Freedom Line Blog

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

The Center for Individual Freedom yesterday lauched its OneMoreVote.org initiative designed to stop the reckless spending  in Washington.  The campaign was featured in Politico’s “Playbook, MSNBC’s “First Read” and The Hill’s “On the Money”:

Politico’s Playbook:

OUT TODAY: “The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) is announcing the launch of the ‘One More Vote’ campaign and website: OneMoreVote.org. The initiative is a grassroots-driven, online enlistment of activists across America focused on pressuring Congress and the administration to enact fundamental spending and budget reforms. … The One More Vote campaign name and concept is a nod to the Balanced Budget Amendment reform effort, a measure that fell just one vote short of passage. On Twitter: @OneMoreVoteCFIF.”

MSNBC’s First Read:

Per a source, “The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) is announcing the launch of the ‘One More Vote’ campaign and website: OneMoreVote.org. The initiative is a grassroots-driven, online enlistment of activists across America focused on pressuring Congress and the administration to enact fundamental spending and budget reforms.”

The Hill’s On the Money:

 More from fiscal hawks this week…

The right-leaning Center for Individual Freedom launches on Tuesday the “One More Vote” campaign, seeking to require supermajorities in both the House and Senate for passage of any budget that projects a deficit, any tax hike and any debt limit increase. The name is a reference to the balanced budget amendment, which fell short of Senate passage by one vote in 1997.  http://bit.ly/9agHwr

If you haven’t already joined this growing movement, please do so here.

That’s the breathtaking conclusion of our liberal friends over at The Nation, a publication that answers the question “What would Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book have been like with ad space?”

According to a report by Chris Moody at the Daily Caller, The Nation is revamping its Educators Program, which provides curriculum materials for schools who think that the three Rs should be redistribution, relativism, and radicalism. According to the report:

On the heels of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s offer of an “historic compromise” Mahmoud Abbas rejected the notion of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s talk about an “historic compromise” and said there would be no compromises on core issues such as Jerusalem and borders.

Abbas also reiterated his rejection of Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. “We’re not talking about a Jewish state and we won’t talk about one,” Abbas said in an interview with the semi-official Al-Quds newspaper. “For us, there is the state of Israel and we won’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”

Regular news watchers in any of the last four decades will recognize this pattern.  Israel offers to negotiate a peace deal; Palestine refuses to negotiate any of the “core issues.”  You know; like borders, how to share – or not – Jersusalem, and perhaps the most important: whether one of the state parties to a “two-state” solution will be recognized as a state by the other.

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) refusal to recognize Israel seems grossly hypocritical when the biggest concession Palestinians demand is Israel’s recognition of Palestine as a state.

As for what the United States government should do about the impasse, probably nothing.  Rasmussen Reports found that 77% of Americans think any peace treaty between Israel and Palestine must include recognition of Israel’s right to exist.  So far, Abbas and the PA won’t even acknowledge that Israel as a state does exist, so it may be a while before they get around to saying it has a right to exist.

Let’s hope the Obama White House doesn’t dither on this issue while the country’s economic house continues to burn down.

So President Obama brought us a crippling $814 billion “stimulus,” and now his promised “Summer of Recovery” has come and passed.

Undeterred, he nevertheless instructs us that what America needs is another $50 billion, or 1/16th the original stimulus amount, in new highway, airport runway and rail construction.  Obama proclaims that “this will not only create jobs now, but will make our economy run better over the long haul.”  So let us get this straight.  Obama turned the $450 billion deficit that he inherited into consecutive $1.4 trillion and $1.3 trillion deficits for his first two years in office, commenced a regulatory onslaught against the private sector, threatened growth-killing regulations like “Net Neutrality” and union card-check, demonized the business community that creates jobs, signed stifling new burdens like ObamaCare into law and appears ready to oversee the largest tax increase in history this January 1.

But according to him, the basis of our economic malaise is…  lack of pavement?

Hugh Hewitt is out today with a sobering call for young public school teachers to buck their union bosses and vote for education reform.  Consider this bizarro-world scenario facing the newest generation of classroom teachers:

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid Democrats and their state counterparts have been dining on the seed corn, running up bills that can only be paid by the taxes of people under 40 working until they are 80 and then retiring on 50 percent of what their older colleagues receive now, if that.

Indeed, that kind of generation theft what is being offered to every twentysomething public employee these days.  Younger workers already get that Social Security won’t be around to help them in retirement.  If the message sinks in that their lavish pensions are also a mirage, we could be in for a major shift in public policy after the November midterm elections.

15 Years and $13 Trillion in Debt Later, A Grassroots Campaign For ‘One More Vote’ Starts Anew

Washington, D.C. – The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) today announced the launch of the “One More Vote” campaign and its accompanying website OneMoreVote.org, designed as a grassroots-driven, online enlistment of activists across America focused on pressuring Congress and the administration to enact fundamental spending and budget reforms and change the wasteful tax, borrow and spend policies currently part of the culture in Washington, DC.

The One More Vote campaign is built on a foundation of both grassroots and legislative advocacy: activists become participants and supporters of the “Your Vote, Your Voice” coalition focused on registering spending and budget reforms as a top priority with lawmakers in Washington, while also presenting common-sense reforms that require a balanced federal budget and higher vote thresholds when raising existing taxes, imposing new taxes or raising the federal debt limit.

The One More Vote campaign name and concept is a nod to the last visible public battle over budget and spending reforms in Congress in 1995 and 1997: the Balanced Budget Amendment reform effort, a measure that fell just one vote short of passage.

“According to expert estimates, our nation’s debt of $13 trillion will skyrocket to more than $20 trillion by the year 2020, or sooner” said Jeff Mazzella, CFIF’s President.  “The fiscal policies being pursued by Congress and the administration only make matters worse.  President Obama’s budgets are projected to run up more debt than all other presidents in American history – from George Washington to George W. Bush – combined. Americans are angry with the status quo, ready to take action and ready to pressure Congress with budget principles that individual taxpayers already apply to themselves.”

The One More Vote effort lays the groundwork for real and meaningful legislation and allows voters and individual activists to become citizen cosponsors of the One More Vote agenda focused on reforming out-of-control spending policies and saving America from economic ruin.

The One More Vote agenda includes what CFIF is calling “The 60% Solution” reform package, which calls for a Constitutional Amendment requiring:

• A federal balanced budget annually;
• A 60% vote, in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, to raise the debt ceiling; and
• A 60% vote, in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, to increase taxes or impose new taxes.

Through OneMoreVote.org, individual Americans are participants in the reform process by learning more about The 60% Solution, signing on as a citizen cosponsors and contacting Congress to urge their support for The 60% Solution.

Read more here.

Join the effort here.

Follow on Twitter here. (@OneMoreVoteCFIF)

So General David Petraeus has come out against the proposed burning of Qurans by a Florida church to commemorate the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, opining that it will motivate Islamic militants.  Fair enough – Petraeus is entitled to his opinion and our respect.

But imagine instead if Petraeus came out in opposition against the proposed Ground Zero mosque in New York City, and the liberal commentariat’s hysteria that would ensue.  After all, many argue that Islamic militants abroad will be encouraged and motivated in their fight by a mosque on the very American soil where their compatriots slaughtered almost 3,000 people.  In fact, they’ve already sounded that trumpet.  So one can imagine a general expressing reservations toward the mosque on those grounds.

For his part, President Obama notoriously inserted his foot into his mouth by defending the Ground Zero mosque, citing express First Amendment freedoms.  Well, the Florida church possesses not only that same First Amendment religious latitude, but also the First Amendment freedom of expression to burn the Quran.  Any bets on whether Obama will take this opportunity to support these Constitutional freedoms that he claims to hold so sacred?

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

As CFIF Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs Tim Lee explained in this week’s Freedom Minute, the largest American labor unions are promising to spend a combined $150 million of their members’ dues money to preserve Democratic control of Congress.

To put that into perspective, here’s a partial list of what President Obama did for unions after receiving $60.7 million from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in the 2008 cycle:

»  Only 10 days after taking the oath of office, Obama signed three executive orders that, respectively, limited what federal contractors can say to employees during union organizing drives, made it harder to fire incompetent employees of government contractors, and directed federal contractors to insure that employees are aware of their organizing rights.

»  One week later, Obama signed another executive order that requires federal agencies to use union-favored Project Labor Agreements on large federally funded construction projects. Not only does that mean many state government construction projects must use a PLA, but so must many economic stimulus-funded projects.

»  Hilda Solis, Obama’s secretary of labor, has nullified disclosure rules issued during the Bush administration that were designed to increase union financial transparency on forms required to be filed with the government under the Landrum-Griffin Labor Management Reporting Disclosure Act of 1959. The disclosure requirements, which were not enforced before Bush, made it possible for union members to see what their officers were doing with their dues.

If Democrats do somehow hang on to power after this year’s midterms, expect at least double the payback for the unions’ doubled investment.

H/T: Washington Examiner

In one of the most telling departures from the previous Administration, Obama officials decided to eliminate the White House’s fact-checking team soon after taking office.  After President George W. Bush received heavy criticism for 16 words he said in his 2003 State of the Union Address, The Decider decided to hire a team of fact checkers to confirm the validity of every word the president spoke to the public.

The result was a process that killed any portion of presidential remarks that couldn’t be 100% verified.  The moral of the story: facts matter.  At least they did to the last occupant of the White House.

Now it seems like facts are inconveniences that can be swept under the rug.  That is, unless their absence appears on top of the new Oval Office rug in the form of a misattributed quote.  On President Obama’s redesigned floor emblem appears the quote “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  Though it’s attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr., it actually belongs to antebellum abolitionist Theodore Parker.

Unlike Vice President Joe Biden, King didn’t forget to give credit for a line he made his own.  Next time, Mr. President, get the facts straight before you commit taxpayer money to honor something that isn’t true.

Conventional wisdom says that when the job market dries up, it’s time to head back to school for more education.  With today’s announcement that unemployment is above 9% nationally for the 16^th month in a row, many out-of-work Americans will consider going back to school.

In two to three years, those who pay for more certificates or degrees may find that their employment – and financial – situation hasn’t improved.  The reason is the rising cost of higher education coupled with the loss in value of college degrees.  Per Reason Magazine:

Student borrowing has more than doubled since the end of the 20th century, according to the College Board, with $85 billion in loans in 2008, up from $41 billion in 1998. And as the rising rate of defaults indicates, borrowers in aggregate are not making the kind of money—i.e. twice as much as a decade ago—they would need to pay those loans back.

The government’s response to this bubble has been to get itself more deeply involved in the inflation. The administration has kicked in various types of assistance, such as a $100 million college prep program. And in March, President Barack Obama signed a bill eliminating the 45-year-old Federal Family Education Loan Program (which guaranteed student loans made by private lenders) and replacing it with a system of direct Treasury Department loans to students. The first part of these efforts is a straightforward waste of money. The second has the potential to be a marginal improvement on a system that shouldn’t exist.

So we have too much money going into an asset, not enough value coming out, a massive increase in leverage, and a large taxpayer liability for the difference.

Get ready for another bailout…

Fresh off home state protests against Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) who, as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), continues to back losing candidates against Tea Party opposition comes a similar bit of news from Florida.  The minority leader of the Sunshine State’s state senate, Al Lawson, just endorsed Governor Charlie Crist (I-FL) for U.S. Senator.  As an African-American and Democratic leader in the Florida Senate, Lawson’s support is a blow to Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL), the Democrats’ African-American Senate candidates.

But Lawson’s endorsement of Crist is apparently motivated by the Democratic establishment’s successful moves to defeat his recent primary challenge to Rep. Alan Boyd (D-FL).  That includes strong-arm tactics by President Barack Obama’s Organizing for America campaign operation.

Unlike Tea Party insurgents Joe Miller in Alaska, Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada, Lawson couldn’t overcome his party’s establishment.  Cornyn’s saving grace is that he still has time to make up with the grassroots voters before November.  Unless Obama & Co. can find a way to unify their base in the next two months, chances are people like Al Lawson will stay home on Election Day; making GOP control of both houses of Congress that much more likely.

Miss him yet?  President George W. Bush, that is?

Well, t-shirts with the image of Bush above the words “Miss Me Yet?” are outselling Obama gear even in Massachusetts these days.  Now, an opinion poll reveals that Ohio voters would prefer Bush over Obama in the White House right now by a 50% to 42% margin.

Calling Rahm Emanuel:  you’ve got a crisis here to not let go to waste.

Regular readers may know that Time Magazine’s Joe Klein has become something of a white whale to your humble blogger. He is to me what Tom Friedman is to Jonah Goldberg.

When Klein isn’t busy singing in the Obama gospel choir (along with Jon Meacham, Ezra Klein, Eugene Robinson, and everyone else who thinks Obama is failing because Americans are too base to grasp his transcendence), he’s usually nursing exceptionally dumb ideas for political reform. You know, the type that would grind a sophomore political science seminar to a halt?

At the moment, Klein’s problem du jour is that the American system of government doesn’t work effectively — by which he means it doesn’t provide the outcomes he likes. What does Klein propose as a tonic? A system that blends the worst aspects of populism and progressivism and then marinates with a throwback to the ancient Greeks. Behold:

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out.  Below is a summary of its contents:

Lee:  Comparisons to Reagan in August 1982 Provide Obama Little Refuge
Senik:  Exclusive: The Lost First Draft of Obama’s Iraq Speech
Ellis:  An American Communist and a Soviet Defector Offer Different Interpretations of Obama at Beck Rally
CFIF Staff:  Living Social(ist): Alerting America to Dumb Government Policies

Freedom Minute Video:  Big Labor Out of Touch With Workers
Podcast:  Pamela Geller Discusses Ground Zero Mosque Controversy
Jester’s Courtroom:  A Whale of a Lawsuit for SeaWorld

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Timothy Lee discusses the recent announcement by big labor unions to spend more than $100 million on the November elections while their individual members try to make ends meet in a struggling economy.

Moments ago, the Department of Labor reported that the nation’s unemployment rate jumped again to 9.6%.

As we reference in today’s Liberty Update commentary, this means that unemployment has now risen from 8.2% to 9.6% since Obama signed his $1 trillion “stimulus” bill in February 2009 (with the promise that unemployment would not exceed 8% under his spending plan).  By contrast, unemployment plummeted from 10.4% to 7.2% during the same timespan following the Reagan tax cuts.

This reconfirms what works:  more individual freedom, lower taxes, lower spending, less government.  It also reconfirms what doesn’t work:  more government control, higher taxes, more spending and more regulation.

In a recent interview with with CFIF, Atlas Shruggs Blogger Pamela Geller discusses the ongoing controversy over the planned Islamic Mosque and Community Center near Ground Zero. 

Listen to the interview here.

Sean Trende at RealClearPolitics delivers some intriguing analysis about the possible net gain of Republican House seats this November:

In reality, barring some major and dramatic turnaround in the political landscape, the 50 seat GOP wave has now in many ways moved closer to the floor for Democratic losses. With the economy continuing to flounder and with fewer than 60 days until Election Day, the potential for a once-in-a-century type of wave that would lead to GOP gains in the 60-90 seat range is increasing.

In a delightful twist of irony, Trende analogizes the perfect storm facing Democrats as strikingly similar to the one that sent Herbert Hoover era Republicans into a two decade electoral wilderness:

Right now, the idea of gains in excess of 60 seats for the GOP is unthinkable to many. Gains of that magnitude haven’t happened in over 80 years. But unthinkability is not evidence. What actual evidence we have reminds us that no political party has hit the trifecta of a lousy economy, an opposition at its nadir (in terms of seat loss), and an overly ambitious Presidential agenda in over 80 years. All these macro factors are pointing to a massive GOP blowout, and they will not be changing between now and November. The Democrats need to hope that the micro factors save them from a once-in-a-century storm.

To put this in perspective, the 1994 Newt Gingrich-led takeover netted 52 seats for Republicans.  Flipping the House by almost double that number in the same year ObamaCare – the Democrats’ signature legislative achievement passed – could signal a generational rebuke.  That is, if Republicans have a credible alternative to Progressivism once in office.