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2013
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February
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- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 28, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 27, 2013
- Barker's Ramblings
- Pat Buchanan (and yours truly) Opine on What the S...
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 25, 2013
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 23 & 24, 2013
- The Wisdom of Patrick J. Buchanan
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 21, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 20, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, February 19, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 18, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 14, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 13, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 11, 2013
- I... Want... Them... Dead...!!!
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 8, 2013
- Censor the Truth...? Or Just Ignore It...?
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 7, 2013
- Just a Quick Note...
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 2 & 3, 2013
- And We're Back! Dow 14,000 Fuels a New Wealth Boom!
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 1, 2013
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February
(22)
About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
13 comments:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-09/china-passes-u-s-to-become-the-world-s-biggest-trading-nation.html
HSBC Holdings Plc forecast last year that China would overtake the U.S. as the top trading nation by 2016.
* BY 2016, HUH...?
China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest trading nation last year as measured by the sum of exports and imports of goods, official figures from both countries show.
* OOPS...
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Jim O’Neill, economist and chairman of asset management, notes, “For so many countries around the world, China is becoming rapidly the most important bilateral trade partner. At this kind of pace by the end of the decade many European countries will be doing more individual trade with China than with bilateral partners in Europe.”
(*PURSED LIPS*)
The U.S. economy is double the size of China’s, according to the World Bank.
* AND YET...
“It is remarkable that an economy that is only a fraction of the size of the U.S. economy has a larger trading volume,” Nicholas Lardy, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said in an e-mail. The increase isn’t all the result of an undervalued yuan fueling an export boom, as Chinese imports have grown more rapidly than exports since 2007, he said.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/fed-s-holdings-us-govt-debt-hit-record-1696691000000-257-under-obama
As of the end of November, according to the U.S. Treasury, entities in Mainland China owned about $1,170,100,000,000 in U.S. government debt, making China the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt.
(*CLAP... CLAP... CLAP*)
In data released Thursday afternoon, the Federal Reserve revealed that its holdings of U.S. government debt had increased to an all-time record of $1,696,691,000,000 as of the close of business on Wednesday.
(*CLAP... CLAP... CLAP*)
The Fed's holdings of U.S. government debt have increased by 257% since President Barack Obama was first inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009, and the Fed is currently the single largest holder of U.S. government debt.
Since Obama has been president, the publicly held portion of the U.S. government debt (as opposed to the "intragovernmental" deb the government has borrowed from federal trust funds such as the Social Security Trust Fund) has increased by $5,264,245,866,257.40. The $1.221369 in additional U.S. government debt the Fed has purchased during Obama's presidency equals 23% of all the new publicly held debt the Treasury has issued during that time.
* NO, FOLKS... I DON'T EXPECT YOU TO REMEMBER ALL THE NUMBERS... JUST BE AWARE OF THE BROAD CONCEPTS.
http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-doctors-20130210,0,1509396.story
As the state moves to expand healthcare coverage to millions of Californians under President Obama's healthcare law, it faces a major obstacle: There aren't enough doctors to treat a crush of newly insured patients.
* HEY... PERHAPS BARBERS CAN GO BACK TO DONG DOUBLE DUTY...??? (IF YOU DON'T "GET" THAT QUIP... WELL... YOUR PARENTS DESERVE THEIR SCHOOL TAX MONEY BACK.)
Some lawmakers want to fill the gap by redefining who can provide healthcare.
* BUT... BUT... BUT... I WAS KIDDING UP ABOVE ABOUT THE BARBERS...!!!
They are working on proposals that would allow physician assistants to treat more patients and nurse practitioners to set up independent practices. Pharmacists and optometrists could act as primary care providers, diagnosing and managing some chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and high-blood pressure.
* SIMPLY "DEEMING" NON-DOCTORS TO BE... er... "DOCTORS."
* HEY... FOLKS... MAYBE IT MAKES SENSE... MAYBE IT'S A GOOD IDEA... BUT ASK YOURSELVES - WAS THIS HOW OBAMACARE WAS SOLD...???
(*SMIRK*)
"We're going to be mandating that every single person in this state have insurance," said state Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina), chairman of the Senate Health Committee and leader of the effort to expand professional boundaries. "What good is it if they are going to have a health insurance card but no access to doctors?"
* WHICH IS WHERE "DEEMING" NON-DOCTORS TO BE... er... "ALMOST DOCTORS" COMES IN.
Currently, just 16 of California's 58 counties have the federal government's recommended supply of primary care physicians...
(*SMIRK*) (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
In addition, nearly 30% of the state's doctors are nearing retirement age, the highest percentage in the nation, according to the Assn. of American Medical Colleges.
(*CLAP... CLAP... CLAP*)
* FOLKS...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/brennan-s-evasions_700510.html
Did John Brennan...
* PRESIDENT OBAMA'S NOMINEE FOR CIA DIRECTOR...
...lie under oath?
The answer appears to be yes.
[Brennan's] comments on Ali Harzi, a suspect in the Benghazi attacks last fall, raise questions about the Obama administration’s approach to radical Islam and — more immediately troubling — Brennan’s veracity.
Here’s the back-story:
Senator Marco Rubio asked Brennan about Harzi, who was detained in Tunisia and eventually released by the Tunisian government.
When Rubio asked why the United States couldn’t prevent Harzi’s release by the Tunisians, Brennan responded that the United States must respect Tunisian law and traditions. “The Tunisians did not have a basis in their law to hold him.”
* UH-HUH.
* FOLKS... WE USE DRONES TO KILL SUSPECTED TERRORISTS IN AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, YEMEN, LIBYA, AND I'M GUESSING TUNISIA. THINK BACK TO HOW MANY NEWSBITES HIGHLIGHT SUCH ACTIVITIES. HELL... THINK BACK TO MSM REPORTING YOU'VE HEARD. DOES IT REALLY SOUND CREDABLE TO YOU THAT ALL OF A SUDDEN WHEN IT CAME TO THIS HARZI CHARACTER THAT "WE MUST RESPECT TUNISIAN LAW AND TRADITIONS...???"
[W]hen Rubio pushed further, Brennan dismissed his concerns and made a claim that simply isn’t true. “We didn’t have anything on him, either,” Brennan said. “If we did, we would have made a point to the Tunisians to turn him over to us, but we didn’t have that.”
We didn’t have anything on him?
First, Harzi had a history. He’d been detained by the Tunisian government for five years, from 2006 to 2011, on terrorism charges. Among other concerns, he was then seeking to join his brother, a midlevel operative in Al Qaeda in Iraq. Second, after the Benghazi attack Harzi was detained in Turkey, at least in part on the basis of intelligence provided to the Turks by the U.S. government. Third, Harzi was held in Tunisia for three months on the strength of intelligence the U.S. government collected about his involvement in the Benghazi attacks. According to the Daily Beast, that intelligence included real-time social media updates from Benghazi about the unfolding attack. Fourth, Harzi’s own lawyer says that the Tunisian courts are still monitoring Harzi because he remains charged with membership in a terrorist group.
If Brennan believes the U.S. government doesn’t have “anything” on Harzi, it’s hard to find others who share that assessment.
Fawzi Jaballah, an adviser to Tunisia’s justice ministry, said the Tunisian attorney general opposed the release. Interior minister Ali Larayedh said in a TV interview that Harzi is “strongly suspected to have been involved in the attack of Benghazi.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested during her final appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that there is evidence of Harzi’s involvement—just not evidence that can be presented in court. “Upon his release, I called the Tunisian prime minister,” she testified. “A few days later [FBI] Director Mueller met with the Tunisian prime minister. We have been assured that he is under the monitoring of the court. He was released because at that time — and Director Mueller and I spoke about this at some length — there was not an ability for evidence to be presented yet that was capable of being presented in an open court.”
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Of course, not having evidence that can be presented “in an open court” is very different from not having “anything on him.”
Would an FBI team spend five weeks on the ground in Tunisia if the U.S. government had no evidence of his involvement in the attack?
And why would the FBI director discuss Harzi with the prime minister of Tunisia if the U.S. government “didn’t have anything on him”?
The short answer: He wouldn’t.
Three sources familiar with the investigation tell The Weekly Standard that one of the main reasons for Mueller’s mid-January stop in Tunisia was to press the Tunisian government for help with Harzi. And no one among the dozen U.S. officials spoken to for this story agreed with Brennan’s characterization that the U.S. government “didn’t have anything on him.”
Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative Frank Wolf worked with the State Department and the FBI to get the Tunisian government to allow the FBI access to Harzi. “There was a sense of urgency from the FBI in all of my discussions about him,” says Graham. “The FBI guys I talked to felt very strongly that this guy was involved. He was a prime target.”
Wolf, who has spoken regularly to senior State Department and FBI officials, says he had the same understanding. “The FBI team that went over there to interview him — they believe he was there [in Benghazi] and has a lot of information. I’m told he remains a person of significant interest.”
Brennan’s eagerness to downplay Ali Harzi should concern senators for another reason. It’s consistent with the Obama administration’s response to jihadist attacks and radical Islam more broadly.
[W]hen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit, the president falsely claimed he was “an isolated extremist” long after it was clear that he was a committed jihadist with strong ties to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
[W]hen Faisal Shahzad sought to blow up an SUV in Times Square, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano called it a “one-off” attack by an unaffiliated individual, ignoring claims of responsibility from the Pakistani Taliban.
[O]n Benghazi, the Obama administration’s official line, as articulated by Susan Rice five days later, was that the attacks that killed four Americans were “spontaneous” and the result of an anti-Islam video. She said this despite a report from the CIA station chief in Libya that the assault had been a terrorist attack and also claims from the nation’s two top defense officials — Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey — that they knew this on the night of September 11.
And Brennan’s claims of transparency notwithstanding, the White House still refuses to produce 70 emails that top administration and intelligence officials exchanged in preparing the “talking points” for Rice’s television appearances.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/us/politics/menendez-discouraged-giving-port-security-equipment-to-dominicans.html?_r=1&
* WELL, WELL, WELL... NOW THE NYT HAS SOMETHING TO REPORT...
(*SNICKER*)
Senator Robert Menendez sought to discourage any plan by the United States government to donate port security equipment to the Dominican Republic, citing concern that the advanced screening gear might undermine efforts by a private company — run by a major campaign contributor and friend of his — to do the work.
(*SMIRK*)
The intervention with the Department of Homeland Security last month came even though Mr. Menendez has publicly chastised the Obama administration for not doing more to combat the surging drug traffic moving through Dominican ports.
(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)
And it came shortly after the senator’s friend, Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, arranged to meet with a senior State Department official, accompanied by a former aide to Mr. Menendez, in a related push to protect the port security contract, which is worth as much as $500 million over 20 years.
* HEY... MAN DOES NOT LIVE BY CHILD SEX SLAVES ALONE...
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department declined to comment on the matter, with a State Department official citing an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee into related matters.
* SERIOUSLY...??? THE SENATE "ETHICS" COMMITTEE...???
Mr. Menendez has broadly rejected any suggestion that his official actions have been driven by an effort to favor Dr. Melgen, a wealthy Florida ophthalmologist who has repeatedly flown the senator on his private plane and has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Democrats in the Senate as well as Mr. Menendez’s re-election campaign.
* HOOKERS! DON'T FORGET THE HOOKERS! THE CHILD PROSTITUTES...!!! C*H*I*L*D PROSTITUTES...!!!
The relationship between Dr. Melgen and the New Jersey senator has drawn scrutiny in recent weeks as Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, has taken over the chairmanship of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee.
* FOLKS... VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY ANSWER. WE HAVE A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY RUNNING THE COUNTRY. LITERALLY!
Late last month, investigators from the Department of Health and Human Services, with which Dr. Melgen has been involved in a dispute over Medicare billing, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided several of Dr. Melgen’s offices in Florida, and the senator has recently acknowledged intervening in the doctor’s billing dispute with the agency twice in the last four years. Dr. Melgen has denied any wrongdoing.
* AND THE SENATOR HAS RECENTLY "ACKNOWLEDGED" INTERVENING IN THE DOCTOR'S BILLION DISPUTE... (NICE OF THE NYT TO FINALLY FOCUS A BIT OF ATTENTION ON THE GOOD SENATOR... THE NEW CHAIRMAN OF THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE...)
Mr. Menendez and Dr. Melgen have been friends since the 1990s...
* NICE FRIEND! NOTED TAX CHEAT... ENGAGED IN CHILD PROSTITUTION... MEDICARE FRAUD... (HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE "FRIENDS" LIKE THIS...???)
* FOLKS... READ THE FULL NYT ARTICLE. THOUGH THE NYT DOESN'T GET INTO THE CHILD PROSTITUTION OR TAX FRAUD REGULAR READERS OF USUALLY RIGHT ARE WELL AWARE OF WHAT SORT OF PEOPLE WE'RE DEALING WITH IN MENENDEZ AND HIS BUDDY MELGEN.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/340838#ixzz2KYPfSUMI
Retired U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, who once commanded all American forces in Afghanistan, has questioned the widespread use of unmanned aerial drones in the War on Terror.
"What scares me about drone strikes is how they're perceived around the world," McChrystal told Reuters. "The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes... is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who've never seen one or seen the effects of one."
(*PURSED LIPS*)
McChrystal, the architect of America's counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, added that drones fuel a "perception of American arrogance that says, 'We can fly where we want, we can shoot where we want, because we can.'"
Drones are a tool that should be used as part of a wider strategy, the former general said, and if their use creates more problems than it solves, Washington should reevaluate the situation.
* MAKES... SENSE... TO... ME...
Drone strikes, which terrorize populations subjected to them, have indeed stoked widespread anti-Americanism in the countries where they occur - Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia - as well as around the world.
Three-quarters of Pakistanis, for example, consider the United States an "enemy." Drones, which Pakistanis rightfully claim are a violation of their sovereignty, are a big part of the reason why.
Perceived American disregard for the hundreds of innocent civilians killed by drone strikes also infuriates many people in affected countries. According to Pakistan's Interior Minister, up to 80% of those killed by drones are civilians, and the London-based Bureau for Investigative Journalism says that as many as 1,117 civilians, including up to 214 children, have been killed by strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia since 2004.
(*SIGH*)
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323951904578290460073953432.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The Supreme Court's 2008 decision in Heller v. District of Columbia confirmed that the Second Amendment means what it says: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
After Heller and its follow-on case, McDonald v. Chicago, which applied the Second Amendment rights to the states, what government cannot do is deny the individual interest in self-defense.
As a legal matter, that debate is settled.
* IN A NATION THAT WAS STILL UNDER THE RULE OF LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION THIS WOULD BE TRUE - BUT AMERICA IS NO LONGER THAT NATION.
The president and his allies seem to have missed the message, as demonstrated by his continued insistence that most of the American people, including many hunters, support his proposed gun-control measures. Even if that claim were true, constitutionally protected rights are guarded with particular vigor precisely when public opinion turns against them. Meanwhile, the president's continued appeals to emotion, capitalizing on a series of tragic mass shootings, also ill-fit what ought to be a serious and dispassionate discussion.
While the courts are still sorting out Heller's implications, politicians should not assume that they have a free hand to restrict private gun ownership.
* INDEED, IT'S JUST THE OPPOSITE! RESPECT FOR THE RULE OF LAW REQUIRES POLITICIANS TO ASSUME THEY DON'T HAVE A FREE HAND TO RESTRICT PRIVATE GUN OWNERSHIP!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
The government cannot abridge constitutionally protected rights simply to make a symbolic point or because it feels that something must be done. Any measure must be justified by a legitimate government interest that is compelling or at least important.
* AND EVEN THIS IS A SLIPPERY SLOPE WHICH WE MUST AVOID IN ALL BUT THE MOST EXTREME CASES! READ THE CONSTITUTION, FOLKS... THERE IS NO CLAUSE WHICH GIVES ANY BRANCH - OR EVEN TWO OR ALL THREE BRANCHES ACTING IN ACCORD - THE POWER TO IGNORE THE CONSTITUTION WHEN IT'S BELIEVED THERE'S A "COMPELLING OR AT LEAST IMPORTANT" REASON TO DO SO!
* THIS "COMPELLING INTEREST" CRAP? IT'S LAW SCHOOL CRAP. IT'S BAD PRECEDENT UPON BAD PRECEDENT CRAP. (ODM... ARE YOU READING THIS...??? CARL...???)
At the same time, any regulation must be "narrowly tailored" to achieve that interest.
On that basis, in a recent case the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on depictions of animal cruelty, rejecting the government's argument that it had any legitimate interest in banning pictures and videos associated with crimes, and finding — even assuming the government's interest — that the statute swept up too much protected speech. In this way, judicial balancing requires a careful weighing of the government's interests against the individual's, with a thumb on the scale in favor of the individual.
But you wouldn't know that from the current gun-control debate.
Several states, for example, are considering gun-insurance mandates modeled after those for automobile insurance. There is no conceivable public-safety benefit: Insurance policies cover accidents, not intentional crimes, and criminals with illegal guns will just evade the requirement. The real purpose is to make guns less affordable for law-abiding citizens and thereby reduce private gun ownership. Identical constitutionally suspect logic explains proposals to tax the sale of bullets at excessive rates.
The courts, however, are no more likely to allow government to undermine the Second Amendment than to undermine the First.
* ACTUALLY... YES THEY ARE.
(*SHRUG*)
* NOR WOULD I GO OUT TOO FAR ON THE LIMB OF ASSUMING COURTS WILL DEFEND THE FIRST AMENDMENT SHOULD THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (PARTICULARLY UNDER A DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT) BE THE PARTY ASSAULTING THE FIRST AMENDMENT.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
A state cannot circumvent the right to a free press by requiring that an unfriendly newspaper carry millions in libel insurance or pay a thousand-dollar tax on barrels of ink — the real motive, in either case, would be transparent and the regulation struck down. How could the result be any different for the right to keep and bear arms?
(*NOD*)
The same constitutional infirmity plagues the president's plan. Consider his proposal for a new "assault weapons" ban, targeting a class of weapons distinguished by their cosmetic features, such as a pistol grip or threaded barrel. These guns may look sinister, but they don't differ from other common weapons in any relevant respect—firing mechanism, ammunition, magazine size — and so present no greater threat to public safety. Needless to say, the government has no legitimate interest in banning guns that gun-controllers simply do not like and would not, themselves, care to own.
Also constitutionally suspect are restrictions on magazine size. There is no question that a limit of 10 rounds (as the president has proposed) or seven (as enacted by New York state last month) would impair the right to self-defense. A magazine with 10 rounds may provide adequate protection against a single nighttime intruder. But it may not: What if there are two intruders?
(Further compounding the constitutional problem is the fact that the benefit of such limits is questionable. For a practiced and calm shooter, swapping magazines takes no more than a couple of seconds. And a swap may not even be necessary if the shooter has multiple guns, as in several mass shootings in recent years.)
While some limit on magazines may be constitutionally permissible, one that falls below the capabilities of guns in common usage for self-defense is probably not. The most popular guns for self-defense take 15 or so rounds in their default configurations. Given the uncertain benefit of restricting magazine size, not to mention the tens of millions of "high capacity" magazines in circulation, something near that number may be a constitutional minimum.
And while there is no question that procedural requirements like background checks are permissible...
* I WOULD DISPUTE THE ABOVE STATEMENT. GUN OWNERSHIP IS A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE, THEREFORE, A MECHANISM THAT VIOLATES PRIVACY RIGHTS CONNECTED TO GUN RIGHTS...
(*SHRUG*)
* I'D REALLY HAVE TO HEAR THE ARGUMENTS BEFORE BUYING THE "THERE IS NO QUESTION" ARGUMENT.
Excessive waiting periods, registration fees and the like are all subject to scrutiny, lest they infringe on constitutionally guaranteed rights.
At bottom, the Constitution requires sensible and effective regulation of guns that respects and upholds this most fundamental right. Policies motivated by nothing more than discomfort with firearms, often born of a lack of experience, fall far short.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-hypocrisy-on-jack-lew-and-his-cayman-investment/2013/02/11/4382c754-73e9-11e2-95e4-6148e45d7adb_story.html
In a brutal campaign ad last year, Barack Obama showed Mitt Romney warbling “America the Beautiful” while pictures of a sandy beach appeared and the ad declared: “He had millions in a Swiss bank account . . . tax havens like Bermuda … and the Cayman Islands.” It concluded: “Mitt Romney’s not the solution. He’s the problem.”
Well, apparently someone else is part of the “problem” - Obama’s nominee for Treasury secretary, Jack Lew.
It turns out Lew had $56,000 invested in a Citigroup venture capital fund based in . . . wait for it . . . the Cayman Islands.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a member of the Finance Committee before which Lew will soon appear, declared, “The irony is thick,” pointing out that “President Obama has been almost obsessively critical of offshore investments.”
Grassley is right. Just last week, during a “60 Minutes” interview before the Super Bowl, Obama declared, “When you look at some of these deductions that certain folks are able to take advantage of, the average person can’t take advantage of them. The average person doesn’t have access to Cayman Island accounts.”
It’s a recurring theme for the president. In a 2009 speech, Obama focused his ire on “a building in the Cayman Islands that had over 12,000 businesses claim this building as their headquarters” — a building called Ugland House. Obama said, “And I’ve said before, either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam. And I think the American people know which it is: The kind of tax scam that we need to end.”
Well, guess who was involved in the “largest tax scam” in the world?
Jack Lew.
According to the New York Times, Lew’s Cayman Islands fund was based in “the notorious Ugland House, a building whose mailboxes are home to nearly 19,000 corporate entities, many of them tax shelters.”
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Someone else who was deeply concerned about Ugland House is the man who will consider Lew’s nomination, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). In a 2008 hearing, Baucus said of Ugland House, “Many of those tenants are feasting at America’s taxpayers’ expense.” Now he must decide whether to confirm one of those tenants as our next secretary of the Treasury.
Lew’s defenders point out that his investment was “only” $56,000. Well, $56,000 may be a small amount in Washington and on Wall Street, but it is more than the annual income of the typical American family.
They say that he sold his Cayman holdings for a loss three years ago. But Lew divested himself and sold his investment for a loss only when confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Before that, even as a senior State Department official, he had no problem parking his money offshore.
(*SMIRK*)
Democrats point out that Republican Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson also had investments in the Cayman Islands and that Republicans did not view this as disqualifying. But the ethics of investing in the Cayman islands is not the issue here. The issue is Obama’s hypocrisy.
* YEP...
Obama excoriated his opponent in last year’s election as being unfit for office for having such investments. So by Obama’s own standard, shouldn’t Lew be considered unfit for office as well? Obama specifically called the investment Lew held the world’s biggest “tax scam.” Should the man responsible for U.S. tax policy be someone the president says was involved in a “tax scam”? Someone the Democratic Senate Finance Committee chairman says was “feasting at America’s taxpayers’ expense”?
A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, pointed out that Lew broke no laws and “paid all of his taxes and reported all of the income, gains and losses from the investment on his tax returns.” But last year Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that while Romney had not technically broken any laws by keeping his money in offshore tax havens, “is not technically breaking the law a high-enough standard for someone who wants to be president of the United States?” Well, is not technically breaking the law a high-enough standard for someone who wants to be secretary of the Treasury?
Investing in the Cayman Islands does not make Lew unfit to be Treasury secretary. But it does make him unfit to be Obama’s Treasury secretary.
* ONE WOULD THINK...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2013/02/09/if-republicans-bend-on-the-sequester-they-dont-deserve-our-support/
I was frustrated by William Kristol’s Don’t Be Seduced by the Sequester.
Kristol argues Republicans must be the grown-up party. The sequester cuts will delay the deployment of an aircraft carrier at a crucial time. Per Kristol: Republicans should negotiate a more measured (and smaller) reduction with the President even if means delays in spending cuts.
Bad advice!
Believe me: The sequestered funds will be the only cuts in discretionary spending we will get over the next four years. Any Republican who walks away from the sequester for a future “compromise” with Obama does not deserve our votes, contributions, or volunteer efforts.
Tea Party, prepare to write down names.
An experienced political writer like William Kristol has fallen for the oldest of political tricks. In Washington, proposed spending cuts routinely elicit screams of bloody murder about the essential services that will be lost. The military can no longer be combat ready; we’ll all get sick because the Center for Disease Control cannot provide flu vaccine; cops must be withdrawn from the streets; and so on ad nauseum.
Even the smallest cuts will have drastic repercussions, we are told.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
Remember, the sequester cuts amount to 8% of discretionary spending and 2.5% of total spending - tell [this tall tale if drastic repercussions] to American households whose median incomes fell by 8% and their net worth by 40% since 2008!
Do not believe the horror stories spun by Washington bureaucrats. Even with across-the-board cuts, agencies can surely find enough fat not to cut the things they really need. Their moans and groans are grandstanding to pressure legislators.
Kristol worries about Defense Secretary Panetta’s claim that the sequester means we cannot have two aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. (Remember Panetta is a member of the Obama’s political team). Congress should order Panetta to prepare alternate contingencies that allow for two carriers by cutting something else if our national defense really rests on this point.
Does Kristol not understand that Obama will fight to the end against spending cuts (except in defense) using his considerable demagoguery skills, knowing Republicans cannot withstand the pressure? In the end, we’ll get more - not less - spending... and Obama will hand off to his successor a debt with which we cannot live.
If we do not cut now, we never will.
The CBO budget baseline assumes the impossible: No increases in discretionary spending for a decade. ... The sequester is of huge symbolic significance - it shows that Congress can indeed cut... even if the amounts are small.
Moderate Republican Peggy Noonan (Beneath the Presidential Platitudes) understands better than Kristol that Obama will never cut anything: “Suddenly it was obvious: The president doesn’t want to cut spending, he wants to increase it. He wants to raise taxes on the wealthy, as he defines them. He does not want the government to be smaller but bigger, or, as he’d probably put it, as big as it has to be…. And it’s not about economics per se — he knows raising taxes on the rich will not solve our fiscal problems. What is motivating him primarily is ideology.”
If Republicans cave on the sequester, they might as well go home and turn Washington over to the Democrats.
P.S. -- I just watched the Sunday talk shows. A common theme was that Republicans will be “blamed” for the sequester cuts of hospital beds, orphanages, food for the starving, flu shots and everything else that Obama will heap upon them.
It is high time Republicans did what is right rather worry about the PR battle.
* I AGREE!
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