whether campaign contributions from company officials make it easier to get earmarks.
"I'm not one of the people that actually contribute to his campaign," he said.
However, Visclosky's campaign disclosure report shows Garvey gave the maximum $2,300 contribution in April, and two other company officers did the same in May.
General Atomics, another out-of-state company that benefited from Visclosky's help -- and gave to his campaign -- said the special project money earmarked for the company would benefit Indiana.
Gary Hopper, vice president of the company's Washington operations, said some of the $1 million it would receive would go to Purdue University, which is helping develop a fuel cell soldiers could carry on their belts.
PMA Group's clients include companies that are part of a high-tech business incubator in northwest Indiana created by Purdue University with money Visclosky secured in previous years' spending bills.
Visclosky got $6.9 million for construction of the Purdue Technology Center of Northwest Indiana, which opened in 2005. Five of the seven initial companies were PMA clients whose headquarters were elsewhere but who opened operations in Northwest Indiana.
Visclosky has continued to look out for the five companies, getting at least $12 million for them in this year's defense spending bill.
One company, 21st Century Systems, which has offices in nine states, said it commonly works with universities like Purdue. A company official said its involvement in the center is not due to Visclosky.
Spokesman Larry Jackson said the small company needs help from Congress because, although it won competitive rounds of funding for its intelligent software security system, it's difficult to get funding for the final phase.
Jackson said the $19,500 company employees have contributed to Visclosky this year is common for companies that work with the government.
"It is the way the nation's system is set up," Jackson said. "It is kind of a cost of doing business in some ways."
Burton, who requested $7.6 million for earmarks, leads the delegation's Republicans in the dollar value of special projects in the spending bills. The largest chunk, $2.5 million, would go to the Christian Sarkine Autism Treatment Center, a project included in the spending bill for the Defense Department.
"It's not that autism or cancer isn't laudable research," said Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "It's just unclear that it's something that the Defense Department should be spending its dollars on when men and women are in harm's way."
A high priority for Burton
Burton spokesman Clark Rehme responded: "Helping autistic children is one of Congressman Burton's highest priorities."
Burton also requested $200,000 for the center in the bill that funds health programs. Ellis said it's possible that Burton went after funding in both bills because the panel writing the defense bill was being more generous with earmarks.
Jon Mills, spokesman for Clarian Health Partners, the Indianapolis-based hospital system that includes the autism center, said the federal funding Burton has gotten for the center over the years has been crucial.
"Financially, it's very tough to treat these children," Mills said. "We just want to tip our hat to him and extend our gratitude."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned
WACO, Texas (AP) — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned, officials said Monday, ending a monthslong standoff with critics who questioned his honesty and competence at the helm of the Justice Department.
Republicans and Democrats alike had demanded his resignation over the botched handling of FBI terror investigations and the firings of U.S. attorneys, but President Bush had defiantly stood by his Texas friend until accepting his resignation Friday, according to senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Justice Department planned a news conference for 10:30 a.m. EDT, in Washington. Bush planned to discuss Gonzales' departure at his Crawford, Texas, ranch shortly thereafter.
Solicitor General Paul Clement will be acting attorney general until a replacement is found, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the announcement.
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff was among those mentioned as possible successors. However, a senior administration official said the matter had not been raised with Chertoff. Bush leaves Washington next Monday for Australia, and Gonzales' replacement might not be named by then, the official said.
"Better late than never," said Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, summing up the response of many in Washington to Gonzales' resignation.
Gonzales served more than two years as the nation's first Hispanic attorney general.
Bush steadfastly — and at times angrily — refused to give in to critics, even from his own GOP, who argued that Gonzales should go. Earlier this month at a news conference, the president grew irritated when asked about accountability in his administration and turned the tables on the Democratic Congress.
"Implicit in your questions is that Al Gonzales did something wrong. I haven't seen Congress say he's done anything wrong," Bush said testily.
Gonzales, 52, called Bush on Friday to inform him of his resignation, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to not pre-empt Gonzales' statement. The president had Gonzales come to lunch at his ranch on Sunday as a parting gesture.
Gonzales, whom Bush once considered for appointment to the Supreme Court, is the fourth top-ranking administration official to leave since November 2006. Donald H. Rumsfeld, an architect of the Iraq war, resigned as defense secretary one day after the November elections. Paul Wolfowitz agreed in May to step down as president of the World Bank after an ethics inquiry. And top Bush adviser Karl Rove earlier this month announced that he was stepping down.
Reacting to Monday's developments, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said that Gonzales' department had "suffered a severe crisis of leadership that allowed our justice system to be corrupted by political influence."
Gonzales could not satisfy critics who said he had lost credibility over the Justice Department's handling of warrantless wiretaps related to the threat of terrorism and the firings of several U.S. attorneys.
As attorney general and earlier as White House counsel, Gonzales pushed for expanded presidential powers, including the eavesdropping authority. He drafted controversial rules for military war tribunals and sought to limit the legal rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay — prompting lawsuits by civil libertarians who said the government was violating the Constitution in its pursuit of terrorists.
There were indications that the development came suddenly. Bush normally handles Cabinet resignations with efficiency, only allowing news of them to leak when a successor has been chosen and appearing with both the person departing and the replacement when the public announcement was made. That was not to be the case this time, the official said.
"Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job. He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say no to Karl Rove," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"This resignation is not the end of the story. Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House," Reid warned.
The flap over the fired prosecutors proved to be the final straw for Gonzales, whose truthfulness in testimony to Congress was drawn into question.
Lawmakers said the dismissals of the federal prosecutors appeared to be politically motivated, and some of the fired U.S. attorneys said they felt pressured to investigate Democrats before elections. Gonzales maintained that the dismissals were based the prosecutors' lackluster performance records.
Thousands of documents released by the Justice Department show a White House plot, hatched shortly after the 2004 elections, to replace U.S. attorneys. At one point, senior White House officials, including Rove, suggested replacing all 93 prosecutors. In December 2006, eight were ordered to resign.
In several House and Senate hearings into the firings, Gonzales and other Justice Department officials failed to fully explain the ousters without contradicting each other.
During his congressional testimony, Gonzales answered "I don't know" and "I can't recall" scores of times and even some Republicans said his testimony was evasive. Bush, however, praised Gonzales' performance and said the attorney general was "honest" and "honorable."
U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and can be removed. But congressional Democrats said politics played an unusually critical role in the ouster of several prosecutors.
In 2004, Gonzales pressed to reauthorize a secret domestic spying program over the Justice Department's protests. Gonzales was White House counsel at the time and during a dramatic hospital confrontation he and then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card sought approval from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in intensive care. Ashcroft refused.
The White House subsequently reauthorized the program without the department's approval. Later, Bush ordered changes to the program to help the department defend its legality. The domestic surveillance program was later declared unconstitutional by a federal judge and since has been changed to require court approval before surveillance can be conducted.
Similarly, Gonzales found himself on the defensive in early March for FBI's improper and, in some cases, illegal prying into Americans' personal information during terror and spy probes. On March 9, the Justice Department's inspector general released an audit showing that FBI agents, over a three-year period, demanded telephone and Internet companies to hand over their customers' personal information without official authorization.
The damning audit also found that the FBI had improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances, and concluded that it underreported to Congress how often it used national security letters to ask businesses to turn over customer data. The letters are administrative subpoenas that do not require a judge's approval.
Gonzales declared himself upset and frustrated over the findings. But lawmakers said they had begun to lose confidence in him.
Republicans and Democrats alike had demanded his resignation over the botched handling of FBI terror investigations and the firings of U.S. attorneys, but President Bush had defiantly stood by his Texas friend until accepting his resignation Friday, according to senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Justice Department planned a news conference for 10:30 a.m. EDT, in Washington. Bush planned to discuss Gonzales' departure at his Crawford, Texas, ranch shortly thereafter.
Solicitor General Paul Clement will be acting attorney general until a replacement is found, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the announcement.
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff was among those mentioned as possible successors. However, a senior administration official said the matter had not been raised with Chertoff. Bush leaves Washington next Monday for Australia, and Gonzales' replacement might not be named by then, the official said.
"Better late than never," said Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, summing up the response of many in Washington to Gonzales' resignation.
Gonzales served more than two years as the nation's first Hispanic attorney general.
Bush steadfastly — and at times angrily — refused to give in to critics, even from his own GOP, who argued that Gonzales should go. Earlier this month at a news conference, the president grew irritated when asked about accountability in his administration and turned the tables on the Democratic Congress.
"Implicit in your questions is that Al Gonzales did something wrong. I haven't seen Congress say he's done anything wrong," Bush said testily.
Gonzales, 52, called Bush on Friday to inform him of his resignation, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to not pre-empt Gonzales' statement. The president had Gonzales come to lunch at his ranch on Sunday as a parting gesture.
Gonzales, whom Bush once considered for appointment to the Supreme Court, is the fourth top-ranking administration official to leave since November 2006. Donald H. Rumsfeld, an architect of the Iraq war, resigned as defense secretary one day after the November elections. Paul Wolfowitz agreed in May to step down as president of the World Bank after an ethics inquiry. And top Bush adviser Karl Rove earlier this month announced that he was stepping down.
Reacting to Monday's developments, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said that Gonzales' department had "suffered a severe crisis of leadership that allowed our justice system to be corrupted by political influence."
Gonzales could not satisfy critics who said he had lost credibility over the Justice Department's handling of warrantless wiretaps related to the threat of terrorism and the firings of several U.S. attorneys.
As attorney general and earlier as White House counsel, Gonzales pushed for expanded presidential powers, including the eavesdropping authority. He drafted controversial rules for military war tribunals and sought to limit the legal rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay — prompting lawsuits by civil libertarians who said the government was violating the Constitution in its pursuit of terrorists.
There were indications that the development came suddenly. Bush normally handles Cabinet resignations with efficiency, only allowing news of them to leak when a successor has been chosen and appearing with both the person departing and the replacement when the public announcement was made. That was not to be the case this time, the official said.
"Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job. He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say no to Karl Rove," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"This resignation is not the end of the story. Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House," Reid warned.
The flap over the fired prosecutors proved to be the final straw for Gonzales, whose truthfulness in testimony to Congress was drawn into question.
Lawmakers said the dismissals of the federal prosecutors appeared to be politically motivated, and some of the fired U.S. attorneys said they felt pressured to investigate Democrats before elections. Gonzales maintained that the dismissals were based the prosecutors' lackluster performance records.
Thousands of documents released by the Justice Department show a White House plot, hatched shortly after the 2004 elections, to replace U.S. attorneys. At one point, senior White House officials, including Rove, suggested replacing all 93 prosecutors. In December 2006, eight were ordered to resign.
In several House and Senate hearings into the firings, Gonzales and other Justice Department officials failed to fully explain the ousters without contradicting each other.
During his congressional testimony, Gonzales answered "I don't know" and "I can't recall" scores of times and even some Republicans said his testimony was evasive. Bush, however, praised Gonzales' performance and said the attorney general was "honest" and "honorable."
U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and can be removed. But congressional Democrats said politics played an unusually critical role in the ouster of several prosecutors.
In 2004, Gonzales pressed to reauthorize a secret domestic spying program over the Justice Department's protests. Gonzales was White House counsel at the time and during a dramatic hospital confrontation he and then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card sought approval from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in intensive care. Ashcroft refused.
The White House subsequently reauthorized the program without the department's approval. Later, Bush ordered changes to the program to help the department defend its legality. The domestic surveillance program was later declared unconstitutional by a federal judge and since has been changed to require court approval before surveillance can be conducted.
Similarly, Gonzales found himself on the defensive in early March for FBI's improper and, in some cases, illegal prying into Americans' personal information during terror and spy probes. On March 9, the Justice Department's inspector general released an audit showing that FBI agents, over a three-year period, demanded telephone and Internet companies to hand over their customers' personal information without official authorization.
The damning audit also found that the FBI had improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances, and concluded that it underreported to Congress how often it used national security letters to ask businesses to turn over customer data. The letters are administrative subpoenas that do not require a judge's approval.
Gonzales declared himself upset and frustrated over the findings. But lawmakers said they had begun to lose confidence in him.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
shit head senator Mccain now wants to secure the border ?
shit head senator Mccain now wants to secure the border ?
where's this shithead been the last few years n Arizona?
he only shows to vote less than 1/2 of the time in the senate, and
he sure ain't representing the concerns of legal Arizonians?
who gonna replace him next election , after he loses his 2nd bid for the president
where's this shithead been the last few years n Arizona?
he only shows to vote less than 1/2 of the time in the senate, and
he sure ain't representing the concerns of legal Arizonians?
who gonna replace him next election , after he loses his 2nd bid for the president
the lone protestor
the lone protestor
one man's story of the impact of illegal workers and his business.
http://www.theloneprotester.blogspot.com/
one man's story of the impact of illegal workers and his business.
http://www.theloneprotester.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
winning Mega MIllions lotto numbers for 7/31/07
07/31/2007 Mega Millions
05-18-37-39-43 gold 42
winning Mega MIllions lotto numbers for 7/31/07
www.needto.net
05-18-37-39-43 gold 42
winning Mega MIllions lotto numbers for 7/31/07
www.needto.net
HILLARY GOOFED IN DEM DEBATE
HILLARY GOOFED IN DEM DEBATE
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
July 30, 2007
(This column has not been published, but is being sent exclusively to our list of subscribers)
The polling is in and Hillary made a big mistake in her sharp disagreement with Obama over whether the president should meet with leaders of rogue nations. According to the Rasmussen Poll, Democrats agree with Obama over Hillary by 55%-22%. Without a poll to pretest her comments, Hillary instinctively took the “insider” position that the president should only meet with such leaders after extensive probing by subordinates to assure that the meetings would be productive. But she was wrong. Democrats want the president to meet with leaders of such nations without pre conditions.
At the South Carolina Democratic Presidential debate, Hillary and Obama clashed over Obama’s statement that he would meet with leaders of rogue nations like North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran if he were president. Hillary said that she would not do so and would not allow herself to be used for “propaganda purposes.”
All week, Hillary pounded out her message, enlisting former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and her possible future Secretary of State Dick Holbrooke to speak up on behalf of her position. She blasted Obama as “naïve,” one of her few direct attacks on her opponent. For his party, Obama ridiculed her position as “Bush Cheney lite,” a comment that got under Hillary’s skin.
The exchange had little real significance during the two hour debate, but Hillary’s obsession with the issue all week has given it real importance. She made a big mistake in the debate and amplified it all week.
Why? Perhaps Hillary is not using polling the way Bill always did – to pretest and post test all important issues. If she had, she would not have locked into the minority position among Democratic primary voters and would not have stayed with that view all week.
Maybe her campaign staff was caught flatfooted for once.
The fact is that this week’s debate was the first time the two Democrats have clashed seriously since the contest began early this year. This round definitely goes to Obama.
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
July 30, 2007
(This column has not been published, but is being sent exclusively to our list of subscribers)
The polling is in and Hillary made a big mistake in her sharp disagreement with Obama over whether the president should meet with leaders of rogue nations. According to the Rasmussen Poll, Democrats agree with Obama over Hillary by 55%-22%. Without a poll to pretest her comments, Hillary instinctively took the “insider” position that the president should only meet with such leaders after extensive probing by subordinates to assure that the meetings would be productive. But she was wrong. Democrats want the president to meet with leaders of such nations without pre conditions.
At the South Carolina Democratic Presidential debate, Hillary and Obama clashed over Obama’s statement that he would meet with leaders of rogue nations like North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran if he were president. Hillary said that she would not do so and would not allow herself to be used for “propaganda purposes.”
All week, Hillary pounded out her message, enlisting former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and her possible future Secretary of State Dick Holbrooke to speak up on behalf of her position. She blasted Obama as “naïve,” one of her few direct attacks on her opponent. For his party, Obama ridiculed her position as “Bush Cheney lite,” a comment that got under Hillary’s skin.
The exchange had little real significance during the two hour debate, but Hillary’s obsession with the issue all week has given it real importance. She made a big mistake in the debate and amplified it all week.
Why? Perhaps Hillary is not using polling the way Bill always did – to pretest and post test all important issues. If she had, she would not have locked into the minority position among Democratic primary voters and would not have stayed with that view all week.
Maybe her campaign staff was caught flatfooted for once.
The fact is that this week’s debate was the first time the two Democrats have clashed seriously since the contest began early this year. This round definitely goes to Obama.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
excerpt from OUTRAGE about the ACLU
OUTRAGE, Dick Morris' new book describes how illegal immigration, Congress, the UN, student lending companies, drug companies, insurance firms, big tobacco, the teachers union, and trade protection are all ripping us off....and what to do about it.
Read this excerpt from OUTRAGE about the ACLU:
"The ACLU is all for freedom of speech - as long as no one's talking about them...There are signs that the ACLU is, to put it mildly, acting in a way that's uncharacteristic for a civil liberties group...Surveillance of (ACLU) staff computers and emails by the ACLU? Are we missing something here? Compiling files on internal political enemies, attempting to stifle free speech that is critical of the organization or its staff, data mining for prospective donors, purging dissidents who dare to disagree...Is that what the ACLU has become? It sounds more like the Communist Party."
OUTRAGE names names and gives you all the facts about how members of Congress work little, take free trips, and enrich themselves and their family.
Read this excerpt from OUTRAGE about the ACLU:
"The ACLU is all for freedom of speech - as long as no one's talking about them...There are signs that the ACLU is, to put it mildly, acting in a way that's uncharacteristic for a civil liberties group...Surveillance of (ACLU) staff computers and emails by the ACLU? Are we missing something here? Compiling files on internal political enemies, attempting to stifle free speech that is critical of the organization or its staff, data mining for prospective donors, purging dissidents who dare to disagree...Is that what the ACLU has become? It sounds more like the Communist Party."
OUTRAGE names names and gives you all the facts about how members of Congress work little, take free trips, and enrich themselves and their family.
HEALTHCARE: HOUSE POSTURES WHILE SENATE LEGISLATES
HEALTHCARE: HOUSE POSTURES WHILE SENATE LEGISLATES
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on July 25, 2007.
It took more than a decade of constant agitation for the elderly to win the right to charge their prescription medications to Medicare. Republican reluctance to spend the money combined with a Democratic willingness to put off action so as to keep the issue in partisan play. The result was that it took a Republican president to undo the political knot and pass a plan that finally offered senior citizens some relief.
We are now watching House Democrats play the same partisan game with the renewal of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which expires on Sept. 30. Meanwhile, the Senate on the one hand and President Bush on the other appear to have crafted a generous extension of the program that may now fall prey to the House Democratic desire to provoke a presidential veto — and the children be damned!
Bush opened the game by proposing a $5 billion expansion of the program to cover more children and to limit the focus of the program to child health insurance. This highly successful program, initiated in the middle of the Clinton administration, has now succeeded in reducing the proportion of uncovered children to less than 10 percent (many of whom could get Medicaid if their parents bothered to apply). States have moved to use the program to expand coverage of adults without insurance and the Bush administration wished to restrict the practice.
But the Senate went further and is pushing a $35 billion program, financed by an increase of at least 60 cents in the federal cigarette tax. The extra money would bring the five-year cost to $60 billion. Crafted by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) along with Democrats Max Baucus (Mont.) and Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), the plan would make child coverage virtually universal and permit states to access food stamp and other assistance program data to locate uncovered children and bring them into the program. But it would restrict the coverage of adults.
Raising the tobacco levy is a good thing to do anyway, even if you don’t need the money. A higher cigarette tax has been demonstrably shown to cut teen smoking, and the increase, which would bring the total levy to $1 per pack, is a good step to improve national healthcare.
Bush threatened a veto, but seems to have backed off and appears able to live with the Senate bill.
So the House decided to pass a bill he couldn’t sign. By deliberately provoking a veto, they hope to demonstrate what a heartless Scrooge Bush really is.
Not only is the House upping the price tag to $50 billion, it is gratuitously courting the favor of the medical establishment by eliminating the cuts in physician fees scheduled for the next few years as part of the effort to save Medicare without cutting benefits. The House bill also opens the doors of the program wide to adult coverage. Covering adults is a good idea. It would be great to cover all Americans without having to fundamentally alter our healthcare system. That way, socialist utopians like Hillary couldn’t use the uncovered population as an excuse to make healthcare a government-dominated program.
But House leaders know full well that Bush won’t sign the bill that repeals his Medicare physician fee cuts and opens the program to adult coverage. But they are determined, nevertheless, to jerry-rig a bill that Bush can’t sign by festooning it with provisions that not only endanger the future of the Medicare program they profess to adore but also may kindle a new round of medical cost inflation they profess to abhor.
The House should just back off. It is a major accomplishment in healthcare, the new third rail of our politics, to expand SCHIP to cover all children. Forcing the administration to give up its hard-won gains on Medicare cost containment to swallow the program is deliberately unrealistic.
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on July 25, 2007.
It took more than a decade of constant agitation for the elderly to win the right to charge their prescription medications to Medicare. Republican reluctance to spend the money combined with a Democratic willingness to put off action so as to keep the issue in partisan play. The result was that it took a Republican president to undo the political knot and pass a plan that finally offered senior citizens some relief.
We are now watching House Democrats play the same partisan game with the renewal of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which expires on Sept. 30. Meanwhile, the Senate on the one hand and President Bush on the other appear to have crafted a generous extension of the program that may now fall prey to the House Democratic desire to provoke a presidential veto — and the children be damned!
Bush opened the game by proposing a $5 billion expansion of the program to cover more children and to limit the focus of the program to child health insurance. This highly successful program, initiated in the middle of the Clinton administration, has now succeeded in reducing the proportion of uncovered children to less than 10 percent (many of whom could get Medicaid if their parents bothered to apply). States have moved to use the program to expand coverage of adults without insurance and the Bush administration wished to restrict the practice.
But the Senate went further and is pushing a $35 billion program, financed by an increase of at least 60 cents in the federal cigarette tax. The extra money would bring the five-year cost to $60 billion. Crafted by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) along with Democrats Max Baucus (Mont.) and Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), the plan would make child coverage virtually universal and permit states to access food stamp and other assistance program data to locate uncovered children and bring them into the program. But it would restrict the coverage of adults.
Raising the tobacco levy is a good thing to do anyway, even if you don’t need the money. A higher cigarette tax has been demonstrably shown to cut teen smoking, and the increase, which would bring the total levy to $1 per pack, is a good step to improve national healthcare.
Bush threatened a veto, but seems to have backed off and appears able to live with the Senate bill.
So the House decided to pass a bill he couldn’t sign. By deliberately provoking a veto, they hope to demonstrate what a heartless Scrooge Bush really is.
Not only is the House upping the price tag to $50 billion, it is gratuitously courting the favor of the medical establishment by eliminating the cuts in physician fees scheduled for the next few years as part of the effort to save Medicare without cutting benefits. The House bill also opens the doors of the program wide to adult coverage. Covering adults is a good idea. It would be great to cover all Americans without having to fundamentally alter our healthcare system. That way, socialist utopians like Hillary couldn’t use the uncovered population as an excuse to make healthcare a government-dominated program.
But House leaders know full well that Bush won’t sign the bill that repeals his Medicare physician fee cuts and opens the program to adult coverage. But they are determined, nevertheless, to jerry-rig a bill that Bush can’t sign by festooning it with provisions that not only endanger the future of the Medicare program they profess to adore but also may kindle a new round of medical cost inflation they profess to abhor.
The House should just back off. It is a major accomplishment in healthcare, the new third rail of our politics, to expand SCHIP to cover all children. Forcing the administration to give up its hard-won gains on Medicare cost containment to swallow the program is deliberately unrealistic.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Fred Thompson’s son has a noshow $170k yr job ?
Fred Thompson’s son has a noshow $170k yr job ?
What did Fred Thompson’s son, Daniel, do to earn the more than $170,000 that his firm, Daniel Thompson Associates, was paid from his father’s federal political action committee, the Fred D. Thompson PAC?
The records suggest he did next to nothing.
The elder Thompson, an undeclared presidential candidate, left the Senate at the start of 2003. He started The Fred D. Thompson PAC with $378,601
transferred from his senatorial campaign committee.
It’s perfectly legal for a former public official to roll leftover campaign funds over to a PAC and use that money to support candidates. Yet very little
of these funds actually went to candidates - the bulk of the money was
paid to Daniel Thompson.
Daniel Thompson did not reply to efforts to contact him.
From the month the PAC started (April 2003), Daniel Thompson Associates began drawing a monthly retainer of $4,000 for management consultant services.
In its first election cycle, the PAC made a total of only $18,000 in
contributions to federal candidates and about $8,000 in contributions to
Republican committees and non-federal candidates. So, the fund spent about
7 percent of its assets on candidates and elections in its first two years
- and about 25 percent on Thompson’s son.
The next cycle (2005-2006), the fund gave $21,200 to federal candidates and about $27,500 to non-federal candidates and party committees - and $84,000 to Daniel Thompson’s firm.
To date, the PAC has paid $176,000 to the son’s firm, $46,000 for federal races, $35,000 in other political donations and $62,700 to charity. The senator’s son,
in other words, accounts for more than half the outlays.
PAC funds can be used to hire relatives. In 2001, the Federal Election Commission ruled that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. could use federal campaign funds to
hire his wife as his campaign manager. But Mrs. Jackson was experienced
in running campaigns and raising funds and had worked on a congressional staff.
It clearly wasn’t a no-show job.
The FEC ruled that a campaign could hire a family member at market value for bona fide campaign services.
But it’s hard to find any evidence of bona fide work done by Daniel Thompson Associates for his father’s PAC. Presumably, Fred Thompson made the
decision about what money would go to candidates - especially since
many of them were his former colleagues.
Maybe Daniel Thompson wrote the 20 checks a year that the PAC mailed out.
How much time or skill could that take? Not $85,000 a year worth.
The PAC appears to have had no office, no phone and no employees other than Daniel Thompson. Minor amounts went for spot telephone and Internet bills, and for an accountant.
And the PAC did no real fund-raising. In its four years, it raised just $700 - two contributions from former Fred Thompson associates. All other income appears to have been interest payments.
The fund did pay a nearly $7,000 to Aristotle Publishing, a company that licenses software for Internet fund-raising, including a $1,000 licensing fee in the fund’s last days several months ago. The initial fees were for conversion, training, and support.
Interestingly enough, Daniel Thompson is now a professional fund-raiser for Lawson Associates in Nashville. According to the firm’s Web site, he consults with clients all over the country to raise funds for non-profit groups in their capital and endowment campaigns.
Too bad he couldn’t help Dad raise money, too.
www.dickmorris.com
www.mccainalert.com
What did Fred Thompson’s son, Daniel, do to earn the more than $170,000 that his firm, Daniel Thompson Associates, was paid from his father’s federal political action committee, the Fred D. Thompson PAC?
The records suggest he did next to nothing.
The elder Thompson, an undeclared presidential candidate, left the Senate at the start of 2003. He started The Fred D. Thompson PAC with $378,601
transferred from his senatorial campaign committee.
It’s perfectly legal for a former public official to roll leftover campaign funds over to a PAC and use that money to support candidates. Yet very little
of these funds actually went to candidates - the bulk of the money was
paid to Daniel Thompson.
Daniel Thompson did not reply to efforts to contact him.
From the month the PAC started (April 2003), Daniel Thompson Associates began drawing a monthly retainer of $4,000 for management consultant services.
In its first election cycle, the PAC made a total of only $18,000 in
contributions to federal candidates and about $8,000 in contributions to
Republican committees and non-federal candidates. So, the fund spent about
7 percent of its assets on candidates and elections in its first two years
- and about 25 percent on Thompson’s son.
The next cycle (2005-2006), the fund gave $21,200 to federal candidates and about $27,500 to non-federal candidates and party committees - and $84,000 to Daniel Thompson’s firm.
To date, the PAC has paid $176,000 to the son’s firm, $46,000 for federal races, $35,000 in other political donations and $62,700 to charity. The senator’s son,
in other words, accounts for more than half the outlays.
PAC funds can be used to hire relatives. In 2001, the Federal Election Commission ruled that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. could use federal campaign funds to
hire his wife as his campaign manager. But Mrs. Jackson was experienced
in running campaigns and raising funds and had worked on a congressional staff.
It clearly wasn’t a no-show job.
The FEC ruled that a campaign could hire a family member at market value for bona fide campaign services.
But it’s hard to find any evidence of bona fide work done by Daniel Thompson Associates for his father’s PAC. Presumably, Fred Thompson made the
decision about what money would go to candidates - especially since
many of them were his former colleagues.
Maybe Daniel Thompson wrote the 20 checks a year that the PAC mailed out.
How much time or skill could that take? Not $85,000 a year worth.
The PAC appears to have had no office, no phone and no employees other than Daniel Thompson. Minor amounts went for spot telephone and Internet bills, and for an accountant.
And the PAC did no real fund-raising. In its four years, it raised just $700 - two contributions from former Fred Thompson associates. All other income appears to have been interest payments.
The fund did pay a nearly $7,000 to Aristotle Publishing, a company that licenses software for Internet fund-raising, including a $1,000 licensing fee in the fund’s last days several months ago. The initial fees were for conversion, training, and support.
Interestingly enough, Daniel Thompson is now a professional fund-raiser for Lawson Associates in Nashville. According to the firm’s Web site, he consults with clients all over the country to raise funds for non-profit groups in their capital and endowment campaigns.
Too bad he couldn’t help Dad raise money, too.
www.dickmorris.com
www.mccainalert.com
FAIR Calls for Suspension of Visa Waiver Program
FAIR Calls for Suspension of Visa Waiver Program in Light of New Intelligence Report
Washington DC - A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report compiled by 16 government intelligence agencies, warns that another attack against the United States by al-Qaeda may be imminent. While the attacks of 9/11 were carried out by terrorists carrying Middle Eastern passports, the NIE cautions that al-Qaeda may use European-based operatives to perpetrate a future attack. According to the NIE a, "growing number of radical, self-generating cells in Western countries indicate that the radical and violent segment of the West's Muslim population is expanding, including in the United States."
Adding to the vulnerability of the United States is the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), which allows nationals of 27 nations to enter the U.S. without visas. With the growth of radical Islam in Europe, the VWP is a likely means by which al-Qaeda can move terrorists into the U.S. "Europe could become a platform for an attack against this country," admits Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
In light of the new NIE report and the candid admission of Secretary Chertoff, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is renewing its call for the immediate suspension of the VWP - a call FAIR first issued after 9/11. "We know that al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic terrorist groups will use every means at their disposal and exploit any vulnerability to carry out another dramatic and deadly attack against the United States," warned Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "We know - because the Secretary of Homeland Security has told us so - that one of the vulnerabilities al-Qaeda is targeting is the VWP.
If the VWP is acknowledged to be a weakness in our defense against global terrorist groups, then the VWP must be suspended immediately," said Stein. The VWP was designed for a pre-9/11 world to make it easier for people who had a low likelihood of overstaying visas to travel here.
"After Madrid 2004, London 2005, and Glasgow last month, there can be no doubt that there are lethal and committed Islamic terrorist cells active all across Western Europe. Many of these terrorists are citizens of those countries and, under the VWP, they can easily enter the U.S. with no prior screening," Stein said. "Every intelligence report over the past several years has warned that al-Qaeda is seeking to take advantage of the VWP and is actively recruiting terrorists with European passports."
Ironically, reports of a heightened terrorist threat comes as the Bush Administration and some in Congress are pushing to expand the VWP under pressure from business interests. "Everyone understands the importance of travel to our economy," said Stein. "But legitimate travelers also understand - in fact appreciate - the need to take all reasonable precautions against future terrorist attacks. By now, we are all used to trading off some convenience for security whenever we travel. The economic impact of asking people to be pre-screened for visas would be minor compared with the potential impact of another deadly terrorist strike."
Washington DC - A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report compiled by 16 government intelligence agencies, warns that another attack against the United States by al-Qaeda may be imminent. While the attacks of 9/11 were carried out by terrorists carrying Middle Eastern passports, the NIE cautions that al-Qaeda may use European-based operatives to perpetrate a future attack. According to the NIE a, "growing number of radical, self-generating cells in Western countries indicate that the radical and violent segment of the West's Muslim population is expanding, including in the United States."
Adding to the vulnerability of the United States is the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), which allows nationals of 27 nations to enter the U.S. without visas. With the growth of radical Islam in Europe, the VWP is a likely means by which al-Qaeda can move terrorists into the U.S. "Europe could become a platform for an attack against this country," admits Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
In light of the new NIE report and the candid admission of Secretary Chertoff, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is renewing its call for the immediate suspension of the VWP - a call FAIR first issued after 9/11. "We know that al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic terrorist groups will use every means at their disposal and exploit any vulnerability to carry out another dramatic and deadly attack against the United States," warned Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "We know - because the Secretary of Homeland Security has told us so - that one of the vulnerabilities al-Qaeda is targeting is the VWP.
If the VWP is acknowledged to be a weakness in our defense against global terrorist groups, then the VWP must be suspended immediately," said Stein. The VWP was designed for a pre-9/11 world to make it easier for people who had a low likelihood of overstaying visas to travel here.
"After Madrid 2004, London 2005, and Glasgow last month, there can be no doubt that there are lethal and committed Islamic terrorist cells active all across Western Europe. Many of these terrorists are citizens of those countries and, under the VWP, they can easily enter the U.S. with no prior screening," Stein said. "Every intelligence report over the past several years has warned that al-Qaeda is seeking to take advantage of the VWP and is actively recruiting terrorists with European passports."
Ironically, reports of a heightened terrorist threat comes as the Bush Administration and some in Congress are pushing to expand the VWP under pressure from business interests. "Everyone understands the importance of travel to our economy," said Stein. "But legitimate travelers also understand - in fact appreciate - the need to take all reasonable precautions against future terrorist attacks. By now, we are all used to trading off some convenience for security whenever we travel. The economic impact of asking people to be pre-screened for visas would be minor compared with the potential impact of another deadly terrorist strike."
Important Immigration Provisions Included in House Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill
Important Immigration Provisions Included in House Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill
Consideration of the massive fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education (H.R. 3043) dominated House floor action this week. Indeed, two full days were spent debating eighty-six amendments to the bill (Congress Now). The bill finally passed, 276-140, fourteen votes short of the number needed to override a promised presidential veto. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill because it is $7 billion more than requested by his administration.
Two important immigration provisions passed as part of the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. First, during the Committee process, Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) successfully offered an amendment to require that government contractors receiving money through the bill to use the Basic Pilot Program to verify that their employees are lawfully present in the United States. The Chamber of Commerce opposed this language and notified Representatives of their objections, urging members to strike the language from the bill. Nevertheless, there were no amendments to remove the language and it survived the floor action.
In addition to the Kingston language that was added in Committee, the House approved a floor amendment offered by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) relating to Totalization agreements. The amendment bars funding for Social Security payments made under a pending totalization agreement with the Mexican government. A social security totalization agreement is an executive agreement entered into by the United States with another country that is intended to relieve employers and employees from double social security tax with respect to the same employment and to consolidate the employee's Social Security tax paid to both countries in order to receive the combined benefits in only one country. A totalization agreement does not permit an employee to avoid Social Security tax in both countries, but instead merely allows the employee to pay tax to either one country or the other.
In a letter sent to colleagues in support of the amendment, Congressman Gingrey expressed concern that the U.S. government would end up paying out more in benefits through the Social Security Totalization agreement with Mexico than it would take in through taxes. In particular, he explained the Social Security Administration has significantly underestimated the number of claims for Social Security that will be made by Mexicans working in the United States—only 50,000. With 12 to 20 million illegal aliens currently in the U.S. who may become legal at some point, Congressman Gingrey argued this number could easily be surpassed, impairing the ability of the government to break even. In fact, in 2003, the GAO determined that if the number of Mexican workers claiming benefits exceeds that estimate by 25% (for a total of 63,000), the result would be a financially significant drain on the Social Security Trust Fund.
Having passed the House, the Basic Pilot requirement and the Totalization amendment will now be conferenced with the corresponding Senate bill. Stay tuned to FAIR for more details…
see more at Mccainalert.com
Consideration of the massive fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education (H.R. 3043) dominated House floor action this week. Indeed, two full days were spent debating eighty-six amendments to the bill (Congress Now). The bill finally passed, 276-140, fourteen votes short of the number needed to override a promised presidential veto. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill because it is $7 billion more than requested by his administration.
Two important immigration provisions passed as part of the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. First, during the Committee process, Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) successfully offered an amendment to require that government contractors receiving money through the bill to use the Basic Pilot Program to verify that their employees are lawfully present in the United States. The Chamber of Commerce opposed this language and notified Representatives of their objections, urging members to strike the language from the bill. Nevertheless, there were no amendments to remove the language and it survived the floor action.
In addition to the Kingston language that was added in Committee, the House approved a floor amendment offered by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) relating to Totalization agreements. The amendment bars funding for Social Security payments made under a pending totalization agreement with the Mexican government. A social security totalization agreement is an executive agreement entered into by the United States with another country that is intended to relieve employers and employees from double social security tax with respect to the same employment and to consolidate the employee's Social Security tax paid to both countries in order to receive the combined benefits in only one country. A totalization agreement does not permit an employee to avoid Social Security tax in both countries, but instead merely allows the employee to pay tax to either one country or the other.
In a letter sent to colleagues in support of the amendment, Congressman Gingrey expressed concern that the U.S. government would end up paying out more in benefits through the Social Security Totalization agreement with Mexico than it would take in through taxes. In particular, he explained the Social Security Administration has significantly underestimated the number of claims for Social Security that will be made by Mexicans working in the United States—only 50,000. With 12 to 20 million illegal aliens currently in the U.S. who may become legal at some point, Congressman Gingrey argued this number could easily be surpassed, impairing the ability of the government to break even. In fact, in 2003, the GAO determined that if the number of Mexican workers claiming benefits exceeds that estimate by 25% (for a total of 63,000), the result would be a financially significant drain on the Social Security Trust Fund.
Having passed the House, the Basic Pilot requirement and the Totalization amendment will now be conferenced with the corresponding Senate bill. Stay tuned to FAIR for more details…
see more at Mccainalert.com
Senators Ask For Commutation of Border Patrol Agents
Senators Ask For Commutation of Border Patrol Agents
The Senate Judiciary Committee convened a hearing Tuesday to discuss the prosecution and subsequent sentencing of Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. The agents were each sentenced to over ten years in federal prison after pursuing and shooting an illegal alien caught smuggling 743 pounds of marijuana into the country. The sentencing has created a national firestorm of controversy with many charging that the federal government has shown more favor to a drug-smuggler than its own law enforcement officers.
In attendance at the hearing were several Senators who have been active in the Ramos-Compean case, including Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and Tom Coburn (R-OK). The witness panel included Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) as well as T.J. Bonner, President of the National Council of Border Patrol Agents, and Johnny Sutton, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas.
The Senators and testifying Congressmen each expressed their alarm at what they considered excessive punishment for Agents Ramos and Compean. Senators Feinstein and Cornyn called the sentence a "serious miscarriage of justice." Senator Sessions shook his head in dismay, saying he was "just heartbroken about it", but that he hoped the Senate could "figure out some way to be helpful to them." Congressman Hunter, who has served on the House Armed Services Committee for 26 years, called the sentence the worst case of "injustice" toward any law enforcement officer he has ever seen. Congressman Rohrabacher lamented, "It just tears at your soul to think of these two men… who put their lives at risk every day trying to do one of America's toughest law enforcement jobs… in solitary confinement for an activity that stems from their interdiction of a drug dealer."
During witness testimony, T.J. Bonner criticized the prosecution's portrait the drug smuggler who was wounded—an operative for Mexican drug cartels—as an innocent civilian who was shot in the back while trying to earn money to take care of his sick mother. Bonner defended the actions of the agents, concluding, "The wrongdoing here was bringing 743 pounds of marijuana into the country. That is a felony. And the person who did that was granted immunity by our federal government." However, Luis Barker, Deputy Chief of the Office of Border Control for the Department of Customs and Border Protection, charged that the agents' first wrongdoing was shooting the drug smuggler as he fled the scene. Senator Feinstein asked how Mr. Barker thought the agents should have reprimanded the fleeing man, to which Mr. Barker replied that their only real option was to shout and chase the man by foot. To this Senator Feinstein retorted, "No wonder so much drugs are coming across the border."
A large focus of the hearing was the application of a federal gun statute (18 U.S.C. 924(c)), a charge against the agents that was added after the original indictment. This portion of the United States Code requires a minimum sentence of ten years for discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. The Senators on the committee repeatedly discussed the fact that Section 924(c) was intended to be a deterrent to drug smugglers, not law enforcement officers pursuing them. However, Johnny Sutton, United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas, said the agents were "not heroes" and that it "is a crime to discharge a firearm during a crime of violence, and we will continue to bring those charges where the law and the evidence warrant." Senator Feinstein and other supporters disagree with Sutton's decision to charge the border patrol agents with a crime under Section 924(c), denouncing it as "prosecutorial overreach."
Senators Feinstein and Cornyn sent a joint letter to the White House Wednesday asking President Bush to immediately commute the sentences of both Ramos and Compean. Representatives Hunter, Rohrabacher, Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Ted Poe (R-TX) have proposed similar measures in the House. In his closing statements, Congressman Rohrabacher added, "And as we now see, Scooter Libby can be set free. Two Border Patrol agents who languish in solitary confinement, whose lives are in danger, their lives don't count a bit with this administration."
The Senate Judiciary Committee convened a hearing Tuesday to discuss the prosecution and subsequent sentencing of Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. The agents were each sentenced to over ten years in federal prison after pursuing and shooting an illegal alien caught smuggling 743 pounds of marijuana into the country. The sentencing has created a national firestorm of controversy with many charging that the federal government has shown more favor to a drug-smuggler than its own law enforcement officers.
In attendance at the hearing were several Senators who have been active in the Ramos-Compean case, including Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and Tom Coburn (R-OK). The witness panel included Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) as well as T.J. Bonner, President of the National Council of Border Patrol Agents, and Johnny Sutton, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas.
The Senators and testifying Congressmen each expressed their alarm at what they considered excessive punishment for Agents Ramos and Compean. Senators Feinstein and Cornyn called the sentence a "serious miscarriage of justice." Senator Sessions shook his head in dismay, saying he was "just heartbroken about it", but that he hoped the Senate could "figure out some way to be helpful to them." Congressman Hunter, who has served on the House Armed Services Committee for 26 years, called the sentence the worst case of "injustice" toward any law enforcement officer he has ever seen. Congressman Rohrabacher lamented, "It just tears at your soul to think of these two men… who put their lives at risk every day trying to do one of America's toughest law enforcement jobs… in solitary confinement for an activity that stems from their interdiction of a drug dealer."
During witness testimony, T.J. Bonner criticized the prosecution's portrait the drug smuggler who was wounded—an operative for Mexican drug cartels—as an innocent civilian who was shot in the back while trying to earn money to take care of his sick mother. Bonner defended the actions of the agents, concluding, "The wrongdoing here was bringing 743 pounds of marijuana into the country. That is a felony. And the person who did that was granted immunity by our federal government." However, Luis Barker, Deputy Chief of the Office of Border Control for the Department of Customs and Border Protection, charged that the agents' first wrongdoing was shooting the drug smuggler as he fled the scene. Senator Feinstein asked how Mr. Barker thought the agents should have reprimanded the fleeing man, to which Mr. Barker replied that their only real option was to shout and chase the man by foot. To this Senator Feinstein retorted, "No wonder so much drugs are coming across the border."
A large focus of the hearing was the application of a federal gun statute (18 U.S.C. 924(c)), a charge against the agents that was added after the original indictment. This portion of the United States Code requires a minimum sentence of ten years for discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. The Senators on the committee repeatedly discussed the fact that Section 924(c) was intended to be a deterrent to drug smugglers, not law enforcement officers pursuing them. However, Johnny Sutton, United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas, said the agents were "not heroes" and that it "is a crime to discharge a firearm during a crime of violence, and we will continue to bring those charges where the law and the evidence warrant." Senator Feinstein and other supporters disagree with Sutton's decision to charge the border patrol agents with a crime under Section 924(c), denouncing it as "prosecutorial overreach."
Senators Feinstein and Cornyn sent a joint letter to the White House Wednesday asking President Bush to immediately commute the sentences of both Ramos and Compean. Representatives Hunter, Rohrabacher, Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Ted Poe (R-TX) have proposed similar measures in the House. In his closing statements, Congressman Rohrabacher added, "And as we now see, Scooter Libby can be set free. Two Border Patrol agents who languish in solitary confinement, whose lives are in danger, their lives don't count a bit with this administration."
Friday, July 20, 2007
New FBI report: Arabs smuggled to U.S. through Mexico
New FBI report: Arabs smuggled to U.S. through Mexico
Grassfire.org Alliance
From the Desk of Steve Elliott
According to ABC News, the FBI is now investigating a major
human smuggling ring that is bringing Iraqi and other
Middle Easterners into the U.S. through our southern
border (see below for a link to the article).
The report indicated that the smuggling ring "used to
smuggle Mexicans, but decided to smuggle Iraqi or other
Middle Eastern individuals because it was more lucrative."
The smugglers gathered at the Mexican border, crossed
the Rio Grande and bordered their "cargo" on trains
for the U.S. interior.
And this smuggling ring is just the tip of the iceberg.
+ + Hezbollah and Al Qaida coming through Mexico
Last year, the FBI director reported that both Hezbollah
and Al Qaida terrorists had crossed our Mexican border.
Also, as we reported in our "Truth About Illegal Invasion"
booklet, in a four-year period (2001-2005) more than 91,500
illegal aliens from countries known to or suspected of
sponsoring terrorism were apprehended at our border.
That means an estimated 200,000 illegals from potential
terrorist nations were not apprehended and successfully
infiltrated our country.
+ + Iranian terrorists coming through Cuba then Mexico
A few days ago, I received an anonymous call from an
Iranian man who is legally residing in the U.S. He
desperately wanted to get the word out that it is
common knowledge in the Iranian community that
terrorists are being smuggled into the U.S. through
Cuba and then Mexico.
He said he couldn't give me his name (for fear of repercussions),
and I admit his report is anectdotal. But based on what
our own FBI is willing to report publicly about Hezbollah
and Al Qaida and now this new smuggling ring, is there
any reason to doubt this man's report?
Meanwhile...
Only 13 miles of the 854 miles of border
fence authorized last year has been built.
And none of the 13 miles of new construction
has been of the mandated double-layer variety.
ed, let's face it -- President Bush and
the Kennedy amnesty gang would have quietly passed their
amnesty bill if you and I and thousands of other citizens
had not raised our voices.
Likewise, they will not build the fence and secure our
borders (even though terrorists are crossing constantly)
unless you and I and thousands more rise up and demand it!
A few days ago, we launched a major "Where's The Fence?"
fax and phone campaign to the President and Congress
Our records show you have not yet scheduled your faxes.
Please go here to schedule your faxes:
http://www.grassfire.org/22042/offer.asp?rid=11222869
(We also have posted the phone and fax numbers so you can
make calls and send faxes on your own if you prefer.)
Thank you for the stand you are taking!
Steve Elliott, President
Grassfire.org
P.S. I've posted this update on FireSociety with a link
to the ABC News article. Go here for those resources:
http://www.firesociety.com/blog/100/15791/?src=111
www.mccainalert.com
Grassfire.org Alliance
From the Desk of Steve Elliott
According to ABC News, the FBI is now investigating a major
human smuggling ring that is bringing Iraqi and other
Middle Easterners into the U.S. through our southern
border (see below for a link to the article).
The report indicated that the smuggling ring "used to
smuggle Mexicans, but decided to smuggle Iraqi or other
Middle Eastern individuals because it was more lucrative."
The smugglers gathered at the Mexican border, crossed
the Rio Grande and bordered their "cargo" on trains
for the U.S. interior.
And this smuggling ring is just the tip of the iceberg.
+ + Hezbollah and Al Qaida coming through Mexico
Last year, the FBI director reported that both Hezbollah
and Al Qaida terrorists had crossed our Mexican border.
Also, as we reported in our "Truth About Illegal Invasion"
booklet, in a four-year period (2001-2005) more than 91,500
illegal aliens from countries known to or suspected of
sponsoring terrorism were apprehended at our border.
That means an estimated 200,000 illegals from potential
terrorist nations were not apprehended and successfully
infiltrated our country.
+ + Iranian terrorists coming through Cuba then Mexico
A few days ago, I received an anonymous call from an
Iranian man who is legally residing in the U.S. He
desperately wanted to get the word out that it is
common knowledge in the Iranian community that
terrorists are being smuggled into the U.S. through
Cuba and then Mexico.
He said he couldn't give me his name (for fear of repercussions),
and I admit his report is anectdotal. But based on what
our own FBI is willing to report publicly about Hezbollah
and Al Qaida and now this new smuggling ring, is there
any reason to doubt this man's report?
Meanwhile...
Only 13 miles of the 854 miles of border
fence authorized last year has been built.
And none of the 13 miles of new construction
has been of the mandated double-layer variety.
ed, let's face it -- President Bush and
the Kennedy amnesty gang would have quietly passed their
amnesty bill if you and I and thousands of other citizens
had not raised our voices.
Likewise, they will not build the fence and secure our
borders (even though terrorists are crossing constantly)
unless you and I and thousands more rise up and demand it!
A few days ago, we launched a major "Where's The Fence?"
fax and phone campaign to the President and Congress
Our records show you have not yet scheduled your faxes.
Please go here to schedule your faxes:
http://www.grassfire.org/22042/offer.asp?rid=11222869
(We also have posted the phone and fax numbers so you can
make calls and send faxes on your own if you prefer.)
Thank you for the stand you are taking!
Steve Elliott, President
Grassfire.org
P.S. I've posted this update on FireSociety with a link
to the ABC News article. Go here for those resources:
http://www.firesociety.com/blog/100/15791/?src=111
www.mccainalert.com
Do we want a Commander-in-Chief ready to hand
Do we want a Commander-in-Chief ready to hand
John McCain was followed by Hillary Clinton on the floor of the Senate
early (and I do mean early!) this morning and they presented
two strikingly different visions of the war in Iraq. John McCain continues
to stand for victory against al Qaeda in Iraq, while Hillary Clinton
has sided with the Democrats who are calling for retreat and defeat.
Do we want a Commander-in-Chief ready to hand al Qaeda "a historic victory"?
Hillary Clinton voted to surrender in our efforts to fight terrorists and Islamic extremists in Iraq, and dutifully indulged the Democratic leadership's all-night "debate." She sided with the Democratic leadership to put on a publicity stunt rather than acting like a leader and standing up for our troops. John McCain, however, refused to give in to the Democrats' empty exhibition, and used his
time speaking on the floor of the Senate to give an impassioned speech
fighting for victory in Iraq. While Hillary Clinton and the Democrats
pretended to lead, it was John McCain who showed real leadership in
denouncing their political stunt.
As John McCain points out time and again, there is a simple choice
facing our nation and it boils down to this - will we have the courage
to win the war against Islamic extremists, or will we succumb to the political pressures of the moment and accept defeat? Hillary Clinton and the Democrats claim this is a war we cannot win. But if we cannot win this war, then who won?
The answer is in the Iraq Study Group report, which states, "Al Qaeda would depict our withdrawal as a historic victory."
The choice is simple, but our resolve for victory is more important now than ever before.
"This fight is about Iraq but not about Iraq alone. It is greater than
that and more important still, about whether America still has the
political courage to fight for victory or whether we will settle for
defeat, with all of the terrible things that accompany it. We cannot
walk away gracefully from defeat in this war."
-John McCain
I am proud that John McCain is standing for victory in Iraq. He understands
that courage and sacrifice are necessary to make this historic choice, especially from the brave men and women fighting for our country. So much rests on
the shoulders of these brave men and women, and we as a nation should
not ask them to sacrifice for us unless it is absolutely necessary.
These are dangerous times we live in, and our enemy is not going away.
In fact, our talk of defeat and withdrawal is only emboldening the
terrorists we are fighting in Iraq. Make no mistake - the terrorists
are in this war to win.
Do we have the courage to stand up and fight for victory? Or will we
settle for Hillary Clinton's vision of retreat and defeat? John McCain has reminded
us time and again that the consequences of withdrawal from Iraq are catastrophic, which is why we must stand strong for victory.
I know most of you probably weren't watching the debate at 4 a.m. this
morning and I know most of your friends probably weren't either.
That's why it's up to us to spread the word about this morning's
clear contrast. John McCain and Hillary Clinton present starkly
different views of the War in Iraq. This morning there was one man
standing before the United States Senate ready to be our next
Commander-in-Chief. That man is John McCain.
Sincerely,
Rick Davis
Campaign Manager
www.mccainalert.com
John McCain was followed by Hillary Clinton on the floor of the Senate
early (and I do mean early!) this morning and they presented
two strikingly different visions of the war in Iraq. John McCain continues
to stand for victory against al Qaeda in Iraq, while Hillary Clinton
has sided with the Democrats who are calling for retreat and defeat.
Do we want a Commander-in-Chief ready to hand al Qaeda "a historic victory"?
Hillary Clinton voted to surrender in our efforts to fight terrorists and Islamic extremists in Iraq, and dutifully indulged the Democratic leadership's all-night "debate." She sided with the Democratic leadership to put on a publicity stunt rather than acting like a leader and standing up for our troops. John McCain, however, refused to give in to the Democrats' empty exhibition, and used his
time speaking on the floor of the Senate to give an impassioned speech
fighting for victory in Iraq. While Hillary Clinton and the Democrats
pretended to lead, it was John McCain who showed real leadership in
denouncing their political stunt.
As John McCain points out time and again, there is a simple choice
facing our nation and it boils down to this - will we have the courage
to win the war against Islamic extremists, or will we succumb to the political pressures of the moment and accept defeat? Hillary Clinton and the Democrats claim this is a war we cannot win. But if we cannot win this war, then who won?
The answer is in the Iraq Study Group report, which states, "Al Qaeda would depict our withdrawal as a historic victory."
The choice is simple, but our resolve for victory is more important now than ever before.
"This fight is about Iraq but not about Iraq alone. It is greater than
that and more important still, about whether America still has the
political courage to fight for victory or whether we will settle for
defeat, with all of the terrible things that accompany it. We cannot
walk away gracefully from defeat in this war."
-John McCain
I am proud that John McCain is standing for victory in Iraq. He understands
that courage and sacrifice are necessary to make this historic choice, especially from the brave men and women fighting for our country. So much rests on
the shoulders of these brave men and women, and we as a nation should
not ask them to sacrifice for us unless it is absolutely necessary.
These are dangerous times we live in, and our enemy is not going away.
In fact, our talk of defeat and withdrawal is only emboldening the
terrorists we are fighting in Iraq. Make no mistake - the terrorists
are in this war to win.
Do we have the courage to stand up and fight for victory? Or will we
settle for Hillary Clinton's vision of retreat and defeat? John McCain has reminded
us time and again that the consequences of withdrawal from Iraq are catastrophic, which is why we must stand strong for victory.
I know most of you probably weren't watching the debate at 4 a.m. this
morning and I know most of your friends probably weren't either.
That's why it's up to us to spread the word about this morning's
clear contrast. John McCain and Hillary Clinton present starkly
different views of the War in Iraq. This morning there was one man
standing before the United States Senate ready to be our next
Commander-in-Chief. That man is John McCain.
Sincerely,
Rick Davis
Campaign Manager
www.mccainalert.com
IS HILLARY HEDGING ON HEDGE FUNDS?
IS HILLARY HEDGING ON HEDGE FUNDS?
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Although Hillary Clinton claims to adamantly support tax fairness,
she can't make up her mind about whether Wall Street barons should
have to pay the same tax rate as the regular workers she loves and
the corporations she loathes.
Right now, when private equity and hedge funds go public, the funds and
their managers only have to pay a 15 percent tax on their millions in
profits. That's a lot less than the top rates of 35 percent for
corporations and 33 percent for individuals. Doesn't sound fair,
does it?
But Hillary, whose Web site espouses justice and fairness by leveling
the playing field and reducing special breaks for big corporations
and ensuring that corporations pay their fair share of taxes hasn't
come out in support of legislation co-sponsored by Barack Obama and
backed by John Edwards to increase the tax rate on hedge funds and
private equity firms to 35 percent.
She's still thinking about it.
And we're not talking about peanuts here. The dollars involved in these
transactions give new meaning to the term big bucks. Take a look at
the public offering on one such firm, Blackstone. Its IPO later this
month is expected to net $4.75 billion! And two of the partners alone
will have made almost $10 billion in the transaction. According to Business
Week, top partners Stephen Schwartzman and Pete Peterson will personally make billions: Schwarzman, 60, will own 24 percent of Blackstone after the
IPO, a stake that would be worth about $7.73 billion. Peterson, 80,
will get at least $1.88 billion when he sells all but 4 percent of
his interest in the firm.
And that's not all: the Blackstone folks are not even satisfied with that
amazingly low and preferential tax rate of 15 percent. Apparently they've even concocted a plan to avoid paying taxes on $3.7 billion of the $4.75
billion profit.
Think about the difference between Mr. Peterson's taxes on the $1.8
billion at the current 15 percent rate and the proposed 35 percent rate:
that's $270 million vs. $630 million - a $360 million difference.
That's why the hedge fund and private equity firms have been deluging
Congress with their lobbyists and their money.
So why isn't Hillary jumping on the Obama/Edwards bandwagon? This is her kind of issue, isn't it? Her Web site also promotes ... reforming the governance of corporations and the financial sector. It is inconsistent with our values to allow CEO pay to skyrocket while workers' wages and benefits are under threat.
Guess how much Blackstone's CEO, Mr. Schwartz, made in 2006? FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS!
And Hillary still has to think about it.
Maybe it's because she has received more contributions from hedge funds in her senate campaign than any other member of Congress $144,460 in the period
from January 2005 to June 2006 alone. And another $160,000 in the first
six months of her presidential campaign.
That's definitely something to think about.
But there's more: Hillary has a family interest in the hedge fund industry
Chelsea Clinton works for the Avenue Capital Group, a $12 billion hedge
fund in New York.
According to Marc Lasry, founder and managing partner of the firm (and a
long-time contributor to Hillary), he thinks that hedge funds make too
much money: "Obviously, what we make is absolutely obscene. I think it's
too much. I'm not saying it's wrong ... (but) trust me, the dollars
are still obscene."
Most people would agree with Mr. Lasry.
It's time to change the rules.
Hillary Clinton should stop hedging and join Edwards and Obama in seeking the justice and fairness that she claims to be pursuing.
Published on FoxNews.com on July 13, 2007.
www.mccainalert.com
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Although Hillary Clinton claims to adamantly support tax fairness,
she can't make up her mind about whether Wall Street barons should
have to pay the same tax rate as the regular workers she loves and
the corporations she loathes.
Right now, when private equity and hedge funds go public, the funds and
their managers only have to pay a 15 percent tax on their millions in
profits. That's a lot less than the top rates of 35 percent for
corporations and 33 percent for individuals. Doesn't sound fair,
does it?
But Hillary, whose Web site espouses justice and fairness by leveling
the playing field and reducing special breaks for big corporations
and ensuring that corporations pay their fair share of taxes hasn't
come out in support of legislation co-sponsored by Barack Obama and
backed by John Edwards to increase the tax rate on hedge funds and
private equity firms to 35 percent.
She's still thinking about it.
And we're not talking about peanuts here. The dollars involved in these
transactions give new meaning to the term big bucks. Take a look at
the public offering on one such firm, Blackstone. Its IPO later this
month is expected to net $4.75 billion! And two of the partners alone
will have made almost $10 billion in the transaction. According to Business
Week, top partners Stephen Schwartzman and Pete Peterson will personally make billions: Schwarzman, 60, will own 24 percent of Blackstone after the
IPO, a stake that would be worth about $7.73 billion. Peterson, 80,
will get at least $1.88 billion when he sells all but 4 percent of
his interest in the firm.
And that's not all: the Blackstone folks are not even satisfied with that
amazingly low and preferential tax rate of 15 percent. Apparently they've even concocted a plan to avoid paying taxes on $3.7 billion of the $4.75
billion profit.
Think about the difference between Mr. Peterson's taxes on the $1.8
billion at the current 15 percent rate and the proposed 35 percent rate:
that's $270 million vs. $630 million - a $360 million difference.
That's why the hedge fund and private equity firms have been deluging
Congress with their lobbyists and their money.
So why isn't Hillary jumping on the Obama/Edwards bandwagon? This is her kind of issue, isn't it? Her Web site also promotes ... reforming the governance of corporations and the financial sector. It is inconsistent with our values to allow CEO pay to skyrocket while workers' wages and benefits are under threat.
Guess how much Blackstone's CEO, Mr. Schwartz, made in 2006? FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS!
And Hillary still has to think about it.
Maybe it's because she has received more contributions from hedge funds in her senate campaign than any other member of Congress $144,460 in the period
from January 2005 to June 2006 alone. And another $160,000 in the first
six months of her presidential campaign.
That's definitely something to think about.
But there's more: Hillary has a family interest in the hedge fund industry
Chelsea Clinton works for the Avenue Capital Group, a $12 billion hedge
fund in New York.
According to Marc Lasry, founder and managing partner of the firm (and a
long-time contributor to Hillary), he thinks that hedge funds make too
much money: "Obviously, what we make is absolutely obscene. I think it's
too much. I'm not saying it's wrong ... (but) trust me, the dollars
are still obscene."
Most people would agree with Mr. Lasry.
It's time to change the rules.
Hillary Clinton should stop hedging and join Edwards and Obama in seeking the justice and fairness that she claims to be pursuing.
Published on FoxNews.com on July 13, 2007.
www.mccainalert.com
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
McCain confidant speaks out about McCain campaign woes
McCain confidant speaks out about McCain campaign woes
By Frank Camacho / 3TV reporter
His campaign may be battered, but Sen. John McCain said he is not quitting his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination.
And in spite of all of the problems, McCain's campaign is experiencing, a long-time confidant said it's far too early to count the senator out.
It's money and people which fuel a successful political campaign, especially one as huge as the presidential campaign. Right now, McCain is running short on both, which long-time McCain confidant Chuck Coughlin thinks is a good thing.
"John is John. He's a very edgy personality," said Coughlin.
It's an edgy personality which can be difficult to package according to Coughlin, a political consultant who came to Arizona more than 20 years ago to work for McCain.
Coughlin thinks the original McCain campaign brain trust made some fundamental mistakes.
"They built an organizational model that required a tremendous amount of fundraising with a guy that hates fundraising, which is just ridiculous. I was John's fundraiser for John's first campaign. I know how much the man hates fundraising."
Coughlin was to morph McCain into the all things to all people candidate. An example of which is McCain's speech at Moral Majority Founder Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. It was a gesture meant to appease the religious right which has a mutual history of mistrust with McCain.
"I mean to everyone here in Arizona who knew John from way back, when you were like asking what's he doing, why would he be doing that," he said.
Coughlin is encouraged by the steps McCain has taken in the
past 10 days, streamlining the campaign and getting back
to the philosophy which served the senator so well eight years ago.
Coughlin thinks McCain should drop out of Iowa and instead
focus his resources and time on New Hampshire, South Carolina
and Florida.
McCain must win one of those three states in order to remain viable.
"You know, it's a healthy thing. It's a healthy thing. It'll be a
certainly be a healthy thing for the Republican ticket to have
John McCain back on the campaign trail speaking from the gospel
of John McCain. I think that'll be great. From Channel 2,
from the gun, back to Channel 1, from the gut," he said.
Coughlin thinks the McCain campaign may receive a boost in
September. He believes the administration will give the
Iraqi government a deadline.
www.mccainalert.com
see at..................
http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stories/KTVKLNews20070717_mccain_confidant_campaign.8578523b.html
see more on Mccain at www.mccainalert.com
By Frank Camacho / 3TV reporter
His campaign may be battered, but Sen. John McCain said he is not quitting his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination.
And in spite of all of the problems, McCain's campaign is experiencing, a long-time confidant said it's far too early to count the senator out.
It's money and people which fuel a successful political campaign, especially one as huge as the presidential campaign. Right now, McCain is running short on both, which long-time McCain confidant Chuck Coughlin thinks is a good thing.
"John is John. He's a very edgy personality," said Coughlin.
It's an edgy personality which can be difficult to package according to Coughlin, a political consultant who came to Arizona more than 20 years ago to work for McCain.
Coughlin thinks the original McCain campaign brain trust made some fundamental mistakes.
"They built an organizational model that required a tremendous amount of fundraising with a guy that hates fundraising, which is just ridiculous. I was John's fundraiser for John's first campaign. I know how much the man hates fundraising."
Coughlin was to morph McCain into the all things to all people candidate. An example of which is McCain's speech at Moral Majority Founder Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. It was a gesture meant to appease the religious right which has a mutual history of mistrust with McCain.
"I mean to everyone here in Arizona who knew John from way back, when you were like asking what's he doing, why would he be doing that," he said.
Coughlin is encouraged by the steps McCain has taken in the
past 10 days, streamlining the campaign and getting back
to the philosophy which served the senator so well eight years ago.
Coughlin thinks McCain should drop out of Iowa and instead
focus his resources and time on New Hampshire, South Carolina
and Florida.
McCain must win one of those three states in order to remain viable.
"You know, it's a healthy thing. It's a healthy thing. It'll be a
certainly be a healthy thing for the Republican ticket to have
John McCain back on the campaign trail speaking from the gospel
of John McCain. I think that'll be great. From Channel 2,
from the gun, back to Channel 1, from the gut," he said.
Coughlin thinks the McCain campaign may receive a boost in
September. He believes the administration will give the
Iraqi government a deadline.
www.mccainalert.com
see at..................
http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stories/KTVKLNews20070717_mccain_confidant_campaign.8578523b.html
see more on Mccain at www.mccainalert.com
Monday, July 16, 2007
more staff jumping the John Mccain sinking ship........
more staff jumping the John Mccain sinking ship........
July 16 7 members of Republican presidential candidate
John McCain's campaign press staff have resigned
as the Arizona senator shuffles his team amid lagging
fund raising and a drop in the polls.
The latest turmoil to hit McCain's bid for the White House
follows the resignations last week of campaign manager
Terry Nelson and long-time McCain strategist John Weaver.
see more at..........
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20070716/pl_bloomberg/acaib_sigxu_1
www.mccainalert.com
July 16 7 members of Republican presidential candidate
John McCain's campaign press staff have resigned
as the Arizona senator shuffles his team amid lagging
fund raising and a drop in the polls.
The latest turmoil to hit McCain's bid for the White House
follows the resignations last week of campaign manager
Terry Nelson and long-time McCain strategist John Weaver.
see more at..........
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20070716/pl_bloomberg/acaib_sigxu_1
www.mccainalert.com
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Arizona Breathing Easier
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Dear Friends,
Arizona had a very busy legislative season this year. Amid the all the important achievements, one of the bills passed in the flurry of last-minute activity was SB 1552, Arizona's first major air-quality legislation in a decade.
This strong new air quality bill puts into place new measures to protect the health of Arizonans, and will remove more than 10,000 tons of particulates from the air we breathe.
Removing particulates from the air is not just about keeping the sky blue. Air quality has a huge effect on our health. Dirty air can cause any number of respiratory problems, especially among our children and senior citizens.
The new law is a bipartisan approach to cleaning up our air. Earlier this year, Senators Carolyn Allen and John Huppenthal and I announced the introduction of a major air quality bill. Representative Ray Barnes helped move the measure through the House. The result is a bill that strongly addresses our air quality. Local governments will pave over many dirt roads and shoulders that blow up dust. Open burning will not be permitted in high-pollution months. Construction sites will have to ensure that they don't kick up particulates into the air. All citizens will stop using leaf blowers on bare dirt and will stop blowing debris into our streets to be churned up and breathed in by our citizens. Government employees and their contractors will refrain from using leaf blowers at all on high-pollution days. These are just some of the many new efforts that we are taking to clean up our air with this initiative.
Not only will this bill help clean up the air we breathe, but it will make sure Arizona keeps its share of federal highway funds. Right now, metropolitan Phoenix is in danger of noncompliance with federal health-based air-quality standards. The bill I signed will go a long way to bringing us in step with the guidelines. In that way, this bill is a win-win approach for Arizona in both the transportation and health arenas.
We should all have confidence that the air we breathe is clean - and thanks to the new efforts of this bill, Arizonans will be able to breathe easier.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact my office at 1-800-253-0883 and ask to speak to Constituent Services.
Yours very truly,
Janet Napolitano
Governor
Dear Friends,
Arizona had a very busy legislative season this year. Amid the all the important achievements, one of the bills passed in the flurry of last-minute activity was SB 1552, Arizona's first major air-quality legislation in a decade.
This strong new air quality bill puts into place new measures to protect the health of Arizonans, and will remove more than 10,000 tons of particulates from the air we breathe.
Removing particulates from the air is not just about keeping the sky blue. Air quality has a huge effect on our health. Dirty air can cause any number of respiratory problems, especially among our children and senior citizens.
The new law is a bipartisan approach to cleaning up our air. Earlier this year, Senators Carolyn Allen and John Huppenthal and I announced the introduction of a major air quality bill. Representative Ray Barnes helped move the measure through the House. The result is a bill that strongly addresses our air quality. Local governments will pave over many dirt roads and shoulders that blow up dust. Open burning will not be permitted in high-pollution months. Construction sites will have to ensure that they don't kick up particulates into the air. All citizens will stop using leaf blowers on bare dirt and will stop blowing debris into our streets to be churned up and breathed in by our citizens. Government employees and their contractors will refrain from using leaf blowers at all on high-pollution days. These are just some of the many new efforts that we are taking to clean up our air with this initiative.
Not only will this bill help clean up the air we breathe, but it will make sure Arizona keeps its share of federal highway funds. Right now, metropolitan Phoenix is in danger of noncompliance with federal health-based air-quality standards. The bill I signed will go a long way to bringing us in step with the guidelines. In that way, this bill is a win-win approach for Arizona in both the transportation and health arenas.
We should all have confidence that the air we breathe is clean - and thanks to the new efforts of this bill, Arizonans will be able to breathe easier.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact my office at 1-800-253-0883 and ask to speak to Constituent Services.
Yours very truly,
Janet Napolitano
Governor
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
NEW IMMIGRATION MEASURES ARE "VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE"
NEW IMMIGRATION MEASURES ARE "VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE"
By Andrew Thomas, Maricopa County Attorney
The new anti-illegal-immigration laws signed by Governor Janet Napolitano covering employer sanctions and Prop. 100 are a "victory for the people," and I intend to move swiftly to implement them.
Last week, the governor signed House Bill 2779 and Senate Bill 1265. House Bill 2779 creates a regime for sanctioning companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The new law provides that county attorneys are the chief law enforcement officers responsible for implementing employer sanctions. It is expected that because of the population of Maricopa County, the vast
majority of potential employer-sanctions cases in Arizona will originate here.
Senate Bill 1265 establishes probable cause as the standard of proof for determining if defendants accused of serious felonies are illegal immigrants and, as such, not entitled to bail or release under Proposition 100. This legislation was passed in response to protracted difficulties in obtaining full enforcement of Proposition 100 in the Maricopa County Superior Courts.
Shortly after the governor signed Senate Bill 1265, the Arizona Supreme Court issued new rules governing Proposition 100 cases, which repealed the so-called Simpson hearings previously created
for these defendants. I'd recently complained that 94 percent of illegal immigrants were being granted bail or release at Simpson hearings by Maricopa County judges and judicial officers. The Simpson hearings were rescinded immediately, and those scheduled were vacated by court decree.
When I ran for county attorney on a platform of stopping illegal immigration, many questioned what state and local governments could do to combat this problem. These new laws are the latest answer to this question. We do not have to rely on a broken federal bureaucracy to secure our borders. The County Attorney's Office helped draft and lobbied in favor of both new laws.
These new laws are also the latest evidence that this is still a democracy. The people have the final say on how our government operates. Their voice was heard loud and clear.
I have begun to set up an internal committee to prepare to implement the new employer sanctions law. I will reach out to the business community and other critics of the law so their concerns can be heard. However, the law is the law, and it will be enforced.
As the County Attorney's Office begins to enforce the new law next year, the office will provide updates on progress made in preparation for this event. I pledge to apply the law fairly and equitably.
www.mccainalert.com
By Andrew Thomas, Maricopa County Attorney
The new anti-illegal-immigration laws signed by Governor Janet Napolitano covering employer sanctions and Prop. 100 are a "victory for the people," and I intend to move swiftly to implement them.
Last week, the governor signed House Bill 2779 and Senate Bill 1265. House Bill 2779 creates a regime for sanctioning companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The new law provides that county attorneys are the chief law enforcement officers responsible for implementing employer sanctions. It is expected that because of the population of Maricopa County, the vast
majority of potential employer-sanctions cases in Arizona will originate here.
Senate Bill 1265 establishes probable cause as the standard of proof for determining if defendants accused of serious felonies are illegal immigrants and, as such, not entitled to bail or release under Proposition 100. This legislation was passed in response to protracted difficulties in obtaining full enforcement of Proposition 100 in the Maricopa County Superior Courts.
Shortly after the governor signed Senate Bill 1265, the Arizona Supreme Court issued new rules governing Proposition 100 cases, which repealed the so-called Simpson hearings previously created
for these defendants. I'd recently complained that 94 percent of illegal immigrants were being granted bail or release at Simpson hearings by Maricopa County judges and judicial officers. The Simpson hearings were rescinded immediately, and those scheduled were vacated by court decree.
When I ran for county attorney on a platform of stopping illegal immigration, many questioned what state and local governments could do to combat this problem. These new laws are the latest answer to this question. We do not have to rely on a broken federal bureaucracy to secure our borders. The County Attorney's Office helped draft and lobbied in favor of both new laws.
These new laws are also the latest evidence that this is still a democracy. The people have the final say on how our government operates. Their voice was heard loud and clear.
I have begun to set up an internal committee to prepare to implement the new employer sanctions law. I will reach out to the business community and other critics of the law so their concerns can be heard. However, the law is the law, and it will be enforced.
As the County Attorney's Office begins to enforce the new law next year, the office will provide updates on progress made in preparation for this event. I pledge to apply the law fairly and equitably.
www.mccainalert.com
Monday, July 09, 2007
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see www.isweepdaily.com
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best of luck
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Sunday, July 08, 2007
McCain’s POW past is core, but not only, claim to presidency
McCain’s POW past is core, but not only, claim to presidency
Sparingly used Vietnam history always inspires GOP crowds
MONTGOMERY, Ala.— Recalling his military past may be key to U.S. Sen. John S. McCain 3rd’s political future.
Declining in the polls and struggling with fundraising, the Republican presidential candidate and U.S. senator from Arizona draws an appreciative response from audiences when he recounts his Navy pilot days and the fortitude of some of his fellow POWs during the 6-1/2 years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison.
Vietnam is hardly the centerpiece of McCain’s campaign; it’s part of his biography and, as such, is an element in a broader narrative he is trying to paint of an experienced leader.
McCain routinely brings up Vietnam as he discusses the challenges in Iraq and he often recognizes veterans in each audience he addresses. He typically only tells his war stories when the opportunity presents itself, such as when he was campaigning this spring in Sioux City, Iowa — hometown of Bud Day, one of his fellow prisoners of war in Hanoi.
McCain did the same in a recent visit to Mike Christian’s home state of Alabama, holding Republicans spellbound at a recent state GOP dinner.
www.mccainalert.com
http://www.telegram.com/article/20070706/NEWS/707060431/1052/RSS01&source=rss
Sparingly used Vietnam history always inspires GOP crowds
MONTGOMERY, Ala.— Recalling his military past may be key to U.S. Sen. John S. McCain 3rd’s political future.
Declining in the polls and struggling with fundraising, the Republican presidential candidate and U.S. senator from Arizona draws an appreciative response from audiences when he recounts his Navy pilot days and the fortitude of some of his fellow POWs during the 6-1/2 years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison.
Vietnam is hardly the centerpiece of McCain’s campaign; it’s part of his biography and, as such, is an element in a broader narrative he is trying to paint of an experienced leader.
McCain routinely brings up Vietnam as he discusses the challenges in Iraq and he often recognizes veterans in each audience he addresses. He typically only tells his war stories when the opportunity presents itself, such as when he was campaigning this spring in Sioux City, Iowa — hometown of Bud Day, one of his fellow prisoners of war in Hanoi.
McCain did the same in a recent visit to Mike Christian’s home state of Alabama, holding Republicans spellbound at a recent state GOP dinner.
www.mccainalert.com
http://www.telegram.com/article/20070706/NEWS/707060431/1052/RSS01&source=rss
Saturday, July 07, 2007
PAUL VS MCCAIN , this has got to hurt.
(Political Animal) PAUL VS MCCAIN....As if John McCain's campaign freefall weren't embarrassing enough before, this has got to hurt.
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos Reports: Though often regarded as a longshot candidate for president, Republican Ron Paul tells ABC News that he has an impressive $2.4 million in cash on hand after raising an equal amount during the second quarter, putting him ahead of one-time Republican frontrunner John McCain, who reported this week he has only $2 million in the bank. In an exclusive interview taped Friday and airing Sunday on "This Week," Paul said his campaign is on a better trajectory than McCain's.
"I think some of the candidates are on the down-slope, and we're on the up-slope," said Paul.
Ouch. Salt on the wound.
To be sure, I don't exactly expect mainstream campaign observers to start treating McCain and Paul as equally credible presidential hopefuls, but who would have guessed, half-way through 2007, that Paul would have more money in the bank than McCain?
see more at................
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/06/politics/animal/main3026168.shtml
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos Reports: Though often regarded as a longshot candidate for president, Republican Ron Paul tells ABC News that he has an impressive $2.4 million in cash on hand after raising an equal amount during the second quarter, putting him ahead of one-time Republican frontrunner John McCain, who reported this week he has only $2 million in the bank. In an exclusive interview taped Friday and airing Sunday on "This Week," Paul said his campaign is on a better trajectory than McCain's.
"I think some of the candidates are on the down-slope, and we're on the up-slope," said Paul.
Ouch. Salt on the wound.
To be sure, I don't exactly expect mainstream campaign observers to start treating McCain and Paul as equally credible presidential hopefuls, but who would have guessed, half-way through 2007, that Paul would have more money in the bank than McCain?
see more at................
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/06/politics/animal/main3026168.shtml
Friday, July 06, 2007
DO THE CLINTONS NOW SUPPORT JAIL TIME FOR PERJURERS?
DO THE CLINTONS NOW SUPPORT JAIL TIME FOR PERJURERS?
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FoxNews.com on July 6, 2007.
Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton are absolutely
outraged that President Bush granted executive clemency to Scooter Libby,
recently convicted of making false statements under oath. They obviously
believe that Libby should serve his thirty month sentence.
Does that mean that they now think that perjurers should go to jail? Or
have they simply forgotten about Bill Clinton’s own plea agreement in
the last hours of his presidency for making false statements under
oath? Some people would call that perjury.
One would have thought that Hillary and Bill Clinton wouldn’t touch
the Libby executive clemency issue with a ten-foot pole for lots
of reasons.
After all, Bill Clinton has a well-earned reputation as the king of
pardons granting 140 of them during his last minutes in office
with many going to terrorists, people who had paid Hillary’s brothers
to arrange for pardons, contributed money or key support to Hillary’s
Senate campaign, given the Clintons expensive personal gifts, and/or
made large contributions to Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library. One
of the pardons went to Bill’s own brother, Roger, while another went
to Susan MacDougal, who kept quiet about Clinton during the
Whitewater trial.
That’s really cronyism, Hillary.
Given the disgraceful Clinton record on pardons, most reasonable people
would have kept quiet especially when Libby’s offense was so similar
to Bill’s own criminal conviction. But the self-righteous former first couple couldn’t resist. Once the clemency was announced, Hillary immediately
attacked President Bush, saying, "This commutation sends the clear signal
that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.
Hey, Hillary, do you understand what cronyism really means?
Cronyism is favoritism shown to friends and supporters without regard to their qualifications. And that’s what Bill Clinton’s pardons were all about.
Except, as usual, the Clintons went way over the top. So, in addition
to granting pardons to undeserving friends, Bill Clinton also pardoned
undeserving strangers who paid his family, friends, campaign coffers,
and presidential library.
Now Bill and Hillary claim that his highly controversial pardons were
different than the Libby clemency.
He’s absolutely right ...
The big difference was that many of the Clinton pardons were patently bought and paid for something event he Clintons don’t claim to be the case in the Libby commutation.
Hillary’s brothers were paid more than $500,000 to lobby the president for pardons that were then granted to con artists and drug dealers. For a fee of
$400,000, Hugh Rodham successfully pushed for a pardon for drug kingpin
Carlos Anabel Vignali, convicted of shipping a half-ton of cocaine from L.A. to Minnesota. His father was a big contributor to the Democratic Party
he gave more than $150,000 to the Los Angeles Democrats. Obviously,
the investment was a shrewd one.
That’s cronyism, Hillary. Get it?
Tony Rodham advocated a pardon for Edgar and Vanna Jo Gregory.
The Gregorys, who owned a carnival company, defrauded a federal bank.
When the pardon was publicized, Hillary stated that Tony was not paid
by the Gregorys for his work on the pardon. Tony repeated that line
on the Larry King Show.
After an investigation, the House Government Operations Committee disagreed and announced that Hillary’s statement was inaccurate. Now, a federal bankruptcy court overseeing the carnival company’s bankruptcy is about to rule on whether over $100,000 paid to Tony Rodham at the time of the pardons was a loan or payment for consulting.
The Gregorys contributed over $100,000 to Hillary’s campaign and other Democratic causes. These folks were well known to the Clintons they visited them
at Camp David and were hired to stage two carnivals on the White House
grounds paid for by the taxpayers.
That’s cronyism, Hillary.
When the Rodham brothers’ exploits were made public, Bill and Hillary
announced that they were shocked and saddened by the disclosure.
At the time of the pardons, the Rodham brothers were actually living in
the White House with the Clintons and had made contact with the highest
level of presidential assistants. But the Clintons claimed that they were
totally unaware of what Hugh and Tony were doing.
But, it wasn’t just Hillary’s family who benefited from the Clinton cronyism.
Bill’s brother Roger was pardoned for his drug conviction, and he was
allegedly paid $30,000 to promote six felons although those pardons were never granted.
That’s cronyism, Hillary.
The most outrageous Clinton pardons went to sixteen members of the terrorist
gang, the FALN, a Puerto Rican nationalist group responsible for over
130 bombings in the U.S. attacking the N.Y. office of the FBI,
military recruiting headquarters, and even former president
Jimmy Carter’s Chicago campaign office. Six people died and dozens
more were injured as a result of FALN’s actions. These terrorists never
even asked for a pardon, but because Hillary wanted to ingratiate herself
with the Hispanic population in New York during her first Senate race,
they were suddenly granted a commutation of their sentences.
Although the commutations were opposed by the FBI and the Clinton
Justice Department, Bill Clinton granted them to all 16 terrorists.
Once again, Hillary claimed to have no involvement in or prior knowledge
of the decision. Her statement is ridiculous. Two days before the
announcement of the pardons, New York City Councilman Jose Rivera personally presented Hillary with a packet of materials including a letter asking
her to speak to the president and ask him to consider granting executive
clemency to the prisoners. What a coincidence the sentences were
immediately commuted!
Hillary, that’s another example of cronyism.
Joe Connor, the son of one of the innocent men killed by the FALN
terrorists at the Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan, put it this way:
The Clinton family traded the release of terrorists for votes, votes that were promised to be delivered by New York politicians to Hillary for senate
and Gore for president. That was clear.
That’s cronyism, Hillary.
And Hillary actually has the audacity to accuse President Bush of cronyism! This woman has no shame.
Then, of course, there was also Marc Rich, the fugitive oil broker who
renounced his American citizenship. Rich was illegally buying oil from
Iran during the American trade embargo and hid the $200 million in
trading (and over $100 million in profits) with Iraq using dummy
transactions in off-shore corporations.
Ironically, Scooter Libby was one of Rich’s lawyers, while Rudy Giuliani
was the U.S. Attorney who brought the indictment. Amazingly, the U.S.
Attorney’s Office was never contacted by the White House for input into
the pardon decision. Here’s what the prosecuting attorney had to say about the pardon:
I cannot imagine two people that were less suited for a presidential pardon
than Marc Rich and Pincus Green[the co-defendant]. It is inconceivable that President Clinton chose to pardon the two biggest tax cheats in the history
of the United States who had renounced their citizenship, been fugitives for seventeen years, and who had traded with the Iranians during the hostage
crisis. While I do not know what motivated President Clinton to pardon Rich
and Green, I can state that it is implausible that those pardons were based
on his evaluation of the merits of the case... [http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardonsex8.htm]
Interestingly, Rich’s wife bought furniture for the Clinton’s
Chappaqua home and contributed at least $450,000 to the
Clinton Library.
That’s cronyism, Hillary.
Finally, there were the four New Square pardons. There, the Hasidic
defendants were convicted of pocketing $40 million of federal scholarship money. Hillary visited the community, and on Election Day the community
supported Hillary 1400 to 12. Weeks later, on December 22, 2000,
President Clinton met with the New Square leaders to discuss a pardon.
Hillary attended the meeting, but claims that she did not speak.
Apparently, she didn’t have to the pardons were granted.
That’s cronyism, Hillary!
===================
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
www.mccainalert.com
see more at www.mccainalert.com
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FoxNews.com on July 6, 2007.
Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton are absolutely
outraged that President Bush granted executive clemency to Scooter Libby,
recently convicted of making false statements under oath. They obviously
believe that Libby should serve his thirty month sentence.
Does that mean that they now think that perjurers should go to jail? Or
have they simply forgotten about Bill Clinton’s own plea agreement in
the last hours of his presidency for making false statements under
oath? Some people would call that perjury.
One would have thought that Hillary and Bill Clinton wouldn’t touch
the Libby executive clemency issue with a ten-foot pole for lots
of reasons.
After all, Bill Clinton has a well-earned reputation as the king of
pardons granting 140 of them during his last minutes in office
with many going to terrorists, people who had paid Hillary’s brothers
to arrange for pardons, contributed money or key support to Hillary’s
Senate campaign, given the Clintons expensive personal gifts, and/or
made large contributions to Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library. One
of the pardons went to Bill’s own brother, Roger, while another went
to Susan MacDougal, who kept quiet about Clinton during the
Whitewater trial.
That’s really cronyism, Hillary.
Given the disgraceful Clinton record on pardons, most reasonable people
would have kept quiet especially when Libby’s offense was so similar
to Bill’s own criminal conviction. But the self-righteous former first couple couldn’t resist. Once the clemency was announced, Hillary immediately
attacked President Bush, saying, "This commutation sends the clear signal
that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.
Hey, Hillary, do you understand what cronyism really means?
Cronyism is favoritism shown to friends and supporters without regard to their qualifications. And that’s what Bill Clinton’s pardons were all about.
Except, as usual, the Clintons went way over the top. So, in addition
to granting pardons to undeserving friends, Bill Clinton also pardoned
undeserving strangers who paid his family, friends, campaign coffers,
and presidential library.
Now Bill and Hillary claim that his highly controversial pardons were
different than the Libby clemency.
He’s absolutely right ...
The big difference was that many of the Clinton pardons were patently bought and paid for something event he Clintons don’t claim to be the case in the Libby commutation.
Hillary’s brothers were paid more than $500,000 to lobby the president for pardons that were then granted to con artists and drug dealers. For a fee of
$400,000, Hugh Rodham successfully pushed for a pardon for drug kingpin
Carlos Anabel Vignali, convicted of shipping a half-ton of cocaine from L.A. to Minnesota. His father was a big contributor to the Democratic Party
he gave more than $150,000 to the Los Angeles Democrats. Obviously,
the investment was a shrewd one.
That’s cronyism, Hillary. Get it?
Tony Rodham advocated a pardon for Edgar and Vanna Jo Gregory.
The Gregorys, who owned a carnival company, defrauded a federal bank.
When the pardon was publicized, Hillary stated that Tony was not paid
by the Gregorys for his work on the pardon. Tony repeated that line
on the Larry King Show.
After an investigation, the House Government Operations Committee disagreed and announced that Hillary’s statement was inaccurate. Now, a federal bankruptcy court overseeing the carnival company’s bankruptcy is about to rule on whether over $100,000 paid to Tony Rodham at the time of the pardons was a loan or payment for consulting.
The Gregorys contributed over $100,000 to Hillary’s campaign and other Democratic causes. These folks were well known to the Clintons they visited them
at Camp David and were hired to stage two carnivals on the White House
grounds paid for by the taxpayers.
That’s cronyism, Hillary.
When the Rodham brothers’ exploits were made public, Bill and Hillary
announced that they were shocked and saddened by the disclosure.
At the time of the pardons, the Rodham brothers were actually living in
the White House with the Clintons and had made contact with the highest
level of presidential assistants. But the Clintons claimed that they were
totally unaware of what Hugh and Tony were doing.
But, it wasn’t just Hillary’s family who benefited from the Clinton cronyism.
Bill’s brother Roger was pardoned for his drug conviction, and he was
allegedly paid $30,000 to promote six felons although those pardons were never granted.
That’s cronyism, Hillary.
The most outrageous Clinton pardons went to sixteen members of the terrorist
gang, the FALN, a Puerto Rican nationalist group responsible for over
130 bombings in the U.S. attacking the N.Y. office of the FBI,
military recruiting headquarters, and even former president
Jimmy Carter’s Chicago campaign office. Six people died and dozens
more were injured as a result of FALN’s actions. These terrorists never
even asked for a pardon, but because Hillary wanted to ingratiate herself
with the Hispanic population in New York during her first Senate race,
they were suddenly granted a commutation of their sentences.
Although the commutations were opposed by the FBI and the Clinton
Justice Department, Bill Clinton granted them to all 16 terrorists.
Once again, Hillary claimed to have no involvement in or prior knowledge
of the decision. Her statement is ridiculous. Two days before the
announcement of the pardons, New York City Councilman Jose Rivera personally presented Hillary with a packet of materials including a letter asking
her to speak to the president and ask him to consider granting executive
clemency to the prisoners. What a coincidence the sentences were
immediately commuted!
Hillary, that’s another example of cronyism.
Joe Connor, the son of one of the innocent men killed by the FALN
terrorists at the Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan, put it this way:
The Clinton family traded the release of terrorists for votes, votes that were promised to be delivered by New York politicians to Hillary for senate
and Gore for president. That was clear.
That’s cronyism, Hillary.
And Hillary actually has the audacity to accuse President Bush of cronyism! This woman has no shame.
Then, of course, there was also Marc Rich, the fugitive oil broker who
renounced his American citizenship. Rich was illegally buying oil from
Iran during the American trade embargo and hid the $200 million in
trading (and over $100 million in profits) with Iraq using dummy
transactions in off-shore corporations.
Ironically, Scooter Libby was one of Rich’s lawyers, while Rudy Giuliani
was the U.S. Attorney who brought the indictment. Amazingly, the U.S.
Attorney’s Office was never contacted by the White House for input into
the pardon decision. Here’s what the prosecuting attorney had to say about the pardon:
I cannot imagine two people that were less suited for a presidential pardon
than Marc Rich and Pincus Green[the co-defendant]. It is inconceivable that President Clinton chose to pardon the two biggest tax cheats in the history
of the United States who had renounced their citizenship, been fugitives for seventeen years, and who had traded with the Iranians during the hostage
crisis. While I do not know what motivated President Clinton to pardon Rich
and Green, I can state that it is implausible that those pardons were based
on his evaluation of the merits of the case... [http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardonsex8.htm]
Interestingly, Rich’s wife bought furniture for the Clinton’s
Chappaqua home and contributed at least $450,000 to the
Clinton Library.
That’s cronyism, Hillary.
Finally, there were the four New Square pardons. There, the Hasidic
defendants were convicted of pocketing $40 million of federal scholarship money. Hillary visited the community, and on Election Day the community
supported Hillary 1400 to 12. Weeks later, on December 22, 2000,
President Clinton met with the New Square leaders to discuss a pardon.
Hillary attended the meeting, but claims that she did not speak.
Apparently, she didn’t have to the pardons were granted.
That’s cronyism, Hillary!
===================
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
www.mccainalert.com
see more at www.mccainalert.com
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
IF BUSH PULLS OUT THE TROOPS, IT MIGHT SAVE THE GOP
IF BUSH PULLS OUT THE TROOPS, IT MIGHT SAVE THE GOP
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on June 27, 2007.
Will George W. Bush try to steal a page from Richard Nixon and, reading the handwriting on the wall after a dismal showing in the congressional elections, begin to pull troops out of Iraq by the end of the year? If he does, will it save the Republican Party?
Recent indications of administration unhappiness with the failure of the Iraqi regime to use the period of the surge in American troops to enact basic reforms might presage just such a withdrawal. Clearly, the Iraqi government has done nothing to expand power-sharing with the Sunnis or to equalize access to oil revenues. Their failure to act could give Bush the rationale he needs to begin to draw down American force levels.
If Bush decides to act in this way, he will be doing himself, his party, and the country a big favor. There is still time to rescue the fortunes of the Republican Party in the 2008 election. It is Iraq that is dragging the president’s ratings down and killing his party’s chances in the election. Bush’s ratings on the economy are not bad, and he still draws commendations for his battle against terrorism. If he began to pull out troops, he could begin to recover his personal ratings and move his party up.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both indicated that they would have to support some kind of ongoing presence in Iraq during their presidencies. Obama implied as much when he told David Letterman that “we need to be as responsible in pulling out as we were irresponsible in going in” to Iraq. But Hillary has been much more direct, telling The New York Times that she favored keeping sufficient troops there to provide logistical, training, air and intelligence support for Iraqi forces and to hunt al Qaeda and patrol the Iraq-Iran border to stop infiltration. These missions, according to Pentagon sources, would likely occupy at least 75,000 soldiers.
If Bush begins to draw down manpower levels by the end of the year, he could reduce the differences between his positionand that of the Democratic front-runners on a matter of numbers rather than on basic policy. In taking the Iraq issue out of contention in the 2008 election, Bush will have rescued his party from what is now almost certain defeat.
Will his move seem transparently political? Democrats will surely say that it is, but nobody will really believe that Bush or the Republicans will reverse course and send in more troops after the election. Everybody will believe that the draw-down of U.S. troops is permanent and quite real. In fact, Bush’s stubborn obstinacy on Iraq in the past will make it unlikely that any concession on his part will be seen as opportunistic. He has already made it quite clear to this angry, disappointed nation that he doesn’t read the polls and doesn’t much care what we think when it comes to his foreign policy.
Without Iraq, Bush has quite a record to present to the country in 2008. The economy seems to be avoiding a recession, unemployment remains low, North Korea seems to be caving in, and the Iranian regime seems to be in real trouble at home.
Bush, after all, did relent and fire Donald Rumsfeld — although too late to influence the 2006 election. Maybe he is getting smart enough to extricate himself and his party from the mess in Iraq.
Certainly, the Iraqi regime is giving him every out to do so. All he needs to do is agree with Hillary that the U.S. troops have done their job but the Iraqi government has not done its. Such rhetoric is all the cover he would need to begin to pull out. And a switch in time might just save the White House.
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on June 27, 2007.
Will George W. Bush try to steal a page from Richard Nixon and, reading the handwriting on the wall after a dismal showing in the congressional elections, begin to pull troops out of Iraq by the end of the year? If he does, will it save the Republican Party?
Recent indications of administration unhappiness with the failure of the Iraqi regime to use the period of the surge in American troops to enact basic reforms might presage just such a withdrawal. Clearly, the Iraqi government has done nothing to expand power-sharing with the Sunnis or to equalize access to oil revenues. Their failure to act could give Bush the rationale he needs to begin to draw down American force levels.
If Bush decides to act in this way, he will be doing himself, his party, and the country a big favor. There is still time to rescue the fortunes of the Republican Party in the 2008 election. It is Iraq that is dragging the president’s ratings down and killing his party’s chances in the election. Bush’s ratings on the economy are not bad, and he still draws commendations for his battle against terrorism. If he began to pull out troops, he could begin to recover his personal ratings and move his party up.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both indicated that they would have to support some kind of ongoing presence in Iraq during their presidencies. Obama implied as much when he told David Letterman that “we need to be as responsible in pulling out as we were irresponsible in going in” to Iraq. But Hillary has been much more direct, telling The New York Times that she favored keeping sufficient troops there to provide logistical, training, air and intelligence support for Iraqi forces and to hunt al Qaeda and patrol the Iraq-Iran border to stop infiltration. These missions, according to Pentagon sources, would likely occupy at least 75,000 soldiers.
If Bush begins to draw down manpower levels by the end of the year, he could reduce the differences between his positionand that of the Democratic front-runners on a matter of numbers rather than on basic policy. In taking the Iraq issue out of contention in the 2008 election, Bush will have rescued his party from what is now almost certain defeat.
Will his move seem transparently political? Democrats will surely say that it is, but nobody will really believe that Bush or the Republicans will reverse course and send in more troops after the election. Everybody will believe that the draw-down of U.S. troops is permanent and quite real. In fact, Bush’s stubborn obstinacy on Iraq in the past will make it unlikely that any concession on his part will be seen as opportunistic. He has already made it quite clear to this angry, disappointed nation that he doesn’t read the polls and doesn’t much care what we think when it comes to his foreign policy.
Without Iraq, Bush has quite a record to present to the country in 2008. The economy seems to be avoiding a recession, unemployment remains low, North Korea seems to be caving in, and the Iranian regime seems to be in real trouble at home.
Bush, after all, did relent and fire Donald Rumsfeld — although too late to influence the 2006 election. Maybe he is getting smart enough to extricate himself and his party from the mess in Iraq.
Certainly, the Iraqi regime is giving him every out to do so. All he needs to do is agree with Hillary that the U.S. troops have done their job but the Iraqi government has not done its. Such rhetoric is all the cover he would need to begin to pull out. And a switch in time might just save the White House.
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