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Showing posts with label Media Daily Grind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media Daily Grind. Show all posts

Friday, December 09, 2011

Daily Grind: How is Newt the anti-Romney?

Daily Grind: How is Newt the anti-Romney?



December 6th, 2011

Candidate is not the deeply philosophical historian, deeply rooted in a limited government philosophy that he plays on TV.

The Obama-Clinton State Department cozies up to dictators in Central and South America.

The mainstream media would rather search the closets of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Sarah Palin, and now Herman Cain for skeletons rather than it would examine the cozy relationship between the current administration and Solyndra.

ALG President Bill Wilson blasts Attorney General Eric Holder over Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal.

How is Newt the anti-Romney?

By Adam Bitely

Contrary to popular belief, Newt Gingrich is not a limited government supporter. If he is, please produce the record. For every action he has taken in the name of moving the country towards a more limited government, he has taken three actions against it.
Consider the following.

In 1993, Newt Gingrich supported health care mandates, similar to the ones imposed by ObamaCare. He supported such mandates as recently as 2008. Now, as a candidate for office who suddenly saw the light on how damaging such mandates could be, Newt has changed his tune and now opposes them.

On climate change, Newt has a similar story. He famously appeared with Nancy Pelosi in a 2008 television ad urging Americans to pressure government to take action on climate change. Now that he is trying to pass himself off as a limited government candidate, he opposes the government taking such action.

And on government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we learn that Newt was a proponent of bad housing policy, accepting $1.6 million from Freddie Mac to garner support from Republicans on Capitol Hill in an effort to get favorable policy for the company. Newt claims that he was not paid to be a lobbyist, but he has changed his story several times over the past week as to what exactly he was paid to do. And beyond that, Newt now claims he opposed the reckless nature of Freddie Mac and would, if elected President, work to undo policy that he had a hand in selling.

Get full story here.

Team Obama Spotlight: Hillary Clinton

Video by Frank McCaffrey



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The Fall of Herman Cain:  A Conservative's Lament

By David Bozeman

There is not much original left to say.  No, it is not fair that the media has taken out yet another charismatic conservative.  Yes, the media actively promoted its preferred candidate, Barack Obama, in 2008, with very little vetting and no concern over his dubious associations and radical worldview.

But I'm going to say it anyway.  The mainstream media would rather search the closets of Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, Sarah Palin, and now Herman Cain for skeletons rather than it would examine the cozy relationship between the current administration and Solyndra. 

For every American who knows that Herman Cain gave money to a woman claiming to be his mistress, how many dozens don't know that the Democrats are today's true darlings of Wall Street, raking in over $15 million, far ahead of any of the GOP presidential contenders. 

To those who remark that Cain has no one to blame but himself, that he fumbled in response to the sexual misconduct allegations, just what is the correct method for mollifying a media hostile not only to conservatism but to its messengers?  And then there is this faux concern over his — gasp! — hesitation in responding to a question about Libya. 

You want to talk about verbal gaffes like"57 states," mispronouncing "corpsman", outright errors such as confusing Memorial Day and Veteran's Day and rambling sentences of incoherence when unaided by a teleprompter?  Look no further than our much-lauded 44th President.

Get full story here.

 
 ALG Editor's Note: In the following featured story from The Daily Caller's Matthew Boyle, ALG President Bill Wilson blasts Attorney General Eric Holder over Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal:
 
Critics: When Holder loses control, it's 'not good for the country' as 'people end up dying'

By Matthew Boyle

Americans for Limited Government president Bill Wilson told The Daily Caller that Attorney General Eric Holder's loss of control on Tuesday is a sign that he's "got something to hide and he's scared."

Holder lost control of his demeanor on Tuesday at the White House when TheDC asked him to respond to the surge in calls for his resignation over Operation Fast and Furious. "You guys need to — you need to stop this," Holder said. "It's not an organic thing that's just happening. You guys are behind it."

Fast and Furious was a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program, overseen by the Justice Department, which facilitated the sale of thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via straw purchasers. Straw purchasers are people who can legally purchase guns in the United States but do so with the intention of illegally trafficking them into Mexico.

At least 300 people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

Since most of the facts have come out, 52 congressmen, two senators, three presidential candidates and two sitting governors have demanded that Holder resign immediately over the scandal.

Wilson said Holder's loss of self-control might indicate that's he's dangerously unstable, something that's not a positive quality for the nation's highest-ranking law enforcement official to exhibit publicly.

Get full story here.

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Daily Grind: To print or not to print, that is the question



December 5th, 2011

Will printing more money solve Europe's debt crisis? The establishment thinks so.

Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers is promoting legislation to keep our tax dollars from going to European bailouts.

Two hearings now have been held on the government induced prescription drug shortage in Congress with more planned. 

The COP-17 United Nations world environment and climate conference is now being held until Dec. 9 in Durban, South Africa.

To Print or Not to Print, That is the Question

By Bill Wilson

The global financial elite have finally taken off their masks and just flat out told the world that the solution to Europe's debt woes is too simply turn on the European Central Bank's (ECB) printing press to refinance the debts of Greece, Italy, and other sovereigns.  The Lisbon Treaty's prohibition on doing so be damned.

In a Dec. 1 column, UK Telegraph writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard boldly declared in his headline, "You are all wrong, printing money can halt Europe's crisis". Rarely is the establishment this brazen.

He has inadvertently admitted to a practice that classical economist Adam Smith called a "pretended payment" in the Wealth of Nations, adding that "The honour of a state is surely very poorly provided for, when, in order to cover the disgrace of a real bankruptcy, it has recourse to a juggling trick of this kind, so easily seen through, and at the same time so extremely pernicious."

Evans-Pritchard apparently has no problems with pretending to pay, however.  He explained, "This crisis can be stopped very easily by monetary policy," and called the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty a "fundamental design-flaw of monetary union."

Never mind that the no-bailout clause of the treaty was included because it likely never would have been adopted without it.  It was even included practically verbatim from the first Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe that failed to be adopted in 2005.  There clearly was a consensus at the time that a bailout prohibition remain included — to prevent exactly the situation that Europe today faces.

Get full story here.

Top Republican in House Says No To IMF European Bailouts

Video by Frank McCaffrey



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Obama Administration Denies Federal Drug Price Controls are Killing Americans

By John Vinci

While Americans are dying because of a drug shortage problem serious enough to call a national emergency, the Obama Administration is denying that Medicare price controls are the cause.

Two hearings now have been held on the government induced prescription drug shortage in the House and another has been requested by ranking members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  The Senate will hold a hearing of its own on Wednesday.

In a nation as prosperous as our own — how can we have such drug shortages?  That was the question the minds of congressmen in a hearing on Nov. 30, 2011 before the House Oversight and Government Reform's Subcommittee on Health.

Four out of the five expert witnesses before the Subcommittee agreed that a Medicare price control policy has disincentivized the production of certain drugs and is at least part of the reason we now have the drug shortages that are killing Americans.

The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 introduced the "average sales price" repayment method for certain drugs.  Instead of paying drug manufacturers based on the "wholesale acquisition cost," Medicare pays based on the average price of the medication six months ago plus six percent.  So, if the costs of producing the medicines increases more than 6 percent in six months, the manufacturer will have to take a loss.

Get full story here.

Durban due diligence

By Kelvin Kemm

From my vantage point here in South Africa, I could hardly miss the major build-up to the COP-17 United Nations world environment and climate conference, which is being held Nov. 28 to Dec. 9 in Durban, where I went to school and university.

For weeks international news broadcasts spoke of "the road to Durban," and people of all ranks made daily comments concerning issues to be addressed at COP-17. Conference organizers announced that bottled water would be limited, or even prohibited, because making, shipping and disposing of plastic bottles was not environmentally sound – and in any event Durban tap water is so good that anyone can safely drink water out of any tap, whether in a hotel room, restaurant or back yard garden hose. I agree with both points; Durban municipal water is excellent everywhere.

Other images also drifted through my mind, such as those of legendary scientist and philosopher Galileo, who dared to announce that it was not the sun that orbited the earth, but the planets, including the earth, which orbited the sun. The ruling establishment of the day jumped on Galileo, threatening him with dire consequences if he did not toe the politically correct line and recant his claims. He did so to avoid burning at the stake but was placed under house arrest anyway, to ensure that he did not spread his views, and his book was banned.

Many years later, during the French Revolution, baying mobs in Paris streets were ready to chop the heads off anyone perceived not to be part of the New World Order. Even scientist Antoine Lavoisier, the discoverer of oxygen and hydrogen, was one of many unfortunate people who lost their heads to French guillotines.

Get full story here.

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Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Daily Grind: Will the U.S. and China Crush Germany into Submission? and other stories


November 10th, 2011
The Daily Grind: Will the U.S. and China Crush Germany into Submission? and other stories

Anti-democratic dominoes threaten the free peoples of Europe.

Not many presidents with Obama's record have been reelected.

The question is whether this was a battle lost due to the mistaken tactic of including highly popular police and firefighter unions into the reforms or whether it is a lost war.

The cries from people such as the Occupy Wall Street protestors over a wide gap existing between the rich and poor are greatly exaggerated.

Will the U.S. and China Crush Germany into Submission?

By Bill Wilson

There has been no clearer articulation of the coming tyranny to be imposed on the once-sovereign nations of Europe — and what may be in store for the debt-addled U.S. should it fail to restore order to its fiscal house — than a recent piece from the UK Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "America and China must crush Germany into submission".
In it the columnist advocates that the U.S. and China essentially force Germany to bail out financial institutions that bet poorly on Greek, Italian, and other troubled sovereign debts, writing, "it would not surprise me if U.S. President Barack Obama and China's Hu Jintao start to intervene very soon, in unison and with massive diplomatic force."

"One can imagine joint telephone calls to Chancellor Angela Merkel more or less ordering her country to face up to the implications of the monetary union that Germany itself created and ran (badly)," he writes.  He accused the Germans of "lacking in deep understanding of what it has got itself into."

At issue is just who will be bailing out the banks that lent the money to Greece and others in the first place.  The consolidated debts of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain, the so-called PIIGS, total more than €3 trillion.  Evans-Pritchard wants that somebody to be the European Central Bank.

In the way, Germany has vetoed the use of the ECB to leverage the €440 billion European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) upwards to perhaps €1.4 trillion — since such a decision would violate a recent German constitutional court ruling declaring that "the Bundestag, as the legislature, is also prohibited from establishing permanent mechanisms under the law of international agreements which result in an assumption of liability for other states' voluntary decisions, especially if they have consequences whose impact is difficult to calculate."

Moreover, such a move would violate Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty that brought the Eurozone into being, which expressly prohibits the ECB from printing money to buy sovereign debts. 

Get full story here.

History's Records



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Kasich's defining moment

By Rick Manning

Ohio Governor John Kasich faces a moment in history where his major initiative to reform the relationship between public employee unions and the taxpayers who pay for them has been soundly defeated in a state referendum.

The question Kasich must answer is whether this was a battle lost due to the mistaken tactic of including highly popular police and firefighter unions into the reforms or whether it is a lost war, dooming the state of Ohio to spiraling public employee costs that are political suicide to attempt to contain.

Public employee unions spent close to $30 million to defeat Kasich's reform.  Ironically, those unions got that money from mandatory dues collected from public employees who are paid by taxpayers.  In a nutshell, $30 million of tax dollars that were paid to public employees were then used to convince the voters of Ohio that public employee union reforms should be rejected.

Public employee unions legally used their member's dues to paint a picture of an Ohio where public safety is at risk due to changes in the relationship between police and firefighter unions and their taxpayer employers.

And Ohio voters, by a 61 percent majority bought it.

Now, reality strikes.

Get full story here.

Rising income inequality?

By Adam Bitely

Numerous reports have come out over the past many days (herehere, and here) disputing the new claim from progressives everywhere that a recent CBO report finally proves that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.

Well, it seems that those who have closely studied the data believe that claims of an ever widening wealth gap seem to be, well, not exactly true.

As Sheldon Richman put it, "Today low-income people have things the middle class didn't dream of 40 years ago — and even some things the rich couldn't have had at any price because they hadn't been invented yet. And this is not primarily due to consumer debt."

Even further, as GMU economics professor Don Boudreaux explained several years back, people that bang the drum loudly that the wealth gap is beginning to widen out of control forget to consider that even though the wealthy get wealthier, the poor get wealthier too:

Get full story here.

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Monday, April 25, 2011

Daily Grind: Obama's Pain at the Pump


April 25th, 2011

There is a supply problem, but it's not with oil.

The President has not filled 12 government watchdog Inspectors General slots since taking office in January of 2009.

The Ryan Plan sees the empowerment of patients as consumers as the, "critical element in restraining the growth of health costs without government rationing."

Paul Ryan's budget embraces a fatal premise of the Nanny State.

Obama's Pain at the Pump


Once again, oil and gasoline prices are on the march upwards, and conveniently,Barack Obama is waving the "speculators" card, promising to investigate nefarious investors he alleges are behind it all. 

With average gasoline per gallon prices nationally at over $3.80 and rising rapidly, American motorists are taking note of the increases — and are asking why they're paying more.

"[A] lot of what's driving oil prices up right now is not the lack of supply. There's enough supply. There's enough oil out there for world demand," Obama said.

Pretty much, that part is true.  Since 2009, global oil consumption has increased from 84.133 million barrels a day to 86.7 million in 2010, a 3 percent increase, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA).  Furthermore, the EIA projects a further consumption increase of 1.5 million barrels a day in 2011, bringing the total consumption rise from 2009 to 2011 to a total 4.8 percent increase. 

Get full story here.

12 Missing IG's Are In The Team Obama Spotlight

Video by Frank McCaffrey
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Would Ryan's Plan Cut Benefits to Seniors?

By Victor Morawski

We showed last week how the proposed Ryan budget plan intends to save the Federal Government money on its Medicare costs and lower the deficit by changing the program from a single-payer to a premium-support plan and allowing open interstate competition among health insurers — something now forbidden — to keep premium costs down.

But not everyone agrees.  Editors of The Nation, for instance, say of Ryan, "the savings he projects would come less from competition than from simple cutbacks to care and benefits."  A similar sentiment is echoed by writers at msnbc.com when they observe that Ryan plan supporters must view voters under 55 as being, "more alarmed about the national debt than they are about cuts in future benefits."

Charges like the above will no doubt alarm younger readers who will figure that if it is enacted then they would not fare as well in their golden years as current Medicare recipients.

That this cause for alarm at the Ryan plan is baseless can be seen clearly if we simply ask ourselves, "What would it mean to say that the Ryan plan cuts care or future benefits to seniors?"  His proposal changes the Medicare program from one that pays health care providers directly for their services to one which effectively pays premiums for seniors to purchase health insurance in the private marketplace (with some means testing involved).

Get full story here.


ALG Editor's Note: In the following featured column from Reason Magazine, Shikha Dalmia makes the case against House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's plans to reform Medicare in the 2012 budget:
 
Why RyanCare Will Fail

By Shikha Dalmia

President Obama last week criticized the Medicare vouchers that are part of RyanCare, the health care reform plan in the budget proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., because they would allegedly balance the budget on the backs of seniors. But his fellow liberals have been criticizing vouchers for the opposite reason: They will cost too much and won't control Medicare spending. They are right.

However, the reason is not GOP economics, but liberal politics that Rep. Ryan has bowed to.

The basic idea behind Ryan's reform is simple: Medicare, the government-funded health care program for seniors, is a slowly tightening noose around this country's fiscal neck. Health care costs have been growing at twice the rate of the economy. But seniors have little incentive to curb their medical consumption because they don't pay for it—taxpayers do. Indeed, according to the president's Council of Economic Advisers, 30 percent of Medicare spending produces no medical benefits.
Get permalink here.

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Thursday, April 14, 2011

Daily Grind: New media catches Obama bribing the fourth estate


April 14th, 2011

CBS News and Washington Post employees are benefitting from an ObamaCare slush fund.

Hear from Utah Senator Orrin hatch, Texas Congressman Jeb Hensarling and California Congressman Devin Nunes on one of the two things you can count on in life...taxes!

Obama: "I have a credit card, and I'm not afraid to use it!"

Fukushima's lessons for America's already safe nuclear plants.

New media catches Obama bribing the fourth estate

By Howard Rich

For years, America's left-leaning mainstream media outlets have belittled and rebuked members of the new media — questioning their credibility, impugning their integrity and assigning all manner of self-serving motivations to their contributions to the marketplace of ideas.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragic Tucson shooting earlier this year, the legacy press took it a step further — essentially implying that the new media was complicit in the attack on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by virtue of the "climate of hate" it helped create in America.

Obviously, the facts of the Tucson case quickly (and completely) debunked this theory — but not before a parade of liberal talking heads had spewed a torrent of reckless vitriol on new media outlets and the First Amendment freedom they exercise.

Fast-forward three months to April 6, when reporter Matthew Boyle of The Daily Caller published a report outlining the details of Barack Obama's socialized medicine slush fund.

Get full story here.

Tax Day Is Upon Us...It's Christmas For Democrats!

Video by Frank McCaffrey
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Obama's 'Adult' Conversation

By Robert Romano

In February, when he presented his budget for the 2012 fiscal year, Barack Obama called for an "adult conversation" on the nation's finances.  Everyone laughed.  His was a budget that would add on average $1.08 trillion to the national debt every single year until 2021, when it would total $26.3 trillion. 
Perhaps it was fitting, then, that he began the discussion by delivering a speech to college students.

More like an adolescent than an adult, Obama was threatening that he has a credit card — and he's not afraid to use it.  He's still going through puberty when it comes to having a real conversation about the debt crisis we face.  On April 13, when he delivered his plan to "pay down our debt" at George Washington University, not once did he mention the size of the gargantuan national debt, now $14.2 trillion.

Get full story here.

Fears and facts

By Paul Driessen

The ground hadn't stopped shaking. Tsunami waters had not receded. And yet coverage of this awful natural disaster — a scene of almost unfathomable devastation and death — was already giving way to single-minded focus on radiation exposure and meltdowns.

Addressing justifiable concerns is essential, to allay fears and refocus attention on finding the missing, burying the dead, helping 450,000 displaced people, and rebuilding ravaged communities.

Like a third of nuclear plants in American service today, providing 20 percent of all US electricity, the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi plant is a "boiling water reactor." Uranium in fuel rods generates heat to turn water into steam that drives turbines, which power generators.

Though not designed or built according to current standards, the Japanese plant had many upgrades and enhancements over the years. For the most part, they worked.
Get full story here.


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