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From The Mailbag

NOTE: This is a BLOG page. If you run off articles before reading them, please note
the entire content will likely be more pages than you want to print.

Judge upholds suspension of Christian counselor
July 29, 2010—US District Court Judge George Caram Steeh, a 1998 Bill Clinton appointee to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Steeh, who is the former President of the Arab-American Bar Association, dismissed a lawsuit filed against Eastern Michigan University [EMU] by a Christian graduate student, Julea Ward, who was expelled by the university because she refused to affirm that homosexual behavior was normal. Ward enrolled in an EMU program with expectations that she would complete the program and become a high school student counselor As a student counselor, Ward counseled student "clients" in a university-operated clinic. In one instance she encountered a "client" who had recently been involved in a homosexual relationship that went bad. The "client" had previously been counseled about that relationship. He wanted to be treated for depression—which would entail further counseling about that relationship. Because of her opposition to homosexuality, Ward asked her faculty supervisor if she could refer the client to another counselor. She explained her religious views precluded her from telling the client that his homosexual behavior was normal.

The university told Ward she would be allowed to stay in the program only if she underwent a "remediation reeducation program" (diversity training) so she could see "the error of her ways" and alter her views about homosexuality. She refused. Telling her that her conduct violated the American Counseling Association Code of Ethics, she was expelled.

Alliance Defense Fund senior counsel David French, who represented Ward in her efforts to force the school to reinstate her told the media that "...Christian students shouldn't be expelled for holding to and abiding by their beliefs. To reach its decision, the courts had to do something that's never been done in federal court: uphold an extremely broad and vague university speech code." It is a speech code defined by the American Civil Liberties Union working in conjunction with the American bar Association beginning in 1989.

In May of that year the ABA distributed to their membership a little noticed or talked about brochure advertising a seminar "...for attorneys who want to be on the leading edge of an explosive new are area of law"—suing churches, Christian leaders, Christian activists and schools that cross the line. The reason? The utopians attempting to create world government were quick to grasp the reality that the patriotism that fuels nationalism is rooted in Christian faith. It became clear to the globalists that before American sovereignty could be breached, the social progressives who were determined to destroy the nation with the aid of corrupt political hacks, judges and bureaucrats who would attack the underpinnings of the 1st Amendment and destroy both religious freedom and free speech.

One of Julea Ward's lawyers, Jeremy Tedesco told Fox News Radio that while the ruling did not explicitly say so, its clear the decision could allow colleges and universities across the nation the expel Christian students for voicing explicit Christian tenets under a host of different scenarios. The Alliance Defense Fund also defended another counseling student at Augusta State University in Georgia. Jennifer Keeton was told to stop sharing her Christian beliefs if she wanted to graduate from Augusta. Keeton's ADF lawsuit argued that she was told she would have to undergo a "reeducation program" and attend "diversity sensitivity classes" if she expected to graduate. Through the efforts of the social progressives the 1st Amendment has successfully morphed into Articles 13 and 14 of the UN's Covenant on Human Rights. The 1st Amendment no longer exists for Christians if social progressives or the deviants they need to get elected object.

Augusta State University issued a statement that the University does not discriminate on the basis of students' moral, religious, political or personal beliefs. Except, it appears unless those moral, religious or personal beliefs are Christian.

Joe Manchin puts a caretaker in the Senate
July 16, 2010—West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin hired a caretaker Senator when he named his former aide, Charleston, WV attorney Carte Goodwin to take the place of US Senator Robert Byrd [D-WV] who died on Monday, June 28, 2010. Manchin wanted to be sure he did not put anyone in Byrd's seat that he would have to run against in November's special election, since Manchin intends to win Byrd's seat and complete the last 2 years of his term of office, and then seek a full term running as the incumbent. Under WV law, had Byrd died on, or after July 3, the appointee—in this case, Goodwin—would serve out the balance of Byrd's term, which expires in January, 2013. Because Byrd died on June 28, a special election will be held on Nov. 2. Whomever is elected will serve out the balance of Byrd's term.

It's a safe bet that all three of West Virginia's members of the US House of Representatives would like to have the job—as would John Raese, the millionaire owner of the Morgantown Dominion Post and WV Radio Corporation, who ran against Byrd in 2006 and against Sen. Jay Rockefeller in 1984. If Raese declares for the job, its a safe bet that former WV Gov. Arch Moore's daughter and 5th term 2nd US Congressional District Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito [R] will bow out of the race. That will leave Democratic 14th term Alan Mollahan [1st District] pitted against 17th term Nick Joe Rahill [3rd District] to vy for the job. But, there's a fly in the ointment for them. It's a gamble for either of them since neither would be running as the incumbent, and neither of them have run for office in a Statewide race. Both have only had to win their constituents in approximately 1/3rd of the State. In a race for the US Senate, only Gov.Joe Manchin has run a Statewide gauntlet. And, in 2008, Manchin won re-election with a 70% mandate from the voters of West Virginia.

Thus, it isn't so much of a gamble for Manchin who can't run for governor in 2012. All he has to do is beat a Republican to get the job. And, in West Virginia politics, being a Democrat is almost the same as runnning unopposed. Since neither Mollahan or Rahall nor Capito can run for re-election to their very safe House seats and vy for Byrd's Senate seat at the same time, they will likey not try. Even if he could seek a third term as Governor in 2012, Manchin could still run for the balance of Byrd's term without jeopardy in 2010. In fact, Manchin made it clear to Politics.com that he expects to run for Byrd's seat and remain Governor until after the election results on Nov. 2. If he wins, which he expects to, he will resign the governorship and finish Byrd's term, seeking re-election in 2012 to the US Senate as the incumbent.

Goodwin who will be sworn in as the junior Senator from West Virginia on Monday or Tuesday next week, told CBS News that he will not run in the special election that will be held on Nov. 2. Manchin, who won his 2nd term as governor in 2008 with 70% of the vote was the candidate "Big Coal" supported. West Virginia is a coal state. If you want to get elected in West Virginia, you need the backing of both the mine owners and the United Mine Workers [UAW]. Manchin has always had it. So, for that matter has Nick Joe Rahall.

However, a new element has been added to the political equation in West Virginia—Barack Hussein Obama. Obama has openly declared war on fossil fuels, particularly coal. Due to his postion on Cap & Trade, Obama has made it clear he intends to destroy the coal industry in the United States. While union-loyal voters in the State continue to back coal-backed Democrats for Congress, they have backed the GOP candidates for President. In 2000, 2004 and 2008 WV voted red at the top of the ticket. With the guy who hates coal calling the shots in the social progressive-controlled House and Senate, the odds are 50/50 that the UAW and the mine owners throw their support behind the GOP Senate candidate this time around. If I was John Raese, I'd be meeting with the mine owners and the UAW right about now.

Peer review journal claims medical journals are
marketing for major pharmaceutical companies.
June 27, 2010—PLoS Medicine a peer review journal for the Public Library of Science claimed in an article that the most respected medical journals have become much too dependent on revenue from the pharmaceutical industry from two sources. First, advertising revenue which, according to PLoS, is the least corrupting form of revenue since the pharmaceutical industry should have the right to reach their potential customers in the periodicals their customers—doctors—read. What is the bigger problem, and what corrupts the integrity of the advertising process in about 25 different medical journals according to PLoS in an article published by the Public Library of Science five years ago (but never read by the general public which does not generally subscribe to it) is the second source of "advertising" revenue. The PR firms hired by the pharmaceutical giants pay fees to the journals to print well-edited capsulated synopsis of the drug trials.

The PR firms know that when the drug trials are published in any medical journal, the drug and the test tacitly carry that journal's stamp of approval simply by appearing in it. According to PLoS, a favorable review in a periodical like the Journal of American Medicine and the British Medical Journal and Lancet which have global distribution is worth thousands of pages of advertising. The PR companies will sometimes pay upwards of a million dollars for reprints of the articles to send to drug distributors, pharmaceutical wholesalers and medical professionals. While the PR firms admit the recipients of the reprints seldom read them, what they rely on is the name of the prestigious journal printing the review of giving a new drug credibility in the marketplace it has not earned from evidence of their curative abilities. The more important the medical journal, the more credibility the drug receives in the eyes of the physicians who receive the reprints.

Many times the whole content of the written clinical tests are not all that favorable to the drug but that, of course, is not reflected in the capsulated, controlled synopsis that appears in the medical journals. In 1994, Dr. Paula Rochon, adjunct scientist for the Kunin-Lunefeld Applied Research Unit and several of her colleagues wrote a paper examining the impact of journals which were paid to publish controlled excerpts of clinical studies had on the medical community's acceptance of the drugs compared to actual medicinal value of the drugs examined. The study focused on one class of drugs only: nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs designed to combat arthritis. They found 56 trials. Not one of the published reports on the clinical studies presented any facts that were detrimental to the drugs tested.

The group came back a decade later, in 2003, and did a follow-up study on the 56 trial drugs to see if the drugs were living up to their clinical claims. The article was published by Richard Smith, the CEO of UnitedHealth Europe. Smith was Editor-in-Chief of the British Medical Journal for 13 years and held that job when the aforementioned study on the new arthritis drug was done. In many cases the reality of the drugs did not match the printed rhetoric of the promises of the clinical study conducted a decade earlier.

The question raised by the Public Library of Science a decade later was: how do pharmaceutical companies get the results they want once the drug is approved and recommended by physicians to their clients. When we go to our HMO or PPO physicians and they prescribe medication, we assume—and have every right and expectation to assume—that the prescription our physician prescribes will relieve or cure whatever the prescription is taken for. According to Smith, the pharmaceutical companies and their PR firms get the results they want not by fudging the facts but by asking the right questions and providing the right answers. This comes from hiring the right PR top guns who know how to stay a step ahead of the peer review groups. They do this by isolating positive parts of the clinical studies and forcing the dialogue into those positive aspects while ignoring negative ones. Or they combine the results from different centers in multiple combinations to obfuscate negative results in some facet or facets of the clinical study.

These strategies, Smith noted, have been exposed in the cases of risperidone and odansetron. However, with the 56 clinical studies the PLoS were attempting to evaluate, there was an impossible amount of work to examine in order to ascertain how many of the trials were truly independent and not biased on behalf of the fees paid by the pharmaceutical company. Clearly, what the Big Pharma wants is their drugs approved and used, and the PR firms they hire are paid to get positive "reviews" from the medical journals and paid advertising and advertorial (paid editorial copy) in the form of capsulated clinical studies.

What it comes down to, if the world's most prestigious medical journals—which medical professionals read as the Bible of the industry—have sold their souls for money, it is no more factually believable than magazines like The Onion or Mad magazine, the satirical comic book most Americans of read as teenagers back in the 1950s and 1960s. Smith further noted that "...Journal editors are becoming increasingly aware of how they are being manipulated and are fighting back. But, I must confess it took me almost a quarter of a century editing for the BMJ to wake up to what was happening...[E]ditors ask for other related data [related to] the studies submitted to them...But editors do not know what other unpublished studies exist."

Editors generally do not know if they are doing an honest peer review on one product or on a gigantic clever marketing jigsaw. More than likely one or more editors have commented that the material they get, regardless if it's a precise document or a jigsaw puzzle will always be of high technical quality.

The question raised by Smith and investigators like Dr. Rochon is how do we prevent the most prestigious medical journals in the world from selling their editorial souls for money? How do we prevent them from becoming no more credible than Mad Magazine or The Onion? How do we prevent them from becoming an extension of the marketing arm of the pharmaceutical industry? Smith thinks the editors can demand the right to review the protocols, and insist that all trials be registered; and most of all, demand that all clinical studies are completely transparent.

That won't happen because the journal publishers and shareholders know those clinical studies are worth millions of dollars in revenue, and bring additional millions in print advertising dollars from the pharmaceutical industry to reward them for publishing the clinical studies. Meaning, of course, that the medical journals are not going to risk that revenue. So, if you're a doctor who generally reads the New England Journal of Medicine, the Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA or BMJ or Lancet in England, Canada or Australia for the latest life saving drugs, you might as well read something that will give you a chuckle. Mad magazine was my magazine of choice as a kid. Give it a try. You have to say one thing about Mad. If you're older than 8 or 10 years of age, you'll always know when Mad's story line is an out-and-out lie or is coloring the truth. According to Smith and the editors of several other medical journals, you can't tell that from clinical studies published in the medical journals until you read the histories of the drugs about a decade later. By then, for some, it's too late. I guess that's why class action lawsuits are still in vogue.

Birthers are right...from March 26, 1790
May 11, 2010—On March 26, 1790 the 1st Congress of the United States, session II, Ch.4 thought it necessary to define precisely what an Article II citizen was to prevent those not legally defined as an Article II citizen from running for, or winning the office of, President of the United States since as a non-citizen, they are not eligible to do either. In the records of the 1st Congress, second session, Congress enacted the guidelines which determined that people not born here while what became the United States was under the thumb of England, who applied for, and were granted citizenship rights, would be construed as a "naturalized" citizens as would any children with them who were under the age of 21 years. These children may have been born in this country, but because their parents were not natural born they were also deemed to be naturalized, not natural born, citizens. They had voting rights, and the right to run for Congress, but not the office of President. I would like you to pause for a moment and think about the pregnant illegals that steal into the United States specifically to have anchor babies here. In the mid-1930s, social progressive Franklin D. Roosevelt decreed, by Presidential Proclamation, that they are construed to be natural born, allowing their parents to use their "anchor status" to get green cards which allowed them to stay in the country. The most prominent illegal in this country today has two anchor children, and a natural born anchor wife. His name is Barack Obama. If his name sounds familiar it's because he's the illegal alien who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania in Washington, DC. According to the law enacted by the 1st Congress, session II, Ch. 4, whether he was born in the State of Hawaii or not, he is ineligible to run for, or be elected to, the office of President of the United States because the law stated" "...the children of citizens (both parents) of the United States, shall be considered natural born citizens; provided that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any State, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an act of the legislature of that State in which such a person was proscribed. (a) Approved, March 26, 1790." What does that mean? It means the father must be a be a citizen to transmit citizenship to a child of his seed who was born in this country. If he is a natural born citizen, he will transmit that right to his offspring. If he is a naturalized citizen, he transmits that right. He cannot transmit a right he does not possess. Thus, if he is not a citizen of the United States, he cannot transmit citizenship rights of any type to his offspring since he has none to bequeath. Which means any illegal alien cannot transmit US citizenship rights to an illegal offspring since they lack citizenship. The parents, and their US-born offspring are legally subject to deportation.

Barack Hussein Obama's father was born in Kenya and was never a citizen of the United States, thus he could not transmit citizenship rights to his son—except Kenyan citizenship rights. Which he did. England claims Barack Obama is a citizen of Kenya. He is also a citizen of Indonesia since his step father, Lolo Soetero, who legally changed Obama's name to Barry Soetoro, renounced both any claim Obama had to US citizenship through his mother, or Kenyan citizenship through his father. Obama traveled on an Indonesian passport which suggests the international community viewed him not as an American but an Indonesian. As did Occidental College which, it now appears, gave him a foreign exchange student scholarship.

While Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, was a naturalized citizen, under federal law she would have had to be 19-years of age when she gave birth to be able to transmit citizenship rights to a foreign-born son. She was 18-years, 8-months and 5-days old when her son was born on August 4, 1961. Because his father was not a natural citizen of the United States he could only transmit the type of citizenship he possessed. Since he was not a US citizen, he could not even transmit naturalized citizen status. And, since his mother was 3-months and 25-days shy of being able to transmit natural birth status to her first born son, any legal status is in question even if Obama was born in Hawaii—which the effort, and money being spent by Obama to conceal his birth records, together with statements by Kenyan Minister of Lands, James Orengo and Kenyan Minister Bonny Khalwale who claim Obama is native born In Kenya, suggests that the only actual, legitimate long form, birth doctor-affirmed birth certificate Obama has is Kenyan. And thus, even though US law was changed in 1986, he would at least have had a citizenship argument even though he could still not have gotten around the lack of standing of his father to qualify as a natural born citizen. The law was further diluted in 1994, 33 years after his birth. But, once again, too little, too late.

Obama finally sets a presidential record
May 9, 2010—Resident Barack Hussein Obama has finally achieved a presidential record that not even his social progressive predecessors, Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and James Earl Carter, were able to achieve. Nearly 40 million American people—representing approximately 8.25% of the people in America—are now on food stamps. Joblessness (based on those who have filed for, or who are currently receiving unemployment benefits) is at 9.9%. While the government uses that figure as being indicative of joblessness, the jobless rate is much higher since those who have been out of work for more than a half year and are no longer drawing unemployment benefits, or those who simply gave up trying to find a job, are not counted in jobless total. In reality, joblessness is somewhere between 12.5% and 15%—or higher. America has sent over 20 million jobs overseas since NAFTA was enacted. As the job base in the United States continues to shrink the unemployed are engaged in the game of musical chairs where after every round about 10% of the chairs are removed, making it impossible for everyone who needs a chair to find one when the music stops and everyone scrambles to find a roost.

The Dept. of Agriculture, which oversees the Food Stamp assistance program said that in February, 2010, (the last month for which there is an accurate tabulation) 39.68 million Americans were on the program. According the USDA, one in every eight Americans was receiving food assistance. This was an increase of 260 thousand from January. By the way, the coupons, which have been replaced by a debit card to make it appear the recipient is paying for his or her groceries with a debit or credit card, making it less embarrassing for those who have to rely on the government to feed their families (something I favor). (About 30 years ago I filed for unemployment. It was one of the most disparaging experiences in my life. The woman at the unemployment office—who had a job because I and others like me did not—as best as I could see, treated all of the applicants for benefits like we were subhuman. I promised myself I would go hungry before I revisited that experience. And, I never have. I always found work that provided enough to pay the rent or the mortgage, and put food on the table. For many years I had to drive anywhere from 200 to 300 miles, each way, to go to work.)

Anyway, back to the Food Stamp...er, SNAP program. Food stamps, as you might have guessed, are no longer food stamps. SNAP is an acronym for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The Obama people like to point out that when they took office, around 31 million people were on food stamps...er, SNAP. By January 3, 2009, the total was 31.8 million. The USDA estimates that by Sept. 30, 2010, 40.5 million Americans will be on the SNAP program. The cost will be $59 billion. For fiscal 2011, the USDA figures that enrollment under SNAP will increase to 43.3 million.

545 People Out of 300 Million
Mar. 29, 2010—A wise commentary by Charlie Reese. (Editor's Note: I usually do not use material written by other writers, but when someone like Charlie Reese talks, its like E.F. Hutton...everyone listens. Or rather, they should. This is a "Short Take" that is long on logic and common sense. Bookmark this page, and on election day this year, take a few minutes to read this just before you go to the voting precinct to cast your vote.)

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered, if both Democrats and Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits? Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve does. One hundred Senators, 435 Congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices equate to 545 human beings out of 300 million people who are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but [privately-owned] central bank. I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason...They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a Senator, a Congressman, or a President to do one cotton-pickin' thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 to #1 million in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how to vote.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the Speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget the want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. It's inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million people cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted—by present facts—of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist. If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Army and Marines are in Iraq, it's because they want them in Iraq. If they do not received Social Security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way. If they are enrolled in an elite health care insurance far superior to the plan they are planning for the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to the bureaucrats whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists whose gifts and advise they can reject; to regulators to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power back. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they took an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power. They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of 'em out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.

Let them eat lobster and caviar!
Feb. 1, 2010—If there is one person in history that Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama reminds me of, it's not Harriet Tubman. Mary McLeod Bethune, Marian Wright Edelman or Eleanor Roosevelt (even though her husband reminds me of FDR). Michelle Obama reminds me of France's iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette von-Habsburg-Lothringen, the Archduchess of Austria who married to Louis XVI. She and her husband were deposed and imprisoned during Robespierre's Reign of Terror. Her crime? Treason. In reality, her crime was, literally, not caring about the welfare of the French people. According to Emer de Vattel's Law of the Nations (from which common law has its roots) monarchs are obligated to care for their subjects.

Marie Antoinette was an extremely selfish, uncaring queen whom the people disliked immensely. Among the causes of the French Revolution was a severe food shortage which brought starvation and economic deprivation to the French people. When she was told by her husband's ministers that the cause for the unrest in France was because the people had no bread to feed their children, she flippantly replied, "Qu'ils manent de la brioche," which literally translated means "Let them eat expensive sweet eggy rolls"—one of her favorite desserts. History translated it as "Then let them eat cake."

In the closing days of the Campaign of 2008 as Barack and Michelle Obama traveled the countryside assuring their rich white constituents that when they was coronated King and Queen of the United States they would immediately begin the redistribution of the wealth of America's middle class through illegal UN carbon taxes to the princes of industry and barons of business and banking who were converting the third world into the commerce mecca of the 21st century's. At the same time, they assured their minority constituents in the United States that immediately after the inauguration of common Americans Barack and Michelle (who suddenly loved the country Michelle Obama hated as a member of Jeremiah Wright's congregation), they promised black America they would begin the redistribution of the wealth of white middle class—to them. Call it reparations. Call it a lie. When they spoke to the white middle class, they assured them that if their household income was $250 thousand or less, they would not receive a tax increase under the Obama Administration.

After the middle class taxpayers were slapped with two trillion, two hundred thirty-nine billion, five hundred million dollars that will ultimately translate into seventy-one trillion, six hundred sixty-four billion dollars in taxes when the interest paid to the Fed bankers is added in to what must be paid by our children, grandchildren and great-great grandchildren—and universal carbon taxes that will impact every man, woman and child regardless of their race and station in life (except the ultra-rich who can buy carbon credits), it will not be long before social progressive bureaucrats will be telling Queen Michelle that the Tea Party revolt that is threatening the Obama dynasty was caused by angry Americans from every walk of life and every political persuasion simply because the people no longer have enough bread to feed their children. To which Queen Michelle will haughtily reply: "Let them eat lobster and cavier." Obama's lunch that day? In his photo ops, you always see common folk Barack Obama sharing a burger with someone at a local burger den. When he enjoys a private lunch with Michelle at the Waldorf-Astoria, like they did on Oct. 15, 2008, they begin lunch with 2 hors d'oeuvres at $50.00, 2 whole steamed lobsters at $100.00, Iranian Osetra caviar at $150.00, washed down with Bollinger Champagne at $44.00. With tip, the down-to-earth Obama's enjoyed a $447.39 lunch. I wonder if that was before or after photo op hamburgers at Buddy's Burger Barn?

When politicians lose sight of the plight of the common man and become lackeys for the princes of industry and the barons of business and banking, it is time to remove them from power and replace them with citizen legislators who will restore the rule of law, outlaw bribery in high places through a Constitutional amendment that will levy mandatory prison sentences not only the politicians and the lobbyists who pay and receive bribes, but on the heads of the cartels who ultimately profit from the bribes as well. The American people need to restore the rule of law and apply it equally to everyone. That means, every law that applies to the least of us applies to richest and most powerful of us as well. All men are not equal if some are more equal than others.

We need to immediately initiate
Operation Wetback IV to reduce
unemployment stats on US citizens
Jan. 23, 2010—Three times in the history of the United States US Presidents took what would today be considered a politically unpopular position by rounding up and deporting illegal aliens to create jobs for US Citizens. The first attempt occurred shortly after the banker-induced Stock Market Crash of 1929 when President Herbert Hoover ordered the round-up and deportation of illegals by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. The program, dubbed "Operation Wetback," was carried out without any protests from US government-funded Hispanic advocacy groups—since there were none. The Clintonesque-liberal media political correctness dictionary was still 63 years in the future and the communist-left FDR (America's white Barack Obama) federal bureaucracy was still some 4-years in the making.

The Hoover roundup sent over one million Mexican illegal aliens packing—freeing up jobs for out-of-work US citizens. In addition, some 47 thousand Mexican nationals who were in the country legally, with visas, also opted to leave due to rising animosity by out-of-work Americans for any foreigner in the United States with a job. Operation Wetback was launched in the Southwest: Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. But deportees also came from Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, and New York. Since Mexican illegals tried hard to remain under the radar screen, few of them traveled far beyond the border States, thus we can assume that most of the deportees from the States north of the Mason-Dixon line were legal residents. During the Hoover years, immigration to he United States was virtually stopped.

The Hoover deportations caused an outcry from the Mexican government demanding to know what gave Hoover the right to deny Mexican citizens the right to jobs in the United States under what was called the "Good Neighbor Policy." At the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman was faced with the same problem that plagued Hoover in 1931—no jobs for US citizens. Under Roosevelt's Public Law 78 agri-giants, who needed dirt cheap labor were allowed to import labor from Mexico even though 25% of the American labor force was out of work—and in the dust bowl farm states, unemployment stood at over 70%. Under Public Law 78, when work contracts were fulfilled, the employer was responsible, under law, to transport the migrant worker back to Mexico. As thousands of migrant workers simply vanished into the human landscape, taking what few jobs were available from American workers, Truman's solution was to issue a terse public statement admonishing Congress, and telling the American people that Congress assured him they would fix the problem. (Yeah, we can see how well the buck stopped at his desk.)

During the prosperity of the war years (1943-54), illegal alien immigration increased by 6,000%, triggering Operation Wetback II and III. In 1954, the INS estimated that illegals—not legal migrant workers—were crossing the US border at the rate of one million per year and that they were penetrating much deeper into the nation that in preceding decades because the INS concentrated their efforts only in the border States. The INS, on orders from the White House, went through the motions of rounding up both illegal aliens and migrant workers who overstayed their visas. Truman deported about 30 thousand Mexicans during his seven years in office.

Truman's blamed his poor record on guarding the border on Public Law 78, enacted by FDR's 73rd Congress and S.984, which was enacted by the 82nd Congress (that expanded the use of migratory workers from Mexico) and made it more difficult to expel illegals under Woodrow Wilson's "Good Neighbor Policy" with Mexico.

Truman became one of the three "deportion presidents" not for deporting Mexicans under Operation Wetback II, but under Presidential Proclamation 2655, an edict requiring the deportation of potentially dangerous WWII detainees from the Axis nations. Deported were several thousand men, women and children of German and Italian ancestry who spend most of World War II in internment camps. It appears that only about 900 Pervian Japanese farmers, held by the US government in that country, were deported to Japan at the end of war.

Eisenhower was stuck will cleaning up the mess created by the open door polices 73rd and 82nd Congresses. As Eisenhower took office, illegal immigrants were now crossing at the rate of about 3 million per year. When Eisenhower assumed the Oval Office, illegal alien migration was one of his top priorities. He attributed the lax attitude of Congress about illegal immigration with a relaxation of Congressional ethical standards. A Truman-initiated study on Mexican migratory labor in 1950 found that cotton growers in Texas paid migrant workers about half what a US citizen was paid to chop cotton. As Eisenhower met with current and retired border patrol agents he learned that the big ranchers and farmers who relied on the cheap migrant labor had friends "in high places" in government. Agents were subtlety warned not to arrest the workers employed by what turned out to be powerful campaign donors. When that didn't work, they were very bluntly told to back off, or they were simply transferred where they would become someone else's problem. The two most influential Senators who blocked the efforts of the INS to do their job were then Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson [D-TX] and Sen. Pat McCarran [D-NV].

Eisenhower hired Gen. Joseph May Swing to head the INS and with units of the US National Guard, began what history now views as a quasi-military operation to find and seize illegal immigrants As hard as Johnson tried to get rid of Swing, Eisenhower protected his man in Immigration. On July 15, 1953, the first day of Operation Wetback III, Swing's men arrested 4,800 illegals. After the first day, the INS averaged the seizure of 1,100 illegals per day. The INS devoted 700 men to the project, hoping to scare enough more illegals to flee back across the border. The INS claims that under Eisenhower's Operation Wetback, they deported 1,300,000 illegals. The open-border social progressives insist that all three phases of Operation Wetback were dismal flops, and that only a few thousand people—all of whom, they claim, were legal residents—were deported.

It was Truman who pushed the Federal Immigration and National Act of 1952 through Congress in the closing days of his administration. Under Section 8 USC 1324[a](1)(A)[iv][b](iii) any US citizen that knowingly assists an illegal alien, provides them with employment, food, water or shelter has committed a felony. City, county or State officials that declare their jurisdictions to be "Open Cities, Counties or States are subject to arrest; as are law enforcement agencies who chose not to enforce this law. Police officers who ignore officials who violate Section 8 USC 1324[a](1)(A)[iv][b](iii) are committing a Section 274 federal felony. Furthermore, according to Federal Immigration and National Act of 1952, if you live in a city, county or State that refuses to enforce the law for whatever reason, the officials making those rules are financially liable for any crime committed within their jurisdiction by an illegal alien.

We now have approximately 25 million illegal aliens in the United States (even though the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that number at around 7.3 million). It's time to demand, under threat of impeachment, that Barack Hussein Obama launch Operation Wetback IV, and complete the job started by Hoover and Eisenhower.

Although they think they are, the President of the United States (legitimate or illegitimate), and the members of Congress are not above the law of the land. If Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D-NV] and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] and any other member of Congress refuses to enforce Section 8 USC 1324[a](1)(A)[iv][b](iii), they need to be impeached for committing a federal felony, tried and removed from office, and then placed on trial in a US federal court (not of their choosing), and sentenced to federal prison for harboring illegals. Furthermore, the United States needs to seize all of the assets of those individuals so that the people of the United States who have been robbed, raped or otherwise injured by an illegal alien can be made financially whole from their asset pool.

Obama Death Board rules no mammograms
before 50. Rationing will be a key part of
the Obama healthcare program.
Nov. 16, 2009—As Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius quickly mastered the Obama art of lying with a straight face like her boss as she referred to Barack Obama's federal Health Board as a healthcare task force and not the bureaucracy of medical doctors legislated into existence not in any of the healthcare plans being debated on Capitol Hill, but in HR-1, the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Obama stimulus bill. You might say that HR-1 was a real "killer of a law." HR-1 allowed the President of the United States to pick a board of doctors with the authority of life or death over the American people.

When the Health Board, more appropriately called the Death Board (because government always names their legislation and their agencies with names that do precisely the opposite of what their names imply). The Health Board's job is to write the regulations that will arbitrarily deny healthcare surgeries, procedures and even medications, to some, or all, people under specific circumstances. For example, today, the Obama Health Board, now referred to by the Obama Administration as the "task force,"said that women do not need mammograms in their 40s and should not start getting them every two years beginning at age 50.

This is a startling departure from the position of the American Cancer Society's long standing position that women should begin getting mammograms at age 40. In fact, the American Cancer Society's chief medical officer Dr. Otis Brawley contradicted the Obama "task force," saying: "This is one screening test I recommend unequivocally, and would recommend that any woman 40 and over [have this done." But the Obama Death Board (since they will be the rationing gurus for Obamacare), temporary named the US Preventive Services Task Force, comprised of 18 medical bureaucrats and headed by Rahm Emanuel's brother, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, concluded that such early and frequent screenings often lead to false positive alarms and unnecessary biopsies without, they say, improving the woman's odds of survival. That, of course, is patently untrue. Compare the survival rates for women with breast cancer in the United States with women in the 18 industrialized nations with socialized healthcare and you will see the survival rates in the United States is the best in the world. Why? Because of early and often testing.

Breast cancer survivors whose cancer was diagnosed in their 30s and 40s were the most vocal critics of these new guidelines. Debbie Haynes, who was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer at age 33 after finding a lump during a self-exam said she thought this decision was "...a big step backwards." A mammogram and an ultrasound found the cancer, the biopsy confirmed it and a mastectomy and chemotherapy saved her life. "People are being diagnosed with breast cancer even in their early 20s," said Haynes, now 53, who is a volunteer coordinator for the Chicago-based Breast Cancer Network.

It's true that false positives are triggered from 10% to 20% of the time. So what? Give any woman a choice of [a] not screening for breast cancer and finding out too late that she has Stage 3 or Stage 4 breast cancer or [b] getting a false positive reading that scares them until a biopsy confirms what the mammogram found was a benign tumor or a cyst and I don't think any of them will pick [a] over [b].

Norman Hsu to be sentenced.
No mention of Hillary Clinton.
Sept. 29, 2009—the liberal Gannett USA Today reported today, on page 3A. that Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu faces sentencing in a New York Court. But there was no mention in the Pulitzer-quality 45 wor article that Hsu was a straw man for the People's Republic of China who acted as a bundler for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she gathered money in 2007 to run for the White House.in 2008. Hsu's saga with Hillary has to be referred to as Chinagate II after the Wall Street Journal broke the story that six members of one oriental family in Daley City, California—without the financial means to do so—donated between $213 abd $260 thousand to Democratic candidates since 2005. The William Paw family contributed $55 thousand of that money to Hillary. Over the past three years they gave her $102,300.00. You can bet if Hsu had been a bundler for any Republican—even a county dog catcher the left wing media would not have lost a heart-beat connecting the names and linking the dog catcher with the highest ranking Republican in office.

The red flag (pardon the pun) arose from the obviousl lack of affluence from the look of their poverty level 1,280 square foot house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. in Daley City. Paw was a USPS union reporesentative who earned $40 thosuand per year. It was unclear to anyone investigating the Paws how they could have contributed $213 thousand to Democratic candidates and another $14 thousand to candidates running for Statewide offices. Paw said he wanted to help the Democrats so he took out second mortgage. The Feds said Norman Hsu wasreimbursing them for the contributions they made. Myself, I think the wrong person is going to go to prison.

Kennedy dies from brain cancer
Aug. 26, 2009—Shortly before midnight last night, Aug.25, 2009, after battling brain cancer for a year, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy succumbed to the inoperable brain tumor at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He was 77 years old. News of his death triggered an outpouring of platitudes from Democrats and Republicans, and friends and political foes alike. Barack Hussein Obama issued a statement in which he said: "...an important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader..." Superlatives are great, even when the rhetoric doesn't match the man. But, people tend to forget the sins and vices of the man as they honor his memory. Then, five minutes after the funeral, they remember the sins even though the platitudes pen the legacy.

ABC News noted that Kennedy was elected to the Senate in 1962, taking the seat that his brother, former President John F. Kennedy, occupied before winning the White House. True—with a twist. When John Kennedy won the White House, Massachusetts Gov. Foster Furcolo appointed a caretaker senator, Glouchester mayor Benjamin Atwood Smith as a "seat warmer" until the President's brother attained age 30—the minimum constitutional age for holding a Senate seat. The Massachusetts political machine wanted to hold the seat for the younger brother. (Which, of course, is why Ted Kennedy implored the State legislator to change a law he had crafted that stripped the governor of the power to appoint interim US Senators so his widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, could be appointed to finish his term. Kennedy would have come up for reelection in 2012.) Ted Kennedy became 30 years of age on Feb. 22, 1962. A special election for Smith's Senate seat was held during the midterm elections on Nov. 6, 1962. Massachusetts politics is a lot like Chicago politics. Both leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

Because John F. Kennedy was a decorated war hero—something clan head Joe Kennedy believed was imperative for winning the White House, Teddy was schooled at the 200-year old Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. His grades were mediocre. The only thing he excelled in at Milton was football. Kennedy entered Harvard in the fall of 1950. Failing, he had a friend take his Spanish language exam in May, 1951 so he could maintain his eligibility to play football. Caught cheating, he was expelled. In June, 1951 Kennedy enlisted the US Army. Joe Kennedy's political power got his son a berth in the Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird following basic training at Fort Dix. But, Kennedy was apparently not intelligent enough for "intelligence." He was dropped from the program by the Army after a few weeks. His father arranged for Teddy to be transferred to Camp Gordon for military police training. Instead of going to Korea, Kennedy, the perpetual foul-up, was assigned to the color guard at SHAPE headquarters in Paris. He was discharged in March, 1953 as a private first class. So much for the war hero.

The socialist progressive far left believes the words of Obama whose short eulogy of Kennedy likened him to his brother, who is still fondly remembered by conservatives and liberals alike. Obama said: "An important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States senator of our time. For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance civil rights, health and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts." Just remember this, when Obama tries to use Kennedy's lifelong penchant to steal one-seventh of the US economy, and tries to use his death to rally moderates and liberals, who are afraid they will lose their jobs, around Obamacare and its death board provisions (which are contained in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and not in the America's Affordable Heath Choices Act of 2009), and does the "one more for the Gipper" speech, just remember—the Gipper is Ronald Reagan, not Ted Kennedy. And, if you want to know the Gipper's position of socialized medicine, you have it here.

Kennedy trying an old ploy to appoint,
rather than elect, his wife to replace him
Aug. 20, 2009—There is absolutely nothing that will cause a dead liberal politician to roll over in his grave faster than having the voters replace him with a conservative. In 2004 when antiwar left-wing Sen. John Kerry was running for President, the legislators in that State realized that if he prevailed in the general election, under State law at the time, moderate Republican governor Mitt Romney would be allowed to appoint Kerry's replacement for the remaining four years of Kerry's 4th term as a US Senator.. The Massachusetts legislature hurriedly changed the law, requiring a special election to be held within 5 months of any vacancy to replace the legislator whose seat was now vacated. In point of fact, Kennedy wants the State legislation to change the allow, again, to benefit the Democratic Party and, in this instance Vicki Kennedy, the Senator's wife. Kennedy wants her appointed to replace him, giving her a three year head start on those interested in the seat in 2012 when she would come up for reelection as the incumbent junior senator from Massachusetts (even though she told the Boston Globe that she has no interest in replacing her husband either temporarily or permanently.) Yeah, I'll believe that one—when pigs fly.

When the legislators changed Massachusetts law to prevent Romney from being able to appoint a Republican to replace Kerry, Kennedy argued this was the only equitable way to replace incumbents who die in office, retire, or run for, and win, some other position in government. Allowing governors to arbitrarily appoint replacements deprived the citizens of the right to choose their own legislators. That is, until you have a Democrat governor and the political climate so electrically-charged against Democrats that the likelihood of a Democrat being elected in liberal Massachusetts to replace a liberal incumbent with an inoperable brain tumor who is expected to die at any time is almost nil. If the election was held next Tuesday, the Republicans would have a super majority the US House of Representatives, and the GOP would have a 55 to 45 majority in the Senate. Ted Kennedy, one of the most socialist members of the US Senate, knows that only too well.

Kennedy, who knew full well that as a part of the ruling class of America he would never have to submit to the healthcare system he wanted to force on America, devoted most of his Senate career trying to destroy the private healthcare industry because no form of taxation known to man will generate more revenue into the coffers of big government than the taxes they can charge the people of the United States disguised as healthcare "premiums" when the government successfully steal the private health insurance industry and replace it with a mediocre healthcare system controlled by a bureaucracy whose idea of healthcare is spending endless millions of dollars to create brochures on eating healthy foods and washing your hands a cazillion times a day.

Kennedy has apparently now written what the Associated Press called a "...poignant letter" to State leaders (i.e., Democratic mucky-mucks) telling them that with so much at stake in Congress, he felt it was imperative that State law be changed to allow for the speedy replacement of him in the US Senate. The fact that Kennedy did not attend the funeral of his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver last week fueled speculation that Kennedy was close to the end. His letter to State leaders via the Boston Globe stirred up even more speculation about his imminent fate. Massachusetts State Senate Leader Therese Murray was adamant that since they just changed the law five years ago to accommodate Kennedy, it isn't likely they will be changing it again. House Speaker Robert DeLeo told the Globe that it is not likely that they will back another change, either. There are just so many times you feel justified playing musical chairs.

Stop for a moment and think about this. Wasn't Kennedy the guy bemoaning the fact that, in 2004, the people of the State were being denied their constitutional right to elect their representatives in both the House and Senate? Who does he think he's kidding? Not even the people in Massachusetts who apparently are dumb enough to elect people to Congress who are trying very hard to destroy this nation, are that stupid. But, like every other liberal in Congress, Kennedy wants to have his cake and eat it, too. But then Kennedy, who smells a socialist victory in the air, knows winning or losing the fight for socialized medicine in the Senate could be decided by one vote. Kennedy does not want to die one vote short of his socialist dream even though his dream will become a socialist nightmare for the people of Massachusetts.

Media ignored 429-to-2 House rebuke of Obama
July 29, 2009—If former President George W. Bush had been rebuked by the House of Representatives—particularly when it was controlled by the President's own party—by a margin of 429-to-2, it would have been the lead story on page A-1 in every newspaper in the country. It would not only have headlined the evening news on every TV network, it would have showcased the news with a segment analyzing how the President lost control of his own party. Yet, on July 9, 2009, when the House of Representatives rebuked Resident Barack Hussein Obama for telling Congress he was going to ignore the restrictions they placed on him in the 2010 supplemental spending bill for the State Department, the media—print and electronic—simply ignored the rebuke. In fact, they simply ignored the whole story. It apparently was not "news that was fit to print."

In a signing statement attached to the 2010 funding bill for the State Department and its foreign operations, which was enacted by Congress in June, Obama said that obeying the restrictions mandated by Congress would "...interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations and discussions."

A provision in that legislation required the US Treasury to provide Congress with an ongoing report on the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars in multilateral foreign assistance that would normally be dispersed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund [IMF]. The purpose of that stipulation was to control how US taxpayer funds, designated to foreign nations by the State Department, were spent. The provision was inserted into the 2010 spending bill by Rep. Kay Granger [R-TX], the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, and received enough bipartisan support to became law.

When the Democrats took back both Houses of Congress in Jan., 2007, Bush-43 began using signing statements to vacate specific provisions in laws. On April 10, 1997, the US District Court for DC overturned the line item veto (which was enacted by the Republican Congress and signed into law by former President Bill Clinton on April 6, 1996. Six liberal pork barrel Senators led by Sen. Robert Byrd [D-WV], challenged the line item veto. US District Court Judge Harry Jackson found the line item veto to be unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court remanded the case back to the District Court on June 26, 1997, ordering Jackson to dismiss the case filed by Byrd because, the high court said, the Senators had not proved they had been damaged. Byrd tried again when Clinton erased some pork from the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and when he cut two provisions from the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. Judge Thomas Hogan of the DC District Court also found the law unconstitutional. This time, in a 6-to-3 decision, the US Supreme Court agreed.

What that means is that Bush-43 could not attaching signing statements, revoking passages or ignoring passages in the laws he was signing—nor can Obama. Invalidate provisions with which he disagrees with that obligate the bureaucracy of the Executive Branch to obey all of the law. Signing statements that invalidate provisions of the law simply aren't a "presidential right by precedent." If Obama is unhappy with the fact that he does not possess the line item veto, he needs to blame Robert Byrd and several senior level pork barrel members of the House and Senate.

When Obama assumed for himself the dictator's imperial purple robe and asserted his authority over Congress by casually dismissing the oversight rules imposed on the Executive Branch in the legislation, the House members were stunned. Granger, who introduced the first measure as an amendment in the State Department funding bill, also introduced the rebuke of Obama that won the 429-to-2 vote to reaffirm the House of Representative's role as the keeper of the pursestrings of the nation with the sole constitutional authority to determine how the government spends the money that belongs not to the government, but to the People of the United States of America.

Senior members of Congress on both sides of the aisle railed at the notion that Obama believed he could arbitrarily ignore legislation they had passed and he had just signed into law. Angered, Barney Frank, one of those who led the fight to enact Obama's healthcare bill, issued a terse statement directed at the White House. "We do this..." the congressional rebuke began "...not just on behalf of this institution, but on behalf of democracy. There's a kind of unilateralism, an undemocratic, unreachable way about these signing statements."

Frank and Congressman Mark Kirk [R-IL] commented that one way to to get presidents to stop issuing signing statements that casually cast portions of the law into a recycle bin was to simply refuse to fund their priorities. The amendment passed will nullify Obama's signing statements—which are unconstitutional—by withholding the allocated funds from any agreement involving the Treasury Department if the Executive Branch fails to follow the conditions established in the supplemental funding bill. "The signal we send to the Treasury is very clear," Kirk said. "Ignore statute at your peril."

ACORN changes its name.
June 22, 2009—After two weeks of Glenn Beck and 14 months of investigations by the FBI for vote fraud, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now [ACORN] has changed its name to Community Organizers International. The new name is branded as a registered trademark. What that means is if the media and/or the blogger community and/or any whistleblowers use their new name in any manner not authorized by The-Organization-Formerly-Known-As-ACORN, they could be liable for monetary damages and injunctive relief.

Even though ACORN is shedding its tarnished shell, they will still attempt to block reporters and bloggers from using their old name to describe The-Organization-Formerly-Known-As-ACORN. ACORN'S general counsel, Arthur Schwartz sent cease and desist orders to Marcel Reid, the current Chairperson of DC ACORN 8 and fired ACORN board member Karen Inman, threatening them with lawsuits.

Inman was fired for asking for the financial records pertaining to the covered-up embezzlement of what was reportedly $1 million by ACORN founder Wade Rathke's brother Dale. When ACORN's board decided to prosecute Dale Rathke for the misappropriation of ACORN funds, the Tides Foundation reimbursed ACORN for its loss. It seems the money crowd that supports ACORN did not want their books opened for scrutiny. In the letter, Schwartz said "...it is a violation of federal and state law for you to use the ACORN name and mark without the written permission of ACORN. Should you continue to do so, you will be liable for monetary and injunctive relief." Schwartz intends to use under trademark or copyright infringement.

Reid told the media that her group, ACORN 8, knew "...for many months that the name ACORN [was] going to be retired. The name has been so damaged to the point where the leadership knows it simply can't go on as it has with the ACORN label out front and center, especially after all of the reporting....ACORN has been decapitated. The senior staff and current national board should be dismantled. The only way to have reform is for the current leadership to be removed completely. We also need a forensic audit." Expect the ACORN audit to take place about a day after the complete audit of the Federal Reserve.

USPS to cut service and raise prices...again
Feb. 20, 2009—Decrying a two decade-long erosion of 1st class person-to-person mail caused by the popularity of home-use computers in the 1980s and 90s and the advent of instant mail over snail mail. The United States Postal Service [USPS] has watched its business erode since 1952 when upstart package courier United Parcel Service [UPS] sued in federal court to set aside the 1930-era Interstate Commerce Commission [ICC] regulations that gave the USPS monopolistic rights to "deliver the mail."

The USPS, decrying lost bulk package delivery revenues to UPS, applied for an increase in the price of 1st class postage stamp—the first one since Nov. 3, 1917. On Aug. 1, 1958 1st class stamps increased from 3¢ to 4¢. In two decades the price of a 1st class stamp rose from 4¢ to 6¢—paralleling the rate of inflation. In 1970 Congress passed the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, divorcing the USPS from the federal government and, effective on July 1, 1971, making it a quasi-governmental independent postal system in order allow it to compete in the free enterprise system with UPS and Federal Express. And, of course, in the free enterprise system, prices escalate quickly. The 6¢ 1st class postage stamp rose to 8¢ in May, 1971; 10¢ in March, 1974; 13¢ in Dec., 1975. As the American people discovered cyber mail was faster—and free—in the 1980s and 90s, it suddenly cost a quarter to mail a snail mail letter. From Bush-41 to Clinton, four rate hikes took the price of the 1st class stamp from 25¢ to 34¢. During the Bush-43 years, there were five price increases, taking the price of the 1st class stamp from 34¢ to 42¢. From 2006 on, there has been a price increase every year. On May 11, 2009 the price of a 1st class stamp will rise to 44¢. On Jan. 18, 2009, the USPS raised prices for Express Mail, Priority Mail, Parcel Select and some international shipping products.

Excluding the US military, the USPS is the nation's second largest employer. Only Walmart employees more people than the Post Office. For that reason, the Postal Board of Governors believes that the Postmaster General of the United States should be paid like any other private enterprise corporate CEO. The GOP-controlled Congress enacted, and Bush-43 signed into law, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 that raised the annual pay of the US Postmaster General from $186 thousand to $235 thousand.

Federal compensation guidelines specify that top postal officials are limited to no more than 120% of the income earned by the Vice President of the United States. In 2008, Vice President Dick Cheney earned $221 thousand, thus the $258 thousand base paid to Potter. The Postal Board added deferred compensation to Potter's earnings because, they said, federal law makes it impossible to pay him even close to what equivalent jobs in the private sector pay.

The current, but soon to be replaced, Postmaster General is John Potter. He was appointed in June, 2001 by President George W. Bush. In the closing days of his tenure he has a newly beefed-up base wage of $258,840.00 plus a 2008 bonus of $135 thousand. This was a "performance bonus" even though the Post Office had a net loss of $2.8 billion last year (their fiscal year ran from Oct. 1, 2007 to Sept. 30, 2008). One-point-one billion of their annual loss happened in their third quarter (April-June, 2008). I guess profitable performance expectations at the Post Office just aren't that high for "part-time executives."

On top of that, a little-noticed regulatory filing in December, 2008 boosted his total compensation package almost fourfold—to twice the wage paid to the President of the United States. Potter's total compensation for 2008, including deferred retirement benefits and other executive perks, is $800 thousand. Postal Board members who approved the pay increase justified their action by noting that FedEx's chairman, Frederick W. Smith received $10.9 million in compensation for 2008. But then, Smith is not paid by forced largess of the taxpayers. Smith is paid from the proceeds received from FedEx's willing customers, sanctioned by the shareholders who own FedEx stock..Perhaps Potter should have taken a job in the private sector Particularly since the real work in the postal system fell to the purview of Deputy Postmaster Patrick Donahue who functions as the chief operating officer of the "company."

Potter was not the only postal chief to benefit from the largess of the taxpayers. Donahue received a $600 thousand compensation package in 2008 and Anthony Vegfliante, USPS's human resources director received just under $483 thousand. The top ten postal officials received exorbitant wage increases under the new law, with two of them receiving 2008 compensation packages that exceeded a quarter million dollars.

We are forced to wonder about just how good the USPS management is when a postmaster making almost a million dollars a year tells the taxpayers that they're thinking about cutting the pay of their carriers by 1/6th and eliminating Saturday mail deliveries because they can't afford to deliver mail six days a week. Or, when you hear reports that the USPS is preparing to lay off some 16 thousand postal employees because 1st class mail deliveries are off due to the nationwide slowdown in mail volume. The USPS denied that layoffs were planned even though it was reported in The Federal Times.

What the USPS did was to extend early-retirement offers to more than 156 thousand postal workers. In October, 2008, 3,700 USPS employees accepted the deal and left. Potter told the postal union at that time that he had identified 16 thousand workers who could be terminated without collective bargaining. That appears to have taken place in January, 2009. According to postal expert Murray Comarow, who led the commission that was responsible for restructuring the Post Office during the Nixon years, told the Federal Times that If the Postal Service couldn't increase mail volume and couldn't raise postal rates sufficiently to cover their losses, they would have to get rid of many post office employees. Which they did.

A Congressional report released last year revealed that third class mail (called "standard mail," or the term I prefer, "junk mail") now exceeds 1st class mail. Most first class mail, like second and third class mail, is business mail. But, with the liberals in control of Congress and the White House, it won't be much longer before the "private enterprise" Post Office will be asking for their own bailout. And, for a very brief moment in time, the quasi-free enterprise bureaucracy we know as the Post Office, will be profitable. Sadly, the consumers will no longer be able to afford to mail a letter.

Gas prices rise as oil prices fall.
Feb. 17, 2009—Here's a puzzler for you. On Dec. 1, 2008, unleaded gas at the pump averaged $1.81 per gallon. Last Friday (Feb. 13) it was $1.96 per gallon.. Conversely, a barrel of crude oil cost $49.28 on Dec. 1. That same barrel of crude cost $37.51 last Friday. Okay...what's going on? According to the executives at the Seven Sisters (the oil giants created by the court-ordered breakup of Standard Oil on May 15, 1911) when they were being raked over the coals by Congress a few months ago, and swore on a stack of Bibles (do they still do that in Congress?) they don't manipulate prices. The free enterprise system, they said, controls the volatility of prices. (I wonder if those who testify before Congress go there thinking that because Congressmen and Senators are notorious liars, that's its okay for them, in retaliation for all the lies they tell the voters, to lie, too?)

Clearly price manipulation is not being done by the futures market since that backfired on the money barons and actually started the financial problems we are now experiencing. The Seven Sisters have apparently reopened the playbook that was written by John D. Rockefeller, Sr. in the 19th century. You control the consumption of oil not by raising the price of oil at the well head, but at the pump. When Standard Oil was born, it was not an oil-drilling company. It was a refinery. The problem Rockefeller faced then is the same problem the Seven Sisters face today. And, its not oil shortages. It never was. It's too much oil. And, doggone if they don't keep finding more of it. Before he left office in January, former President George W. Bush had to declare 335,561 thousand square miles of the Pacific Ocean—over 6,000 miles from the Pacific shoreline of the United States—as a protected US National Park. Why? Because a joint Standard Oil-People's Republic of China IPO discovered what will ultimately prove to be the largest oil and natural gas find in the history of the world that spreads from the Marianna Islands to the foot of the Hawaiian Island chain. The seabeds in that 335 thousand square miles of ocean is now protected from any country poaching on those oil reserves until such time as the Seven Sisters and China are ready to harvest that wealth.

In the meantime, back on the homefront—eyebrows are being raised as consumers notice the price of crude oil dropping as the price of gasoline at the pump keeps inching up. Someone needs to hook the Seven Sisters executives up to a lie detector and ask why that's happening.

The answer is as simple as it is complex. Part of the problem is greedy merchant princes. Part of the problem is arrogant and self-interested environmentalists. And most of the problems is stupid consumers who believe the garbage spit at them by watermelon politicians (reds posing as greens). In reality, the Seven Sisters understand that you control by price of oil by controlling its availability. You don't do this at the well head You do it at the refinery. In the late 1860s, just after the Cilvil War, Rockefeller mastered the principle of the law of supply and demand. When something is in short supply and everyone needs it, the price goes up. At times, because the crude oil market was so volatile, the wood slats in the barrels the oil was shipped in to the refinery was worth more at the end of the day than the oil inside the barrel. Rockefeller and refiners like him fought back. They created shortages in a world where striking oil was as commonplace and tying your shoelaces by simply refusing the cartage. Drillers retaliated by building their own refineries until finally kerosene, the primary luminance for home lighting, was selling for less than it cost to extract the raw crude from the ground.

Rockefeller knew that to stabilize the luminance industry two things had to happen. First, he had to control oil production in the United States—from the amount of oil sucked from the Earth to the amount of kerosene manufactured. Plus he had to find a more economical way to get the crude to the market—and keep his competition from doing the same. Rockefeller succeeded beyond his wildest imagination. By 1885 Standard Oil controlled 85% of all of the oil refining in the world. In the United States today, the Seven Sisters virtually controls or greatly influences all of the refining of crude oil in the United States.

Thanks to the environmentalists, almost every independent refinery is now out of business. Only 17% of the oil refined in this country comes from independent refineries. Fifty-six percent comes from the largest Seven Sister companies: ExxonMobil, ConcocoPhillips, and BP-Amoco. In addition there is Valero (which was formerly a defunct subsidiary of Cosatal States Gas called LoVaca Gathering Co.), and Royal Dutch Shell which is a European equivalent to any of the Seven Sisters. The smaller members of the Seven Sisters, and the larger independents of which the Seven Sisters owns sizable shares and, thus, is able to influence their boards, produce about 22% of the refined products. It's kind of what you would call a closed cartel.

All of them understand the principle of the law of supply and demand. Cut the supply, the demand rises and so does the price. The refineries argue there are shortages right now for several reasons. First, there is greatly reduced consumer demand because people don't have money to spend, so they driving as much. When demand is anemic, you cut back on the supply since its not needed. Second, several refineries said that, typically at this time of the year, some units are shut down for maintenance to make sure when there is peak demand in the summer that they are able to produce the product. If you believe that one, I've got a nice four-lane bridge in The Sahara Desert I'd like to sell you. An oil analyst interviewed by Gannett Newspapers suggest that consumers "...go easy on the poor refiner," adding, "...if you're losing money on something and you're producing at 90%, you're going to cut back." The analyst feels since the robber barons managed to leverage the price of oil to $150 barrel before the Bush-43 Administration threatened to create a national oil refinery, and the price of crude began to tumble on the world markets (they said, because of new oil field discoveries) they should be entitled to reduce production so they didn't have to sell too much cheap oil.

"If there's no demand," chimed Bill Day, a spokesman for Valero Energy Corporation's San Antonio headquarters, "there's really not a whole lot of point to making extra gasoline." Oil analyst Tom Kloza agreed with Day, saying that US refiners did not slash production fast enough during the last quarter when the global crude market was weak, and, as a result, too much supply lowered prices too much in the United States.

So, the free enterprise system controls the price of crude...and the price of gasoline at the pump is controlled by "market forces?" Since its not likely the oil industry, which claims its been losing money on every gallon of gasoline its sold for the last couple of months, is going to convince Congress they, too, should have some type of bailout, they're creating their own stimulus package. Cut production, create demand and, when the price gets back up over $3 a gallon, they will produce enough gasoline so that the American consumer can drive to the poor house.

Circuit City bites the dust—will close by March.
Feb. 9, 2009—Here's a tip for America's chain store retail executives. When your high-priced MBA bean counters tell you that you need to layoff your highest paid employees in austerity moves and replace them with minimum wage workers, do yourself a favor and fire the bookkeepers. They're wrong. Your highest employees are the highest paid employees because they produce the most business for your company. Business owners in nonunion companies reward those best who generate the most revenue for the corporation. They do it selfishly because they don't want to lose those employees.

When the beancounters tell the employer it doesn't make sense to pay a handful of employees considerably more than their newer employees who earn minimum wage, its time to fire the beancounters. Why? Because in places like Circuit City, the highest paid employees a couple of years ago were the commissioned sales people who had to move a lot of product out the door in order to earn a decent wage. When you eliminate the pay incentive by firing the commissioned sales people and replacing them with hourly employees who are not incentivized to move product out the door, product stops going out the door. In the case of Circuit City, you can't blame their demise on the financial crisis or the "economic catastrophe. Plain and simple, you need to blame it on their head beancounter. Once again, a sales decision was made by the bureaucrats with red pencils.

When a retail chain the size of Circuit City closes, the trickle-down damage will reverberate through the local communities where they were located for quite some time. The remaining 567 Circuit City stores were located in 45 States and directly impacted the incomes of 34 thousand store employees and vendor reps whose jobs will be gone when the going-out-of-business sales are over. (Circuit City fired 7 thousand in the 2007 austerity move that quickened their demise.) Their departure from the retail community will leave 18.71 million square feet of empty floorspace in malls and shopping centers across the country. This will impact commercial real estate industry that is already teetering from the collapse of the financial market. There will be no rent growth in the commercial real estate market for the balance of this year, and probably 2010 as well. Since, in most malls, Circuit City was an anchor store, along with a supermarket on the opposite end of the retail complex, the collapse of Circuit City will not bode well for shopping center management companies since the traffic that used to go to Circuit City will likely be going to across town to Best Buy, which is expected to pick up most of the customoers Circuit City had.

The mini domino affect will be that the small retailers—both chain and independent—that feed off the traffic created by the anchor stores, will lose the traffic generated by the heavy advertising of the anchor stores. Their revenue streams will slow down and, eventually, many of the small shops that relied on the traffic of the super stores will close as well.

GM will use US bailout to invest $3.51 billion
in Brazilian auto plant renovations and three
other new auto assembly and parts plants
Nov. 25, 2008—According to GM-Brazil president Jaime Ardila in an interview with the Argentina Star and the Latin American Herald Tribune in Caracas, Venezuela on Nov. 24, General Motors will invest at least $1 billion of its bailout windfall from the US government in the renovation of GM-Brazil's assembly plant in San Paulo. In addition to the San Palo renovations, GM will be investing another $250 million in an engine and small parts factory in Brazil. Also on tap is a new $600 million Chevrolet production plant in Rio Grande do Sul that will churn out 100 thousand new Chevrolet cars. Also coming will be a $500 million components plant in Santa Catarina and $150 million for for a body-parts plant in Sao Paulo. GM acknowledged the four Brazilian auto plants will cost the company $3.5 billion at a time when it is crying that it could go bankrupt. GM is asking the US Congress for a $25 billion bailout that will ultimately be paid by the sweat equity of children and grandchildren of working class Americans.

In addition to the 4 Brazilian plants, GM announced last month it had just opened a $300 million state-of-art assembly plant in Russia and another plant in India. GM has invested over $1 billion on its assembly plants in India. Thus far, the world's largest auto maker has spent over $5 billion on GM assembly plants in China. GM announced that it would invest another $1 billion in China in 2009. According to the Argentina Star the increased investment in South America will coincide with more plant closings in the United States. Any US Congressman or Senator who votes in favor of the auto bailout needs to be impeached or recalled by the State he or she represents and immediately removed from office.

Ardila said the announcement by GM of the forthcoming infusion of eight billion reais ($3.51 billion, US) into the Brazilian auto industry has already begun to "revive sales." The Brazilian GM plant churned out 2.85 million units this year and expects, even with the expected recession, to produce 2.6 million units in 2009.

When reporters from the Brazilian newspaper, Gazeta Mercantil, suggested that statements made by GM, Chrysler and Ford in Washington, DC about the possibility of going bankrupt without the bailout made it sound like GM was likely to scale back its Brazilian commitment, Ardila said: "It wouldn't be logical to withdraw the investment from where [GM] is growing, and our goal is to protect investments in emerging markets." Ardila said the economic situation in the world made GM scale back its 2009 sales projections by 14% from $11 billion to $9.5 billion.

According to the Frankfort, Germany newspaper, Allgmeine Zeitung, GM subsidiary, Opel, is seeking EU500 million in loan guarantees from the German government in the event the United States denies the GM bailout. What that means is that GM expects US taxpayers to bailout GM's failing Opel division as well. The regional parliament in the German state of Hesse where Opel is located voted unanimously to approve the loan package—but only in the event that General Motors goes bankrupt.

In an interview published on Nov. 23, GM-Europe head Carl-Peter Forster told the Welt am Sontag Sunday newspaper that General Motors Corporation will neither fire German workers nor would it close its failing factories in its German Opel unit. "Closures, sales of factories or job cuts [in Germany] are not only the agenda," Forster told the newspaper. (Further closures in the successful GM plants in the United States are, unfortunately, part of GM's corporate strategy as the world's retail giants seek new consumers to purchase their wares in the human capital-rich emerging nations where they are relocating their factories.) However, according to Ardila, when GM receives the bailout money from Congress, a new round of plant closures with take place—but all of them will be in the United States. So much for protecting US jobs with a US taxpayer-funded bailout.

New vehicle sales in the United States are down 28% from this date a year ago. However, automotive sales in the United States for October are up 1.9%. GM has experienced a 28% global decline in sales this year. Ford's sales have slid 33% and Chrysler posted a drop of 42%. The sales drop, however, is not exclusively a problem felt only by traditionally American-branded vehicles. Toyota's sales dropped 24%. Honda experienced a sales decline of 21% and Nissan's sales plummeted 29%. Responding to weak sales, Honda announced last week it would furlough workers in one British factory for two months and reduce output in Japan and Europe. For Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai, the United States is the "foreign market" they are trying to capture and holding jobs to hold market share is important to them.

The combined penetration in the US market by GM, Ford and Chrysler-branded vehicles (made worldwide) is now 47%, down from 51% last year. Standard & Poor noted that US light vehicle sales (for all auto brands) thus far in 2008 totaled 13.3 million vehicles. At this time last year, US consumers purchased 16.1 million vehicles (all global brands), a drop of 2.8 million units. Standard & Poor projected that US light vehicle sales for 2009 will only reach 12.3 million units. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are in financial trouble because they have been using the purchasing power of the US consumer to finance their dalliances in global expansion.

Since the steady, never-ending jobs drain began when President Bill Clinton and the Democratically-controlled 104th Congress installed the NAFTA swinging door at the gateway to both Canada and Mexico in 1994 and jumpstarted the job exodus that eventually became a tsunami, it was inevitable that, sooner rather than later, US consumers would no longer have the financial wherewithal to purchase the goods offered by the strumpets of industry and the mercantile courtesans. Congress is singularly responsible for the jobs drain. We, the People, do not intend to stand by and let the same politicians who stole our jobs, and our paychecks, by allowing greedy transnational industrialists to send those jobs to the third world—without financial penalty—now reach into our pockets for what money's left, and give $25 to $50 billion that we will be expected to pay back, to the same industrialists who will use that money to finance their commitments to other nations.

Any US Congressman or Senator who votes in favor of the auto bailout needs to be impeached or recalled by the State he or she represents and immediately removed from office. This is the time to act. Contact your Congressmen and Senators. Let them know you will join a movement to remove them from office if they vote in favor of the bailout...and then, do it! Empty threats will not restore our nation.

City threatens blind woman with a property
lien over an unpaid utility bill for a penny.
Nov. 20, 2008—-The City of Attleboro, Massachusetts in Bristol County has 43,502 residents—most of whom were shocked yesterday to learn that the city sent a 74-year odl blind woman, Eileen Wilbur, a dun letter for a penny—that cost the taxpayers of the City of Attleboro 42¢ to mail. The letter demanded the immediate payment of an outstanding utility bill—for 1¢. The letter notified Wilbur that if the delinquency was not paid by December 10, the city would place a $48 lien on Wilbur's next property tax bill. If the 1¢ overdue utility bill and the $48 lien for her failure to pay the penny was not paid, her property could then legally be seized for the 1¢ delinquent utility bill or for the unpaid $48 utility lien. The city would then have the right to sell Wilbur's home at public auction. Wilbur, a 49-year resident of the city, has lived at this address, 16 Glenn Street in Attleboro since 1959.

The question that leaves one cause for wonder is, since this penny was due from a prior utility bill, and homeowners pay monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly utility bills everywhere in the nation, why was the penny not simply added to a subsequent bill where it would have been automatically paid by the homeowner when they paid their utilities?

Eileen Wilbur said she learned of the outstanding 1¢ utility bill, and the threatened lien, when her daughter, Rose Brederson, came over to her house to read her mail. (This suggests the city had failed to simply incorporate the overdue amount on her next utility bill, or to attach a note to those bills that there was an overdue amount pending on her account.) The notice was dated Nov. 10, 2008, notifying Wilbur that she had 30 days to cure the default before action would be taken against her. The $48 dollar lien would be assessed on her next property tax bill.

When her daughter read the notice, Wilbur said, "It was so upsetting, it sent my blood pressure up so high. They wasted taxpayer money on the letter," she added, noting the 42¢ cost of the stamp to collect a penny.

When the local Sun Chronicle newspaper questioned Attleboro City Collector Debora Marcoccio about paying 42¢ to dun someone for a penny, Marcoccio defensively responded: "It would have been fiscally irresponsible for me to have staff weed through the bills and pull out any below a certain amount. And what would that amount be?" How about any amount for which it cost more to collect than the city would receive? But, to an illogical bureaucrat—particularly a liberal Blue State illogical bureaucrat—exacting every cent a taxpayer owes is "job one." Marcoccio told the Sun Chronicle reporter that Attleboro is holding firm that any amount owed to the city must be paid, adding that the city would not waive any balance that is due them. "If there's a bill," she said, "it must be paid." Spoken like a true Massachusetts liberal. Is Marcoccio an elected official or a city employee? If she's a city employee, she needs to be fired for displaying a lack of common sense. If she's elected, the people of Attleboro got what they deserve for voting for her.

More and more often, utility companies are
cutting off the lights, the gas and the phone
June 26, 2008—-As gas prices continue skyrocket, what little discretionary income remains in the homes of struggling America dwindles as homeowners struggle to makes ends meet. When consumers can't make their biweekly paychecks stretch to the end of the month, they frantically search for bills they can "put off" which they think will not impact their credit scores. Making hard choices, more and more consumers—even those with solid middle class incomes—opt to skip paying their utility bills believing as long as they pay their credit cards, car payment and mortgages they will maintain their credit scores and, when they really need to, they will be able to borrow their way out of tough times.

A recent survey taken by the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association [NEADA] (which subsidizes home heating and cooling bills for the elderly and the needy) indicated that electricity and gas non-pay shutoffs are up by 15% nationwide—and not just for low income homes in financial distress. The NEADA noted that 8% of the four-member households earning $33 to $55.5 thousand have suffered electricity and gas nonpayment disconnects this year. The disconnects are the result of cold winters in States with moratoriums against non-pay disconnects in the winter months with consumers who failed to catch up by the end of May. The disconnects are escalating as unseasonable heat waves ripple across the nation's heartland.

Most States are reporting increases in service terminations. Detroit Edison reported terminations are up 56%. Edison of Southern California has reported an increase of 14% and People's Gas in Chicago reported non-pay interruptions are up 27%. Duke Energy in North Carolina is averaging about 11 thousands service interruptions a month, or an increase of about 14%. The highest increase reported was from PPL Electric in Pennsylvania which reported a 168% increase over last year. A PPL spokesman noted that the utility will not cut off service until the resident's arrearages exceed $250, and the consumer either refuses to set up a payment plan or reneges on their promise after a payment agreement is made.

Homeowners blame not only the escalating price of gasoline, but the skyrocketing price of food and other commodities for the drain on the family's financial resources. What most consumers don't know is that their credit scores are determined not only on how they pay their credit cards, installment payments, car payment and mortgage, but on how they pay their gas, electric, phone bills and even their car insurance premiums—and whether they shop around for credit. You know the TV ads you see from e.companies like Lending Tree which suggests that smart consumers shop for the best "interest" bargains? Actually, they don't. When they do, their credit scores plummet because it appears they are applying for credit through multiple companies at the same time (which suggests the consumer is in a financial crisis not shopping for the lowest interest rates).

Tancredo wants to yank the welcome mat
May 19, 2008—Congressman Tom Tancredo [R-CO] thinks its time the United States picked up the nation's welcome mat and shook it a couple times in order to shake a few archaic ideas from it. Namely that babies born to illegal aliens who are in this country illegally specifically to give birth should be construed to be lawful citizens of the United States. Tancredo, one of the two best presidential candidates who was forced out of the 2008 presidential race for lack of funds, and has opted not to seek re-election to his US House seat this fall, says that illegals are taking advantage of "birthright citizenship" by sneaking into the United States to have their babies, believing their offspring's birthright citizenship will anchor them firmly on American soil.

Tancredo noted that an estimated 300 thousand babies are born to illegals in the United States every year, and automatically become US citizens when their birth certificates are filled out by the hospitals where they are born. Tancredo said he finds it this US policy to be somewhat peculiar: any person born in the United States—even if their parent[s] are here illegally are granted a gift that millions of foreigners around the world would give everything the possess in this world to have—US citizenship.

The Colorado Congressman recalled being told by Joseph Riley, the CEO of the McAllen Texas Medical Center that sits just on the US side of the Texas-Mexican border of seeing mothers about to give birth walking to the hospital, still dripping wet from swimming the Rio Grande while they were in actual labor, dirty, wet and cold, to have their baby in the United States, but knowing they had to have that baby in a US hospital where the birth would be officially recorded.

Tancredo is right. It's time to yank the welcome mat, and close the door. The United States is now finding itself facing the same problems as the industrialized nations of Europe. Those who hate us most are taking over our countries. It's time to stop the insanity and restore the American dream to those whose sweat equity created it. Natural born or legally naturalized citizens. If the impoverished want to come here, let them come here in the same fashion as Europe and Asia's impoverished came in the 1890s, the 1900s and the 1940s and 50s. Let them learn the language, let them learn our customs, let them learn our history and let them apply for visas. And, when you come, don't come with an outstretched hand asking what this country can give you, follow the words of John F. Kennedy, and ask what you can give this country. And, you can start by defending it.

Why should I pay so you can get drunk?
Feb. 29, 2008—Beer drinkers take note. Fergal Murray, the brewmaster for the legendary Irish brew, Guiness, is coming to Washington, DC. Is DC having a Bobby Flay "beer throw-down?" No. Murray is lending his celebrity status as the world's foremost brewmaster to aid the lobbying of Congress to make St. Patrick's Day an official national holiday in the United States. Think about it. A beer-drinking holiday where working class stiffs (who will almost certainly end up stiff) can fill their oversized bellies with Guiness or some of the hard liquor Diageo/Guiness substitute like J&B, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, or Baileys.

BeerAdvocate.com—a Guiness project—(who even knew such a website existed?) has launched a cyber-petition to make March 17 a real, honest-to-goodness beer/booze-guzzling national holiday. In the spirit of green beer, Murray will be visiting pubs all over the nation's capital—followed by stops in as many of the beer-drinking cities in America where he hopes to find enough sober people to collect a million signatures (from 21+ year olds) by midnight on March 16, 2008. With much fanfare, the petitions will be delivered to Congress on Monday, March 17. I expect the petitions will be personally delivered to the nation's top drunk, Teddy Kennedy. And, I expect a ton of holiday-loving beer and booze drinkers will be ecstatic over such a notion. They can go to proposition317.com and sign an online petition. The mouse-operated virtual pen allows you to actually scrawl your own signature. But you have to be 21-years of age or older to sign—and you should be sober enough to write..

If you're wondering why Murray doesn't devote his efforts to making St. Patty's Day a national holiday in the country where the Blarney Stone and Guiness beer are national shrines, its because there are nine times as many Irish-blooded beer drinkers here than there are in all of Ireland (plus a 100 million more who are Irish one day a year).

Which brings us to the reality of this scenario. Why should I have to pay so you can get drunk on St. Patty's Day? Making St. Patrick's Day a national holiday means—as far as the federal government goes—someone is asking me to foot a chunk of the bill to pay some 2,483,202 civilian federal government workers to have a day off so they can go out, drink green beer, act like a fool and get drunk on my dime. Granted, as much as I would love to see all of the government offices—and the legislature—closed (since that means Congress is not creating any new laws), I don't think I want my tax dollars used to fund a new national holiday where the taxpayers are obligated to give close to 2.5 million bureaucrats a paid day off so they can drink green beer and have a hangover the next day.

Calderon claims sovereignty over US soil.
Less than eight months after replacing Vicente Fox, Mexican President Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa has morphed into a dangerous facsimile of Nazi despot Adolph Hitler and, sadly, President George W. Bush is starting to look a little too much like Neville Chamberlain. In his televised State of the Union address to the Mexican people from the National Palace in Mexico City on September 2, Calderon said "...Mexico does not stop at its borders. That means wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico. And, for this reason, the government action on behalf of our countrymen is guided by principles, for the defense and protection of their rights."

Calderon also bragged in his speech that he created 618 thousand jobs in Mexico since taking office in January. In point of fact, Calderon simply held open the already swinging door between the United States and Mexico and gave the one finger wave to American industrialists who were exporting both factories and jobs from US cities to Mexico in order to capitalize on cheap labor and the lack of binding arbitration laws South of the border at the expense of the US labor pool whose sweat equity built those companies from mom and pop operations to transnational giants.

Ignoring the fact that the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 requires US law enforcement to go after US employers who hire illegal aliens—and to prosecute them—Calderon protested the increase in raids by Immigration Control and Enforcement [ICE] agents on US employers hiring illegal aliens in violation of US law. Calderon said that what Bush is doing is "...little more than a faint nod" to his responsibility to enforce US immigration law. (Calderon might be surprised to know that 78% of the American people agree with that assessment. Bush is not even coming close to doing his job.) In his speech Calderon complained that The Department of Homeland Security was sending out notices to US employers that the Social Security Administration was sending notices informing employers of non-matches between employees' names and their Social Security numbers. The employer must resolve the discrepancies with 90 days or be forced to fire the employee—or face a $10,000 fine for knowingly employing an illegal alien. (Author's note: I wonder if Social Security will be sending the mismatch list to the US government since the Bush-43 Administration is the nation's largest employer of illegal aliens?)

Calderon's speech suggests—and, in the United States, the overt action of the National Council of La Raza, the League of United Latin American Citizens [LULAC], the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund [MALDEF] and the Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (the most radical of all of the Hispanic groups)—that Mexico has claimstaked all of the land Mexico ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, signed between the United States and Mexico at the end of the Mexican-American War on Feb. 2, 1848. The land ceded to the United States included all of what is now California, Nevada and Utah and parts of what is now Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming—or 525,000 square miles of what is now some of the most valuable real estate in the Western United States. Simply put, Mexico—or the Hispanic advocacy groups causing civil unrest in the southwest—wants the land back. They view the citizens of the United States, not the illegal aliens flooding across the border in an unbroken stream, as the squatters.

On Sept. 2, Calderon continued his televised tirade against the United States by saying: "We strongly protest the unilateral measures taken by the US Congress and government that have only persecuted and exacerbated the mistreatment of Mexican undocumented workers. The insensitivity towards those who support the US economy and society has only served as an impetus to reinforce the battle...for their rights," adding "where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico...Mexico does not end at its borders."

Like Hitler did to England, Calderon is doing to America. Calderon is confident that even if Bush engages in media saber-rattling, the the weak-knee sissies who control both the House and Senate will hold the cowboy in check since the US military is not in a position to fight another war—particularly when this one would be on the US-Mexican border. Calderon is confident that the United States will do what England did in 1939—make even more concessions. Tough talk, Hitler discovered from 1937 to 1939, gets tangible results. Hitler's conquest of Europe began before the first shots were ever fired. Conquest begins with the concessions of men afraid to call the bluff.

The eradication of any nation's sovereignty begins with the erasing of its borders.

Over 200 illegals using one
housewife's social security number
June 22, 2006—Audra Schmierer realized someone else was using her Social Security number in February, 2005 when she got a notice from the Internal Revenue Service demanding payment of $15,813.00 in back income taxes. Schmierer is an housewife in Dublin, California who has not worked since the birth of her son in 2000. The taxes were due from a job in Texas—somewhere Schmierer has never lived, and from an employer for whom she's never worked.

Schmierer was shocked to learn from the IRS when they checked that dozens of people were using her Social Security number—200 of them to be exact. In 17 States. The federal government knew a lot of different people were using Schmierer's Social Security for quite some time. They' knew because the IRS computers spit out the duplicate use of Social Security numbers whenever they happen—as soon as they happen. When duplicates occur, the Internal Revenue Service assumes its not fraud, and sends letters to the employers notifying them of an error in the use of the offending number. Other than fining the business owner $50 for each inaccurate number submitted, there isn't much the IRS can do. While it is a crime to use someone else's Social Security number, it is not the job of the IRS to track down purveyors of false ID. It's the job of the FBI—but its also one of those authority "gray areas" since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. If ID counterfeiters create bogus identification for illegal aliens, the crime falls under the purview of Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] so usually raids on bogus ID mills are joint FBI and ICE operations.

Schmierer was told by the IRS that over 81 people were currently earning incomes on her Social Security number. When she started digging, Schmierer obtained over 200 W-2s and 1099 tax forms that contained her Social Security number but different names. The IRS assured her that the erroneous tax bills would be wiped out. But, they warned her, the problem was going to continue as long as illegal aliens were able to buy bogus ID containing her Social Security number since Social Security numbers aren't like credit card numbers where you simply cancel the card and issue a new number.

Laborers from Florida to Washington State were using her Social Security number to secure employment in construction, high tech companies and fast food restaurants. Some of those using it were men. Some were women. Information gleaned from FBI investigations of many of them determined that the majority of the users of Schmierer's Social Security number were illegal immigrants. Illegals purchase phony identification from underground ID mills that can be found in every urban center in the country. The going rate for a bogus Social Security card, green card or driver's license is $80 to $125. If the "customer" is Muslim the price could be higher since the quality of the workmanship will have to be much better. Most counterfeiters can turn out an ID package consisting of all three documents within 30 minutes to three hours for the typical Mexican "customer."

Some of the documents are good enough to fool a cop checking a pedestrian's ID, but most of them aren't good enough to fool a computer if the ID is run for warrants. Unfortunately, most of the employers who hire illegals aren't concerned about whether or not their identification is genuine—or even if its poor quality. They simply want to cover their butts in case an ICE agents asks to check the I-9 completed by the job applicant to make sure they possessed a green card, a Social Security card and a drivers' license when they applied for their job.

Around 6 a.m. on Tuesday, June 20 FBI and ICE agents raided a two-bedroom apartment on 16th St. NW in Washington, DC. They woke the eight Hispanic men who were sleeping there and arrested them. Taken into custody were Eladio Espinoza-Cuevas, 50; Andrews Angel Vasquez-Soriano, 41; Alberto Martin Vasquez-Soriano, 40; Luis Vasquez, 33; Julio Cesar Pacheco-Vasquez, 24; Cesar Cuevas-Mendez, 24; Luis Angel Mendez-Hernandez, 21; and Juan Antonio Pacheco-Vasquez, 20. Luis Vasquez faces federal charges for immigration fraud. The others face similar charges, but will likely be deported instead of charged.

Agents found more than 100 fake documents in the apartment. The feds also found electronic devises used to counterfeit the documents they sold. Also found was about $14 thousand in cash. The ring that was broken is thought to be part of an international ID ring run by the Castorena-Ibarra family—whose leader was just arrested in Mexico.

ICE agents said the ring distributes their bogus IDs throughout the country, They have ties with groups in Detroit, Baltimore and Chicago. These group has been under surveillance by ICE since shortly after 9-11. The task force has already arrested 195 people. All of them except one were illegal aliens. Most of them were Mexican although Hispanics from other Central American countries were also arrested. Over 10 thousand counterfeit documents with a street value of more than a million dollars were seized. The federal government prosecuted 60 illegals thus far. Some were charged with aggravated identity theft—which carries a minimum of 2 years in prison; others were charged with counterfeiting fraudulent immigration documents which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of $250 thousand.

There is little satisfaction for people like Audra Schmierer who have had their Social Security numbers stolen and can expect, every two to three years, to receive a letter from the IRS dunning them for unpaid taxes and penalties or threatening them with jail for not filing a 1040 on income earned in Texas, California, or somewhere else she's never been.

Greenspan warns of bubble on "exotic" mortgages
June 21, 2005—Everyone's buying a new home. Home ownership in America is skyrocketing—so are the unsustainable prices not only of new homes but existing homes whose appraised values have likewise skyrocketed because of the tremendous increase in home building both east and west of the Mississippi . And that, according to Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is a major part of the problem now facing the Fed and the American banking community. The other part of the problem is centered around some of the creative financing and exotic home loans being offered to new home buyers and existing home owners seeking to refinance their homes to lower their current mortgage payments.

What disturbs Greenspan most is the explosion of interest-only home loans (for the first year or two that help home buyers qualify for homes they could not otherwise afford—and should not be buying) and what the chairman describes as "exotic" adjustable-rate mortgages over the last 12 months to bolster the housing market when it began to sag. Further, unscrupulous mortgage brokers who earn an income only when they sell a mortgage, are persuading cash-strapped home owners who "overbought" five or ten years ago to refinance with an adjustable rate or modified rate debt-consolidation mortgage to reduce their monthly outlay. Mortgage brokers earn the sale by showing the home owner repayment schedules that include all of the debts to be consolidated in the new adjustable rate mortgage verses the new mortgage payment minus all other debt. Cash-strapped home owners think they just discovered the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It looks good on paper, but people who abuse credit cards will suddenly find, with all their credit cards paid off, they have a lot of available credit to abuse all over again.

Greenspan told the Washington Times that the majority of the new home-purchase loans today are designed to minimize initial monthly payments so the buyers can qualify for more expensive homes than they could otherwise buy. The loan brokers, in selling mortgages to the prospective buyer, suggest that, in three to five years, the prospective home owners' incomes will increase exponentially and they will be in a better position to pay the whole mortgage payment. To encourage them to sign, they remind them that if they decide to wait, within three to five years—when they can afford the home they are considering—with rising prices, they won't be able to buy that home since it will likely double in value by then.

If the mortgage broker finds the unsuspecting buyers a mortgage that offers both a variable interest rate and a modified principle clause, the home buyers are setting themselves up for a foreclosure sale before they ever move into their new home. As long as interest rates remain extremely low, the home buyer will be relatively safe. However, if interest rates rise substantially about the same time the exemption from paying any of the principle expires, the homeowner is going to have a mortgage payment 30% to 50% higher than it was when the home was purchased. On a $400 thousand to $600 thousand home, a principle-free, adjustable rate mortgage might start as low as $2,500 a month—and unexpectedly mushroom to $3,500 to $4,000 or more a month with no warning. Mortgage brokers aren't concerned whether or not you can afford the payments on your new home once the papers are signed. They get paid for originating the loan.

"To be sure," Greenspan admitted, "these financing vehicles have their appropriate uses. But to the extent that some households may be employing these instruments to purchase a home that would otherwise be unaffordable, their use is beginning to add to the pressure in the marketplace." Greenspan noted that the bubble in some of the nation's hottest real estate markets is due to the drop in interest rates and the exotic mortgage packages being offered to people who probably cannot afford the homes they are buying. But even more troubling to Greenspan is reversal pricing. During a housing boom, home prices spiral upward because of the demand. Real estate brokers know, in many markets, the homeowner's asking price is the place where prospective purchasers begin bidding for the home. But as Greenspan noted, when the bubble bursts—and they always do—reverse pricing results when reality sinks in and demand establishes the new value of the home.

Just as reality caused the i-tech bubble to burst when the overpriced internet stocks collapsed and retirement accounts vanished overnight, reverse pricing will topple the inflated values of a ton of million dollar homes. All that will be left of the unrealistic value of the homes will be the tax assessments. When home sales die in any market, foreclosure rates increase proportionately—and Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, or HUD take the financial hit since they guaranteed the loans to the mortgage banks that extended the credit. But ultimately it is the taxpayers who discover they are paying for million dollar public housing units that no one except the welfare crowd can afford.

Greenspan noted that "...although we can't rule out home-price declines, especially in some local markets, these declines, were they to occur, likely would not have substantial macro-economic implications." That will be of little a comfort to the middle-income couples who buy a new $750 thousand home, live in it for a year or two, get transferred, and discover when realtors try to sell their beautiful albatross that—in that particular post-bubble "local" real estate market—$750 thousand dollar homes are now selling for $450 thousand.

By the way, does it seem strange to you that Greenspan noted the residential building boom is international? It doesn't seem strange to me. He also suggested that he is clueless why this international building boom is taking place. Perhaps we should tell him. The residential home building boom, fed by billions of dollars from the world's richest industrialists who have an interest in making it appear that the world economy—and in particular the economies of the industrial nations that are losing roughly 30% of all of their jobs to the emerging nations—is healthy when it's not. The building boom in the emerging nations—where affordable shelter is desperately needed—is a visible sign to the people in the developing nations that prosperity has finally found them. In reality, all that is really happening is that the wealthy industrialists and bankers are simply investing in the human capital whose sweat equity will turn the wheels of commerce for the New World Order as world government replaces the nation-states during this, or the next, decade.