My Beauty Best Teacher

Won't you please join me along with members of Empower DC, parents, teachers and community as we fight the displacement of our students and the privatization of our public schools. I have featured a guest post by Liane Scott which outlines the plan to expose DC's Equation for Displacement. Hope to see you this Saturday @ 11 am. Details listed below. Spread the word.

Candi Peterson

The Displacement Equation

Guest post By Liane Scott

What do DC’s proposed school closings have to do with the loss of affordable housing in the District of Columbia? Could it have something to do with the fact that many schools are being closed down in neighborhoods that are of interest to for-profit developers? What about the loss of community services like affordable child care? Has the government of the District of Columbia come to the conclusion that running the city is a lot cheaper if they have fewer children to educate, especially if those children have parents who are not so well off?

Come to Empower DC’s Info and Action Summit this Saturday, and explore these questions further. We believe that…


SCHOOL CLOSINGS + LOSS OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING + PUBLIC LAND GIVE-AWAYS = DISPLACEMENT

Help Us Expose DC’s Equation for Displacement

Saturday, February 4th, 2012
11:00 AM – 1:30 PM

@ Empower DC – 1419 V Street, NW

U Street Metro (Green Line) street parking available.
Lunch Provided & Childcare Available

This Saturday, Empower DC will make plans to MAKE OUR DEMANDS KNOWN at Mayor Gray’s ONE City Citizen’s Summit, the following Saturday, February 11th at the Washington Convention Center. The city may not be investing in certain communities because they have plans for those neighborhoods that don’t include the current residents. Let’s let them know that we know what’s up and that we’re not going to stand for it. Please contact Daniel at (202) 234-1991 ext. 104 or Daniel@empowerdc.org to RSVP and request childcare.

Under Article II, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution, the President has the power to fill any vacancies that may happen during when Senate is in recess. Over the past 100 years, a legal and official Senate recess has been interpreted by scores of Attorneys Generals and the Department of Justice (DOJ) from both Republican and Democratic Party's as the Senate being out of town and not conducting any business at all for at least 10–25 days of duration. No one, not even crazy right or left wing professors or lawyers, has ever before even suggested anything of six to seven days might be enough to count as a recess (source).

Right now the Senate is not in a recess. Every three days it opens up a brief session for a half hour or so and then adjourns for three days before it then has another brief 'pro forma' session. This means that officially, technically, and according to the rules and procedures of the United States Senate, it is still in session. This tactic was invented and used first by the Democrats to block President Bush recess appointments, and it was successful, because legally the President can not make appointments while the Senate is in session.

And so it was quite a surprise to me today that President Barack Obama (one-term Democrat), made several recess appointments, illegally and against the laws of our nation. Check out the many stories on this issue on memeorandum found here or here.

President Obama argued that under his and Democrats leadership America has fallen into such a crisis that he no longer has to follow the laws of our nation. He can simply deem that the Senate is effectively in a recess, and thus appoint whomever he wants to whatever he wants, even without Senate confirmation.

Many bloggers and professors and lawyers have jumped to his defense, arguing that the Senate is indeed in a recess, but that's contrary to what the White House memo says- it does not say 'the Senate is in a recess and the President is making several appointments'- nope, the memo says "Senate has effectively been in recess"- in other words, not technically, not officially, not legally, but "effectively", and so Obama was going to technically, officially, and legally make appointments that would be effective immediately.

Many other bloggers and professors are arguing that the President had the right to break the law here because the Senate wasn't advising and consenting and was simply blocking the one appointment of Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but their arguments were again made into useless junk by the President later making further 'recess' appointments to the NLRB, and some of these appointments had been opposed because the Senate opposed the people involved and did not want to give their assent.

Look, there is no defense for breaking the laws of our nation. None. The ends do not justify the means. I don't care if its a conservative, Tea Party Republican, or a socialist, communist Democrat- the President only has the power to make appointments when the Senate is officially in a recess of longer than 10 days. Period. Anything other than that is breaking the law, and is unconstitutional, and deserving of impeachment.

That won't happen though- bit by bit, crisis by crisis, American citizens are learning to tolerate law breaking. Ignoring established bankruptcy laws to 'save the automobile industry' was okay. Pressuring immigration officials to ignore fraudulently filled out forms and security threats in order to increase the number of immigrants in America is okay. Passing a law ordering people to buy a product or face fines is okay. And making recess appointments while the Senate is officially/legally/technically in session and not in recess is okay. Bit by bit, little tyranny by big, we are learning to accept that one man is greater than the system and can destroy it if he thinks by doing so he can save us.

This incident once more reminds me of a post I wrote last year called America is a Republic- It Shouldn't Matter if Most Want to Tax Millionaires More. In it, I wrote:

Our nation is approaching a key election in 2012, much as Rome faced a key turning point in its history when Lucius Sergius Catilina attempted to overthrow the Roman Republic by playing to the lures of democracy and populism. Catiline rallied the poor to his banner by arguing for debt relief for the poor people of Rome, and many supported him because there are always more people who are poor than there are people who are truly wealthy. Because of the destructive policies of the government, which had collapsed the housing market and had taxed and regulated the small farms and small businesses to the brink of destruction, there were many people out of work who listened to the siren song of 'support me, I'll claim majority rule, and take from those who have wealth and give to those who do not.' Thankfully, Rome had an ardent defender of the Republic in a man like Cicero, and the conspiracy was foiled, but I believe that it had come close enough to succeeding to inspire men like Julius Caesar and Pompey to try again soon after, and they were successful in harassing the forces of democracy to institute a dictatorship over the masses.

Obama is following in the footsteps of Catiline, and bit by bit breaking the laws and traditions and precedents of our Republic. He might be stopped, but the damage he is doing is surely going to inspire a Caesar to put an imperial dictatorship on my children and grandchildren.

UPDATE: Let's make this issue even clearer. On Tuesday, January 3rd, the Senate was in session. You can view their schedule here, and see from it that they were called to order at 11:01 AM. They engaged in legislative and executive business. They adjourned over an hour later after completing the session's business. Several hours later, Barack Obama appointed several people to several different positions, arguing that the Senate was 'effectively in a recess' and that he therefore had the authority to make recess appointments.

Liberal bloggers and news pundits and radio hosts are arguing that since the Senate was in a recess for 3 days it was okay- but in reality, the Senate had adjourned for only several hours, and there is no way, no way at all, that an adjournment of several hours can be considered a 'recess'.

The only argument is that the Senate session held on Tuesday for over an hour that accomplished several items of note wasn't a real session, and that argument is utterly laughable beyond question.

The Senate was not in a recess, and thus the recess appointments were unconstitutional and illegal. President Barack Obama acted in a criminal and illegal fashion yesterday, and the only real question I have is whether he did it on accident (believing that the Senate was in fact in a recess) or on purpose (knowing they were not and not caring and breaking the law).

Thank you Powerlineblog for bringing this point to me attention.

UPDATE II: Several days after his power grab, President Barack Obama went further, telling a group of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau bureaucrats that "Now that Richard [Cordray] is your director, you can finally exercise the full power that this agency has been given to protect consumers under the law." The only problem with this statement is that the legislation that created the CFPB includes a section that says many of the bureau’s new powers are to be held by the secretary of the Treasury “until the Director of the Bureau is confirmed by the Senate.” Cordray was not confirmed by the Senate- he was appointed to the position while the Senate was in session in violation to the Constitution.

So how does President Obama's pronouncement square with the law? I have two theories- one, that President Obama is ignorant of the law and incompetent in his understanding of it; or two, that President Obama is competent and knowledgeable and just doesn't care one bit about the law and what's legal.

Source- The Daily Caller, via Doug Ross.

According to a recent poll by CBS, most Americans believe that taxes on millionaires should be increased in order to reduce the deficit. When asked "should taxes on millionaires be raised in order to lower the the deficit," 64% of those responding to this poll said "yes." This is exactly why our founding fathers rejected a democracy in favor of building a republic.

When our founding fathers built our nation, they knew from history that democracies inevitably fail. Democracies are governments built on majority rule, where the majority has the power to decide what to do with your property, your liberties, and eventually your life. In a democracy, votes are held, and if the majority decides that they want to take more of your money, property, wealth, or business in order to 'lower the deficit', that is exactly what happens. Although those who are voting played no part in you earning this wealth and those who are voting did not expend any effort for you to gain this wealth, they derive their power from the fact that there are more of them than you, and majority rules. On this basis, they feel that they can gather as mobs and demand higher taxes on you and more control over your choices, simply because there are more of them than you. This sort of mob rule is exactly the sort of rule that was common in ancient Greece and common at the end of the Roman Republic, and eventually both of these republics-turned-democracies slide into governments ruled by Caesars and Tyrants.

Our founding fathers knew this was the nature of man and knew that although democracies and majority rule have some favorable aspects to them, the only way that people's lives, liberty, and property could be properly protected is by building a republic. A republic is a government where political power is limited by the law, which sets up a government of limited powers that is frequently checked by separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. In a republic, minority rights are protected and the government is unable to threaten your life, liberty, and property because it lacks the power and capacity to do so- it does not rule on majority rule, but rather rules based on the majority properly running a firmly established and defined political entity which performs certain needed tasks well, such as national defense and establishing police services, but which does not have the real power to inject itself into tasks which it can not do well, like setting up social values and controlling the free market of exchange. In a republic, the government lacks the capacity and power to take money from those who earn it simply because they have it- rather, taxes are raised on people because it is argued that those people benefit the most from the services of the state so should pay more. This argument only works to a certain point, and assumes that even the poor pay taxes into the system to a rate comparable to what the services that they receive from the state- it is not just 'loot the rich because they have money and there is more of us than them.'

Our nation is approaching a key election in 2012, much as Rome faced a key turning point in its history when Lucius Sergius Catilina attempted to overthrow the Roman Republic by playing to the lures of democracy and populism. Catiline rallied the poor to his banner by arguing for debt relief for the poor people of Rome, and many supported him because there are always more people who are poor than there are people who are truly wealthy. Because of the destructive policies of the government, which had collapsed the housing market and had taxed and regulated the small farms and small businesses to the brink of destruction, there were many people out of work who listened to the siren song of 'support me, I'll claim majority rule, and take from those who have wealth and give to those who do not.' Thankfully, Rome had an ardent defender of the Republic in a man like Cicero, and the conspiracy was foiled, but I believe that it had come close enough to succeeding to inspire men like Julius Caesar and Pompey to try again soon after, and they were successful in harassing the forces of democracy to institute a dictatorship over the masses.

So, after reading that the majority of Americans believe that taxes on millionaires should be increased in order to reduce the deficit, I once again thankful that our nation is a Republic- if only we can keep it that way.

The title of this post isn't mine- Ralph R. Reiland came up with it in his post which I will talk about. But it's a great title- in my mind, I see the American economy hitting an iceberg around 2007 and start taking on some water, enough that it badly listed by 2008 and went into a recession. The iceberg was too much federal spending that soaked up savings and investments, too many federal government policies that encouraged bubbles in investing and housing, and increasing regulations that choked off economic growth, especially in small businesses, and signaled to business owners that now was the time to play it safe and not take risks and create jobs. The tip of this iceberg of federal policy ripped a large hole in the Titanic of the US economy, and soon the boat started to dangerously take on water.

Although I'm no expert of this, I imagine that once your boat hits an iceberg and takes on water, you have two options. Option one is to continue moving forward and patch the hole- in other words, keep America's booming private economy and remove the harmful regulations and policies that caused the damage. Option two is to stop moving and widen the hole, by which I mean to attack private business and those who are successful in it and put in place more harmful policies. Oh, I guess there was a double-secret third option too, and that is to turn the boat around and try to ram the boat on the iceberg again, this time with the intent on sinking the whole thing. For a while, I thought that Obama and the Democrats were just intent on going with option 2, but it looks like they are honestly considering circling back on that iceberg with the goal of sinking the economy of the United States for good.

President Barack Obama was once named by me as Captain of the US Titanic Spending (see my complete list of Obama nicknames)- and now he's going after that iceberg again!

Here are some parts of the article by Reiland called Obama: Circling back to the iceberg:

Only 26 percent of the public approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy in the latest Gallup poll, conducted Aug. 11-14, while a whopping 71 percent disapprove. That's down from Obama's previous low point of 35 percent approval on this top issue.

The public's growing dissatisfaction shouldn't be surprising. Going back to 1890, reports the National Bureau of Economic Research, the only U.S. president with a worse record than Obama in job creation in his first two-and-a-half years in office, measured in terms of percentage change, was Herbert Hoover, presiding over the emergence of the Great Depression.

"Official unemployment is 9.1 percent," stated a New York Times editorial on Aug. 15, decrying the nation's jobs picture, "but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work." "Keeping the economy going and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning," Obama said back in March. "It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."

Now, nearly six months later, the White House reports that Obama is working on a new strategy for job creation that will be unveiled after he returns from vacation. The task of coming up with a jobs plan that works shouldn't be all that terribly difficult. All Mr. Obama has to do is reverse what he's done and change what he thinks.

First, by the government's own numbers, small businesses have created 64 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. economy over the past 15 years.

In fact, that understates the role of small business, since the vast majority of America's medium-sized and large businesses began as small businesses. The Heinz corporation began when 16-year-old Henry Heinz grated piles of horseradish at home, using his mother's recipe, and sold the bottled product door-to-door in Sharpsburg out of a wheelbarrow.

Yet since Obama took office, employment at federal regulatory agencies has jumped 13 percent while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6 percent. Second, 39 percent of small-business owners said in a Chamber of Commerce survey in July that ObamaCare was either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring....

...Additionally, 84 percent of small business owners in the survey said the economy is on the wrong track, 79 percent view the current regulatory environment as unreasonable, and 79 percent believe Washington should get out of the way of small business, rather than offering a helping hand (14 percent).

In its first 26 months, reports The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration imposed new regulatory rules that will cost the private sector $40 billion. In July alone, reports Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., federal regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will add some $9.5 billion in new costs.

Bottom line: What's required from Obama is a complete about-face, the shelving of his flawed economic philosophy and a reversal of his counterproductive policy prescriptions.

For those who want to see which way the United States is going under President Obama and his progressive policies supported by the new progressive Democratic Party, watch this movie- Titanic (10th Anniversary Edition).

Nile Gardiner, a British conservative commentator and former aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, unleashed on US President Barack Obama (Democrat) in his latest column, summing up Obama and his Democratic administration's actions perfectly:

The decision by credit agency Standard and Poor’s to downgrade America’s AAA credit rating for the first time in 70 years is a massive blow to the credibility of the Obama administration, and a damning indictment of its handling of the economy. No doubt the White House will pathetically try to blame the Bush Administration, Republicans in Congress, and of course its favourite target, the Tea Party, for the move by S&P. But without a shadow of a doubt, responsibility for the country’s financial mess and staggering levels of debt lie with the current US president and his administration. They have been in charge of running the economy for over 30 months, during which time the United States has witnessed an unprecedented increase in government spending and borrowing.

As the Congressional Budget Office revealed In January, the deficits generated under the Obama administration are the largest since the end of World War Two...

...Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the United States has embarked on the most ambitious failed experiment in Washington meddling in US history. Huge increases in government spending, massive federal bailouts, growing regulations on businesses, thinly veiled protectionism, and the launch of a vastly expensive and deeply unpopular health care reform plan, have all combined to instill fear and uncertainty in the markets. Free enterprise has taken a backseat to continental European-style interventionism, as an intensely ideological left wing administration has sought to dramatically increase the role of the state in shaping the US economy. The end result has been a dramatic fall in economic freedom, sluggish growth, poor consumer confidence, high unemployment, a collapsing housing market, and an overall decline in US prosperity, with more than 45 million Americans now reliant on food stamps – that’s over one seventh of the entire country.

These are increasingly dangerous times, with American leadership being challenged across the globe. Only an historic reduction in government spending combined with pro-growth measures including lower business tax rates to stimulate job creation and attract investment can turn the US economy around. Unfortunately, as Standard and Poor’s decision has shown, this is a presidency in extreme denial over America’s towering debts, leading a nation on a precipice while blindfolded to reality. The United States badly needs another Reagan-style revolution to stave off further economic disaster, preserve American leadership on the world stage, and secure the future of a superpower. Ultimately, greater liberty and freedom, not the deathly hand of Big Government, are needed to turn this great nation around.

He nails it- sometimes it takes a guy from across the pond to really sum up things over here. Click on these links to check out Gardiner's books such as Forever in the shadow of Churchill?: Britain and the memory of World War Two at the end of the 20th century (Historical roots of contemporary international and regional issues occasional paper series).

The following is a video from a development in Tacoma WA (Salishan) that was purpose built for illegal immigrants. There are about 1325 homes in this complex, and the immigrants to our great nation live on refugee pay that offers them $2642 per month in SSI benefits, plus Food Stamps, plus Section 8 Housing. Although few work and the average salary of these illegal immigrants is rather low, you might notice all the expensive cars in this video- I guess when you are given a house that is roughly 180K to live in that is maintained for you and then you are given 26K/year, you have money for nice new cars.

Sometimes I feel like such a rube, working and paying my taxes, paying down the loan that I took out from the bank, and not abusing the system like everyone else seems to be. Anyway, here is the video of it:

UPDATE: In response to those who want to deny reality, the name of this housing project is either the Tacoma Housing Authority or the Salishan Housing Project. Originally built by the federal government in the 1940's, by the 1990's it had turned into a crime and drug infested low income neighborhood run by the government to trap minorities and poor people in a cycle of dependence. So in 2001, using mostly taxpayer money ($45.5 million in federal funds and $12 million in state funds), the development was rebuilt and now it looks nice and pretty like it does in the video. According to the official website for this project, the government spared no expense with these homes that it is giving away to people who can't afford them. The wikipedia page provides further data derived from the census that backs up this video.

Oh, I'm sure on some aspects it is possible to interpret aspects of this story differently and some link exists that tries to debunk this whole thing, but the main point remains that me and my family work hard creating wealth and the federal government takes this wealth from us and gives it to people who did nothing to earn it, using me and my family as slaves while some politician or political party claims credit and glory for providing this wealth redistribution to people who did not earn it. It is immoral and wrong and needs to be stopped.

Imagine that you lived in a state of nature- your plane crash landed on some previously unclaimed island that has no inhabitants and there is no hope of being rescued or contacting your previous home nations. Or you go to the moon, or an asteroid, or the bottom of the ocean, or some other location where there are no laws and no legal rights are written down. What sort of rights would you have?

Another way of asking this question is for you to think of things that others would do to you that you would think are wrong- that you would believe are wrong because you know that to do these things are wrong, with or without a government or any sort of legal authority telling you that they are wrong. These are what are called your natural rights.

What sort of natural rights would you have, whereby you would feel violated and wronged by others, even if there were no government or state or authority? Let's say you crash land on the island or find yourself on the moon- would you feel that you had been horribly wronged and violated if your fellow citizens didn't pay for your healthcare insurance in case you got injured? You're on an asteroid, and you demand that the other people on the asteroid buy a house for you or subsidize your loan, and they say no- have you been wronged and your natural rights violated? Of course not- you don't have any sort of right to have others pay for your healthcare insurance, house, car, food, or anything of that sort.

Imagine that you begin to work on your island, tilling a field and growing a crop, where others lay around and do nothing other than to watch you. After you are done growing your crop, they all band together in a large group and vote to have you distribute your crop to everyone, with everyone getting an equal share, even though you contributed all the labor. Were you wronged? Did someone violate your rights? Or let's say on the moon, you provide some sort of service that is essential- taking care of the banking, entertaining others by playing a sport, taking a risk and thinking up a new product- and you work hard at your service and in return others pay you some sort of compensation, that they voluntarily pay for your service because they recognize its worth; and after this, someone else comes along and demands a share of your 'money' in order to pay for someone else to conduct a study of the effects of drinking in prostitutes in China, or to build a road that you will never travel on the other side of the moon, or to cut a check to the older people stranded on the moon, or to hire a bureaucrat to supervise you and tell you all the things you are doing wrong. Would you be wronged then?

Of course you would have been wronged- your labor is yours, and the profit from your labor is yours, and the government does not have any 'right' to your labor, not unless you are a slave to the state. You are okay with voting to provide a military to protect your property from outside aggression, or police or fire service to protect it from theft or fire, or to create a court system to resolve any disputes that may arise regarding your property. But for the government to come and demand the fruits of your labor and lay claim to it is tyranny- it is your property, it existed before government, it will exist after government, and you are the only person who can lay any sort of right to that property. This in your natural right to property.

The purpose of our government is to protect these natural rights- life, liberty, and property. There is no such thing as a 'tax cut for the rich'- the government does not have any sort of claim on the rich citizens' property, so a more proper name for this would be a 'lessening of the unequal taxes levied on those earning high incomes'. You do not have any sort of right to healthcare or housing; but neither do you have any sort of right to social security or medicare- those are provided to some in our society by violating my rights and the rights of other young people in society to keep and earn property in order to provide forced charity to those who have had ample opportunity to earn and pay for their own retirement and healthcare- but they have no right to this sort of forced charitable giving.

Understanding property rights and the nature of them is important, because once the state becomes destructive to these property rights that state is on the road to tyranny. We can see it already in our nation, where our government has arbitrarily violated contracts because a car company is going bankrupt, failed to properly issue permits to energy companies who have gone through the (excessive and capricious) permit process, or the forcing someone young and healthy and full of life to buy a product like health insurance in order to subsidize the costs for others in society. Once it has been established that your property rights can be violated by a government- that rights to keep and earn property that existed before government was around and would be around even if government was not around- then the next step is to go after your freedoms and liberties, and lastly, your life.

Fight for the right to keep and earn property, and stop engaging in class warfare, because it will only lead to tyranny and injustice.

For more, check out John Locke, property rights, and economic theory.: An article from: Journal of Economic Issues or John Locke and Property as a Human Right Today: Towards a New Theory of Property Rights.

Over the weekend I was talking with some of my friends and relatives who support Obama in 2012, and what struck me about these conversations was the stunning inconsistency that these supporters of Obama demonstrated. They stated that they don't really like Obama's associations with terrorists, his views on race, his anti-Semitism, his contribution to divisive rhetoric, his cold and aloof manner, his extreme vanity, his thin-skinned nature, or the way that he lectures us; but yet they say that they support Obama because 'he is a good guy who I like.' These Obama supporters stated that they like the direction that Obama is taking our nation, but when pressed on a range of real policies, they said that they don't really like the massive amounts of debt that Obama has added, the fact that unemployment rates have settled at a new normal under Obama of 10%, the reality of the housing market which still has not hit bottom, they are sick of paying his prices at the pump because of his anti-drilling policies, and think that Obamacare was a noble and grand attempt but will be a huge policy disaster.

My conversations with Obama supporters led me to believe that they like Obama because of his views and policies, but in reality don't really like his views and policies. It is a weird disconnect that I can't figure out.

UPDATE: All things considered though, if no one actually runs against Obama, it won't really matter in 2012. I just read that Mitch Daniels told supporters in a midnight email early Sunday that he is opting against a 2012 presidential run. Daniels had slowly emerged as my alternative to an un-apologetic-about-healthcare-reform Romney, but now I have to go back to the drawing board. Quick, liberals and Democrats, make me feel comfortable about voting for someone with no experience like Hermain Cain- myself, I like to see accomplishments, but obviously if BamBam can get elected, any rube off the street can be dug up and thrown in White House.

UPDATE II: Via Transterrestial Musings:

The Obama administration reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer changes his name to “Max Power” (he saw it on a hair dryer). He tells Bart that there are three ways to do something: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way. “What’s the Max Power way?” It’s like the wrong way, but faster.

UPDATE III: The question remains- WHY OBAMA?

If America elected Presidents based on foreign policy success and experience, John McCain would be President instead of Obama right now, so let's get back to the reality of the American political system and talk about the effect that Obama's domestic policies are having on our nation. To that, I turn to a Nolan Finley column that ran in the Detroit News this weekend that some of you may have missed:

Republicans hoping to unseat President Barack Obama and his Democratic enablers in Congress should recraft the campaign slogan Bill Clinton used to topple George H.W. Bush: It's the policies, stupid.

Obama, with no shortage of audacity, is betting he can blur the connection between the decisions of his administration and the still wheezy performance of the economy and convince voters that soaring prices for essential goods and anemic job creation are not his fault.

That was the message pitched by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week when he told the Detroit Economic Club that the recovery is on solid ground and any lingering economic pain is the fault of the previous administration.

Given the money Obama has spent and the depth of his reach into the private sector, he now owns this economy. And it isn't anywhere near where he said it would be by now when he bullied through an $823 billion stimulus package and seized control of the free market.


Obama hopes to blame big, greedy oil companies for gasoline prices that are more than $4 a gallon today, and could be up to $6 by Election Day if trends hold.

But Obama has used his regulatory power to choke off domestic oil exploration, fueling speculators who are betting on tighter future supplies. The Fed's stubborn commitment to a weak dollar also is impacting oil prices and other commodities, including food.

This is the slowest economic recovery since World War II, and while Geithner tried to shrug that off as typical of a recession triggered by a financial markets crisis, the real blame falls on Obama's policies that are blocking development and spooking investors.

The biggest culprit after huge deficit spending is the Environmental Protection Agency, which has side-stepped Congress to put in place carbon caps that assure America won't have enough energy to power robust economic growth.

Despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars to shore up the housing market, mortgage foreclosures continue to surge. Delaying foreclosures drags out the inevitable and keeps the market from resetting. Home values keep declining along with consumer confidence.

Small businesses complain they can't get loans to expand, and banks say Obama's rushed through financial regulations make it almost impossible to lend money to entrepreneurs.

The uncertainties of Obamacare, growing debt and the president's determination to raise taxes on the investor class make job creators nervous and less eager to risk their money.

Businesses see that Obama has tilted the labor field sharply in favor of unions, impacting decisions on whether to locate new operations here or overseas. Same goes for his corporate tax policies.

From the viewpoint of Main Street, the economy still stinks. Obama will work hard over the next 18 months to shirk the blame. But as the dots are connected, the line of responsibility leads to the Oval Office.

Finley hits the nail on the head- what we are seeing are the results of the policies of liberal Democrats such as those that controlled the House from 2007 to 2011, the Senate from 2007 to today, and the Presidency from 2009 to today. Let's get back to looking at what works and what doesn't work, and from my view, liberal policies don't work, and I offer as evidence liberal Democrat Detroit, liberal Democrat Michigan from 2003-2011, and liberal Democrat USA from 2009-2010. High taxes, high regulation, class warfare, bureaucratic control, attacks on wealth, and backwards energy policies that liberal Democrats push for yield the predictable results and attack the foundations of life, liberty, and property growth that America was built on.

According to the AP, President Barack Obama's new chief of staff William Daley respond to the proposal from congressional Republicans to cut $55 billion from the federal budget by going on CBS' 'Face the Nation' and asking the "Where's the beef?" He then elaborated that he is very curious to see exactly where those cuts will come from, implying that Republicans are playing the same sort of game that Obama plays often where he makes vague statements with no details to back them up. Both President of the United States Barack Obama (Democrat) and him apparently can't find the details for these cuts and so think that this is some sort of trick.

This is really sad, because I opened up internet explorer, went to google, searched 'details of gop plan', and the very first site that was listed was "A Roadmap for America's Future: The Budget Committee Republicans," which links to the GOP's detailed plans to cut $55 billion from the federal budget. That I was able to find the details to the plan so easily and yet the President of the United States and his chief of staff were not able to speaks to one of two things- one, they're all incompetent idiots who lack basic computer and research skills because they are all stuck in the pre-internet past, or two, they are disingenuous liars who are knowingly trying to scam and fool the American people because they know they are not decent or honest or truthful people so they can't find any refuge there.

Daley is thus either an incompetent idiot or a disingenuous liar- either way, the fact that he was chosen to be the main advisor to our President speaks to the kind of people that our President has chosen to surround himself with.

In case Obama or Daley ever do figure out how to use the internet and read by blog, I'll help them out by putting the apparently hard to find information on where 'the beef' is below:

• LEGISLATIVE BRANCH...............................$1,283,000,000. (23%)
• Notes: The Government Printing Office is abolished.
• JUDICIAL BRANCH......................................$2,434,000,000. (32%)
• AGRICULTURE............................................$42,542,000,000. (30%)
• The Agriculture Research Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Resources Conservation Service, and Foreign Agricultural Service are abolished. The Forest Service gets a $1.2 billion haircut.
• COMMERCE...................................................$5,322,000,000. (54%)
• National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is cut by $857,000,000.
• DEFENSE.......................................................$47,500,000,000. (6.5%)
• EDUCATION..................................................$78,000,000,000 (83%)
• Only the Pell grant program survives.
• ENERGY............................................................$44,200,000,000 (100%)
• The Defense Department takes over all of Energy's remaining functions (nuclear waste, for example) and about $18 billion of its budget.
• HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES..............$26,510,000,000. (26%)
• Notes: FDA is cut by $230,000,000; Indian Health Service is cut by $650 million; CDC is cut by $1.17 billion; NIH by $5.8 billion.
• HOMELAND SECURITY.................................$23,765,000,000. (43%)
• Notes: Coast Guard is shifted to Defense. TSA's funds are cut by $900 million.
• HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT....$53,100,000,000. (100%)
• Notes: Completely eliminated. Veterans' housing programs are transferred to the VA
• INTERIOR........................................................$10,934,000,000. (78%)
• Bureau of Reclamation and Bureau of Indian Affairs are abolished.
• JUSTICE.............................................................$9,057,000,000. (28%)
• Note: Office of Justice Programs is abolished.
• LABOR....................................................$2,803,000,000. (2%)
• OSHA, MSHA, and the The Employment and Training Administration are spared all cuts (no cuts to unemployment benefits)
• STATE...................................................................$20,321,000,000. (71%)
• Note: Massive foreign aid cuts. All international commissions and organizations are defunded.
• TRANSPORTATION............................................$42,810,000,000. (49%)
• Notes: Amtrak is completely de-funded.
• VETERANS’ AFFAIRS..........................................No cuts
• CORPS OF ENGINEERS......................................$1,854,000,000. (27%)
• EPA..............................................................$3,238,000,000. (29%)
• GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION.....$1,936,000,000. (85%)
• INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS...$24,300,000,000 (100%)
• NASA.........................................................................$4,500,000,000 (25%)
• NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION...............$4,723,000,000. (62%)
• OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT.......$9,070,000,000.
• SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION.........No cuts
• FCC...........................................................$2,150,000,000. (22%)
• ABOLISH...............................................................$2,050,000,000. (100%)
• (1) Affordable Housing Program.
• (2) Commission on Fine Arts.
• (3) Consumer Product Safety Commission.
• (4) Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
• (5) National Endowment for the Arts.
• (6) National Endowment for the Humanities.
• (7) State Justice Institute.
• MISC
• Collect delinquent taxes from Federal Employees........$3,000,000,000.
• Freeze Federal Government employee pay...................$2,000,000,000.
• Reduce Federal Government travel..............................$7,500,000,000.
• Repeal Davis-Bacon..................................................... $6,000,000,000.
• Prohibit union project labor agreements......................$2,000,000,000.
• TARP repeal.................................................................$4,481,000,000.
• Sell Federal Buildings..................................................$19,000,000,000.
• Reduce Federal vehicle budget..........................................$600,000,000.

UPDATE: Comment from theblogprof's story on this subject, which I echo:

Note the one cut close to the end: "Collect delinquent taxes from Federal Employees." $3 BILLION??? Good grief. How are they still federal employees at all?

Via Doug Ross:

Should you need additional proof that the Democrat-controlled federal government is completely and utterly out of control, may I present Exhibit 9 Bazillion?  The last paragraph is important: after all (Democrat-passed) regulations failed to avert the mortgage crisis (thanks especially to Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Maxine Waters), the Democrats are busy building up new agencies and new offices to oversee the same losers that failed the last time. Democrats don't mind that the country is bankrupt. They've emptied the Treasury with trillions in failed spending programs. And still they spend, hiring new bureaucrats as greedily as Michael Moore hordes french fries at Johnny Rocket's. By the way, if you want to apply for the job, please contact Marisa Harper, a Human Resources Specialist at Federal Housing Finance Agency in Washington, DC. Please be polite and tell her I sent you. Maybe I'll get a referral fee.

This is the reason that America is in a recession and has an increasingly hard time recovering from it. There are leeches on the system, sucking at productivity and labor of our nation so that they can engage in community activism and indulge in their personal power trips. Teachers are doing more and more with less, and yet more and more money goes into education- the disconnect is because union staff and ISD's suck more and more money out of the system. Civil servants are doing more and more with less, and yet more and more money goes into government- the disconnect is because salaries are skyrocketing at the top levels of government and more and more agencies are being added, sucking more and more money out of the hands of productive civil servants. America is being dragged down by inefficient, highly-paid, top-level bureaucrats and union leadership, who are using their political connections and expensive lawyers to transfer more wealth to people who do less work.

Often overlooked on this blog and others is foreign policy. Those who follow the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan usually only do so as a reflection on US domestic policy. Events in North Korea or Georgia serve only to give citizens of the United States a chance to test responses by political actors. Few really truly appreciate that importance of foreign policy, but it was foreign affairs that dragged our nation into the War on Terror, the Cold War, Vietnam, Korea, WWII, WWI, etc. It was foreign policy that led to crisis in the Balkans, Rwanda, Somalia, etc. It was foreign policy that opened up markets to our products.

Walter Russell Mead never losses sight of foreign policy and its importance and today put together an excellent article that surveys the major challenges facing the world. Here are some highlights from his article Things Fall Apart, via The American Interest:

...There are times when the ideas of the world’s rulers and the institutions through which they govern are adequate to the needs of the era, and there are times–like the present–when they are not. It is not just the Obama administration that seems mentally and even culturally unprepared to understand much less to guide the events now sweeping through the world. In Brussels, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo and Delhi — to say nothing of Washington – leaders seem equally clueless, equally committed to outmoded, inaccurate approaches to the issues of our time...

Europe

...The European Union is perhaps the most feckless of the world’s power centers. Its currency is built on a foundation of hopeful assumptions that haven’t panned out: for example that countries as disparate in culture and situation as Greece, Germany, Finland, Ireland and Italy can all live happily under a common currency. There has been no shortage of warning signs for the last decade: there was no secret about the housing bubbles in Ireland and Spain. The falsity of Greek statistics was well known, as were the imprudent habits of its governments and the dysfunctional nature of its economic culture....

...Meanwhile, Europe continues its relentless failure to manage urgent challenges at home and abroad. The Europeans are unwilling (and in some cases, unable) to make the investments that would keep NATO strong; the continuing refusal to take Turkey’s application for EU membership seriously further and decisively marginalizes Europe in the Middle East. Wishful thinking cannot substitute for policy when it comes to the question of immigration, and Europe’s deepening demographic crisis ensures not only a future of population decline but of economic decline and welfare state bankruptcy as well...

China

...Europe is not the only place where leaders don’t measure up to the problems. Although China is not as democratically governed as Europe, on the whole the technocrats of Beijing have handled the last twenty years better than the bureaucrats of the EU. Nevertheless Beijing is confronting a confluence of economic, environmental and social challenges that pose problems which even China’s leadership is unlikely to overcome. Arguments about China’s currency undervaluation, while real, miss the main point: Whether China revalues the renminbi or not, its model of rapid growth based on manufactured exports is reaching fundamental limits... Rising raw material prices combined with consumer fatigue in the malls is squeezing the profitability of Chinese industry just as workers are demanding higher wages. Meanwhile, food price inflation in China is triggering mass anxiety and the financial system appears vulnerable to the kind of bubbles that have wreaked such havoc in the West....

China’s problems go beyond economics. Chinese public opinion, smarting from what it sees as two centuries of humiliation, and now elated by (overblown) press reports of China’s rise, wants its government to follow a more assertive and even aggressive foreign policy. Disputes with Japan, Korea and Vietnam over offshore islands stir deep currents of emotion, and public opinion judges the Chinese government by its ability to prevail in these disputes.

...Looming environmental disasters threaten China’s future, with issues of water, air quality and the usual environmental devastation that accompanies communist governance on a massive scale already taking a toll. The consequences of the one-child policy threaten a demographic disaster as an aging Chinese population will place a growing burden on a society not yet affluent enough to support it...

Russia

Emerging from the sordid shadows of the Soviet Union, Russia faced four great challenges. It needed to come to terms with the horrors and failures of the past, recognizing the enormous evil that Russia both suffered and inflicted during the Soviet period... It has failed, and Russian life and culture remain poisoned by the residue of unrepented horrors and uncomprehended crimes.

...Second, Russia needed to build a modern and competent state that in turn could provide the framework for a new economy and a new society... but with every passing year the critical failure of the Putin presidency to build the stable institutions and solidify the rule of law that a genuinely strong Russian state would require becomes more clear — and more costly....

...The third task, of building the kind of capitalist economy that could provide its citizens with dignity and affluence, has also been left undone. There is no one who thinks that the rule of law is secure in Russia, or that investors (foreign or domestic) have any real security for their investments....

...The fourth task, of finding a suitable world role for a new Russia, has also been decisively botched. Russia has no real friends anywhere in the world; there are those it can bully and those (a much greater number) that it can’t...

Mead also touches on Japan ("a pale shadow of its former self"), India (scandals, poverty, political chaos), Israel, Turkey, etc. His conclusion is one that I also echo:

I hope and pray that the generations of today will not know the sick despair of September 1939; if we are to avoid that kind of fate under even uglier circumstances, we need to start demanding more of our leaders — and of ourselves.

For those interested, check out some books by Walter Russell Mead such as Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (Vintage), or Walter Russell Mead.

Mogadishu Man reports:

courtesy of Mogadishu Man

The KM 50 airport was, until now, the largest Qat depot in Somalia. Located in the Lower Shabeelle region, near Afgooye, the airport received an average of 7 plane loads of Qat a day, adding an estimated $1,500,000 a day to the Kenyan economy. The cargo would then distributed to all the cities in Southern/Central Somalia and to individual sellers. The Islamists’ decision to forbid the landing of Qat planes at the airport is by far the toughest verdict, in their long list of punitive measures against the stimulant, to be meted out to the Qat merchants in Somalia, and consumers alike. But how will this decision affect the people of Southern Somalia?

More here
I wonder is Qat any worse a stimulant than coffee?

Two years. Budgets are negotiated between Congress and the President, and over the last two years, while the rest of our nation dropped into a recession- nay, causing our nations recession to become a depression- Congress did something that no other Congress did in the history of Congress- increased spending on discretionary non-military spending by over 20%. Anyone associated with this Congress should be kicked out on the street and never allowed to hold a position of power ever again.

These budgets were put in place by a Democratic President working with a Democratic Congress. President Obama isn't on the ballot this election, but Democrats in Congress are. I ask my Congressman, a Democrat named Gary Peters, what were you thinking about when you saw that tax receipts were declining and debt was piling up and everywhere else people were cutting back- did you think that now was the time to double-down on generous welfare payments, now was the time to ask for no accountability, now was the time to freely dole out money that you are taking from my grandchildren, that now was the time to tell people that everything was going to be taken care of by the government?

Mr. Peters, when you saw all these people on unemployment, why did you fight so hard to keep them on unemployment and keep giving them more and more money, money that our government borrows from China so that my children can pay it back with interest some day, while at the same time attacking job creators with massive increases in taxes and regulations? Mr. Peters, why do you vote in favor of cap-and-trade and Obamacare, two pieces of legislation that make it more difficult for businesses to operate and stay profitable, when you know that the legislation you support is going to make more people lose their jobs, and then you vote to keep them unemployed for as long as possible? You pretend to care about our nation, but all you do is vote to give others people money to those people who don't work, and then you pretend that you don't understand why your actions are turning our recession into a depression.

The above chart is from the Wall Street Review. Their comments on it were (in part):

Spending rolled in for the year that ended September 30 at $3.45 trillion, second only to 2009's $3.52 trillion in the record books. But don't think this means Washington was relatively less spendthrift. CBO reports that the modest overall spending decline results from three one-time events.

The costs of TARP declined by $262 billion from 2009 as banks repaid their bailout cash, payments to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were $51 billion lower (though still a $40 billion net loser for the taxpayer), and deposit insurance payments fell by $55 billion year over year. "Excluding those three programs, spending rose by about 9 percent in 2010, somewhat faster than in recent years," CBO says.

Somewhat faster. You've got to laugh, or cry, when a 9% annual increase qualifies as only "somewhat faster" than normal. What did Washington spend more money on? Well, despite two wars, defense spending rose by 4.7% to $667 billion, down from an annual average increase of 8% from 2005 to 2009.

Once again domestic accounts far and away led the increases. Medicaid rose by 8.7%, and unemployment benefits by an astonishing 34.3%—to $160 billion. The costs of jobless insurance have tripled in two years. CBO adds that if you take out the savings for deposit insurance, funding for all "other activities" of government—education, transportation, foreign aid, housing, and so on—rose by 13% in 2010.

As for the deficits, the 2010 total was $1.29 trillion, down slightly from $1.42 trillion. That's a two-year total of $2.7 trillion, or more than the entire amount during the Reagan Administration, when deficits were supposed to be ruinous. Now liberal economists tell us that deficits are the key to restoring prosperity. But all we have to show for spending nearly 25% of GDP for two years running is a growth rate of 1.7% and 9.6% unemployment.

Those slow growth numbers have contributed to the deficits by yielding paltry tax revenues. Individual income tax receipts fell again in 2010, by 1.6% to $901 billion. As recently as 2008, individual income tax revenues were $1.15 trillion. Corporate tax revenue climbed a healthy 38.6% to $192 billion, but that's still well below the $304 billion of 2008. This only underscores how much deficit reduction depends on a growth revival.

Here's the kicker: By far the biggest percentage-gain revenue winner for the taxpayer in 2010 was . . . the Federal Reserve. Thanks to the expansion of its balance sheet with riskier assets, the Fed earned $76 billion during the year, a 121% increase. The Fed's windfall is a perfect symbol of our current economic policy. The government is making money because it now controls so much capital, but it is robbing that money from the private economy in the process. It is never a good sign when your central bank is a national profit center.

On the north end of Democrat Gary Peters 9th District, the story of two different Americas is clearly visible for everyone to see. One America is the America of capitalism and private-sector jobs, and the other America is of corporatization and public-sector jobs. One America is the bankrupt ruins of a $2 billion shopping and housing development, and the other America is the road construction workers dutifully ripping up and rebuilding a major road right in front of it.

Democrats like Peters believe that the best way to lead our nation back to growth and prosperity is to have the national government lead the way by having the national government borrow money from banks in the US and from lenders like China abroad and then use that money to build roads, bridges, schools, and public buildings. In this America, there is job growth and pay raises, assuming that you have the correct political connections to get the jobs and you belong to the labor unions that do business with the state. In this America, there is little accountability to customers and little money to be made by taking risks, increasing efficiency, or cutting costs- in the Democrats America, there is always a job for everyone willing to do the bidding of the state.

This America is the road construction that you see in the pictures and videos, and is something that Democrats like Gary Peters can rightly take credit for.

But there is another America out there, an America where jobs are increasingly scarce, investment funds are nonexistent, and pay cuts are the norm. In this America, increasing taxes, increasing regulation, and increasing uncertainty caused by a growing state presence in the marketplace has caused it to be less profitable to do business, has scared customers and investors, and has led to high unemployment and low job growth. The government is borrowing funds for their projects, and so businesses find it increasingly difficult to borrow money for their projects. Efforts to cut costs and increase efficiency are met by political leaders publicly speaking ill about your company, and it becomes increasingly difficult to meet the bottom line when the government forces the bottom line up and talks profits down.

This America is the abandoned and bankrupt building project that you can see in the pictures and videos, and this is also something that Democrats and Gary Peters can take credit for.

The two Americas meet at the 93-acre site on Telegraph Road near Square Lake Road in Bloomfield Hills. Bloomfield Park was once the symbol of booming private America- a place where citizens could work, buy products, and live. It now lies abandoned, naked steel girders and half-built looming structures, some seven stories tall, crumbling and rusting in front of construction work to rebuild the public road that goes past it. Its marble foundations and ambitious scale are the risks that America once took on itself, but at its feet now scurry the workers of the America that now safely puts its power in the hands of government officials.

But work continues on Telegraph road. Signs boldly advertise that the project was paid for by stimulus dollars voted for and signed into law by Democrats. Democrats like Peters point to this as a sign that his plan is working, and wants to be returned to office based on public works projects like these. That's the America that Democrats ultimately want- an America that is dependent on the state for jobs and income and growth while the private sector dies.

All video and picture was taken by me from my camera phone, after I snuck past security and risked my life walking through the dangerous ruins of America's once glorious past (pre-2008).

UPDATE: Thanks for linking!