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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Tom Blumer</title>
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		<title>Al Gore&#8217;s Global Warming Desperation</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/al-gores-global-warming-desperation/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=al-gores-global-warming-desperation</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Aug 2013 04:05:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al gore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environmentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Warming]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=202419</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Devastating news on the horizon for the climate change cult. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/3-7-13-Al-Gore_full_600.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-202420" alt="3-7-13-Al-Gore_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/3-7-13-Al-Gore_full_600-450x342.jpg" width="270" height="205" /></a>Those who are wondering why Al Gore chose to publicly resurface in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/21/al-gore-explains-why-hes-optimistic-about-stopping-global-warming/">a Washington Post interview </a>last Thursday with that paper&#8217;s ever-pliable <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/25/the-fix-was-in-journolist-e-mails-reveal-how-the-liberal-media-shaped-the-2008-election/">Journolist founder </a>Ezra Klein only need to look in three places.</p>
<p>First, there&#8217;s the recently revealed empirical evidence that the &#8220;global warming&#8221; movement&#8217;s claim that climate change is causing increased extreme weather events isn&#8217;t true. Second, there&#8217;s a new summary of historical research which blows up the movement&#8217;s infamous core &#8220;<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/09/hockey-stick-graph-ipcc-report">hockey stick</a>&#8221; chart forecasting unprecedented, accelerating warming. Finally, there&#8217;s a new report due to arrive in a month from an increasingly desperate United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.</p>
<p>In late September, the IPCC, laughably described <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/will-ipcc-reclaim-climate-change-agenda/story-e6frgcjx-1226704485194">by the wire service AFP </a>as &#8220;an expert body set up in 1988 to provide neutral advice on global warming and its impacts,&#8221; will release its next set of &#8220;scientific data&#8221; to advocate for a worldwide carbon-tax regime. Gore&#8217;s mission is clearly to start greasing the skids for the IPCC&#8217;s next round of hysteria.</p>
<p>Gore told WaPo&#8217;s Klein that the earth is already suffering the negative consequences of failing to act against &#8220;global warming.&#8221; He claims that &#8220;every extreme weather event now has a component of global warming in it,&#8221; and that &#8220;the appearance of more extreme and more frequent weather events has had a very profound impact on public opinion in countries throughout the world.&#8221;</p>
<p>There&#8217;s no doubt that the worldwide press&#8217;s emphasis on &#8220;extreme weather events&#8221; has been greater. Virtually every such occurrence will cause one or more journalists, politicians or both to claim it as definitive or presumptive &#8220;proof&#8221; of the existence of &#8220;global warming&#8221; and the urgent need to combat it.</p>
<p>The trouble is, the actual occurrences of &#8220;extreme weather events&#8221; has not increased.</p>
<p>In mid-July, University of Colorado environmental scientist Roger Pielke <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/18/scientist-tells-senators-global-warming-not-causing-extreme-weather/">testified </a>before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. What he had to say surely did not please Democrats and socialists <a href="http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Members.Home">on the committee</a>, including California&#8217;s Barbara Boxer, Rhode Island&#8217;s Sheldon Whitehouse, and Vermont&#8217;s Bernie Sanders:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Hurricanes have not increased in the U.S. in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900,” Pielke added. “The same holds for tropical cyclones globally since at least 1970.”</p>
<p>&#8230; (He also noted) that U.S. floods have not increased in “frequency or intensity” since 1950 and economic losses from floods have dropped by 75 percent as a percentage of GDP since 1940. Tornado frequency, intensity, and normalized damages have also not increased since 1950, and Pielke even notes that there is some evidence that this has declined.</p>
<p>&#8230; droughts have been shorter, less frequent, and have covered a smaller portion of the U.S over the last century. Globally, there has been very little change in the last 60 years, he said.</p></blockquote>
<p>Based on <a href="http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_pielke/">his bio </a>and credentials, leftists tempted to trash Pielke&#8217;s reputation would be well advised to pick a different target.</p>
<p>Now, let&#8217;s get to that &#8220;<a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/the-hockey-stick-lives/?_r=0">hockey stick</a>.&#8221;</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Medieval+Warm+Period+(Arctic)+--+Summary&amp;oq=Medieval+Warm+Period+(Arctic)+--+Summary&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.435j0&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8">August 14 post </a>at <a href="http://www.co2science.org/subject/m/summaries/mwparctic.php">CO2Science.org</a>, the website of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Craig Idso, the <a href="http://www.co2science.org/about/chairman.php">organization&#8217;s chairman </a>and past president, posted a lengthy summary of others&#8217; research dating back 15 years relating to what happened during the Medieval Warm Period in the Arctic.</p>
<p>Those who have followed the work of &#8220;global warming&#8221; advocates disguised as scientists for some time may recall that Penn State&#8217;s Michael Mann and his cohort <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/20/do-hacked-e-mails-show-global-warming-fraud/">were determined</a>, as seen in the leaked &#8220;Climategate&#8221; emails, to &#8220;get rid of&#8221; the Medieval Warm Period, so that their beloved &#8220;hockey stick&#8221; would remain nearly straight before turning up sharply during the past few decades and into the future.</p>
<p>Idso, who has a Ph.D. in Geography and has authored several peer-reviewed scientific articles on climate-related topics, painstakingly ran down the results of 17 studies attempting to reconstruct surface temperatures in Greenland and other Arctic areas during the past millennium.</p>
<p>Every study he reviewed supports Idso&#8217;s conclusion (italics are his):</p>
<blockquote><p>[T]he Arctic &#8211; which climate models suggest should be super-sensitive to greenhouse-gas-induced warming &#8211; is <em>still</em> not even as warm as it was several centuries ago during portions of the Medieval Warm Period, when there was <em>much</em> less CO2 and methane in the air than there is today, which facts further suggest that the planet&#8217;s more modest current warmth need not be the result of historical increases in these two trace greenhouse gases.</p></blockquote>
<p>Eight of those studies predate the thousand-year global extension of Mann&#8217;s &#8220;hockey stick&#8221; graph of 2003, meaning that he had to deliberately ignore a huge swath of scientific evidence, which, if honestly considered, would have caused him to throw it into the trash. Instead, he and others associated with the IPCC essentially pretended that no other meaningful contradictory information existed.</p>
<p>In other words, Mann&#8217;s &#8220;hockey stick&#8221; is a bunch of what <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhagzSEXzic">Colonel Potter </a>of the TV series M*A*S*H used to call &#8220;<a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=horse%20hockey">horse hockey</a>.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s hard to see how the IPCC can regain the momentum for taking action against something that clearly isn&#8217;t happening. There has been no warming <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/08/20/leaked-draft-climate-report-struggles-with-drop-in-warming/">for 15 years</a>, and some evidence <a href="http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/06/15/forget-the-temperature-plateau-earth-undergoing-global-cooling-since-2002-climate-scientist-dr-judith-curry-attention-in-the-public-debate-seems-to-be-moving-away-from/">of slight cooling </a>since 2002.</p>
<p>I suspect that IPCC and its supporters will have no choice but to resort to leftists&#8217; traditional fallback tactics. That is, they&#8217;ll try to act as if damning contradictory information doesn&#8217;t exist or is unimportant, and they&#8217;ll ramp up their demonization of so-called &#8220;deniers.&#8221;</p>
<p>That act is wearing very thin. I&#8217;d like to believe that it won&#8217;t be effective, but that belief depends heavily on continued vigilance on the part of those who insist on following the science where it takes them, instead of making up &#8220;science&#8221; to fit a statist agenda.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Radicalism of Michelle Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/the-radicalism-of-michelle-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-radicalism-of-michelle-obama</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Aug 2013 04:26:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agenda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michelle Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Racist]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=201375</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A controversial history exposed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Michelle-Obama.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-201423" alt="Michelle Obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Michelle-Obama.jpg" width="280" height="210" /></a></p>
<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Like Bill Clinton&#8217;s female counterpart Hillary, Michelle Obama is arguably more radical in her outlook than her husband. Leon Puissegur <a href="http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/08/the-radical-racist-background-of-michelle-obama-were-not-talking-about-barack/#ixzz2cQeK03NI">at Freedom Outpost </a>is in the midst of compiling what can be gleaned from Mrs. Obama&#8217;s light historical footprint, and what he has compiled from her younger days is illuminating.</span></b></p>
<p>More recently, Mrs. Obama&#8217;s February 2008 reaction to her husband&#8217;s breakout performance in the Democratic primaries may have been the most direct window into her soul we will ever see.</p>
<p>Her husband Barack&#8217;s presidential candidacy had turned an important corner earlier that month. He outperformed rival Hillary Clinton in a slew of contests on February 5 and 12, establishing a significant lead in Democratic Convention delegates and a clear perception of unstoppable momentum. To Mrs. Clinton&#8217;s chagrin, the &#8220;first black president&#8221; was in the process of completely trumping the &#8220;first woman president.&#8221;</p>
<p>So what emotions should one have expected from Michelle, a seasoned political spouse, once it was evident that her husband had just become the favorite to win the Democratic Party&#8217;s presidential nomination? Positivity, excitement, and optimism, of course.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s not what we saw.</p>
<p>Instead, she acted as if some — but far from all — of the weight of over a quarter century of misery had been lifted from her shoulders &#8212; not once, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/02/michelle-obam-1-2/">but twice </a>in the same day:</p>
<blockquote><p>Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin today, would-be First Lady Michelle Obama said, &#8220;for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.&#8221;</p>
<p>Then in Madison, she said, &#8220;For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Michelle Obama has been an adult since her eighteenth birthday on <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/michelle-obama-307592?page=1">January 17, 1982</a>.</p>
<p>The second statement, moving from &#8220;I&#8217;m proud&#8221; to &#8220;I&#8217;m really proud,&#8221; looks like a reluctant and impotent attempt, especially <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGjR81pFJI4">when seen on video</a>, to water down the first.</p>
<p>Despite her Madison protestation, Mrs. Obama&#8217;s newfound pride was almost definitely short-lived and, to the extent that it ever existed, completely about her husband&#8217;s success. It was not at all about &#8220;hope,&#8221; or what it might have said about America&#8217;s willingness to consider a presidential candidate regardless of his or her color.</p>
<p>An early March 2008 <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/10/080310fa_fact_collins?currentPage=all">New Yorker magazine article</a>, &#8220;The Other Obama: Michelle Obama and the politics of candor,&#8221; exposed the self-adopted strident tone of Mrs. Obama&#8217;s stump speeches:</p>
<blockquote><p>Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I’m young. Forty-four!”</p>
<p>&#8230; “The life that I’m talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl. . . . So if you want to pretend like there was some point over the last couple of decades when your lives were easy, I want to meet you!”</p></blockquote>
<p>Collins importantly noted that Mrs. Obama composed the speech herself, delivering it &#8220;without notes&#8221; — and, it would appear, without a teleprompter.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s very little chance that Mrs. Obama&#8217;s pride lasted. One does not suddenly get past such a repeated display of open contempt for America and the everyday people who live in it and permanently find pride simply because your husband is on a political hot streak.</p>
<p>Michelle Obama&#8217;s long-term and still-existing shortage of pride originates in a deep-seated belief that America remains, in the words of leading black socialist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornel_West">Cornel West</a>, &#8220;a &#8216;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornel_West#Views_on_race_in_the_United_States">racist patriarchal</a>&#8216; nation where white supremacy continues to define everyday life.&#8221;</p>
<p>In 1984, while an undergraduate student at Princeton, then-Michelle Robinson <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/10/30/a-detailed-look-at-obamas-radical-college-past-and-were-not-talking-about-barack/">promoted and attended </a>&#8220;a &#8216;Black Solidarity&#8217; event for guest lecturer Manning Marable, who at the time was, according to West, probably &#8216;the best known black Marxist in the country.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
<p>Her <a href="http://obamaprincetonthesis.wordpress.com/">1985 thesis </a>buys into the harmful belief of 1960s black radicals Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton that &#8220;Before a group can enter the open society, it must close ranks.&#8221; The problem is that once groupthink dominates, philosophical separation from the rest of society almost never goes away.</p>
<p>Michelle was married to Barack Obama in 1992 at the Rev. Jeremiah Wright&#8217;s Trinity United Church of Christ. Wright is best known for saying less than a decade later that America, based on its history of &#8220;terrorism,&#8221; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=208t80uceSg">deserved what happened to it </a>in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzuOOshpddM">invoked Malcolm X </a>as he said that &#8220;America&#8217;s chickens are coming home to roost.&#8221;</p>
<p>Less visible but even more crucial is Wright&#8217;s belief in the &#8220;American/European Rhetorical Ethic,&#8221; which states the following:</p>
<blockquote><p>Rhetorical ethic is the hypocritical exercise of white supremacy used to service the same. It sets laws that are only to be adhered to by others. But if those laws or structures get in the way of white supremacist actions of power, they will not apply. Such is the history and current state of this American government.</p></blockquote>
<p>In broader terms, the ethic sees the law as an artificial construct only to be applied to the powerless and which can safely be ignored by the powerful. Now that they&#8217;re in power, it&#8217;s interesting how operating above the law — &#8220;the hypocritical exercise of leftist supremacy,&#8221; if you will — seems to be the guiding philosophy of Barack Obama&#8217;s presidential administration.</p>
<p>When the spoken and written statements of Wright and other TUCC clerics threatened to derail Obama&#8217;s 2008 general election campaign, the Obamas chose to resign. Even though the resignation letter&#8217;s text was written in first person singular, its lead signature, conveniently <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2008/05/31/breaking-obama-quits-trinity-united-church-of-christ/">released on a Saturday evening</a>, was Michelle&#8217;s. The resignation letter made sure not to reject Wright&#8217;s &#8220;theology,&#8221; which when broken down was essentially <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/03/20/31079/obamas-church-pushes-controversial.html#.UhOtbGT3IhY">Black Liberation Theology </a>tinged with bitter, delusional attacks on &#8220;<a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2008/04/11/quote-of-the-day-among-rev-jeremiah-wrights-ten-essential-facts-about-the-united-states/">white supremacy</a>.&#8221;</p>
<p>Though she has largely restrained herself since her husband assumed the presidency, there&#8217;s little evidence to support the notion that Michelle Obama&#8217;s core beliefs have changed. Unless we see otherwise, the default assumption should be: Once a far leftist, always a far leftist.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Universal Pre-School Push</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obamas-universal-pre-school-push/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-universal-pre-school-push</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 04:40:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Children]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[federal government]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pre-school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Universal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=178634</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president seeks to add another statist layer to society. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obamas-universal-pre-school-push/state-of-union/" rel="attachment wp-att-178640"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-178640" title="State Of Union" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/130212_obama_state_of_union_speaking_ap_605.jpg" alt="" width="228" height="193" /></a>The first and most obvious question about the &#8220;universal preschool&#8221; idea President Barack Obama proposed in <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/12/transcript-obama-state-union-speech/">his State of the Union address</a> has to be: &#8220;How in the world did we ever survive without it?&#8221;</p>
<p>The answer, until the nation and its culture began losing its way during the 1960s and 1970s, is that we mostly did just fine. Rich or poor, most families contained a married couple that stayed together. Their children generally grew up to competent with the help of strong reinforcing support structures in our neighborhoods, churches and communities.</p>
<p>Now we largely don&#8217;t have intact families. We&#8217;re paying for this devolution dearly in more ways than I can hope to enumerate in a single column. But I will note the primary result: Too many of our children are not being raised in home environments conducive to healthy early (or later) development. I will also note why this has happened: For decades, government policies have discouraged marriage while encouraging family break-ups.</p>
<p>Now the same people who brought us 30 years of a welfare system which did those very things (until 1996, when welfare reform began to improve that situation, but only marginally, because the culture by then had changed so markedly for the worse), an urban education system which has been failing children for decades (with the rot spreading to the suburbs and exurbs faster than more people recognize), and urban neighborhoods which have become virtual battle zones, are offering yet another &#8220;solution&#8221; which won&#8217;t solve anything, and could possibly do significant harm. But it will expand the government&#8217;s power and influence, which is what all of this is really about.</p>
<p>In his speech before Congress, Obama treated the dispute over the real value of universal preschool the way the left has treated global warming &#8212; y&#8217;know, the thing that really hasn&#8217;t been happening <a href="http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/21/update-and-confirmation-of-global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago/">for the past 16 years</a> &#8212; i.e., as supposedly settled science:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8230; today, fewer than three in ten 4-year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool program. Most middle-class parents can&#8217;t afford a few hundred bucks a week for private preschool. And for poor kids who need help the most, this lack of access to preschool education can shadow them for the rest of their lives. So, tonight, I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.</p>
<p>&#8230; Every dollar we invest in high-quality early childhood education can save more than seven dollars later on, by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime. In states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children &#8212; like Georgia or Oklahoma &#8212; studies show students grow up more likely to read and do math at grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, form more stable families of their own.</p></blockquote>
<p>This is another one of those major exercises in statism which somehow won&#8217;t &#8220;increase our deficit by a single dime.&#8221; It can be said Obama is right in a sense. It will surely increase our deficit and the national debt by hundreds of millions, and probably more like billions, of dimes.</p>
<p>It is clear that Obama&#8217;s definition of &#8220;a high-quality preschool program&#8221; is one that lasts all day. &#8220;A few hundred bucks a week&#8221; means at least $10,000 per nine-month school year. A small percentage of parents nationwide pay that much (<a href="http://www.stcatharineschool.com/preschool/tuition">many pay far less</a>), and those who do are usually leaving their child in the care of others all day.</p>
<p>Thus, Obama has admitted, perhaps inadvertently, that he wants the nation&#8217;s children between roughly the ages of 3-1/2 and 5 years old housed all day long in what will surely be government-regulated and eventually effectively government-controlled situations.</p>
<p>Is there solid evidence that all-day preschool has lasting beneficial effects? Not really.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/02/20/universal-preschool-state-of-the-union/1934361/">USA Today editorial</a> on Wednesday, citing <a href="http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/head_start_report.pdf">government-sponsored research</a>, noted that &#8220;intensive study of Head Start, the nation’s largest and oldest preschool program, finds that the beneficial effects, which are real, wear off by third grade,&#8221; because &#8220;for decades now, the American family has been breaking down.&#8221;</p>
<p>But it goes beyond that.</p>
<p>First, there are strong arguments relating to emotional attachment why many kids of preschool age shouldn&#8217;t be away from their parents for that long. The fact that this is so should not be seen as some kind of negative childhood trait.</p>
<p>Even more important, the driver behind the more aggressive preschool efforts is the belief that teaching children writing and math at an earlier age gives them a leg up in tackling their studies from that point forward. That premise seemed to be where Obama placed his emphasis in last week&#8217;s address. The trouble is, it erroneously assumes that preschoolers are ready for these tasks. From a strictly biological development standpoint, they&#8217;re often not.</p>
<p>David Elkind, at the time a professor of early childhood development at Tufts University, <a href="http://www.homeeducator.com/FamilyTimes/articles/13-6article5.htm">laid out the argument</a> against rushing academics in 2005:</p>
<blockquote><p>Those calling for academic instruction of the young don’t seem to appreciate that math and reading are complex skills acquired in stages related to age.</p>
<p>Children will acquire these skills more easily and more soundly if their lessons accord with the developmental sequence that parallels their cognitive development.</p></blockquote>
<p>The reality is that children have to be far along in developing general motor skills (e.g., working with blocks containing letters, numbers, and colors) before they can effectively work on fine motor skills (e.g., holding a pencil, writing letters, doing simple math calculations). Elkind pointed to research showing that attempts to force fine motor skill work onto kids before their general motor skills have been adequately honed will leave children frustrated, anxious, and perhaps demotivated.</p>
<p>Elkind noted why there is so much pressure for doing what has been shown not to work:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8230; the movement toward academic training of the young is not about education. It is about parents anxious to give their children an edge in what they regard as an increasingly competitive and global economy.</p></blockquote>
<p>Obama&#8217;s attempt to capitalize on this anxiety to impose yet another statist layer on society is among his more cynical and potentially diabolical moves. The better solution is the harder one: Rebuild a culture of personal and parental responsibility.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Real State of the Union</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/the-real-state-of-the-union-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-real-state-of-the-union-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Feb 2013 04:45:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=178172</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The bleak economic facts President Obama neglected to mention. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/the-real-state-of-the-union-2/should-you-buy-a-foreclosed-home-1/" rel="attachment wp-att-178179"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-178179" title="should-you-buy-a-foreclosed-home-1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/should-you-buy-a-foreclosed-home-1.jpg" alt="" width="288" height="192" /></a>In <a href="http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/02/12/read-full-transcript-of-president-obamas-state-of-the-union-address/">his State of the Union speech</a> on February 12, President Barack Obama failed to note that this nation&#8217;s 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln">was born on the same date</a> 204 years earlier. Perhaps that&#8217;s because it was Lincoln <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/abrahamlin109276.html">who said</a>: &#8220;Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama removed all doubt about his foolishness &#8212; at least in his public statements, though possibly not in regards to his and fellow progressives&#8217; larger agenda &#8212; when he told the assembled senators and congressmen that, concerning the state of the economy, &#8220;[W]e have cleared away the rubble of crisis, and can say with renewed confidence that the state of our union is stronger.&#8221;</p>
<p>No it&#8217;s not, and all of the insufferable media cheerleading describing jobs reports as &#8220;<a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/02/02/aps-rugaber-describes-fridays-jobs-report-mostly-encouraging-despite-une">mostly encouraging</a>&#8221; even when the official unemployment rate goes up, and about &#8220;<a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_STATE_OF_UNION_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT">A U.S. Economy That&#8217;s Strengthened</a> Over [the] Past 4 Years,&#8221; won&#8217;t change that.</p>
<p>The evidence could take up a book. I&#8217;ll limit mine to three areas: employment, student loans, and housing.</p>
<p>A February 1 <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/020113-642922-obama-jobless-recovery-continues-unemployment-jobs.htm"><em>Investor&#8217;s Business Daily</em> editorial</a>, which appeared shortly after the government released its January jobs report, laid out the primary truth about the current job market:</p>
<p>It took an average of just 24 months to regain all the jobs lost in the previous nine recessions. But at the current Obama job-creation pace, it will take about 80 months to regain those lost jobs.</p>
<p>Mort Zuckerman, the liberal editor-in-chief at <em>U.S. News</em> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_Zuckerman#Politics">who voted for Obama in 2008</a>, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323478004578303992482199574.html">recently wrote the following</a> in a <em>Wall Street Journal</em> column:</p>
<blockquote><p>After four years America remains in a jobs depression as great as the Great Depression. But the crisis isn&#8217;t seen in that light because the country isn&#8217;t confronted daily by scenes of despair like the 1930s photographs of bread lines and soup kitchens &#8230;</p>
<p>&#8230; The jobless today are much less visible than they were in the 1930s because relief is organized differently.</p></blockquote>
<p>Zuckerman&#8217;s subheadline succinctly detailed the point just made: &#8220;Twelve million out of work, 48 million on food stamps, 11 million on disability.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even those glum statistics don&#8217;t adequately capture the entire problem. Per Zuckerman, &#8220;The only work that has increased (since the November 2007 peak in nationwide employment) is part-time, and that is because it allows employers to reduce costs through a diminished benefit package or none at all.&#8221; Many employers are also clearly doing all they can to keep all but a few key employees from toiling more than 30 hours per week, because ObamaCare will compel them to treat employees who work 30 or more hours as &#8220;full-time,&#8221; forcing them to either provide mandatory health insurance coverage or pay a fine if they don&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Additionally, the jobs that are being obtained are going overwhelmingly to workers who are 55 and older, where employment (again, largely part-time) has <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/01/Jobs%20by%20Age%20Group%20January.jpg">grown by 4 million</a> during the past four years. Employment for everyone else during that same period has decreased by almost 3 million. The overall labor force participation rate is back to where it was <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/01/Labor%20Force%20Participation%20Rate.jpg">during the early 1980s</a>, an era when a much higher percentage of spouses voluntarily stayed home to raise their children.</p>
<p>The growing crisis in the government&#8217;s student loan programs may be the least publicized trillion-dollar mess in world history. Outstanding balances <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/11-2/Student%20Loans%20Q3.jpg">have grown by $400 billion</a> during just the past four years. During that time, the percentage of loans which is 90 or more days delinquent <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2012/11-2/Student%20Loan%20Delinquencies.jpg">has skyrocketed</a> from an already awful 8 percent to 11 percent, with most of that increase occurring during just the past few reported quarters.</p>
<p>Why is this happening &#8212; and why will the situation probably get much worse? High school grads are going on to college at <a href="http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/college-enrollment-rates.png">a record high percentage</a>, but an unprecedented percentage of those who do are ill equipped to succeed in their studies. When they fail, their student loans don&#8217;t go away, not even in bankruptcy. If they can get jobs, they probably won&#8217;t pay very well. Their student loan payments act as an effective millstone hindering their ability to otherwise advance in life.</p>
<p>The alleged recovery in the housing industry is one of the most heavily publicized economic myths going. We&#8217;re supposed to be excited that new home sales are achieving three-years highs, even though today&#8217;s level <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_fb7TcROtAo/UQKhuAZb4HI/AAAAAAAAX3g/20v1B652H94/s1600/NHSDec2012.jpg">is barely back to where it was</a> during the early-1980s recession, when the U.S. population <a href="http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table">was 25 percent lower</a>. Today&#8217;s level of homebuilding activity is about half of what it should be in a truly healthy economy. Though it&#8217;s clear that the housing bubble engineered by government <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2010/01/10/fan-and-fred-fundamental-frauds-by-design/">frauds by design</a> Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and assisted by previous Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan caused home prices to increase beyond reason during the previous decade, the fact remains that inflation-adjusted home prices are right back where they were in 1990. So much for a home being a great long-term investment.</p>
<p>Uncanny in its inability to learn from past mistakes, risky lending policies and decisions have taken yet another government housing entity, this time the Federal Housing Authority, to the brink of insolvency. Last week, <a href="http://reversemortgagedaily.com/2013/02/14/congress-watchdog-gao-say-fha-makes-high-risk-list/">the Government Accountability Office</a> &#8220;released a report stating &#8230; (that it) is a &#8216;high risk&#8217; entity.&#8221;</p>
<p>Lincoln <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/abrahamlin110340.html">said something else </a>about foolishness which ties directly into Obama&#8217;s State of the Union address: &#8220;You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.&#8221; As the nation&#8217;s Obama-induced economic malaise continues, the roster of those who are being fooled will continue to shrink.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Chris Dorner: A Mass Shooter Leftists Can Love</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/chris-dorner-a-mass-shooter-leftists-can-love/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chris-dorner-a-mass-shooter-leftists-can-love</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Feb 2013 04:50:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chris Dorner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cop]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gun]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[killing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[LAPD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[manifesto]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Progressives reveal their soft spot for cop killers. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/chris-dorner-a-mass-shooter-leftists-can-love/chris-dorner-crop-598x350/" rel="attachment wp-att-177214"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-177214" title="chris-dorner-crop-598x350" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/chris-dorner-crop-598x350.jpg" alt="" width="263" height="206" /></a>In the past several days, we&#8217;ve learned about how you too can gain a degree of public sympathy if you plan to embark on a killing spree and then go into hiding as you bide your time waiting to kill again: Write a &#8220;manifesto&#8221; dominated by anti-police rants, a &#8220;progressive&#8221; outlook towards Second Amendment freedoms and support for leftist politicians.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s what former Los Angeles Police Department officer Christopher Dorner, <a href="http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/08/16899029-police-search-mountains-for-lapd-murder-suspect-christopher-dorner-release-new-image">who is accused</a> of killing Monica Quan, Keith Lawrence, and an as yet unnamed LAPD officer while wounding two others, has done. His sympathy-by-manifesto strategy has been alarmingly successful.</p>
<p>Dorner&#8217;s <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/feature?section=news/local/orange_county&amp;id=8983607">11,000-word tome</a>, addressed to &#8220;America,&#8221; was reportedly delivered to CNN&#8217;s Anderson Cooper <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Southern_California_shootings#February_1.2C_2013">on February 1</a>. Much of its second half directs praise and scorn at a variety of politicians, celebrities and athletes while also, of all things, politicking for gun control and praising two of its proponents (spelling and grammar errors were not fixed in this and the following manifesto excerpt):</p>
<blockquote><p>The time is now to reinstitute a ban (on assault weapons) that will save lives. Why does any sportsman need a 30 round magazine for hunting? Why does anyone need a suppressor? Why does anyone need a AR15 rifle?</p>
<p>&#8230; Mia Farrow said it best. &#8220;Gun control is no longer debatable, it&#8217;s not a conversation, its a moral mandate.&#8221;</p>
<p>Sen. Feinstein, you are doing the right thing in leading the re-institution of a national AWB.</p></blockquote>
<p>Dorner also effusively praises President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, while showing contempt and disdain for &#8220;America,&#8221; the screed&#8217;s addressee, for not wholeheartedly supporting Dear Leader (paragraph breaks added by me):</p>
<blockquote><p>You disrespect the office of the POTUS/Presidency and Commander in Chief. You call him Kenyan, mongroid, halfrican, muslim, and FBHO when in essence you are to address him as simply, President. The same as you did to President George W. Bush and all those in the highest ranking position of our land before him. Just as I always have.</p>
<p>You question his birth certificate, his educational and professional accomplishments, and his judeo-christian beliefs. You make disparaging remarks about his dead parents.</p>
<p>… You call his wife a Wookie. Off the record, I love your new bangs, Mrs. Obama. A woman whose professional and educational accomplishments are second to none when compared to recent First wives.</p>
<p>You call his supporters, whether black, brown, yellow, or white, leeches, FSA, welfare recipients, and ni$&amp;er lovers. You say this openly without any discretion. Before you start with your argument that you believe I would vote for Obama because he has the same skin color as me, (expletive) you.</p>
<p>&#8230; Mr. President, I haven&#8217;t agreed with all of your decisions but of course I haven&#8217;t agreed with all of your predecessors decisions. I think you&#8217;ve done a hell of a job with what you have been dealt and how you have managed it. I shed a tear the night you were initially elected President in 2008.</p></blockquote>
<p>Dorner also allocated space to praising the following broadcast media members, in order of appearance: Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, Pat Harvey, Brian Williams, Soledad O&#8217;Brien, Wolf Blitzer, Meredith Viera, Tavis Smiley, Cooper, the late Walter Crokite, Tom Brokaw, the late Peter Jennings, Willie Geist, and Piers Morgan.</p>
<p>While Dorner&#8217;s alleged acts and plans have properly appalled the vast majority of America, a distressingly large contingent of our fellow citizens considers him a hero.</p>
<p>As of 10 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, I located two newly-minted Dorner-friendly Facebook pages: &#8220;I Support Christopher Jordan Dorner&#8221; (over 7,700 &#8220;likes&#8221;), and &#8220;LAPD Cop Killer Christopher Dorner is A HERO&#8221; (over 300 &#8220;likes&#8221;). <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/02/09/Facebook-fan-pages-Chris-Dorner">On Saturday</a>, Breitbart.com&#8217;s Ben Shapiro identified several others. This is clear evidence that there is a dangerous strand of thought on the left which is perfectly fine with the commission of violent, murderous acts &#8212; as long as their perpetrators hold anti-establishment, anti-authority views.</p>
<p>By contrast, the pro-life community always roundly denounces the very few acts of violence visited upon abortion clinics and abortion doctors &#8212; of course other than those which clinic employees themselves commit by killing pre-born babies. Criminals who have bombed clinics and harmed or murdered their employees have never garnered any meaningful level of sympathy beyond a truly tiny and obviously unrepresentative fringe.</p>
<p>Public figures who should know better have either gone into a sympathy routine or chosen a strange form of neutrality towards Dorner. <a href="http://twitchy.com/2013/02/08/jesse-jackson-tweets-plea-to-chris-dorner-i-understand-your-feelings-of-hurt-and-pain/">Jesse Jackson tweeted</a>: &#8220;I understand your feelings of hurt and pain.&#8221; Noticeably absent was any recognition of the &#8220;hurt and pain&#8221; Dorner has inflicted on the families of Quan, Lawrence, and the unnamed slain police officer&#8217;s families. <a href="http://twitchy.com/2013/02/08/bill-maher-calls-christopher-dorner-a-nut-followers-disagree/">Bitter Bill Maher</a> attempted to draw an equivalence between cold-blooded killing and a &#8220;headline&#8221; at FoxNews.com, which, from what I can tell, was really either <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013">never there</a> or was planted by a commenter at a blog post. The aforementioned <a href="http://twitchy.com/2013/02/08/mia-farrow-tweets-about-murderer-cop-doesnt-mention-he-quotes-her-in-manifesto/">Ms. Farrow tweeted</a> about &#8220;a murderer cop,&#8221; but &#8220;somehow&#8221; didn&#8217;t mention that Dorner views her favorably.</p>
<p>Print and web reports from the nation&#8217;s establishment press are following Farrow&#8217;s example. From reading their output, you wouldn&#8217;t even know that Dorner even mentioned President Obama, Mrs. Obama, or Vice President Joe Biden, let alone spent hundreds of words praising them. An unbylined Friday report <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LA_POLICE_SHOOTING_MANIFESTO_EXCERPTS?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT">at the Associated Press</a> containing &#8220;some samples&#8221; from the manifesto which one would have hoped would be representative <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/02/08/aps-used-excerpts-dorners-manifesto-various-pols-omits-effusive-praise-o">managed to suppress everything</a> relating to our sitting president, his wife, and vice president, but managed to quote relatively brief mentions of George H.W. Bush, Chris Christie, Hillary Clinton, and Colin Powell, while also ignoring Dorner&#8217;s anti-gun stance. There isn&#8217;t a chance in Hades that the self-described &#8220;essential global news network&#8221; would have been so kind to a sitting Republican or conservative president, first lady, or veep.</p>
<p>Also recall that ABC&#8217;s Brian Ross initially attempted to pin the blame for the Aurora, Colorado theater murders on a Tea Party activist <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/07/20/It-Begins-ABC-Ross-Stephanolpoulos-Point-to-Tea-Party-for-Dark-Knight-Shooting">based only on his name</a>, while his network and other <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/christopher-dorner-manhunt-cops-manifesto-posted-online-18438426">have reported nothing</a> about Dorner&#8217;s sympathy for Obama.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, no one Dorner named shares any blame for his actions. He bears that responsibility alone.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s not what the left or their media sympathizers would be saying if Dorner had invoked the views of conservative talk radio hosts, pundits, or politicians in a vain attempt to justify themselves.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Can Amnesty Be Stopped?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/can-amnesty-be-stopped/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=can-amnesty-be-stopped</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:36:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Mexico]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Eyeing a repeat of the 2007 "comprehensive immigration reform" meltdown. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/can-amnesty-be-stopped/20130130_amnesty2/" rel="attachment wp-att-176768"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-176768" title="20130130_amnesty2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/20130130_amnesty2.jpg" alt="" width="275" height="209" /></a>Almost six years ago, the last time the Washington establishment tried and failed to shove &#8220;comprehensive immigration reform&#8221; down the nation&#8217;s collective throat, the unemployment rate <a href="http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/jul/wk2/art01.htm">was 4.5 percent</a>. In some quarters that&#8217;s considered &#8220;<a href="http://www.amosweb.com/cgi-bin/awb_nav.pl?s=wpd&amp;c=dsp&amp;k=full+employment">full employment</a>.&#8221;</p>
<p>Now we have a much higher unemployment rate <a href="http://bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm">of 7.9 percent</a>, 48 previous months during which the rate has been 7.8 percent or higher, and <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm">indications</a> of <a href="http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNU03008275">job-market pain</a> we haven&#8217;t seen since the Great Depression. Despite all of this, immigration &#8220;reform,&#8221; more properly characterized as &#8220;de facto amnesty for illegal aliens,&#8221; appears at this point to be on track towards passage.</p>
<p>Far more even than <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/31/obama-jobs-council-shutting-down-thursday/">the recent termination</a> of his &#8220;jobs council,&#8221; which met only four times in two years and accomplished nothing, President Barack Obama&#8217;s grim determination to push through &#8220;reform&#8221; in such persistently dire circumstances makes a mockery of his assertions that he cares about economic progress, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/10/16/163050988/transcript-obama-romney-2nd-presidential-debate">and that</a> &#8220;the most important thing we can do is to make sure that we are creating jobs in this country.&#8221;</p>
<p>Washington&#8217;s original attempt to circumvent the nation&#8217;s clear will during the second quarter of 2007 ultimately failed when the Senate rejected the related bill <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2007/06/28/further-reflection-on-voinovich/">by a vote of 46-53</a> on June 28.</p>
<p>Just a few days earlier, the measure&#8217;s passage seemed assured. What happened? In an effort which in retrospect was a precursor of the longer-lasting and still quite powerful Tea Party movement, deeply concerned Americans rose up in massive numbers and demanded a rejection of what became known, largely as a result of efforts by extraordinary and tireless columnist and blogger <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/page/7/?s=shamnesty">Michelle Malkin</a>, as &#8220;shamnesty.&#8221; Everyday Americans&#8217; powers of persuasion were such that when the bill&#8217;s failure became a foregone conclusion on the Senate floor, <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2007/07/01/quick-thanks-to-dirk-thompson-additional-info-on-voinovich-and-brown/">both senators from Ohio</a> retreated from days-earlier public positions of strong support and voted &#8220;no.&#8221;</p>
<p>Then-Senator Barack Obama <a href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&amp;session=1&amp;vote=00235#position">voted &#8220;yes.&#8221;</a> Though that vote kept him in good standing with the radical amnesty advocates at La Raza, the historical record shows that Obama played a critical role in the bill&#8217;s ultimate rejection when he voted several weeks earlier, as <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/13/AR2007061301966.html">the late Robert Novak noted</a>, to include a &#8220;poison pill&#8221; provision in the law &#8220;aimed at emasculating the essential guest-worker program.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s move was then seen as &#8220;surprising&#8221; (again via Novak):</p>
<blockquote><p>because he had participated, uninvited, one time in the bipartisan negotiating process. He had demanded and won a provision permitting immigrants to stay on the job after being designated &#8220;not employable&#8221; by the government under the new system until their appeals were exhausted.</p></blockquote>
<p>In hindsight, Obama&#8217;s about-face, as has seemingly been the case throughout his career as a legislator and then as President, was about enhancing his career. His maneuver, as noted, made the passage of immigration &#8220;reform&#8221; unlikely. Why would he do this? Obama and his handlers apparently calculated that they had to keep the &#8220;need&#8221; for &#8220;reform&#8221; available as a campaign issue during his nomination fight against Hillary Clinton. If the immigration issue had gone away, as would have been the case if &#8220;reform&#8221; had passed, Obama&#8217;s ability to mobilize support among Hispanics and other groups heavily supported by the then-influential radicals at ACORN would have been seriously compromised.</p>
<p>The cynical calculations continued into Obama&#8217;s presidency. Obama correctly believed that his Hispanic supporters, after grousing a bit about his inaction, wouldn&#8217;t abandon him at reelection time if he ignored immigration &#8220;reform&#8221; during his first term. He was right.</p>
<p>Since the 2007 rejection of &#8220;shamnesty,&#8221; the government has had ample opportunity to do the one thing it can do without the benefit of legislation: enforce and secure our country&#8217;s borders. Instead, under Obama, as a suit <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/immigration-agents-sue-obama-administration-over-illegal-alien-policies">brought last summer</a> by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shows, border enforcement has turned into a national laughingstock:</p>
<blockquote><p>The agents allege that President Obama’s policies have reduced the number of illegal aliens who will be deported back to their country of origin.</p>
<p>The ICE agents allege in their lawsuit that &#8230; they must choose between enforcing federal laws and being disciplined by their commanders, or obeying their supervisors thereby violating oaths of office and a Clinton administration law &#8212; passed by a bi-partisan Congress in 1996 &#8212; that mandates the deportation of illegal aliens.</p>
<p>&#8230; In the 20-page legal complaint, the agents state they’ve been ordered to ignore an entire category of illegal aliens. The agents allege they were told to stop requesting proof of citizenship or immigration status.</p></blockquote>
<p>Almost no other country tolerates a situation where non-citizens can enter their country and stay with virtual impunity &#8212; certainly not Mexico, whose sanctions against those who it finds are in their country illegally are <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2011/04/04/mexico%E2%80%99s-immigration-laws-the-untold-story/">especially harsh</a>.</p>
<p>Absent controlled borders, efforts to provide a &#8220;path to citizenship&#8221; to the millions who knowingly entered and stayed in the U.S. illegally will not only cause even larger waves of illegals to arrive so they can someday start down the same &#8220;path.&#8221; It will also enable those who attain citizenship to bring in millions of spouses, children, and other relatives. The strain on schools, public-health systems, social services, infrastructure, and government finances at all levels will be incalculable.</p>
<p>With unemployment already stubbornly high and seemingly destined to stay there as long as Obama occupies the White House, where will all of these new arrivals find jobs? The President and those who support &#8220;shamnesty&#8221; are, despite their platitudes, unconcerned about such things. Securing a permanent leftist governing majority is far more important than fixing a largely broken economy.</p>
<p>More and more, immigration &#8220;reform&#8221; looks like yet another application of the system-breaking <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/the_cloward-piven_way.html">Cloward-Piven strategy</a>.</p>
<p>Conservatives who go along with this deeply misguided scheme may not like the verdict their voters render when they are next up for reelection.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Incredible Shrinking Economy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obamas-incredible-shrinking-economy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-incredible-shrinking-economy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obamas-incredible-shrinking-economy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Jan 2013 04:44:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=175691</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president's economic spin-masters go into overdrive.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obamas-incredible-shrinking-economy/070808-obama-607-649x376/" rel="attachment wp-att-175693"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-175693" title="070808-obama-607-649x376" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/070808-obama-607-649x376.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="180" /></a>I believe that the funniest reaction to Wednesday&#8217;s government report on Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which showed that the economy contracted <a href="http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2013/txt/gdp4q12_adv.txt">by an annualized 0.1 percent</a> in the fourth quarter of 2012, was posted at my home blog. A mere 23 minutes after the report&#8217;s release, my commenter <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2013/01/30/4q12-gross-domestic-product-013013/#comment-172232">noted with mock surprise</a>: &#8220;This bad even with all the extra guns that were sold. And they aren’t cheap.&#8221;</p>
<p>Government officials, wire service reporters, and pundits galore inadvertently attempted and failed to top my commenter&#8217;s sense of humor throughout the rest of the day. Sadly, they were all trying to be serious.</p>
<p>An unbylined dispatch from the Associated Press, aka <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2012/04/09/ap-the-administrations-press-and-propagandists/">the Administration&#8217;s Press</a>, released shortly after the report was issued &#8212; actually, I&#8217;m not sure about that, as the time stamp <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/100419252">at CNBC&#8217;s web site</a> where the report is carried is 8:11 a.m., 19 minutes before the government&#8217;s supposed embargo on the information expired &#8212; earned the award for most accidental jokes per column-inch. The report&#8217;s top three laugh lines related to &#8220;stimulus,&#8221; &#8220;cuts&#8221; in &#8220;government spending,&#8221; and tax increases.</p>
<p>AP&#8217;s unidentified writer characterized the contraction as &#8220;possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus&#8221; &#8212; as if we haven&#8217;t already had more than enough of that.</p>
<p>Gee, there was the $900 billion &#8220;stimulus plan&#8221; which stimulated nothing except a longer recession and slower subsequent growth. The government has run $5 trillion in deficits during the past four calendar years while adding an even larger amount to the national debt. Keynesian economic theory, which at this point would even embarrass the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Cops">Keystone Cops</a>, tells us that deficits, especially of such unprecedented magnitude, should stimulate the economy to recover at a faster pace. That&#8217;s obviously not happening. On top of all of that, <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/ben-bernanke-has-betrayed-us-all/">Ben the Betrayer</a> Bernanke at the Federal Reserve has bought up <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-29/bernanke-seen-buying-1-1-trillion-in-bonds-by-early-2014.html">over $3 trillion</a> in government debt and kept interest rates at nearly zero for several years. Those actions are also supposed to be stimulative.</p>
<p>With all that stimulation, the economy, according to Keynesians, should be growing at a roaring pace. Instead, annual growth since the recession officially ended 3-1/2 years ago has averaged just 2.2 percent. Average annual growth during the first 14 full quarters after the 1980s recession ended (1983, 1984, 1985, and the first half of 1986), as President Ronald Reagan was employing those allegedly useless, ineffective, and counterproductive supply-side economic policies, was 4.9 percent &#8212; over twice as fast.</p>
<p>AP&#8217;s next fable had to do with how &#8220;government spending cuts&#8221; were largely to blame for the negative result. In making this claim, the AP repeated a mistake the press has been ignorantly making for years in assuming that &#8220;government spending&#8221; is the same thing as “government consumption expenditures and gross investment”  in the GDP report.</p>
<p>It isn&#8217;t. The latter term represents purchases of real goods and services plus capital investments in fixed (long-lasting) assets. It isn&#8217;t even one-third of all federal &#8220;government spending,&#8221; which includes transfer payments and myriad other items which, though in some cases defensible, don&#8217;t add economic value. The fact is that &#8220;government spending&#8221; skyrocketed by 12% from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, rising from <a href="http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0912.txt">$810 billion</a> to <a href="http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts1212.txt">$908 billion</a>. Since expenditures and gross investment included in GDP went down, spending that added no value clearly soared by even more.</p>
<p>The AP&#8217;s final major gag line had to do with taxes. All of a sudden, today&#8217;s bad news &#8220;could raise fears about the economy&#8217;s ability to handle tax increases that took effect in January.&#8221;</p>
<p>Wait a minute. I thought that the established wisdom was that tax increases don&#8217;t hurt the economy. At least that&#8217;s what we were told during the fiscal cliff negotiations a month ago when the objective was to figure out how much the Republican House would allow the government to &#8220;soak the rich&#8221; (actually, &#8220;soak those with the highest incomes who may or may not be rich&#8221;). I think the revised formulation is: A tax increase on high earners isn&#8217;t a problem, but a Social Security tax increase on those who were promised that it would be the rich who would pay during Obama&#8217;s second term is. Uh-huh.</p>
<p>Giving AP&#8217;s reporters extra time to digest the news only increased the decibel level of their howlers. In <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ECONOMY?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2013-01-30-17-40-21">a late-afternoon report</a>, the wire service&#8217;s Christopher Rugaber trembled in fear over &#8220;the biggest threat it (the economy) faces in 2013: sharp government spending cuts and prolonged political budget fights.&#8221; Beside your problem with calling two things a (singular) &#8220;threat,&#8221; Chris, there haven&#8217;t been any &#8220;cuts.&#8221; If we&#8217;re lucky, we&#8217;ll only see reductions in the rate of previously projected spending increases. The economy will have a better chance of seeing a meaningful recovery if your dreaded &#8220;prolonged political budget fights&#8221; lead to even a modicum of control over what is now a runaway government. If you&#8217;re looking for threats, try looking into over-regulation, the war on fossil fuels, borders which are out of control, and at least two dozen other far more relevant factors.</p>
<p>Reuters pitched in with <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/30/us-usa-economy-idUSBRE90T07520130130">its own humdinger</a> &#8212; &#8220;[E]conomists said Superstorm Sandy, which struck the East Coast in late October may have reduced GDP by about half a point.&#8221; Nice try, no sale. Growth during the third quarter of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina inflicted perhaps as much or even more damage to the nation&#8217;s productive capacity, especially in energy, was an annualized 3.2 percent. The Obama economy hasn&#8217;t seen a growth figure that high in three years.</p>
<p>Bloomberg decided to go into &#8220;What difference does it make?&#8221; mode (© 2013 Hillary Clinton), <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-30/gdp-an-imperfect-measure-of-progress.html">whining that</a> &#8220;[P]oliticians have increasingly come to rely on &#8230; (GDP) as a singular tool for calibrating public policy. This is a mistake.&#8221; Folks, no matter what &#8220;tool&#8221; you use, it&#8217;s bad out here in the real world, whether you look at employment, unemployment, under-employment, wage contraction, disposable income contraction, low business start-ups &#8212; I could go on forever.</p>
<p>The top humor entry in the government apologists&#8217; division came from Paul Ashworth at Capital Economics, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/01/30/economists-react-best-looking-contraction-in-gdp/">who actually said </a>in a note to clients: &#8220;Frankly, this is the best-looking contraction in U.S. GDP you&#8217;ll ever see.&#8221; Last time I checked, Paul, no contraction &#8220;looks good.&#8221;</p>
<p>There seems to be at least some chance that the GDP figure will move from contraction to a tiny amount of expansion during the next two revisions in February and March. Building on the genuine humor of my commenter, maybe the government bean-counters will find that they underestimated the value of guns purchased and concealed-carry classes held in December after the politicians started making noises about taking our guns away.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama, Not GOP, Retreats on Debt Ceiling</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obama-not-gop-retreats-on-debt-ceiling/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-not-gop-retreats-on-debt-ceiling</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Jan 2013 04:39:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[But who will have the upper hand when the new extension expires? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obama-not-gop-retreats-on-debt-ceiling/r-obama-economy-rhetoric-large570-3/" rel="attachment wp-att-174769"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-174769" title="r-OBAMA-ECONOMY-RHETORIC-large570" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/r-OBAMA-ECONOMY-RHETORIC-large5702.jpg" alt="" width="247" height="188" /></a>If it&#8217;s so obvious that the President and Democrats in Congress have the upper hand in discussions about raising the nation&#8217;s debt ceiling, why did Barack Obama and his administration backpedal on a threat he made just ten days ago?</p>
<p>At his first term-ending <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2013/01/14/president-obama-holds-news-conference#transcript">victory lap news conference</a> on January 14, Obama told reporter Major Garrett that he would not accept a short-term extension of three or fewer months of &#8220;the so-called debt ceiling&#8221; &#8212; that&#8217;s what a sneering Obama actually called it in his introductory remarks &#8212; in these specific words:</p>
<blockquote><p>[W]e shouldn’t be doing this on a one to three-month timeframe. Why would we do that? This is the United States of America, Major. What, we can’t manage our affairs in such a way that we pay our bills and we provide some certainty in terms of how we pay our bills?</p>
<p>&#8230; I’m not going to have a monthly or every-three-months conversation about whether or not we pay our bills. Because that in and of itself does severe damage. Even the threat of default hurts our economy. It’s hurting our economy as we speak.</p></blockquote>
<p>On Wednesday, the House of Representatives led by Republican Speaker John Boehner passed a three-month extension of the debt ceiling from February 18 to May 19. It included an <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/23/opinion/avlon-no-budget-no-pay/index.html">interesting</a> but <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/no-budget-no-pay-congress-2013-1">debatably effective</a> provision that is &#8220;designed to stop all pay to members of Congress until they pass a budget.&#8221;</p>
<p>The previous day, as the White House signaled that it &#8220;welcomed the (expected) move,&#8221; Jim Kuhnhenn at the Associated Press, aka <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2012/04/09/ap-the-administrations-press-and-propagandists/">the Administration&#8217;s Press</a>, <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_FISCAL_FIGHT?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2013-01-22-03-16-15">falsely characterized </a>it as a &#8220;retreat&#8221; &#8212; by the House, with Obama headlined as having stood his ground. Nice try, Jim and AP; no sale. Even though you and the rest of the press won&#8217;t report it, the reality is that Barack Obama is the one who retreated from a supposedly firm position on the very first day after his second inauguration.</p>
<p>Please note that the &#8220;bills&#8221; Obama wants Congress to unconditionally &#8220;pay&#8221; were almost entirely created or committed to during the first half of Obama&#8217;s first term when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.</p>
<p>Reported spending during the final eight months of fiscal 2009 Obama&#8217;s first eight months in office &#8211; after <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2010/04/13/ap-cites-dramatic-march-deficit-reduction-due-to-non-cash-item-out-of-control-spending-continues/">correcting</a> for <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2009/05/31/the-federal-deficit-gets-indecipherable/">accounting shenanigans </a>&#8211; <a href="http://bizzyblog.com/wp-images/SpendingInObamasFirst32Months.png">averaged almost $280 billion</a> per month, a record up to that point. Ordinarily, one would say that Obama inherited that level of spending from predecessor George W. Bush, as the budget for fiscal 2009 should have been a done deal by September 2008. But it wasn&#8217;t. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (with then-Senator Obama firmly in their corner), banking on Obama defeating John McCain in November, effectively forced Bush to either accept continuing resolutions extending past the end of his term or risk the media-fed wrath of voters by shutting down the government just as the economy was tanking and the Democrat-driven housing mess arrived.</p>
<p>Once Obama took office in January 2009, Pelosi, Reid, and Obama, that terrible triumvirate of Democratic Party plunderers, worked on ramping up spending immediately &#8212; and as it has so far turned out, irrevocably &#8212; by passing a &#8220;stimulus&#8221; plan which stimulated nothing except higher spending and <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2012/09/12/43-months-of-depressing-misery/">economic malaise</a>.</p>
<p>Fiscal 2009 was just a warm-up. Since April of that year, Reid&#8217;s Senate has refused to pass a budget, putting spending into autopilot. Outlays (again after adjusting for accounting tricks) averaged <a href="http://bizzyblog.com/wp-images/SpendingInObamasFirst32Months.png">$298 billion per month</a> in fiscal 2010, and <a href="http://bizzyblog.com/wp-images/SpendingInObamasFirst32Months.png">broke the $300 billion per month barrier</a> in fiscal 2011.</p>
<p>Faced with Reid&#8217;s intransigence, Speaker John Boehner and his Republican House majority lacked the nerve to change the trajectory of spending during the rest of fiscal 2011, betting that they would have a better shot trying to control spending in fiscal 2012. Though in hindsight Boehner&#8217;s decision was a tactical blunder, that doesn&#8217;t change the fact that Pelosi and Reid, with Obama eagerly accepting their continuing resolutions, are responsible for <a href="http://bizzyblog.com/wp-images/SpendingInObamasFirst32Months.png">the $9.4 trillion in spending</a>, the $3.7 trillion in deficits, and the $4.2 trillion increase in the national debt which occurred from February 2009 through September 2011. Those Democrat-caused &#8220;bills&#8221; are the ones Obama wants the current Republican House to unconditionally &#8220;pay.&#8221;</p>
<p>Though it&#8217;s way too early to give the House any positive credit, it clearly didn&#8217;t cave to Obama&#8217;s press conference demand. Wednesday afternoon, Reid, who has usually thrown spending-related House bills into the trash can upon receipt and prevented the Senate from even considering them, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/harry-reid-senate-will-pass-house-debt-ceiling-bill-86617.html?hp=l1">falsely claimed victory</a> and said that the Senate will pass the House bill as is.</p>
<p><a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEBT_LIMIT?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT">Another AP report Wednesday </a>by David Espo characterized the Republicans&#8217; move as &#8220;retreating with a purpose.&#8221; The purposeful retreaters are really in the White House.</p>
<p>As I <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2013/01/22/four-years-later-all-he-can-say-is-an-economic-recovery-has-begun/">noted on Monday</a>, there are good reasons to believe that the economy is once again sputtering. Economic growth in the fourth quarter appears to have <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-11/us-q4-gdp-25-sub-1-under-six-months">slowed by at least half</a> from the previous quarter. Job growth has continued to be unimpressive compared to what is needed to make a meaningful dent in the number of unemployed, under-employed, and discouraged. Though it was masked by a quirky seasonal adjustment calculation, raw initial jobless claims for the week ended January 12 were higher than the analogous week in 2012, the first time that has happened in a truly comparable full business week comparison <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2013/01/17/initial-unemployment-claims-335-sa-nsa-layoffs-up-by-almost-6-year-over-year/">since October 2009</a>.</p>
<p>My take on the political maneuvering is that the White House is anticipating poor economic performance during the early months of 2013, and that it is looking for someone other than themselves to blame. So, with the help of their new <a href="http://www.barackobama.com/">Organizing for Action</a> shock troops, they&#8217;ll try to claim that Republicans are responsible for foisting a short-term debt ceiling extension on Reid and Obama (those poor helpless creatures), creating an unmanageable atmosphere of economic uncertainty.</p>
<p>Republicans, on the other hand, may have been emboldened by the belief that continued economic underperformance will work in their favor, expecting public opinion to move into their corner as more Americans become convinced that our struggling country cannot afford a never-ending regime of reckless spending.</p>
<p>Who&#8217;s right? I don&#8217;t know, but it appears that the playing field may be more level several months from now than the left and press would like us to believe.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Startling Second Inaugural Admission</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obamas-startling-second-inaugural-admission/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-startling-second-inaugural-admission</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jan 2013 04:56:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inauguration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=174418</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Four years later, all he can say is "an economic recovery has begun"?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obamas-startling-second-inaugural-admission/obama-inauguration-speech-close-cropped-proto-custom_28/" rel="attachment wp-att-174435"><img class=" wp-image-174435 alignleft" title="obama-inauguration-speech-close-cropped-proto-custom_28" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/obama-inauguration-speech-close-cropped-proto-custom_28.jpg" alt="" width="246" height="166" /></a>President Barack Obama&#8217;s <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/text-obamas-second-inaugural-address_696599.html?nopager=1" target="_blank">second inaugural address</a> on Monday was mostly what one would have expected: A paean to the wonders of statism and how great America could be if we would just overcome our unhealthy legacy. In Obama&#8217;s world, we would all be so much better if we could get over obsessions like rugged individualism and the true meaning of the words contained in our nation&#8217;s Constitution, and let a benevolent, all-knowing government take more control over our everyday lives.</p>
<p>But in the midst of his &#8220;we know better&#8221; exercise, Obama made the most stunning admission of abject failure I have heard a president utter in my lifetime. I’ll have more on that shortly.</p>
<p>In his speech, Obama made a pretense of paying homage to our Founding Fathers, but followed it with a clear indication that he believes their wisdom is passé by claiming that &#8220;preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.&#8221; Other than our involvement in wars, which he falsely claims will soon be coming to an end, I can&#8217;t imagine what he could be thinking of. Obama even added a dose of coldly calculated and contemptuous ridicule to the mix by including an insulting reference to the modern wartime inadequacy of &#8220;muskets and militias.&#8221;</p>
<p>Though it was indeed, as the Politico&#8217;s Glenn Thrush <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/obama-return-of-the-liberal-86507.html" target="_blank">correctly noted</a>, &#8220;the most liberal speech he has delivered as president,&#8221; it clearly disappointed some of those in the establishment press who wanted to hear Obama go for his opponents&#8217; jugulars. That group includes John Dickerson, who has been <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/01/21/cbs-political-director-john-dickerson-calls-obama-declare-war-republican" target="_blank">Political Director at CBS News</a> since November 2011.</p>
<p>Dickerson put on his best game face at Slate <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/01/barack_obama_s_inauguration_the_president_offered_a_surprisingly_partisan.single.html" target="_blank">after the speech</a>, but it&#8217;s clear from reading his previous <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/01/barack_obama_s_second_inaugural_address_the_president_should_declare_war.single.html#return" target="_blank">2,000-word battle plan </a>disguised as a column on Friday that Obama didn&#8217;t go as far as he would have liked.</p>
<p>The column&#8217;s headlines called for Obama to &#8220;Go for the Throat!&#8221; and &#8220;declare war on the Republican Party.&#8221; In his content, Dickerson claimed that Republican recalcitrance meant that &#8220;Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize,&#8221; and that the president &#8220;can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP.&#8221; Slate was so thrilled with the piece that <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/01/21/cbs-political-director-john-dickerson-calls-obama-declare-war-republican" target="_blank">it amped up </a>its &#8220;most popular&#8221; tease list title to read: &#8220;Why Obama Should Seek To Destroy the Republican Party.&#8221; Dickerson&#8217;s occupation of such an influential perch at CBS and the presence of so many others like him at other news outlets largely explain why last year&#8217;s establishment press coverage of the GOP primaries and the general election was so ruthlessly biased against Republicans and especially conservatives.</p>
<p>Given the content of the rest of his speech, it was astonishing to hear Obama say the following five words: &#8220;An economic recovery has begun.&#8221;</p>
<p>Wow.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re just three weeks shy of the fourth anniversary of the passage of the February 2009 &#8220;stimulus plan.&#8221; It was supposed to turn the economy around after the evil George W. Bush ruined everything. Obama&#8217;s Keynesian economists told us that without the stimulus plan&#8217;s immediate implementation, unemployment would rise <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/wp-images/ObamaStimulusPromiseGraphDec2012.jpg" target="_blank">to an unacceptable 9 percent </a>by the summer of 2010. But if we would just pass this monstrosity which <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvnwOjDjnH4" target="_blank">nobody read</a>, unemployment would peak at 8 percent in just a few months and gradually fall to 5.2 percent by the end of 2012.</p>
<p>What really happened is that despite the plan&#8217;s passage (actually, largely because of it), the unemployment rate hit 10 percent before 2009 was even over, stayed above 8 percent for a post-World War II record <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/43-months-of-depressing-misery/" target="_blank">43 months</a>, and is still <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_01042013.htm" target="_blank">at 7.8 percent</a>. The Obama government, set into fiscal motion by the Democratic Congress of 2009-2010 and running on autopilot ever since, has run up $5 trillion in supposedly stimulative budget deficits and has been the beneficiary of four years of supposedly stimulative near-zero interest rates courtesy of <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/ben-bernanke-has-betrayed-us-all/" target="_blank">Ben the Betrayer </a>Bernanke&#8217;s Federal Reserve.</p>
<p>Now, after all of that ruinous stimulus, the best our president can say is: &#8220;An economic recovery has begun.&#8221; It&#8217;s almost as if he wants us to believe that this strange, uncontrollable beast called the economy has finally decided to get better on its own.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for those who are unemployed, under-employed, and discouraged, there&#8217;s still reason to believe that the economy, after so many false starts during Obama&#8217;s first term, is once again sputtering.</p>
<p>Economists have been wearing out their erasers and &#8220;delete&#8221; keys writing down their estimates of economic growth during the fourth quarter of 2012. The rough consensus is that gross domestic product will grow by an annualized 1.5 percent, <a href="http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2012/txt/gdp3q12_3rd.txt" target="_blank">down from 3.1 percent</a> in the third quarter &#8211; <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-11/us-q4-gdp-25-sub-1-under-six-months" target="_blank">if we&#8217;re lucky</a>.</p>
<p>Seasonally adjusted job growth has only averaged 130,000 during the past ten months. That&#8217;s below <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/07/news/economy/august-jobs-report/index.html" target="_blank">the 150,000 jobs needed</a> just to keep pace with growth in the adult population. Additionally, in a sign that the trend is in the wrong direction, the raw number of jobs changes before seasonal adjustment <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/wp-images/NSAtotalNFPandPrivateSeptToDec2012.png" target="_blank">has been lower</a> than that seen in the same month of the previous year during three of the past four months.</p>
<p>Finally, in perhaps the most ominous sign of decay, last week&#8217;s report on initial jobless claims told us that the raw number of claims filed (i.e., before seasonal adjustment) was greater than the comparable week a year ago &#8212; the first time this has happened in a truly comparable non-holiday week <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2013/01/17/initial-unemployment-claims-335-sa-nsa-layoffs-up-by-almost-6-year-over-year/" target="_blank">since October 2009</a>.</p>
<p>The way things are going, Obama&#8217;s successor may very well use those same five words &#8212; &#8220;An economic recovery has begun&#8221; &#8212; in his or her inaugural address four long years from now.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Ben Bernanke Has Betrayed Us All</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/ben-bernanke-has-betrayed-us-all/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ben-bernanke-has-betrayed-us-all</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 04:45:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ben Bernanke]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[debt ceiling]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[John Boehner]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Spending]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Federal Reserve Chairman parrots Obama propaganda on getting rid of the debt ceiling. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/ben-bernanke-has-betrayed-us-all/bernanke-remarks-gi-top/" rel="attachment wp-att-173961"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-173961" title="bernanke-remarks.gi.top" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/bernanke-remarks.gi_.top_.jpg" alt="" width="251" height="175" /></a>As if we needed any further reminder of how thoroughly corrupt and one-sided Washington has become, the man who is ostensibly in charge of what is supposed to be the most important politically neutral institution in the nation has once again weighed in on the side of the most financially irresponsible administration in U.S. history.</p>
<p>In case you missed it in the midst of the media-imposed obsession over &#8220;gun violence,&#8221; aka the orchestrated attempt to do as much damage to citizens&#8217; constitutional right to keep and bear arms as possible, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke <a href="http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/events/calendar/1447/">appeared on Monday</a> at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. In <a href="http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/files/transcripts/2013-ben-bernanke.txt">a question-and-answer format</a>, first with school dean Susan Collins and then followed by submitted student questions, Bernanke, in what Ylan Q. Mui at the <em>Washington Post</em> called &#8220;<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bernanke-debt-ceiling-only-symbolic/2013/01/14/2cdaa556-5e8d-11e2-9940-6fc488f3fecd_story.html">a free-wheeling conversation</a>,&#8221; engaged in historical revisionism, berated the U.S. Congress, and parroted the aggressively partisan line <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/14/news-conference-president">President Barack Obama</a> and <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2013/01/13/jay-carney-sums-up-the-problem/">officials </a>in his administration have taken as the federal government once again bumps up against its duly legislated credit limit:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8230; [I]t was the very slow solution to the debt ceiling in August 2011 that got the US downgraded last time. &#8230; [I]t&#8217;s very, very important that Congress take necessary action to raise the debt ceiling to avoid a situation where our government doesn&#8217;t pay its bills.</p></blockquote>
<p>Bernanke tried to pretend that the downgrade of long-term U.S. debt from AAA to AA+ by ratings agency Standard and Poor&#8217;s occurred because the House of Representatives under Speaker John Boehner didn&#8217;t immediately bend over and acquiesce to an unconditional increase in the debt ceiling almost 17 months ago.</p>
<p>That was at best a secondary reason for S&amp;P&#8217;s downgrade. The primary driver was the firm&#8217;s <a href="http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/articles/en/us/?assetID=1245316529563">clearly expressed opinion </a>&#8220;that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government&#8217;s medium-term debt dynamics.&#8221; In other words, after all of the histrionics, Congress and the administration failed to do what they needed to do to get the government&#8217;s house in order.</p>
<p>S&amp;P was indeed also troubled &#8220;that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened.&#8221; But who did the weakening? Certainly not Boehner&#8217;s House; the Speaker and his party took control of Congress&#8217;s lower chamber in the 2010 elections when the nation decided it had seen enough of the frightening damage inflicted by two years of one-party rule under Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Voters hoped that Boehner&#8217;s House would be able to rein in the insanity. That hasn&#8217;t happened yet, but the &#8220;weakened&#8221; situation S&amp;P cited predates Boehner&#8217;s ascension to Speaker.</p>
<p>That weakening occurred in two stages. The first took place when Pelosi, Reid and Obama decided to ramp up spending from an already far too high <a href="http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0908.txt">$2.98 trillion</a> in fiscal 2008 to <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamas-unsustainable-and-gutless-budget-proposals/">a dangerous $3.57 trillion</a> in fiscal 2010 (<a href="http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0910.txt">the &#8220;official&#8221; 2010 spending figure</a> is lower because Tim Geithner&#8217;s Treasury Department engaged in <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2010/04/13/ap-cites-dramatic-march-deficit-reduction-due-non-cash-item-out-control-">TARP-related accounting manipulation</a> which made fiscal 2009 look worse than fiscal 2010, when that wasn&#8217;t really the case), primarily by passing a &#8220;stimulus&#8221; program which <a href="http://cnsnews.com/blog/terence-p-jeffrey/obamas-stimulus-documented-failure">stimulated nothing </a>but massive levels of <a href="http://jeffreystedfast.blogspot.com/2012/08/grading-obamas-green-energy-stimulus.html">waste</a>, <a href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/04/06/Justice-Department-Probing-Widespread-Stimulus-Fraud.aspx#page1">fraud</a> and <a href="http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/2010/02/stimulus-waste-15-notable-sinkholes.html">abuse</a>. Then, despite promising that the stimulus would be a temporary two-year operation, and that spending levels would come down after that, Obama and Reid made it clear to Boehner and the rest of the country that their previous pledges meant nothing, and that they would accept no meaningful controls on spending growth. Thus, the &#8220;weakened American policymaking&#8221; S&amp;P cited is directly and completely traceable to Pelosi&#8217;s sessions of Congress, the White House, and Congress&#8217;s upper chamber.</p>
<p>As he cited the need to have the current debt ceiling <a href="http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/charts/charts_debt.htm">of $16.394 trillion</a> raised, Bernanke gave away his contempt for our Founding Fathers and the brilliant separation of powers mechanisms they set up in our Constitution. While he didn&#8217;t directly answer a questioner who wanted to know his take on whether the ceiling &#8220;could &#8230; be eliminated without much consequence,&#8221; his answer, which the <em>Washington Post&#8217;s</em> Mui interpreted as a call for getting rid of it, was deeply disturbing:</p>
<blockquote><p>[I]t&#8217;s got symbolic value, I guess &#8230; [E]ssentially, no other countries in the world have this particular institution.</p></blockquote>
<p>Gosh, Ben. What if everyone in the country decided that the credit limits on their credit cards, home-equity lines, and other forms of credit were just &#8220;symbolic&#8221;? The answer is that in almost all cases attempts to borrow above those limits would be stopped by strict control mechanisms installed at checkout lines and other points of purchase and credit access. By contrast, Ben Bernanke would apparently prefer that the government have no limit on how much it can borrow. We can already see the accumulating wreckage in Europe which has occurred because there has been no meaningful restraint on EU governments&#8217; borrowing ability. <a href="http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/07/14999435-firebombs-teargas-fly-as-anti-austerity-rally-turns-violent-in-greece?lite">It&#8217;s not pretty</a>, and it promises <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_1_otbie-european-debt-crisis.html">to get very ugly</a>.</p>
<p>Speaking of ugliness, Bernanke&#8217;s mimicking of the Obama administration&#8217;s meme that Boehner&#8217;s House needs to &#8220;pay its bills&#8221; is among the more risible assertions I&#8217;ve heard out of this bunch &#8212; and that&#8217;s saying something.</p>
<p>Boehner&#8217;s House has passed budgets. Reid&#8217;s Senate has refused to even consider them or to pass any other kind of budget resolution, effectively placing the government on spending autopilot <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/12/16/politico-discussing-obamas-2014-budget-proposal-fails-note-no-real-budge">for nearly four years</a>. If he were a responsible fiscal steward, Obama would insist on receiving an agreed-upon roadmap for running the government. Instead, he has been all too happy to run up the government&#8217;s debt tab while disingenuously disclaiming any responsibility for it.</p>
<p>The sad reality is that Ben the Betrayer Bernanke&#8217;s Federal Reserve has long since been co-opted by the Obama regime. The Fed&#8217;s multiple programs of &#8220;quantitative easing&#8221; have financed an out of control government with trillions of dollars of money created out of thin air. If QE stopped today, the government&#8217;s finances and the nation&#8217;s economy would more than likely collapse in short order. Bernanke&#8217;s four years of cooperation with his profligate masters now have us at the brink of the point of no return.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s not John Boehner&#8217;s fault, Ben &#8212; and you know it.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Agenda: Shrink Second Amendment Freedoms</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obamas-agenda-shrink-second-amendment-freedoms/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-agenda-shrink-second-amendment-freedoms</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 04:36:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=173610</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A president unleashed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/obamas-agenda-shrink-second-amendment-freedoms/president-obama-addresses-the-nation-on-the-connecticut-school-shooting/" rel="attachment wp-att-173613"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-173613" title="President Obama Addresses The Nation On The Connecticut School Shooting" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/9794349961935b19b8b79ca7c2ea605a.jpg" alt="" width="267" height="202" /></a>President Barack Obama, who <a href="http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Oath_Office.htm">swore he would</a> &#8220;support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic&#8221; when he joined the U.S. Senate in 2005, and <a href="http://www.presidentsusa.net/oathofoffice.html">that he would</a> &#8220;to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States&#8221; when he entered the White House in 2009, <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/15/details-of-biden-gun-package-emerge/">now stands ready</a>, according to his vice president, to consider &#8220;19 steps &#8230; (he) can take himself using executive action.&#8221;</p>
<p>The administration&#8217;s intent could not be more clear. It wants to bureaucratically create a de facto repeal of as much of <a href="http://constitution.org/billofr_.htm">the Second Amendment&#8217;s</a> clearly stated and <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html">correctly interpreted</a> individual &#8220;<a href="http://constitution.org/billofr_.htm">right of the people to keep and bear Arms</a>&#8221; as possible by January 20, 2017 &#8212; and if that requires shredding what&#8217;s left of the Constitution&#8217;s separation of powers, so be it.</p>
<p>The clear-eyed among us warned that this day might come <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2008/10/29/hope-on-callout-campaign-john-boccieri-does-not-support-the-individual-right-to-keep-and-bear-arms/">in 2008</a> if Obama won the presidency that year. During that campaign, Obama tried to quiet a group of skeptics at a Pennsylvania campaign stop, <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2008/09/06/wsj-obama-wont-ban-guns-i-dont-have-votes-congress">first by claiming</a>: &#8220;If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it.&#8221; That wasn&#8217;t particularly persuasive, nor was his next line, which predictably did not get the press attention it should have: &#8220;Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress.&#8221; It&#8217;s now clear that he mostly doesn&#8217;t care about how many &#8220;votes in Congress&#8221; he has.</p>
<p>In 2012, we further warned that reelecting the most visceral opponent of the fundamental human right of self-defense ever to occupy the White House to a second term would exponentially increase the danger to our free exercise of that basic right. Now Obama has won his last election (or so we hope), while bragging that &#8220;the American people have spoken.&#8221; Hardly. 50.61 percent of voters pulled the lever for Obama despite his being opposed by the worst Republican candidate in my lifetime; <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/wp-images/VotersAndTurnoutPrez2012.png">fewer than 27 percent</a> of all voting-age adults voted for him, a decline from four years earlier. Nonetheless, it remains the case that Obama has four more years to figure out how to gut the Second Amendment &#8212; something which has been one of his overarching goals for at least the better part of two decades.</p>
<p>It is reasonable to believe &#8212; in fact, there&#8217;s really no other rational alternative explanation &#8212; that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, who in 1995 told a sympathetic audience that the nation&#8217;s leaders should &#8220;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNE5vuI9TNo">really brainwash people</a> into thinking about guns in a vastly different way,&#8221; believed that Operation Fast and Furious would be that brainwashing vehicle. As Ben Shapiro &#8212; yes, the same guy who ran circles around CNN&#8217;s gun-grabbing Piers Morgan <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJdhAm_oUUs">last week </a>&#8211; wrote <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/03/18/Holder-Fast-Furious-Guns">at Breitbart.com</a> in March of last year:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8230; (In) the Fast and Furious scandal &#8230; the Attorney General apparently gave the go-ahead to an operation that funneled guns to the drug cartels – guns later used in the murder of U.S. citizens. &#8230; [I]t surely was not a simple sting operation – and critics have long suspected that the program was designed to stir up anger at gun distribution inside the U.S. in order to provide support for gun control.</p></blockquote>
<p>Fast and Furious was &#8220;not a simple sting operation,&#8221; simply because the detailed movements of most and possibly all of the &#8220;funneled guns&#8221; <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000702304665904576385993445351016.html?mod=googlenews_wsj">weren&#8217;t tracked</a>. Instead, as <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2012/10/02/asleep-at-the-wires-no-coverage-as-univision-exposes-wider-scope-sickening-carnage-of-fast-and-furious/">Univision reported in October</a>, the law enforcement &#8220;logic&#8221; was as follows: &#8220;If the weapons were used to kill in Mexico, then (police), in the crime scenes, could establish who acquired them.&#8221; In other words, it was an operation in which what ended being a body count of <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/ten-2011-examples-of-major-media-malfeasance/?singlepage=true">at least 300 Mexicans</a>, including a group of innocent teenagers at a birthday party, was sloughed off as collateral damage.</p>
<p>On the U.S. side of the border, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry&#8217;s murderer used a Fast and Furious gun, and the Justice Department <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/17/nation/la-na-atf-guns-20110817">has admitted</a> that it was &#8220;aware of 11 (other) instances&#8221; where a Fast and Furious firearm &#8220;was recovered in connection with a crime of violence in the United States.&#8221; Completing the conspiratorial circle, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-57338546-10391695/documents-atf-used-fast-and-furious-to-make-the-case-for-gun-regulations/">revealed in December 2011</a> that &#8220;the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation &#8216;Fast and Furious&#8217; to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.&#8221;</p>
<p>At <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/14/news-conference-president">his Tuesday press conference</a>, Obama did not correct a reporter who wanted him to call the recent spike in gun and ammunition sales &#8220;irrational,&#8221; instead calling it the result of &#8220;a fear that&#8217;s fanned by those who are worried about the possibility of any legislation getting out there.&#8221;</p>
<p>That fear is far from irrational. Those who have called for gun confiscation or mandatory buybacks include New York Governor <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/12/22/page-a29-nyt-dull-headline-cuomo-says-gun-confiscation-could-be-option">Andrew Cuomo</a>, Iowa State Representative <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/09/iowa-lawmaker-calls-for-retroactive-gun-bans-confiscations-of-semi-automatic-weapons/">Dan Muhlbauer</a>, and the queen of confiscation, Dianne Feinstein. The California Senator <a href="http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons">recently proposed</a> &#8220;a program to purchase weapons from gun owners, a proposal that could be compulsory.&#8221;</p>
<p>In 1995, Feinstein <a href="http://www.infowars.com/video-dianne-feinstein-says-prepare-to-turn-in-your-guns/">bemoaned her failure</a> to take everyone&#8217;s guns, saying:</p>
<blockquote><p>If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States, for an outright ban, picking up every of them &#8212; Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in &#8212; I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren&#8217;t here.</p></blockquote>
<p>There&#8217;s no reason whatsoever to believe that Feinstein feels any differently now.</p>
<p>More to the point, Barack Obama&#8217;s track record is so littered with over-the-top opposition to the right of self-defense that it would take at least another full column to enumerate all of the outrageous examples. One will suffice to demonstrate how deep-seated his hostility is.</p>
<p>Beginning in 1999, as described <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/obama-and-the-attempt-to-destroy-the-second-amendment/?singlepage=true">by David T. Hardy</a> in October 2008, the Joyce Foundation, with Obama serving as one of its directors, began a campaign to stack the influential <em>Chicago-Kent Law Review</em> with articles claiming that the Constitution does not confer an individual right to bear arms. It pointedly rejected offers from writers wishing to promote the opposite view.</p>
<p>This may seem a mundane matter, but Hardy pointed out that &#8220;When judges cannot rely upon past decisions, they sometimes turn to law review articles.&#8221; He also noted that the Foundation almost got its wish:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Joyce directorate’s plan almost succeeded. The individual rights view won out in the <em>Heller</em> Supreme Court appeal, but only by 5-4. The four dissenters were persuaded in part by Joyce-funded writings, down to relying on an article which misled them on critical historical documents.</p>
<p>Having lost that fight, Obama now claims he always held the individual rights view of the Second Amendment &#8230;</p></blockquote>
<p>No, he doesn&#8217;t.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Jack Lew: Architect of Obama&#8217;s Trillion-Dollar-Deficit Budgets</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/jack-lew-architect-of-obamas-trillion-dollar-deficit-budgets/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jack-lew-architect-of-obamas-trillion-dollar-deficit-budgets</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/jack-lew-architect-of-obamas-trillion-dollar-deficit-budgets/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2013 04:50:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jack Lew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nominee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Secretary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tim Geithner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Treasury]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=172961</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[No Treasury Secretary would better embody the president's fiscal insanity. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/jack-lew-architect-of-obamas-trillion-dollar-deficit-budgets/afp-516314650_001-4_3_r560/" rel="attachment wp-att-172966"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-172966" title="afp-516314650_001-4_3_r560" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/afp-516314650_001-4_3_r560-450x337.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="202" /></a>On Wednesday, Julie Pace and Martin Crutsinger, two of the usual suspects at the Associated Press, <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_TREASURY_SECRETARY?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2013-01-09-17-45-11" target="_blank">began paving the way</a> for what they clearly hope will be a worry-free Senate confirmation of current Obama administration Chief of Staff Jack Lew to become the nation&#8217;s next Treasury Secretary.</p>
<p>Towards that end, the AP pair larded on the compliments and historical revisionism with reckless abandon. Among other things, their report lauded Lew as &#8220;one of Washington&#8217;s most knowledgeable budget experts to manage prickly fiscal negotiations with Congress and steer the still-shaky national economy&#8221;; said that he would &#8220;bring to Treasury a mastery of federal budget mechanics&#8221;; claimed that he had &#8220;helped negotiate a balanced budget agreement with Congress, something that has eluded Washington ever since&#8221;; and described Lew as &#8220;a pragmatic liberal &#8230; [who] is well-liked in Washington by both Democrats and Republicans[.]&#8221;</p>
<p>Along the way, Pace and Crutsinger couldn&#8217;t make up their minds about the current condition of the economy. After the &#8220;still-shaky&#8221; characterization just noted in their first paragraph, they later evaluated it as &#8220;now stabilized, if still sluggish.&#8221; Those two conditions can&#8217;t exist at the same time, given that &#8220;shaky&#8221; <a href="http://www.synonyms.net/antonyms/stable" target="_blank">is an antonym</a> of &#8220;stable.&#8221; Although it would have required more verbiage, the AP pair should have characterized the current economy, as a result of <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/43-months-of-depressing-misery/" target="_blank">the derelict stewardship</a> of Obama, the soon-departing Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke as &#8220;the worst since Franklin Delano Roosevelt needlessly extended the Great Depression by over eight years during the 1930s.&#8221; <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/43-months-of-depressing-misery/" target="_blank">Because it is</a>.</p>
<p>The AP also decided to have a little fun with Lew&#8217;s signature, which will appear on the nation&#8217;s currency if he is confirmed, commenting <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_LEWS_LOOPY_SIGNATURE?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2013-01-09-19-37-26" target="_blank">in a separate item</a> that his sign-off, a &#8220;J&#8221; followed by &#8220;seven loopy scribbles,&#8221; is &#8220;illegible.&#8221;</p>
<p>What&#8217;s really loopy is AP&#8217;s collection of contentions about Lew.</p>
<p>Lew may actually be &#8220;knowledgeable&#8221; and have a &#8220;mastery of federal budget mechanics,&#8221; but he hasn&#8217;t demonstrated either. As Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in early 2011 following service in that same position during Bill Clinton&#8217;s final 32 months in office a decade earlier, Lew was the primary compiler of that February&#8217;s proposed White House Budget. That document blessed the idea of running a full-year fiscal 2011 deficit <a href="http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world-news/obama-budget-curbs-us-deficit-setsfiscal-fight_522687.html" target="_blank">of $1.645 trillion </a>while coveting $1.5 trillion in taxes over the next 10 years beyond those already locked in by the previous year&#8217;s passage of ObamaCare.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021411-563132-editorial-obamas-gutless-budget-proposal.htm" target="_blank">An Investor&#8217;s Business Daily editorial</a> made mincemeat of Lew&#8217;s handiwork, correctly describing it as &#8220;gutless&#8221; because it chose to do nothing about runaway entitlement spending, even with the available political cover of Obama&#8217;s own Simpson Bowles Commission. That panel <a href="http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Issues/Simpson-Bowles/" target="_blank">had recommended  </a>sweeping changes to the Social Security system and significant Medicare and Medicaid reforms just two months earlier.</p>
<p>As to Lew&#8217;s vaunted negotiating skills, give me a break.</p>
<p>The Clinton administration&#8217;s agreement with Congress early in his second term did balance the budget and generate surpluses for a few years, but Lew&#8217;s role appears to have been minimal. The key players in that drama were then-Congressman, now Ohio Governor John Kasich and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The AP itself in 2009 <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2009/05/04/ap-ohio-writer-pulls-a-calvin-woodward-explains-fundamental-truth-about-john-kasich/" target="_blank">acknowledged Kasich&#8217;s role</a> as &#8220;chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Budget Committee in 1997 that balanced the nation’s budget for the first time in more than 30 years.&#8221;</p>
<p>Jack Lew did not become Bill Clinton&#8217;s OMB Director until May 1998. Concerning 1997, when the measures which ultimately led to a balanced budget became law, including the reduction in the capital gains tax which caused related tax receipts to skyrocket during the next several years, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lew#Clinton_administration" target="_blank">Lew&#8217;s Wikipedia entry </a>currently only says that he &#8220;frequently served as a member of the Administration negotiating team.&#8221; Big whoop.</p>
<p>When he has been a player in negotiations, he has been anything but constructive. <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/09/Jack-Lew-The-Man-Who-Cannot-Say-Yes-to-Republicans" target="_blank">Breitbart.com&#8217;s Joel Pollak</a> noted on Wednesday that, according to Bob Woodward&#8217;s book, The Price of Politics, Lew &#8220;so irritated congressional Republicans during debt ceiling negotiations in 2011 that Speaker of the House John Boehner personally asked Obama to exclude Lew from the talks.&#8221; Pollak believes that the Lew nomination &#8220;is a clear sign that he intends to drive a hard bargain with Republicans and that he is even less interested in compromise than he was during his first term.&#8221; It&#8217;s hard to see how he could be wrong. So if you thought Geithner&#8217;s <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2012/02/17/geithner-yeah-we-dont-have-a-solution-to-the-debt-problem/" target="_blank">condescending, punkish comment</a> to Congressman Paul Ryan about Ryan&#8217;s plan to prevent the country&#8217;s deficit- and debt-driven financial implosion was bad &#8212; &#8220;we (don&#8217;t) have a definitive solution &#8230; What we do know is, we don’t like yours&#8221; &#8212; you probably haven&#8217;t seen anything yet.</p>
<p>AP&#8217;s suggestion that Lew is &#8220;pragmatic&#8221; is nonsense. In early 2011, Lew showed himself to be beyond doubt a doctrinaire leftist unconcerned with facts or the truth.</p>
<p>It all began when <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2011-02-22-editorial22_ST_N.htm" target="_blank">a USA Today editorial</a> called Social Security&#8217;s trust fund, &#8220;at least in cash terms, a fiction,&#8221; correctly asserting: &#8220;In reality, the trust fund is no more than a collection of IOUs.&#8221; (More on Social Security&#8217;s dire situation can be found <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/social-security-even-more-insolvent-than-you-thought/" target="_blank">in my Tuesday FrontPage column</a>, &#8220;Social Security: Even More Insolvent Than You Thought.&#8221;)</p>
<p>Lew took umbrage at USA Today&#8217;s contention <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2011-02-22-editorial22_ST1_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip" target="_blank">in an opposing column</a> there. Included in his collection of laughable claims were these howlers: &#8220;Social Security does not cause our deficits,&#8221; and &#8220;Social Security benefits are entirely self-financing.&#8221;</p>
<p>That was too much for Washington Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/10/AR2011031004683.html" target="_blank">who flung verbiage</a> from Clinton-era reports issued by Lew&#8217;s own OMB back in his face:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8230; listen to the OMB&#8217;s own explanation (in the Clinton administration budget for fiscal 2000 under then-Director Jack Lew, the very same). The OMB explained that these trust fund &#8220;balances&#8221; are nothing more than a &#8220;bookkeeping&#8221; device. &#8220;They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits.&#8221;</p>
<p>In other words, the Social Security trust fund contains &#8211; nothing.</p></blockquote>
<p>Lew doubled down a day later while attacking Krauthammer <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/11/hammer-misses-mark" target="_blank">at the White House&#8217;s OMB blog</a>. In addition to repeating the lies contained in his USA Today column, he also blamed the country&#8217;s budget problems on &#8220;the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and the Medicare prescription drug benefit.&#8221; Unfortunately for Lew, federal collections <a href="http://i739.photobucket.com/albums/xx40/mmatters/FederalReceipts2003thru2007.jpg" target="_blank">rose by 44%</a> from fiscal 2003 through fiscal 2007 after those cuts took full effect, and the federal budget was <a href="http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0907.txt" target="_blank">within $163 billion</a> of achieving balance in fiscal 2007. As to the drug benefit, also known as Medicare Part D, it was indeed an ill-advised move by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress, but competition-enhancing aspects of that law have caused the program&#8217;s costs to rise at <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2012/06/06/medicare-part-d-proves-that-competition-lowers-health-care-spending/" target="_blank">a much lower annual rate</a> than health care costs in general.</p>
<p>Krauthammer got in the last word <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-still-an-empty-lockbox/2011/03/17/ABPpoym_story.html" target="_blank">in his next column</a>, correctly arguing that Lew&#8217;s false arguments justify &#8220;precisely the kind of debt denial and entitlement complacency that his boss is now engaged in.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Lew nomination tells us that we can expect four more years of &#8220;debt denial and complacency.&#8221; Moves like this lend further credence to the idea that Obama really doesn&#8217;t mind if the country falls apart financially by the time he leaves the White House &#8212; assuming he plans to.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Social Security: Even More Insolvent Than You Thought</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/social-security-even-more-insolvent-than-you-thought/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=social-security-even-more-insolvent-than-you-thought</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jan 2013 04:35:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[accounting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bankrupt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[federal government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shortfall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tax]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=172631</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Its actuaries have been blowing the calculations, and there is no “buffer.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/social-security-even-more-insolvent-than-you-thought/fe_da_intro_boostsocialsecurityslideshow/" rel="attachment wp-att-172644"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-172644" title="FE_DA_Intro_BoostSocialSecuritySlideshow" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/FE_DA_Intro_BoostSocialSecuritySlideshow.jpg" alt="" width="230" height="167" /></a>At first, one doesn&#8217;t know whether to laugh or cry at research findings reported by two Ivy League profs <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/opinion/sunday/social-security-its-worse-than-you-think.html?_r=1&amp;">in a co-authored column</a> in the Sunday <em>New York Times</em> titled &#8220;Social Security: It’s Worse Than You Think.&#8221;</p>
<p>Actually, white-hot anger is more appropriate, given that what <a href="http://gking.harvard.edu/">Gary King</a>, a professor of government and director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, and <a href="http://people.iq.harvard.edu/~ssoneji/">Samir S. Soneji</a>, a demographer and assistant professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, really told us, namely that the New Deal-era retirement system, thanks to its use of ossified actuarial calculations, is more insolvent than almost all of us knew.</p>
<p>The pair&#8217;s core finding, as presented in the <em>Times</em>: &#8220;[T]he Social Security Administration underestimates how long Americans will live and how much the trust funds will need to pay out — to the tune of $800 billion by 2031.&#8221;</p>
<p>There are at least three justifications for feeling righteously outraged.</p>
<p>The first has to do with the delay between when King and Soneji originally reported their core findings to the academic community and when they deigned to let the rest of the country in on their virtual secret.</p>
<p>The pair&#8217;s research paper, &#8220;<a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-012-0106-z/fulltext.html">Statistical Security for Social Security</a>,&#8221; reported that &#8220;Social Security, especially the OASI program, may be in a considerably more precarious position than officially thought&#8221; because the government&#8217;s actuaries are ignoring the financial implications of life expectancy increases due to &#8220;the steady decline in smoking,&#8221; which more than offset decreases relating to &#8220;the rapid rise in obesity.&#8221; The estimated net effect they reported in their paper was &#8220;$730 billion less in the OASI and SSDI (Old Age and Disability) Trust Funds&#8221; by 2031 (I will get to the &#8220;Trust Funds&#8221; fiction and the $800 billion/$730 billion discrepancy later in this column).</p>
<p>The paper first appeared in <em>Demography</em> <a href="http://bizzyblog.com/wp-images/SocSecPaperOnShortfall051712.png">on May 17, 2012</a>; the link from the their Sunday <em>Times</em> column <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13524-012-0106-z">to the web page</a> containing the paper&#8217;s abstract is labeled &#8220;August 2012.&#8221;</p>
<p>This means that King and Soneji had credible evidence that Social Security is in far worse shape than most of us thought well in advance of the November 2012 elections. Apparently, they made no special effort to bring their work to the nation&#8217;s attention, even though virtually any credible center-right news outlet would have been extremely interested in their findings. In their <em>Times</em> column, King and Soneji almost seem to crow about the fact that Social Security was not a contentious item in the presidential contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney: &#8220;It was a rare issue on which both men agreed — and both were utterly wrong.&#8221; Well guys, if you knew they were wrong, why didn&#8217;t you say anything?</p>
<p>Further blame assignment is in order. How could Romney&#8217;s largely Northeast-based advisers have missed the article&#8217;s publication? Isn&#8217;t setting up Google Alerts on key terms supposed to part of Campaigning 101? Though it appears that <em>Demography</em> has been coding its web pages <a href="http://link.springer.com/robots.txt">to avoid search engine detection</a>, a Google Web search <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=The+financial+viability+of+Social+Security%2C+the+single+largest+U.S.+government+program%2C+depends+on+accurate+forecasts+of+the+solvency+of+its+intergenerational+trust+fund.&amp;hl=en&amp;safe=off&amp;client=safari&amp;rls=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=zYrrUOD-C7G_0QGZz4H4Aw&amp;ved=0CCEQpwUoBg&amp;source=lnt&amp;tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A01%2F01%2F2012%2Ccd_max%3A09%2F01%2F2012&amp;tbm=">on the research paper&#8217;s first sentence</a> shows that it should not have escaped detection last summer.</p>
<p>A very sad and worse possibility which cannot be ruled out is that Team Romney learned of the research and didn&#8217;t believe that bringing up Social Security&#8217;s unprecedented decay <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/social-securitys-implosion-continues/">during Obama&#8217;s presidency</a> would be a good idea. As we have so often seen but Republican campaigns have failed to learn, timidity does not win elections.</p>
<p>The second reason for outrage is the government&#8217;s decades-long failure to modernize its actuarial methodologies. King and Soneji show that the system currently uses assumptions based on &#8220;a combination of linear extrapolation and qualitative judgments,&#8221; which, though they were the best available frameworks many years ago, are now dangerously outdated and divorced from reality. Unfortunately, this is all too typical of what happens when entrenched government bureaucracies simply go through the same processes year after year after year without giving adequate or sometimes even any thought to whether they could or should be improved.</p>
<p>This debacle would never have happened if Social Security&#8217;s trustees had been outsourcing their annual actuarial reviews to one of the industry&#8217;s leading firms. These organizations live or die on their ability to develop credible and state of the art mortality estimates for their private and public clients. Social Security&#8217;s trustees should make outsourcing this work in future years while ordering the firm selected to follow the best available practices one of their first orders of business. Odds are they won&#8217;t &#8212; and that if they try, Obama and Harry Reid&#8217;s Senate won&#8217;t let them.</p>
<p>The final source of outrage relates to King&#8217;s and Soneji&#8217;s fictional presentation of how Social Security supposedly works in their research paper, their <em>Times</em> column, and that column&#8217;s accompanying flowchart.</p>
<p>Sentences from each of the pair&#8217;s three documents will demonstrate that what they tell readers about the Social Security&#8217;s &#8220;trust funds&#8221; is an exercise in sheer fantasy:</p>
<p>• Their research paper engages in laughable historical revisionism: &#8220;As a result of payroll taxes that generated revenue in excess of annual benefit outlays over the last 25 years, the trust funds have amassed large surpluses in preparation for the aging population.&#8221;</p>
<p>• Among their column&#8217;s claims: &#8220;(The trust funds are) a $2.7 trillion buffer built in anticipation of retiring baby boomers &#8230;&#8221;</p>
<p>• They saved the worst howler for their column&#8217;s graphic: &#8220;Current workers’ payroll taxes go into the Social Security Trust Funds — a bank account for current and future beneficiaries &#8230;&#8221;</p>
<p>What rubbish. Jay Leno could use these assertions as jokes on <em>The Tonight Show</em> and have most of his audience rolling in the aisles.</p>
<p>The real facts are these:</p>
<p>• The &#8220;trust funds&#8221; consist almost entirely of IOUs from the rest of the federal government. Congress has taken Social Security&#8217;s annual surpluses and spent them on other things for decades.</p>
<p>• The rest of the government currently has a balance of $11.5 trillion in &#8220;<a href="http://www.savingsbonds.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np">debt held by the public</a>&#8221; (i.e., excluding &#8220;intergovernmental holdings&#8221; like the &#8220;trust funds&#8221;).</p>
<p>• Our supposed betters in Washington have run deficits of over $1 trillion during each of the past four years, and have added an even greater amount to the national debt during that time. Fiscal 2013, despite the fiscal cliff deal, appears to be on track to stretch that streak to five.</p>
<p>• Part of the government&#8217;s annual deficit now includes money needed to cover Social Security&#8217;s annual cash shortfalls, which, as King and Soneji have noted, began in 2010.</p>
<p>• Social Security&#8217;s ability to continue to pay benefits at current levels depends largely on the government&#8217;s ability to cover those annual cash deficits, which are projected to grow as far as the eye can see. Given that <a href="http://reason.com/24-7/2013/01/07/boehner-obama-insisted-we-dont-have-a-sp">Obama insists</a> that &#8220;we don&#8217;t have a spending problem,&#8221; there is substantial reason to believe that the government will not be able to cover those cash deficits several years from now.</p>
<p>The serious deterioration in Social Security&#8217;s viability we have seen in the past four years is partially due to the recession, but really has far more to do with the fact that the economy under Obama has failed to adequately recover from that recession. If the economy only grows by 2 percent per year, those paper entities known as the &#8220;trust funds&#8221; will run dry in an accounting sense well before 2031, perhaps by as much as a decade &#8212; assuming that the rest of the government&#8217;s finances don&#8217;t collapse sooner.</p>
<p>One indicator of how serious the system&#8217;s decay is can be seen in the fact that the $730 billion shortfall estimated in King&#8217;s and Soneji&#8217;s research paper ballooned to the $800 billion noted above in their <em>Times</em> column&#8217;s presentation. Though they may have refined their life expectancy data in the meantime, the higher number more likely occurred because their original paper used data from the 2011 Social Security Trustees Report containing calendar 2010 data, while their Times column instead used data from <a href="http://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2012/index.html">the 2012 report</a>.</p>
<p>Parting question: What kind of impact would the failure to consider the life expectancy estimation problems King and Soneji cited have on the financial projections for Medicare and ObamaCare? None of us should be surprised if the twenty-year impact on those programs runs to several trillion dollars.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>&#8216;Negotiating&#8217; With the Left: A Waste of Time</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/negotiating-with-the-left-a-waste-of-time/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=negotiating-with-the-left-a-waste-of-time</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/negotiating-with-the-left-a-waste-of-time/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 04:50:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[debt ceiling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deficit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fiscal cliff]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[John Boehner]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[John Boehner learns the hard way. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-blumer/negotiating-with-the-left-a-waste-of-time/16b8f411851a1023240f6a7067008d01/" rel="attachment wp-att-171990"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-171990" title="16b8f411851a1023240f6a7067008d01" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/16b8f411851a1023240f6a7067008d01-450x338.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="203" /></a>Having lived in Greater Cincinnati for most of my life, I&#8217;ve had a chance to observe Congressman John Boehner&#8217;s actions and performance from a perspective most haven&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Most of what I saw until he became House Speaker in January 2011 was good &#8212; usually very good. What has transpired since has not been. Boehner and House Republicans have been unable to put the brakes on the country&#8217;s headlong rush towards insolvency driven by President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the federal regulatory leviathan, and the courts, or on their continued trampling of our fundamental freedoms.</p>
<p>I can already see the excuses: &#8220;Tom, the House of Representatives is only one-half of one of the three branches of government. You can&#8217;t expect Boehner and Republican leaders to withstand the daily assaults from all other quarters.&#8221; Sure, I get that. Add the adversarial, hostile, double standard-driven establishment press to the mix, and one can totally understand the daunting challenges the Speaker has faced.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s one problem with that attempt at justification, and it has nothing to do with ordinary expectations. It instead has everything to do with the heightened expectations Boehner and the Republican Party created in the run-up to the 2010 congressional elections, embodied in both the party&#8217;s <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20017335-503544.html">Pledge to America</a> and Boehner&#8217;s <a href="http://www.bizzyblog.com/2010/10/08/delay-blogging-boehners-friday-speech/">October 2010 speech</a> just a few weeks before Election Day.</p>
<p>By that time, it was clear to almost everyone, thanks to the growing influence of the Tea Party movement, the pathetic economic recovery, and the unprecedentedly awful job market, that Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s reign as Speaker of the House was going to end, and that Boehner, with a solid post-election GOP majority, was a virtual lock to become its next Speaker.</p>
<p>Boehner&#8217;s speech and the party&#8217;s Pledge gave millions of frightened mainstream Americans hope that they could, and would, right the ship of state. Consider just a few things Boehner said in that October speech, and compare them to actual results.</p>
<p><em>&#8220;(This speech is) about the jobs that were promised to the American people by the current administration, and never delivered.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>At the time, total seasonally adjusted private-sector employment as measured by the Establishment Survey at the Bureau of Labor Statistics was eight million below its January 2008 peak. 25 months later, private-sector employment, which should by now have jumped to several million above that 2008 high, is still down by 3.7 million. Even those grim statistics understate the gravity of the employment situation and how little improvement we&#8217;ve seen, especially in comparison to past recoveries. Full-time employment as measured by the BLS&#8217;s Household Survey is still 6.2 million lower than its peak in late 2007, while part-time employment is up by 2.8 million. Since the recession officially ended in June 2009, over 800,000 of the 3.3 million net jobs added have gone to those who toil at temporary help firms.</p>
<p><em>&#8220;The greatest threat to job creation in our country is the flawed idea that we can tax, spend and borrow our way to prosperity.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>In the 24 months Boehner has been Speaker, the government has run a deficit of over $2 trillion, spent over $7 trillion, increased the national debt by over $2.4 trillion, and done almost nothing to contain the explosive growth of entitlements.</p>
<p><em>&#8220;Our plan cuts spending immediately, back to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>If that were currently the case, the government would be spending about $2.9 trillion annually &#8212; still far more than necessary to carry out its constitutionally assigned functions (a topic for another day). Instead, it has spent $3.4 to $3.6 trillion during <a href="http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0912.txt">each of</a> the <a href="http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0910.txt">past four</a> fiscal years, and is off <a href="http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts1112.txt">to a record-shattering start</a> in fiscal 2013.</p>
<p><em>&#8220;Your government is out of control. Do you have to accept it? Do you have to take it? Hell no you don’t! That’s what elections are for! In </em>Common Sense<em>, Thomas Paine wrote that &#8216;we have it in our power to begin the world over again.&#8217; In just 25 days, voters will have a chance to do just that.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>Unlike many others, I really believe that John Boehner intended to get what he described as an &#8220;out of control&#8221; government back on track. Nobody who heard that speech could possibly have imagined that he would acquiesce to an August 2011 debt-ceiling deal that put off serious consideration of what we are doing to our children, grandchildren and generations yet to be born until after the 2012 elections, seriously crippling 2012 GOP election campaigns across the land. There was also no reason to believe that Boehner would just over two years later get behind fiscal cliff-preventing legislation which <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/31/Fiscal-cliff-deal-41-1-in-tax-increases-to-spending-cuts-ratio">by some accounts</a> involves $41 in tax increases for ever dollar in spending &#8220;cuts,&#8221; which we know really means &#8220;reductions in projected spending increases.&#8221; A January 2 <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323820104578215400767461788.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h"><em>Wall Street Journal</em> editorial</a> asserts that the legislation involved represents &#8220;the biggest tax increase in 20 years&#8221; coupled with &#8220;spending <em>increases</em>.&#8221;</p>
<p>So what happened? Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Washington Republicans have naively believed, and probably still do despite their repeated humiliations, that there can be honest negotiations with Washington Democrats led by the most radical president in U.S. history. That is not possible.</p>
<p>Boehner&#8217;s only alternative from Day 1 of his speakership, something which I erroneously thought he finally realized in that 2010 speech, was to:</p>
<p>• Insist on constitutional grounds that the House would consider no revenue-raising legislation originating in the Senate. (<a href="http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec7.html">Article 1, Section 7</a>: &#8220;All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.&#8221;)</p>
<p>• Pass comprehensive legislation to accomplish the goals articulated in the Pledge for America.</p>
<p>• Adjourn, and don&#8217;t come back. If the Senate or the President wouldn&#8217;t sign, then the government would shut down, and it would be blindingly obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense who caused it.</p>
<p>The People&#8217;s House has the constitutional power of the purse. John Boehner hasn&#8217;t leveraged it. Until he or the next Speaker does, the left will rule the fiscal roost in Washington, and our nation&#8217;s rapid descent into bankruptcy will be virtually assured.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Gun Grabbers Gone Wild</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/tom-blumer/gun-grabbers-gone-wild/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gun-grabbers-gone-wild</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Dec 2012 04:46:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[dianne feinstein]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Leftists admit the ultimate goal is confiscation. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/tom-blumer/gun-grabbers-gone-wild/picture-7-30/" rel="attachment wp-att-171572"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-171572" title="Picture 7" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Picture-7.png" alt="" width="258" height="194" /></a>The left&#8217;s gun grabbers believe that the Newtown massacre gives them a ghoulish yet golden opportunity to permanently undermine citizens&#8217; Second Amendment rights.</p>
<p>Exhibit A is California Senator Dianne Feinstein&#8217;s <a href="http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons">promise</a> to introduce a bill which will supposedly stop &#8220;the spread of deadly assault weapons.&#8221; Her bill would go far beyond the so-called &#8220;assault weapons ban&#8221; passed in 1994, but which Congress <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5946127/ns/politics/t/congress-lets-assault-weapons-ban-expire/">refused to reauthorize</a> in 2004.</p>
<p>Feinstein’s proposal, among many other things:</p>
<p>• &#8220;Bans large-capacity ammunition feeding devices capable of accepting more than 10 rounds.&#8221;</p>
<p>• &#8220;Requires that grandfathered weapons be registered.&#8221;</p>
<p>The only way Feinstein can accomplish the first of her two listed goals is to confiscate all such &#8220;devices&#8221; that already exist. This would be a massive, ugly &#8212; and logistically impossible &#8212; enterprise. At the <em>Washington Post</em>, reporter Brad Plumer <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/17/everything-you-need-to-know-about-banning-assault-weapons-in-one-post/">wrote in mid-December</a> that in 1994, there were &#8220;roughly 1.5 million assault weapons and more than 24 million high-capacity magazines in private hands.&#8221; Putting aside the fact that every weapon used to commit a crime against a person, including items which aren&#8217;t guns, is by any normal definition an &#8220;assault weapon,&#8221; there are surely more of the weapons and magazines Feinstein wants to see seized now than there were 18 years ago.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s more, their number is growing. Law-abiding citizens are responding to gun grabbers&#8217; aggressiveness by buying any and every weapon they can, while they still can. <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SMALLBIZ_GUNS_FOR_CHRISTMAS?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT">The Associated Press reports</a>: &#8220;The prospect of a possible weapons ban has sent gun enthusiasts into a panic and sparked a frenzy of buying at stores and gun dealers nationwide.&#8221; I would characterize what the AP describes as a &#8220;frenzy of buying&#8221; as &#8220;a wave of common sense.&#8221;</p>
<p>Feinstein justifies her far-reaching ban largely on a Justice Department study claiming that &#8220;the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was responsible for a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders, holding all other factors equal.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nice try, DiFi. Plumer, <a href="http://newsbusters.org/category/people/brad-plumer">who clearly leans left</a>, cites a University of Pennsylvania study that concluded, in his words, that &#8220;While gun violence did fall in the 1990s, this was likely due to other factors.&#8221; One of the more important &#8220;other factors&#8221; was the passage of concealed carry laws in many states during that period, and the growing interest in personal self-defense those laws helped to generate.</p>
<p>The word &#8220;grandfathered&#8221; in the senator&#8217;s second listed objective above would require the registration of all guns not otherwise outlawed. In other countries, this has historically been the opening round of governments&#8217; efforts to confiscate guns, make their possession by ordinary citizens illegal, and subdue their populations while moving, sometimes glacially but often quickly, towards tyranny.</p>
<p>Blogger Doug Ross <a href="http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2012/12/red-alert-assault-weapons-ban-20.html">has summarized the impact</a> of Feinstein&#8217;s registration provision quite well:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8230; once a gun is required to be registered, it is <em>virtually confiscated</em>. The government will know who possesses which firearms and where those arms are stored. And when they desire physical possession of those weapons (which history tells us is inevitable), they can then order the citizenry to voluntarily turn in their weapons.</p>
<p>This has happened over and over again throughout all of recorded history.</p></blockquote>
<p>Tyrants and tyrant wannabes know that gun confiscation enables them to more quickly subjugate their society&#8217;s otherwise resistant elements, enabling them to consolidate their power more quickly and ruthlessly.</p>
<p>On December 20, as if to prove Ross&#8217;s point, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in an Albany radio station interview, discussed his plans, as described <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/21/nyregion/cuomo-says-he-will-outline-gun-measures-next-month.html?_r=2&amp;">at the <em>New York Times</em></a>, to &#8220;propose a package of gun legislation in his State of the State address on Jan. 9.&#8221; Cuomo&#8217;s specific ideas: &#8220;Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it.&#8221; Not wishing to unduly alarm the Empire State&#8217;s populace, the <em>Times</em> dutifully <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/12/22/page-a29-nyt-dull-headline-cuomo-says-gun-confiscation-could-be-option">buried the story </a>on Page A29.</p>
<p>On the Friday before Christmas, the <em>Journal News</em>, a White Plains, New York-based newspaper owned by Gannett, helped make Mr. Cuomo&#8217;s ideas more easily achievable by <a href="http://www.lohud.com/interactive/article/20121223/NEWS01/121221011/Map-Where-gun-permits-your-neighborhood-?gcheck=1">publishing an interactive map</a> showing the names and physical addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland Counties. It obtained this information as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests.</p>
<p>The agenda behind the map is obvious in the paper&#8217;s ominous headline: &#8220;Where are the gun permits in your neighborhood?&#8221; &#8212; as if residents should be presumptively afraid of anyone who has the nerve to own a gun in the same way they should be concerned about convicted sex offenders in their neighborhood. In response, a New York State Senator <a href="http://politicker.com/2012/12/state-senator-slams-asinine-newspaper-editors-who-published-gun-permit-map/">has proposed</a> making this information off-limits to all except those with a need to know in law enforcement &#8212; something which is obviously long overdue.</p>
<p>While the <em>Journal News</em> apparently hopes that other citizens will treat permit holders as pariahs, the following results are far more likely:</p>
<p>• Criminals will use the map in one or both of two ways &#8212; either to target homes from which to steal weapons, or to target homes without permits for home invasions and away-from-home assaults on those who don&#8217;t have permits. I believe we&#8217;ll see more of the latter than the former; criminals prefer soft, non-relatively defenseless targets.</p>
<p>• As a reader at Instapundit <a href="http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/160286/">pointed out</a>, &#8220;women who have gun permits due to stalkers and abusive spouses now that the paper has revealed their new addresses&#8221; will either have to relocate or live in constant fear for their and their children&#8217;s safety &#8212; just in time for Christmas.</p>
<p>• Ex-cons with vengeance on their minds will now be able to find otherwise unlisted or hard to find addresses of law enforcement officers who arrested them, prosecutors who convicted them, and judges who sentenced them.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama, whose involvement with <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-and-the-attempt-to-destroy-the-second-amendment/">legally manipulative efforts</a> to undermine the Second Amendment is an inarguable matter of historical fact, has, <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2012-12-30-16-57-00">according to AP</a>, &#8220;pledged to put his &#8216;full weight&#8217; behind legislation aimed at preventing gun violence.&#8221; Senator Feinstein&#8217;s proposed legislation won&#8217;t accomplish that aim, but that&#8217;s not her or Obama&#8217;s point. Ultimately, it&#8217;s about control.</p>
<p>Law-abiding, freedom-loving Americans must strenuously oppose any such efforts to water down their Second Amendment freedoms.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Time&#8217;s Embarrassing &#8216;Person of the Year&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/tom-blumer/times-embarrassing-person-of-the-year/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=times-embarrassing-person-of-the-year</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 04:54:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170502</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A fitting end to a disgraceful year in the establishment press.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/tom-blumer/times-embarrassing-person-of-the-year/ap-time-person-of-the-year-4_3_r560/" rel="attachment wp-att-170506"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170506" title="ap-time-person-of-the-year-4_3_r560" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ap-time-person-of-the-year-4_3_r560-450x338.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="203" /></a>There was a time, so to speak, and it wasn&#8217;t that long ago, when there was much anticipation and a great deal of debate over who might be named and who should be named Time Magazine&#8217;s Person of the Year. This year, the relative disinterest is stunning. And why not? The publication&#8217;s selection of Barack Obama, though arguably correct, set a new and embarrassing low in utterly vacuous justification.</p>
<p>A half-century ago, Time was a highly respected weekly newsmagazine which, though it clearly tilted to the left, was known for its strong journalism and institutional integrity. Those days are long gone.</p>
<p>The magazine reports circulation <a href="http://stateofthemedia.org/files/2012/01/10-Mags-Datablog-2012-News-Magazines%E2%80%99-Overall-Circulation-Holds-Steady.png">of roughly 3.4 million</a>, basically flat since 2007 but about 18 percent below where it spent the 15 previous years. Meanwhile, the U.S. population has grown by over 20 percent. The level-off of the past five years isn&#8217;t due to anything Time has done, but is instead a by-product of the self-immolation seen at Newsweek, its principal competitor. Things are so bad at Newsweek that its owners <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/10/18/newsweek-print-digital/1640879/">recently decided</a> to terminate the print edition when 2012 ends.</p>
<p>Time claims &#8220;readership&#8221; 20 million. Sure. We&#8217;re really supposed to believe each copy of the magazine is read by an average of six people. I certainly don&#8217;t. The better indication of the weekly yawns the magazine induces in the public is its newsstand sales, which during the second half of 2010 amounted to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(magazine)#Circulation">a paltry 79,000</a>. Each issue is typically so thin you wonder why anyone bothers to publish it, let alone read it.</p>
<p>Those who think that Time might be making up for lost circulation and ad revenue on the web should know that for all its supposedly well-crafted and surely costly content, its total web traffic <a href="http://bizzyblog.com/wp-images/DrudgeVsTime3mos121512.png">is only about half</a> that of the usually one-page Drudge Report. Perhaps that explains why Drudge hadn&#8217;t even taken note of Time&#8217;s selection of Obama as of when this column was drafted.</p>
<p>Or it may simply be that Drudge read &#8212; more likely, tried and failed to read &#8212; any one of the <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/27/time-nominates-sandra-fluke-for-person-of-the-year/">magazine&#8217;s</a> tributes to Obama. Michael Scherer&#8217;s <a href="http://poy.time.com/2012/12/19/person-of-the-year-barack-obama/">five-page love letter</a> describing Obama&#8217;s supposed accomplishments and second-term ambitions could induce almost anyone to vomit. If that didn&#8217;t get to you, Richard Stengel&#8217;s pathetic wrap-up <a href="http://poy.time.com/2012/12/19/the-choice/">to his tribute</a> would: &#8220;For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is TIME’s 2012 Person of the Year.&#8221; But to get to either Scherer&#8217;s or Stengel&#8217;s pieces, most readers would have had to get past the 2012 Person of the Year <a href="http://poy.time.com/">home page</a>, which describes Obama&#8217;s great year thusly: &#8220;In 2012, he found and forged a new majority, turned weakness into opportunity and sought, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union.&#8221;</p>
<p>In an even slightly tolerable establishment media environment, other journalists would be laughing Time into well-deserved oblivion for trotting out such obvious nonsense about Obama&#8217;s desire for a &#8220;more perfect union.&#8221; But we all know that won&#8217;t happen.</p>
<p>Barack Obama showed absolutely no interest in a &#8220;more perfect union&#8221; during the presidential campaign. Never has an incumbent president premised his electoral success so completely on turning Americans against each other and treating his opponents as agents of evil.</p>
<p>To Obama and his apparatchiks, Mitt Romney wasn&#8217;t just a guy who disagreed with the President about how to grow an economy. The former Massachusetts governor and highly successful businessperson, who in fact helped build several highly successful companies while creating thousands of jobs, was really a guy who heartlessly threw workers to the wolves and stood by while their spouses got cancer and died. To serve this and other twisted narratives, Obama and his campaign didn&#8217;t merely shade the truth; they lied so shamelessly and so often that it became literally impossible to keep up with the accumulated mendacity. That, and not the drivel about a &#8220;more perfect union,&#8221; is why one could argue that Obama really was 2012&#8242;s Person of the Year.</p>
<p>Obama and his campaign&#8217;s assertions and tactics never would have succeeded without a pliant press firmly in their corner. To name just three of the most obvious examples of journalistic malfeasance:</p>
<p>• They falsely portrayed the economy, which is in reality in the midst of the worst &#8220;recovery&#8221; since Franklin Delano Roosevelt&#8217;s New Deal brought about eight years of misery during the 1930s, as being on the verge of a solid recovery while virtually ignoring the ongoing pain and suffering of the unprecedented millions of long-term unemployed and under-employed.</p>
<p>• They minimized the frightening build-up of trillions of dollars in debt our children, grandchildren, and generations yet unborn will have to repay.</p>
<p>• They ignored the horrors of Operation Fast and Furious and the negligence which led to the death of America&#8217;s ambassador and three others in Benghazi.</p>
<p>If Obama is Person of the Year, it&#8217;s only logical, based on their conduct, that the press should receive a related award as Enablers of the Year.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Hopeless Fiscal Cliff Negotiations</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/tom-blumer/the-hopeless-fiscal-cliff-negotiations/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-hopeless-fiscal-cliff-negotiations</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Dec 2012 04:53:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tom Blumer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Deficit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fiscal cliff]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170178</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With the clock winding down, the math still doesn't add up. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/tom-blumer/the-hopeless-fiscal-cliff-negotiations/barack-obama-john-boehner/" rel="attachment wp-att-170247"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170247" title="Barack Obama, John Boehner" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/la-pn-fiscal-cliff-standstill-deadline-primer-001-450x307.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="184" /></a>The otherworldly nature of the current discussions and proposals in Washington over addressing the &#8220;fiscal cliff&#8221; can be seen in a brief look at where the country stands financially.</p>
<p>Through the first two months of the 2013 fiscal year, which will end on September 30, 2013, the federal government has already run up <a href="http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts1112.txt">a $292 billion deficit</a>. Our overlords of Washington are clearly on track to run up a fifth consecutive full-year shortfall of over $1 trillion. Before fiscal 2008, the highest annual deficit ever recorded was $455 billion.</p>
<p>Federal outlays during October and November of $638 billion were 16 percent higher than during the same two months in 2011 and a breathtaking 52 percent greater than October and November of 2007. Collections in this lukewarm recovery, if you can even call it that, were up by less than 10 percent.</p>
<p>As of Monday, December 17, the national debt was $16.35 trillion, up by over $5.7 trillion in the 35 months since Barack Obama took office. The portion of the national debt known as &#8220;debt held by the public,&#8221; which is really debt held by any entity which is not part of the U.S. government but includes foreign countries and other foreign holders, made up $5.25 trillion of that amount.</p>
<p>A significant portion of that $5.25 billion is held by Ben Bernanke&#8217;s Federal Reserve, which many don&#8217;t realize really isn&#8217;t a part of the government. Instead, <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&amp;q=cache:hW-ZPKaSpXIJ:https://www2.bc.edu/peter-ireland/ec261/chapter14.pdf+&amp;hl=en&amp;gl=us&amp;pid=bl&amp;srcid=ADGEESjf0gHExz9c6zjF0tgiLANciuJHc0muiA-ornrr7hnzx6baILH3hQyngFUeXHoIg3UQPN4TKDfmtksGHHIFEHEoKdMF6v6ga39wo0k6pFdHRfdA_U6OkIJVxmTOHZRq49zxGsRC&amp;sig=AHIEtbSPUJ67bermYuf3_Jn0e5wr7i6DwA">the Fed is </a>a collection of 12 district banks, each of which is &#8220;a legally separate corporation that is owned by the commercial banks in its district.&#8221; Because they produce no goods or services, the district banks, and the Fed itself, have no inherent ability to repay the Treasury and other securities they have bought from our beyond-profligate government.</p>
<p>Within this dangerous framework, House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama are obsessing over whether taxes should be raised on those with annual incomes of over $1,000,000 &#8212; or $400,000 or $250,000, or whatever. Besides the obvious danger that any tax increase on our most productive citizens will slow down an already sluggish, low-growth, under-employing economy, the amounts raised will be a pittance, garnering less than 10 percent of the amount needed to close projected fiscal gaps (I would say &#8220;budget gaps,&#8221; but the government hasn&#8217;t passed a budget <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/12/16/politico-discussing-obamas-2014-budget-proposal-fails-note-no-real-budge">in nearly four years</a>).</p>
<p>Where are the spending cuts? Or, more properly framed, where are the reductions in projected future spending? A <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/fiscal-cliff-plan-b-obama_n_2330457.html">Wednesday morning Associated Press dispatch</a> on the President&#8217;s plans to veto Boehner&#8217;s so-called &#8220;Plan B&#8221; framework reported that the President would veto such a plan if it ever reached his desk &#8212; something that in the real world probably wouldn&#8217;t happen because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wouldn&#8217;t let any House bill Obama opposes get that far &#8212; because &#8220;the deficit reduction that would result from the `Plan B&#8217; approach is minimal and offers no spending cuts.&#8221;</p>
<p>You read that right. The people who have brought us trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see are positioning themselves <em>to the right</em> of the hopelessly timid Republican House.</p>
<p>Is Obama&#8217;s claim correct? Well, Erick Erickson at RedState <a href="http://www.redstate.com/2012/12/19/bull/">writes</a>: &#8220;The most significant thing John Boehner’s plan does is absolutely nothing on spending.&#8221; A Wednesday morning <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323723104578187091789698654.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop"><em>Wall Street Journal</em> editorial</a> identifies what can only be described as nibbling around the edges of the problem by changing how increases in entitlement spending and taxes are indexed, and tells us that it&#8217;s all about continuing with business as usual: &#8220;Tax and spending increases now, in return for the promise of spending cuts and tax and entitlement reform later.&#8221;</p>
<p>We&#8217;re long past the time where business as usual will work. The federal government&#8217;s financial condition today is the functional equivalent of a family taking home $27,000 per year, spending $38,000, and carrying over $160,000 in nonmortgage debt. The major difference between the family and our government is that while the family involved would almost certainly be paying 10 percent or more interest on its outstanding debts, Uncle Sam is getting away with paying less than 2 percent. Oh, and Uncle Sam can keep on borrowing, while the family&#8217;s lenders would surely have ended any access to additional credit.</p>
<p>Even if the example family just described were paying only 2% interest on its debts, its finances would still be considered almost beyond repair without major changes. Boehner&#8217;s Plan B is the equivalent of the family telling its lenders, who wish to force them into bankruptcy, that it will &#8220;solve&#8221; their problem by immediately having one of its members get a one day per month job paying $100 and by cancelling their premium cable channels and lawn service &#8212; starting a year from now. Maybe. If they feel like it.</p>
<p>Such a proposal would send lenders straight to bankruptcy court, as it would be obvious that this family isn&#8217;t at all serious about taking meaningful action. Boehner&#8217;s Plan B isn&#8217;t any better, and promises to send the credit rating agencies scrambling to see who can lower the federal government&#8217;s credit rating first.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, what Obama and his party want &#8212; don&#8217;t touch Social Security, don&#8217;t touch Medicare, and don&#8217;t touch any other entitlements &#8212; isn&#8217;t serious either. But the fact that he can credibly claim that his &#8220;solutions&#8221; do more that Boehner&#8217;s Plan B shows how badly the Speaker has failed.</p>
<p>No wonder genuine conservatives <a href="http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Articles-NEWS-and-COMMENTARY-c-2012-12-10-264194.112112-Boehner-under-attack-from-conservative-Republicans.html">are in open revolt</a>. They should be.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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