This is rich: EPA’s illicit-power-aggregating Lisa Jackson says Republicans are “jack-booted thugs.” Well, well, well. As I have repeatedly written, the EPA is the home of the armed, crazed, dangerous agents who sometimes impose a reign of terror on innocent people. If Ms. Jackson wants to see a thug, or a thugette, she needs to look in the mirror — if she doesn’t mind being frightened. Then she should look down to see her own footwear. Was she sleep-walking when she put on those jackboots?
Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal summarizes the winners and losers in the fight between the environmental left and blue collar union workers:
The EPA has labored over an ozone rule (estimated job losses: 7.3 million), power plant rules (1.4 million), a boiler rule (789,000), a coal-ash rule (316,00), a cement rule (23,000), and greenhouse gas rules (even Joe Biden can’t count that high). The administration blew up Louisiana’s offshore deepwater drilling industry, insisted Detroit make cars nobody wants to buy and, just to stay consistent, is moving to clamp down on the country’s one booming industry: natural gas.
Those going the way of the dodo are utility workers, pipefitters, construction guys, coal miners, factory workers, truck drivers, electrical workers and machinists. Many of these are union Democrats who don’t care if their union bosses are publicly sticking with the president. They are pessimistic about the future and increasingly angry over the president’s attack on their work.
The 2012 electorate is ripe for another GOP presidential candidate able to pick-up thousands of ‘Reagan Democrats’ in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The fact that all three states elected Republican governors in 2010 sets the table for a nominee able to wrap free market principles in a populist appeal. The question is, will someone craft a message in time to take advantage of Obama’s foolishness?
Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Vice President for Legal and Public Affairs, will speak at 1:15 p.m. tomorrow (Saturday, November 5) at the Defending the American Dream Summit, hosted by Americans for Prosperity. The panel session at which Mr. Lee will speak is entitled “Keeping the Internet and Americans Safe from Illegal Foreign Rogue Websites,” in Room 209 – Track E. Mr. Lee will appear with co-panelists Andrew Langer of the Institute for Liberty, Ryan Radia from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and panel host Steve Tepp from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In an interview with CFIF, Richard Trzupek, a chemist, consultant and writer who has worked in the environmental industry for decades, discusses his recently released Encounter Broadside titled, “How the EPA’s Green Tyranny is Stifling America.”
The nation’s unemployment remained at or above 9% again last month, and has now exceeded 8% for 33 consecutive months since February 2009. That’s the longest stretch since the federal government began issuing monthly reports in 1948.
Here’s why that 8% benchmark and February 2009 are important. When Obama passed his nearly $1 trillion “stimulus” bill that same month, his administration projected that unemployment would never exceed 8%, and be all the way down to approximately 6% today. Instead, unemployment quickly climbed to 10.1%, and has remained above 9% for all but four months during that record 33-month span. Moreover, the economy only added a disappointing 80,000 jobs for September, less than the expected 100,000 and far below the estimated 200,000 necessary each month to reduce the rate by just 1% over the course of a year.
It’s instructive to compare the real-world results of Obama’s economic agenda with Ronald Reagan’s. In the same 33-month stretch following the effective date of Reagan’s tax cuts, unemployment plummeted from 10.4% to 7.1%. The comparison speaks for itself, yet now Obama tells the nation that what we need is more of the same – more “mini-stimulus” government spending. Obama’s agenda has demonstrably failed, and it’s time to return to what demonstrably works.
In what can only be described as a stroke of journalistic genius, the folks over at the Daily Caller cross-referenced the addresses of protesters arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests with real estate listings and Google Maps. The results speak volumes. Here are just a few examples of the humble dwellings of the underclass:
Who knew it took this much square footage to fight the man?
Last week I wrote here about Sen. Ron Johnson’s proposals to save $1.4 trillion over ten years. Today, for the University of Mobile, I add that to proposals by Jeff Sessions, Tom Coburn, Paul Ryan and others to show that significant savings shouldn’t be all that hard.
At The American Spectator, where the Cain debate is being waged with great ferocity, I posted this long blog entry about the latest controversies surrounding our favorite pizza man. Upshot: Cain needs to get his act together and start handling his public appearances better, start doing some serious homework on issues, and drastically improve his campaign operation — regardless of whether there is any truth at all to the sexual harassment allegations.
But as one of the first people to really delve into the details of his 9-9-9 plan (largely because in theory I REALLY liked the plan), I want to say a little more about this latest controversy. Here’s the deal: Sober reflection and analysis, and sober questions and answers, are called for. It remains a horribly disturbing thing to see so many conservatives rush to judgment on both sides (but mostly circling the wagons in defense of Cain), and to do it so emotionally, in a time when over-emotionalism can play right into the hands of the Left and get us stuck with issues, candidates, positions, or images that can do great damage to conservative prospects in 2012 (and beyond). Conservatives need to train ourselves to react more dispassionately, or at least to channel our normal emotional reactions into constructive actions. Pickett’s Charge was a horrendous failure. ‘Twould be best for conservatives not to see every controversy as a reason to charge, quite vulnerably, across a mile of open ground.
First, Paul Ryan said he isn’t running for president in 2012. Then, he said he wouldn’t close the door on being someone’s vice presidential running mate next year. Now, he tells the Weekly Standard that Mitt Romney can be trusted to repeal Obamacare even though it bears a striking resemblance to Romneycare in Massachusetts.
Could it be that Ryan – perhaps like Chris Christie – is angling for a spot in the Romney veepstakes?
Recently, Troy wrote an excellent indictment of the latest Los Angeles boondoggle, a debt-laden deal to bring an NFL team to a city with job-killing regulations and 12.5 percent unemployment.
Now, Joel Kotkin echoes Troy’s analysis with more scathing criticisms of the regulations-for-thee-but-not-for-me pay-to-play scandal pushing a publicly financed stadium forward.
Such projects often obscure the real and more complex challenge of nurturing broad-based economic growth. This would require substantive change in a city or regional political culture. Instead the football stadium services two basic political constituencies: large unions and big-time speculators, particularly in the downtown area. The fact that the stadium will be built with union labor, for example, all but guaranteed its approval by the city’s trade union-dominated council.
Downtown developers and “rent-seeking” speculators, the other group behind the project, have siphoned hundreds of millions in tax breaks and public infrastructure in the past decade. They have done so – subsidizing companies from other parts of Los Angeles, entertainment venues and hotels — in the name of a long-held, impossible dream of turning downtown Los Angeles into a mini-Manhattan. Perhaps no company has pushed this more effectively than the stadium developer Anschutz Entertainment Group, a mass developer of generic entertainment districts around the world. AEG has expanded its influence by doling out substantial financial donations to Mayor Villaraigosa and others in the city’s economically clueless political class.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sat for an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo last week on the state of the economy. Based on her remarks here, we can conclude that — as dismal as the current downturn is — it would only be worse if the Sage of San Francisco and her ilk were still running the lower chamber:
I loved Tim’s column the other day on rising support for the individual right to bear arms.
It just so happened that right before I read it, as my computer was stuck in an “update,” I was reading Richard Brookhiser’s new biography of James Madison while I waited for my ‘puter. Within a page of where I began that hour’s reading, I came across this from Brookhiser: “In Federalist # 46, [Madison] had even warned that Americans could resist an oppressive government thanks to ‘the advantage of being armed, which [they] possess over the people of almost every other nation’.”
Yes, being armed is an individual right, and yes it is both for personal protection AND for the radical eventuality, which we hope never to need, of resisting an oppressive government.
And if anybody at the Obama Department of Justice wants to Shanghai me for exercising my First Amendment rights about the meaning of the Second Amendment, and to accuse me (falsely) of inciting insurrection… well, bring it on, baby, bring it on. For the record, I am inciting nothing, but merely explaining that the Second Amendment’s origins did indeed include the notion of protection against government. It’s a purely objective analysis. And it’s a lot safer to write about guns this way than it is to deliberately seed the realm of drug lords with firearms, which is what Eric Holder’s minions appear to have done. My freedom of speech is far saner and safer than their idiocy of action.
In an interview with CFIF, Richard Trzupek, a chemist, consultant and writer who has worked in the environmental industry for decades, discusses his recently released Encounter Broadside titled, “How the EPA’s Green Tyranny is Stifling America.”
CFIF Freedom Line Blog RSS Feed
CFIF on X
CFIF on YouTube