Meanwhile, for the Chinese and other fast-growing economies, it’s full speed ahead on new energy projects. Chinese oil companies are pursuing new oil and gas exploration on a global scale, even in the mainland U.S. They are buying up oil and gas leases in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America, including just offshore Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

But China is not limiting its options to petroleum. It is acquiring vast reserve of coal, importing U.S. coal that environmentalists have put off-limits to electric utilities in the United States and securing ownership of coal mines in Australia, Asia, and Latin America. The purchase of Felix Resources by China’s Yanzhou Coal in December 2009 was the largest coal acquisition in Australian history, but it was by no means the last. Asian buyers are now competing for another big prize: Whitehaven Coal. Soon, even if American policymakers were to wake up to the threat we face, there will be no more major coal properties available for purchase.

The situation with uranium supplies is equally dire. At present the U.S. is the largest nuclear energy producer in the world, but China is out to change that. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, China plans to build 60 large nuclear reactors by the end of this decade, and it is acquiring the uranium necessary to fuel these facilities along with its existing plants. Chinese state-owned companies are bidding on uranium-rich companies around the world, including Kalahari Minerals, owner of large uranium deposits in Namibia.

In response, the Obama administration has not approved a single one among the pending 21 applications for new nuclear facilities in the U.S. With no action on the part of regulators, American companies are loath to acquire rights to new supplies of uranium. They have been largely absent from bidding for the world’s remaining supplies.

This review is not intended as a criticism of China, which is simply pursuing the kind of coherent, long-range energy policy that is lacking at present in the U.S. China is acting in the rational self-interest of its people, and its people will reap the reward of this effort in the decades ahead.

Obama’s policy, on the other hand, is simply “none of the above.” America will also reap the rewards of its energy policy under Obama and Energy Secretary Chu. With no additional nuclear facilities under development, with the withering away of domestic coal-power production, and with no access to major new Alaskan and offshore oil supplies, America faces a future energy shock of unprecedented proportions. Once the effects of Obama’s restrictions on drilling begin to be felt, today’s gas prices are going to seem like a blue-light special.

The question is, why does Obama want to forestall access to so many of our energy resources just at the moment when gas prices are hitting $4 a gallon and experts are predicting they will go higher? Either the President is out of his mind, or he is intent on wrecking our future. Since spiraling gas prices are also going to hinder Obama’s re-election, it is a difficult question to answer. The truth may be that he just hasn’t thought about it. He’s too busy shooting hoops and hosting rappers like Jay-Z in the White House Situation Room.

Unless reversed by a conservative president and Congress following 2012, Obama’s failed energy policy will have devastating consequences. Americans will pay much higher prices for energy in the future, as high as $12 a gallon for gas and four times the current price of about 15 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. More important yet, high energy prices will sap economic growth, and slower growth will result in structurally high unemployment, declining living standards, and a weakening of our national defense. Maybe this is what Obama wants — I believe that it is — but it is not what most Americans hope to see.

Slow growth and a weakened military may not seem like such an awful fate to the fashionable idiots on the left. It is, in fact, exactly what they are seeking: an America brought to its knees, one weak little nation among many, no more powerful or influential than Bolivia or Peru. A nation that sits happily on the sidelines of history, content to consume its “fair share” of the earth’s resources and live at the average level of the world’s economy, somewhere between Nigeria and Moldova.

That is the happy future that Obama has in mind for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A pair of plastic sandals and a government-issued bike for transport, a bowl of rice for supper, a three-month wait for a visit to the physician’s assistant, and a hundred-square-foot apartment with a wall screen permanently tuned to MSNBC.

There are some Americans who are born communists — those who fancy the Mao suit, the masochistic fall-into-line mentality, the fondness for self-abasement and diminishment. These natural-born comrades, eager to hand over their liberties to some vicious and inscrutable dictator, must like what they see in Obama. The rest of us will continue fighting to preserve our liberties.

HT: American Thinker

How delicious is irony, how fickle fate?

Just a little more than two years ago, liberals were ecstatic about Barack Obama’s election and Democrats’ control of Congress. Liberal pundits were all atwitter about the brand new Democratic Era that voters had ushered in. America would finally become what America should have been years ago: a European-style social democracy.

Boy, did Democrats misread their mandate! With very little hindsight needed, it’s apparent to all but ideologically-blinkered liberals that the Democrats’ gross overreach isn’t what voters wanted or expected. Voters wanted a redo of the Clinton years. Instead, in the person of Barack Obama, voters got an amalgam of FDR and LBJ with a dash of Neville Chamberlin thrown in.

But here’s the real kicker. Two years of Obama-Reid-Pelosi overreach and excesses may have been the table-setter for the real revolution now unfolding. Voters and taxpayers first needed to see the irresponsibility and recklessness of unalloyed liberalism to appreciate that conservative government is far superior. Thank you, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid.

Of course, the real revolution began last year with the 2010 midterm elections. Yes, the GOP made the largest gains in U.S. House seats since 1948. But the underappreciated story is that the GOP racked up huge gains in state legislative contests, and further down ballot, Republicans swept plenty of local offices. State legislatures control congressional redistricting. Republicans now dominate enough key statehouses to lock-in GOP congressional electoral advantages for a decade.

Had voters limited their ballots to throwing out the rascals in Congress, a fair argument could be made that 2010 was just a protest vote — an attempt by voters to shake up the Democrats. But when voters drill down to change party control of legislatures, city halls, and county commissions, you can bet that they’re thoroughly repudiating the party in power. The 2010 repudiation of Democrats was a clear expression of what voters did and didn’t want from government.

Move now to the present time. Republicans are on the march in Congress. Late last week, House Republicans passed a budget bill containing $61 billion in cuts. It’s not the $100 billion that conservatives aimed for, but it’s substantial and can be considered a down payment. The House Republican proposal now goes to the Senate. The budget process wrangling is just in its first phase. Moving forward, the GOP will have multiple opportunities to push more cuts.

And look what else House Republicans are doing. They’re using the budget process to hamstring Obamacare by denying it funding. Shutting down and then nixing ObamaCare would be an historic victory in the fight to end liberalism’s nearly hundred-year dominance; it would be one of those critical turning points in history — like Vicksburg and Gettysburg — a momentum shifter that leads to other key victories, such as entitlements reform.

Also, Indiana Republican Mike Pence offered and passed an amendment cutting funding for the odious abortion mill called Planned Parenthood. Another amendment, offered by Oregon Republican Greg Walden, that passed, chokes off funds for the Federal Communications Commission’s net-neutrality gambit. Net -neutrality would concentrate more power in the FCC’s hands and stymie free speech across the internet. Net-neutrality could well have been made in China.

Of course, the revolution just beginning isn’t confined to the Halls of Congress. Chris Christie, New Jersey’s intrepid Republican governor, fired the first shots last year in the burgeoning struggle to bring sanity back to state affairs. Christie’s efforts aren’t limited to balancing state budgets and reining in taxes, important as those things are. Christie is working to limit government and expand the playing field for the private sector. As we’re seeing, government without proper limits is a ruinous beast. California is a prime example.

Now newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is making headlines because he dares to say that his state is broke and that the public employees’ gravy train needs to end. Governor Walker wants to end collective bargaining for public employees, excepting police and firefighters, on the simple, common sense premise that employees shouldn’t be negotiating the hours they work, among other things.

In Ohio, Governor John Kasich is gearing up to slash budgets, rollback taxes, cut regulations, and confront the Buckeye State’s public employee unions. There’ll be fireworks aplenty in Columbus.

Thomas Jefferson is being proven right again. The states are the laboratories of democracy. Christie, Kasich, and Walker are seeking to demonstrate that limited, financially responsible government is best for economic and societal health. If successful — and we should all have high confidence that these governors will succeed — the lessons will not be lost on voters and politicians in other states. Revolutions are like that; it takes just a few courageous leaders to embolden others and for revolutions to spread.

A marvelous, if unintended, consequence of this burgeoning conservative revolution is what it’s doing to liberalism. The budding conservative revolution is starting to place strains on liberalism; beginning to make liberals and their allies fight defensive battles in multiple — and multiplying — places. Call this a modified Cloward-Piven — or Cloward-Piven turned on its masters.

Challenging liberal governance, and pressing limited government reforms, will help bring down liberalism across the nation. And that should be an indisputable aim of the new conservative revolution. Liberalism became a pox on the nation years ago. Marginalizing liberalism would be an incomparable service to generations to come — and to those kids being lied to now by too many Wisconsin teachers.

“Change We Can Believe In.” Mr. Obama’s slogan always had a nice ring to it, but it was misapplied and a little ahead of its time. With the conservative revolution, change we can really believe in has arrived. How’s that for rich irony?

HT: American Thinker

President Obama has been speaking lately of what he views as an upswing in the economy. “The economy is growing again,” he declared in the State of the Union address. Not surprisingly, he failed to mention that for 104 consecutive weeks, larger and larger numbers of Americans have become dependent on welfare. Or that within those families receiving welfare, fathers have become more and more irrelevant, and youth crime has increased.

But, then, those are not facts that one expects to hear from the President in a State of the Union address, or anywhere else. What we hear, again and again, is the fantasy that government creates jobs, government drives the economy, government feeds kids and sends them to bed happy. The facts are just the opposite.

In fact, the Department of Agriculture has just reported that 43.6 million Americans are now receiving food stamps.

Significantly, in 2006, near the height of the historic Bush economic expansion, the number of Americans receiving food stamps was just over 20 million. Since then, the number of recipients has more than doubled, with nearly all of the increase coming under the presidency of Barack Obama. In fact, one of the under-reported stories of the past two years is that the number of Americans receiving food stamps has increased every single month under the Obama administration. Even with the recent decline of the unemployment rate from 10% to 9.4%, the number receiving food stamps has continued to increase.

That increase is not good for the taxpayer or for the welfare recipient. The increase in federal welfare spending is one of the main reasons for annual budget deficits now totaling $1.5 trillion. In the 2011 budget that Obama has submitted to Congress, over $1.43 trillion is to be spent on Medicare and Medicaid, with Medicaid the fasting growing component. Next to defense, health and human services is the largest component of discretionary spending in the Obama budget, coming in at $83.5 billion. But housing is not that far behind, with $41.6 billion. And other major redistribution programs, such as the Earned Income Credit, do not even appear in the budget.

The annual cost to the taxpayer of the Earned Income Credit program, which provides a maximum of $5,666 per family, is $59 billion. This is a high cost to pay, especially since as many as 30% of those claiming the credit are not entitled to it.

Clearly, Obama’s redistributionist politics are not good for the taxpayer. But welfare is not good for welfare recipients, either.

The impact of food stamps, Section 8 housing subsidies, Medicaid, and other support programs has been to create a permanent welfare class which, in terms of skills and attitudes, is poorly equipped to return to work. Not only that, the children of welfare moms are nurtured in a mentality that perpetuates dependency from generation to generation. And liberal politicians are in no hurry to end this dependency since the system of welfare patronage serves their interests.

The destructiveness of welfare goes beyond political dependency. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan documented long ago in The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, the welfare system contributes greatly to the breakdown of the family. What Moynihan wrote in the 1960s holds true today. The more welfare that families receive from government, the less necessary fathers are for their support. Lacking the role model of a responsible father, children grow up to believe that dependency is a natural condition of life.

Furthermore, a great deal of evidence points to a close relationship between crime and welfare. It is by no means an urban myth to suggest that housing projects are dangerous locales. Statistical mapping reveals that murder sites in urban areas are clustered around public housing locations.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1994, Michael Tanner documented the relationship between welfare and crime. Pointing to the ill effects of high rates of out-of-wedlock birth and fatherless families among welfare recipients, Tanner concluded that “the welfare system is a significant cause of juvenile crime and violence.” Clearly, welfare entails a cost to society that goes beyond its effect on the federal and state budgets.

As to why so many Americans are receiving food stamps and other welfare benefits, one reason is that so many have dropped out of the workforce altogether. The January 2011 jobs report confirmed that Obama’s economic policies are not creating jobs. In fact, there were only 36,000 jobs created at a point in the economic cycle when one would expect a quarter million or more. The “good news” is that the unemployment rate fell to 9%, but only because so many more decided that welfare beats work. Expect the big increases in food stamp numbers to continue.

Maybe Obama is pleased with the jobless recovery we are in. America now has the lowest labor force participation rate in a quarter century. As of November 2010, the rate had sunk to 64.5%. That number includes not only those persons of working age who are employed but also those who are unemployed but looking for work — currently 16% of the workforce. In other words, 35.5% of working age adults have simply given up on finding a job.

US Labor Force Participation, Lowest in 25 Years

One would think these numbers would be alarming to a President who has already kicked off his re-election campaign with a partisan State of the Union address and numerous appearances in swing states. But Obama was schooled in the Chicago patronage system which equates dependency with votes. For a politician like Obama, a vigorous private sector expansion just means fewer votes. Maybe that’s why he has done so much to prevent it from happening.

Democrats have a vested interest in expanding the numbers of Americans who have simply given up looking for work. Why should Obama wish to create more jobs when it is welfare recipients who are his greatest fans?

HT: American Thinker

It is Europe’s autumn of discontent. All across the continent, people are taking to the streets to protest the austerity measures of their governments. The governments have to cut for a simple reason: They are broke. They no longer have the money to sponsor the kind of padded lifestyles to which their citizens have grown accustomed. This in turn makes the citizens angry — so much so that they are willing to turn their countries upside-down in order to obtain benefits their governments simply cannot provide.

In France, where the deeply unpopular President Sarkozy is trying to raise the retirement age of 60, things have turned decidedly unpretty. Across the country, cars are getting burned, shop windows are getting smashed, garbage is left uncollected, roads are being blocked, and people are getting beaten up. Nearly one fourth of France’s twelve thousand-plus gasoline stations are suffering shortages. Even secondary schools are being blocked and disrupted.

Across the border in Belgium, a rail workers’ strike halted rail transport across the country. Only in the northern region of Flanders — which is the less socialistic part of Belgium — were some trains running intermittently last week. According to Agence France-Presse, “the strike triggered massive traffic jams on Belgian roads and also disrupted the services of the Eurostar train line which links London, Paris and Brussels.”

Late last month, a strike in Spain shut down much of the country’s industry and paralyzed transportation services. As many as 70 percent of Spain’s workforce walked off their jobs. “The strike has been an undoubted success,” gloated a union leader.

Greece now seems to be in a perpetual state of unrest and protest. Two weeks ago, protesters — mostly government workers — besieged and then occupied parts of the ancient Acropolis. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, rail workers and students marched on the Greek parliament. Even though it is bankrupt and dysfunctional, the Greek government still managed to rally the riot police to beat up on the state’s hapless wards.

The Frenchmen’s sense entitlement to Big Brother’s dough is truly staggering. It apparently makes itself felt early in life, as evidenced by Laura Tanniou, a 22-year-old student, who probably spoke for many in her generation when she said, “We may be only students now, but we still want to make the most of our retirement.” What she actually meant by the word “retirement” was state-provided retirement.

In the past, students used to dream about how they would become rich and make it big through their talents and efforts. But now, under the welfare state, they are fantasizing about how they will retire on generous government pensions. In light of the young lady’s statement, the expression “forward-looking young people” gains an entirely new meaning.

While the youth of France is dreaming about easy retirement, some of their mature compatriots think that work may pose a danger to health. Véro Du Cheyron, 51-year-old social worker, said this to a reporter: “They say that people are living longer so they have to work longer, but they don’t say anything about the health problems that come by doing that.”

This is a strange claim, especially when coming from France, where people are not known to overextend themselves during their working years. By law, they enjoy a 35-hour working week, which they tackle, for the most part, at a less-than-breakneck pace. Their blasé attitude toward work is not surprising, given that more than half of Frenchmen work either directly for government or in government-related jobs. Yet there are people in France who think that adding two more years of this to a person’s work-life could endanger their health.

What we see happening in France and across Europe are the devastating effects of the welfare state. We see a citizenry whose work ethic, morals, power of reason, and grasp on reality have been grievously damaged. They balk at hard work, yet they want to enjoy lives of plenty and ease. Their governments are bankrupt, but they still keep demanding benefits that are impossible to deliver. And while they refuse to engage in hard labor themselves, they see nothing wrong with living at someone else’s expense.

The welfare state — once the pride and glory of European democracies — has become a curse. This sad situation should have not come as a surprise. The outcome was predictable, given what we know about human nature and the workings of government. More than two hundred years ago, John Adams warned of welfarism’s pernicious effects:

Like a cancer; it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society.

Adams’ words describe the disposition of the contemporary western welfare state almost to a T. One could only perhaps add “widespread amentia” to Adam’s list of afflictions.

If they were clear-thinking, the Europeans would protest against the criminal waste and recklessness of their governments and demand that they shape up. They would call for the resignation and prosecution of those politicians responsible for their bankruptcy. They would insist that the fiscal house be put in order. But they never do that. On the contrary, they march and demand even more spending. Instead of demonstrating against those who brought on their fiscal ruin, they protest those who try to do something about it.

In one respect, America is still very different from Europe. It is the only Western country where people march against the bankrupting policies of their government. We have seen this in numerous Tea Party rallies across the land. It is encouraging to see this reaction, especially since such thinking is completely alien to most people in the rest of the developed world.

But even in America, welfarism has exerted its devastating effects. Even though many in this country are angry about our fiscal plight, they are unwilling to support the kind of measures necessary to bring about remedy. Anyone who looks at the budget and long-term spending trends will quickly realize that it is entitlements that account for the bulk of the federal fiscal burden. The much-talked-about national debt — large though it is — represents only a small portion of the government’s overall obligations. To avoid the fiscal train wreck that lies ahead, drastic cuts will have to be made in entitlement programs. But this is precisely what the vast majority of the American people — including those who are upset about our national bankruptcy — refuse to accept.

We saw a striking demonstration of this last week when Carly Fiorina, a California Senate candidate, appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” One of the themes of Fiorina’s campaign has been reinstating financial sanity in Washington, D.C. — so much so that she recently even issued a budget plan intended to bolster her fiscal hawk credentials. But when asked by the host to name a single entitlement benefit she would cut or reduce, she refused to answer. When pressed on the point, she accused her interlocutor of “asking a typical political question.”

Some would say that Fiorina’s evasiveness is indicative of a lack of political will to make the hard choices. But this is not the case. Fiorina’s attitude is, in fact, reflective of a lack of popular will. Had she said that she would cut entitlements, her chances of getting elected would have effectively dropped to zero.

Nor is Fiorina’s quandary peculiar to left-leaning California. As far as this writer is aware, no Tea Party candidate for federal office has publicly advocated deep cuts in entitlement programs. In fact, according to research by James Ostrowski, not one Tea Party-favored senatorial candidate is calling for significant reductions in even the over-bloated federal agencies. To say, as Fiorina did, that she plans to cut waste will simply not do. For one thing, the savings from what is officially termed waste would be too small to make any real difference. But the larger point is that most federal spending is a waste in the first place, not to mention the fact that it is also unconstitutional.

What the concerned Americans need to realize is that we cannot have it both ways: We cannot gripe about the size of the federal cake while munching on it all the while. Until we resolve this contradiction in our hearts and minds, we cannot be fiscally cured.

HT: American Thinker

Socialism has led to extraordinary human suffering whenever and wherever it has been tried. There is no reason to think an experiment with socialism here in the United States would be any different. It is our unique system of government which allowed Americans to become a great, kind, magnanimous people.

[...]

I live in a ragged white and gray farmhouse that has stood two and a half centuries’ vigil over the farming tracts of southern Pennsylvania. Located 75 miles from Washington, District of Columbia, my wife and I (along with our four young children) made the two-hour drive to attend Saturday’s progressive “One Nation Working Together” rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

I was unsure what to expect when attending this rally, and we made no effort either to fit in or to stand out. Initially I had worried that we might be identified as outsiders to be mistreated, but this did not happen. As we expected, there were many people dressed in bizarre costumes or carrying signs which displayed obscenities and other unsavory proclamations, but these were in the minority. From our perspective, the crowd was orderly and had a generally pleasant demeanor. The rally area was not densely packed, and there were no lines for the port-a-johns.

We started out at the rally in a spot very near the Lincoln Memorial itself, on the north side of the reflecting pool. This would be on the right side of the pool, as observed from the Washington Monument in this photo. As the rally proceeded, we moved away from the Lincoln Memorial and towards the World War II Memorial, pictured at the bottom of the aforementioned photo. Interestingly, the information booths which were set up became increasingly radical (and there was far more garbage on the ground) as we approached the rear of the rally. By the time we got to the World War II Memorial, I was talking to actual socialists and communists who were displaying pictures of Marx and the Red Star. These were not the American communists of the 1960s — they were clean, well-mannered, and did not become unhinged when having their ideas challenged. This is not something to be relieved about.

I was stunned by the amount of obviously Bolshevik imagery that riddled the entire length of the One Nation rally. Such imagery has become a staple of the American Progressive movement — in particular the image of the raised fist of the worker. The worker’s fist was shamelessly displayed upon thousands of signs and t-shirts, and I am certain that the vast majority of those carrying it were unaware of its origins and meaning. The fact that thousands of decent Americans, regardless of their political stripe, can be convinced to march around, wittingly or unwittingly, with Bolshevik images, demanding the implementation of socialist programs, is deeply troubling. When recent onetime presidential candidate Al Sharpton takes the stage and declares, “This is what America looks like,” it is even worse.

If al-Qaeda can come to the understanding that sawing someone’s head off and putting the resulting video on YouTube creates a brand image problem, so too can the socialist movement realize Americans might take issue with unhygienic, flag-stomping Marxists yelling, “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents.”

The socialist brand image problem has been mostly corrected, although progressives refuse to acknowledge that their agenda is one and the same with socialism. KFC may be the result of a name change, but it is still selling Kentucky Fried Chicken. The same is true of socialism — same product, different name, and bad for your health.

While it is deeply saddening to see the increasing polarization of America along ideological lines, it cannot be honestly argued that progressives represent the ideals of our Founding Fathers — namely due to progressive notions of positive rights (such as health care and education) which necessarily discard Natural Law. Based on his recent appointment of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court and (either deliberate or accidental) omission of the word “Creator” when citing the Declaration of Independence, it can be fairly surmised that President Obama believes that Natural Law as a philosophical construct impedes the ability of government to solve problems on the people’s behalf. If President Obama, like Elena Kagan, does not “have a view of what are natural rights independent of the Constitution,” he and his progressive base must say so if they wish to be seen as truthful.

Based on the speeches given, along with the abundant signs and available literature, I would say there were four main themes at the One Nation rally — the right to a job with a living wage, the right to education, the right to health care, and (to a lesser extent) the right to housing. These ideas are thoroughly socialist and completely alien to the American Constitution.

HT: American Thinker – more…

Obamacare: A Nightmare for America

9/20/2010 – N.C. Aizenman -

Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23.

The companies will continue to cover children who already have child-only policies. They will also accept children with preexisting conditions in new family policies. …

Three insurers – WellPoint, Cigna and CoventryOne – all cited uncertainty in the health insurance market for their decisions. That incertitude and the resulting decision of other insurers to drop their child-only plans, according to WellPoint spokeswoman Kristin Binns, “has created an unlevel competitive environment.”

CoventryOne spokesman Matthew D. Eyles said that the insurer was facing “unique challenges that could undermine our ability to offer value and meet our continued obligations to existing policyholders.”

But officials of the Obama administration said the move contradicted a letter from the leader of one of the insurance industry’s most important trade groups after the law’s adoption in March. Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, expressed support for the law’s provisions concerning children with preexisting conditions and promised to “fully comply” with them.

“We expect [insurance companies] to honor that commitment. Insurers shouldn’t break their promise and turn their backs on some of our most vulnerable Americans,” said Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for AHIP, noted that insurers will be accepting children with preexisting conditions in other types of plans.

But, he said, extending such coverage in child-only policies “provides a very powerful incentive for a parent to wait until their child becomes very sick before purchasing coverage.”

Zirkelbach added that in 2014, when similar protections kick in for all individuals with preexisting conditions, virtually all Americans will be required to get health insurance.

With no such mandate currently in place, however, the result over the next several years could be that the pool of children insured by child-only plans would rapidly skew toward those with expensive medical bills, either bankrupting the plans or forcing insurers to make up their losses by substantially increasing premiums for all customers. And Zirkelbach said the effect could be compounded if only a few plans remain in the market.

It is unclear how many children will be affected. Child-only plans represent only a small share of the non-group plans available on the individual market – with somewhere between 100,000 and 700,000 children currently receiving such coverage, according to administration officials.

In some states that have separate requirements concerning child-only plans, insurers will continue to offer new policies – New York, Maine, Ohio and Virginia, in the case of WellPoint’s Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, for instance.

Most poor children with preexisting conditions already qualify for insurance through programs such as Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And those who are not poor will be able to apply to new high-risk pools established by the law.

HT: Washington Post

Lloyd Marcus

9/12/2010 – Lloyd Marcus -

Here are two paradigms which evil, divisive Democrats have shamefully promoted and exploited for years: one, white men are burning the midnight oil thinking of ways to keep blacks down; and two, all rich white people are selfish, evil, and deserving of punishment.

No Democrat president has sold the “you have too little because the rich have too much” message better than Barack Obama, which led to angry protesters picketing the homes of corporate executives.

Democrats are masters at creating a hated “bad guy” to further their agenda.

As a black man, I wish to share a few of my life experiences which crush the paradigm that all whites are committed to keeping blacks down.

When I was 15, I wanted to attend art college on weekends. I wrote a letter to my (white) senator. When I arrived home from school one day, my mom said our senator stopped by, saw the sign I was painting for our teen dance, and decided to give me a scholarship.

I wrote a letter to then-Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaeffer for a scholarship. Imagine this nervous 15-year-old black kid from the ghetto, dressed in my Sunday best and my artwork between two pieces of cardboard as a portfolio, sitting in the mayor’s huge office. My artwork was spread over his massive carved oak desk. Schaeffer was kind and easy to talk to. He became annoyed by interruptions and instructed his secretary to hold his calls. We talked for an hour or so. A few weeks later, I received a scholarship to the Maryland Institute College of Art.

When I was a young man in the U.S. Army stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC, my pregnant wife and I were seeking a loan. The clerk said we needed a co-signer. A (white) captain, overhearing the conversation, said, “I’ll co-sign for you!” I said, “But sir, you don’t even know me.” He replied, “You seem like a nice enough feller.”

After college, I went job hunting for a position as a graphic designer. Upon viewing my portfolio, (white) businessman John Halechak did not offer me a job. Instantly, he gave me office space, a room in a high-rent office building, to start my own business.

So there you have it: a few personal anecdotes that are also antidotes to the Democrat narrative that white America tries to keep us blacks down and in our place.

As for the Democrats’ relentless attacks and insistence that we hate the rich, had Mr. Halechak not been well-off, he would not have been in a position to help me. Still, Democrats want to, as Obama said, “spread the wealth around” — which really means redistribution of other peoples’ hard-earned money. Then we will all be equally just barely getting by.

U.S. unemployment has risen to a postwar historical high, and our economy is diving downward. The Obama administration could turn things around by simply creating a friendlier atmosphere towards business and not raising taxes. Economics 101 says that the higher you tax an activity, the less people will indulge in that activity. Reagan proved that lowering taxes generates more activity, which generates more revenue for the government.

Obama and company are locked in their paradigm that the rich are selfish SOBs deserving of punishment. Obama plans to end the Bush tax cuts, spinning that they benefit only the rich.

A tax cut across the board for all Americans would tremendously boost our economy. Unfortunately, the Democrats’ insane hatred, demonization, and jealousy of the rich compels them to sink the entire ship of America rather than save one rich person.

These two evil Democrat-promoted paradigms — white men oppose black success and the rich are SOBs — are deeply ingrained in the psyche of many Americans.

However, I learned years ago, while serving in the U.S. Army, that good people and jerks come in all colors.

As for hating the rich, the Bible says, “Thou shall not covet.” With the exception of a few Ted Kennedys and John Kerrys in this world, most of the rich worked hard to get to where they are. Rather than hating them, I want to learn from them.

Once, a dear friend was in danger of losing his home. I was not in a financial position to help. All of my sympathy and good intentions could not help him — he needed cash. Wealth is a very good thing.

HT: American Thinker

If there was ever any question what Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the Ground Zero mosque project, thought about America, the latest audio clip uncovered by Pamela Geller on her Atlas Shrugs blog should remove any doubt.  In the 2005 lecture the “moderate” imam said this about our country:

“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations.”

The “half-million Iraqi children died because of US sanctions” lie was also a favorite of both Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein who both used it in their hate-America propaganda.  This whopper of a myth was first dreamed up by Saddam Hussein era Iraqi officials, in order to smear America and sway world opinion against the sanctions imposed on Saddam to stop him from expanding his “biological, chemical, nuclear, and missile-based weapons systems.”

A detailed expose done by Reason magazine back 2002 debunked this lie and explained the origin of this myth.  The article documented the deeply flawed studies that gave birth to this falsehood and the lack of objective and independent data to backup the outrageous claims.

“The idea that sanctions in Iraq have killed half a million children (or 1 million, or 1.5 million, depending on the hysteria of the source) took root in 1995 and 1996, on the basis of two transparently flawed studies, one inexplicable doubling of the studies’ statistics, and a non-denial on 60 Minutes.

In August 1995, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) gave officials from the Iraqi Ministry of Health a questionnaire on child mortality and asked them to conduct a survey in the capital city of Baghdad. On the basis of this five-day, 693-household, Iraq-controlled study, the FAO announced in November that “child mortality had increased nearly five fold” since the pre-sanctions era. As embargo critic Richard Garfield, a public health specialist at Columbia University, wrote in his own comprehensive 1999 survey of under-5 deaths in Iraq, “The 1995 study’s conclusions were subsequently withdrawn by the authors….Notwithstanding the retraction of the original data, their estimate of more than 500,000 excess child deaths due to the embargo is still often repeated by sanctions critics.”

In March 1996, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its own report on the humanitarian crisis. It reprinted figures — provided solely by the Iraqi Ministry of Health — showing that a total of 186,000 children under the age of 5 died between 1990 and 1994 in the 15 Saddam-governed provinces. According to these government figures, the number of deaths jumped nearly 500 percent, from 8,903 in 1990 to 52,905 in 1994.”

Building on the old adage that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” the “moderate” backer of the Ground Zero mosque has just provided us with important insights on just how objective, balanced, and moderate his views are. Let’s hope that America is paying attention.

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog

Once — long ago — when I used to respond to leftist e-mails about my articles, I knew from the first few words of their e-mails what sort of people they were: angry, arrogant, and nasty.

Their e-mails always began with insults and went downhill from there. These people, who had never met me and who had only read one of my articles, had determined that whatever bile or venom they could fling on me was acceptable. These leftists had the manners of Nazis, their Siamese twins ideologically. I would respond, always, politely — much to their chagrin sometimes. I would also ask them, civilly, if there were any facts which I could present which would change their minds. In every single case, no facts, however well-documented, could sway their mind, which was marinated in noxious misology.

Conservatives have criticized my articles more often than leftists, but their critiques almost never have personal attacks. They discuss legislative votes, public statements, and philosophies of government and society. Conservatives are civil, even when they strongly disagree with me. Other conservatives, I am sure, encounter the same difference in manners between leftists and conservatives. Why is this so? I think for three reasons:

First, most conservatives are religious. They may be Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish, but within them burns real, living faith. Courtesy, kindness, and respect are ineradicably intertwined in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Treating people as you would like to be treated, among countless other rules the Blessed Creator has enjoined us to follow, simply prohibits the sort of savagery which pockmarks leftism.

Second, conservatives believe in markets. We usually — and carelessly — think of markets only in terms of the hurly-burly of financial markets of Wall Street. Yet we see the virtue and vitality of markets more clearly in the quiet sidewalks of Maple Street. Markets transcend money and economics. Treating our neighbors decently, treating strangers decently, watching our language when around children, ladies, or the elderly — these and countless other signal “transactions” in the marketplace of human interactions largely determine what sort of life we will lead.

The left dislikes all forms of markets and believes instead in coercion — the officious bureaucrat, the obnoxious teacher or professor, the monopolistic leftist media stalking the Palin family, the “comedians” and “entertainers” whose purpose for existence seems to be spiteful mockery of America and its culture — these people trust force and pressure more than liberty and choice.

Third, conservatives believe in truth. Leftists like Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Mussolini, Howard Dean, and Al Gore believe that ideology is truth. There is no point in really looking beyond ideology, and any facts which contradict their ideological reality must be false. So the real “progressives” (those who believe that the human condition can be improved through thoughtful and honest reflection) are invariably conservatives. Our problem with global warming, for example, is that it is a lie. Our problem with socialism is that it always fails and creates human misery. Our problem with leftism is that it is, more or less openly, based upon an utter absence of scruples, with honesty the first casualty.

Those who seek truth behave entirely differently from those who seek to crush truth. We listen to the left because we want to hear what they have to say. Most of us can state the arguments of the left better than Howard Dean or Barack Obama could ever recapitulate conservative positions. When the left has a point, as with the corruption of Nixon, we agree with them (Nixon resigned when Republican leaders, including Goldwater, told him he must — in stark contrast to Clinton when caught in a web of outlandish lies and perjury). Those who truly want the free flow of information do not invent “speech codes” for college campuses and do not try to create a climate in which the political or ideological impact of each word must be weighed before spoken. Conservatives, then, are like true Americans — plain-talking, really listening, open-minded, but independent-thinking people.

All of this means that conservatives want a civil society. So we behave decently. We believe that God connects us to every single human being, including leftists, so our reality has no Juden and no Kulaks, only fellow creatures of a loving God. We believe that the panorama of free markets enriches all human lives. And we grasp our finite knowledge, so the search for truth is serious and lifelong, which means we listen as well as speak. Civility is the mark of grownups seeking goodness. That is why conservatives are naturally, happily polite and respectful.

HT: American Thinker

President Obama has pledged more of your money to protect the unions and secure their vote. The administration demanded and got $26 billion taxpayer dollars to spare 300,000 teachers and other public workers from the unemployment lines.

The hundreds of billions of taxpayer money already spent by Obama and the Democrats since 2009 to pay off their union supporters was apparently not enough. Despite giving $100 billion in new funding to the Department of Education (DOE), courtesy of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, in addition to the $25 billion bailout that saved the GM and Chrysler auto union workers, more is needed to thank them for their continuing support and unquestioning loyalty.

The Senate passed the $26 billion bailout measure last week and the House approved it on Tuesday with overwhelming Democrat support. Obama is expected to sign it quickly. The additional spending is partially paid for by reducing food stamps benefits to the poor.

The $26,000,000,000 required to protect 300,000 union jobs, works out to roughly $86,666 per job. This is an amazingly generous payoff to union workers, considering the average $56,100 yearly salaries of Americans working in the private sector.

Meanwhile the US economy continues to slow down, with the “official” unemployment rate holding steady at 9.5% and the underemployment rate (which includes part-time workers and those who have given up looking for a job) hovering around 17%.

More misery and uncertainty is in store for 15 million unemployed Americans. But government employees and union workers are experiencing unprecedented prosperity and job security under the protection of Obama’s socialist policies.

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog and at Chris Banescu.com

Image from: frugal-cafe.com

Al Gore’s Church of Climatology has been abandoned by world leaders in their quest to maintain power and political position.

Lawrence Solomon recently reported that G20 leaders in Toronto tried to avoid the fate of colleagues felled by warming advocacy by turning their backs on global warming legislation.

Will the “mainstream” media in the U.S. report these findings? Not likely!

Last week’s G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto and its environs confirmed that the world’s leaders accept the demise of global-warming alarmism.

One year ago, the G8 talked tough about cutting global temperatures by two degrees. In Toronto, they neutered that tough talk, replacing it with a nebulous commitment to do their best on climate change.

Not trying to outdo each other, the global-warming commitments of the G20, which now carries more clout than the G8, went from nebulous to non-existent: The G20’s draft promise going into the meetings of investing in green technologies faded into a mere commitment to “a green economy and to sustainable global growth.”

These leaders’ collective decisions in Toronto reflect their individual experiences at home, and a desire to avoid the fate that met their true-believing colleagues, all of whom have been hurt by the economic and political consequences of their global-warming advocacy.

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s gung-ho global-warming prime minister, lost his job the day before he was set to fly to the G20 meetings; just months earlier Australia’s conservative opposition leader, also a major proponent of global warming legislation, lost his job in an anti-global-warming backbencher revolt.

The Church of The Church of Climatology’s choir director, on global warming Gordon Brown, of the U.K. likewise lost his job.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had vowed to “save the human race” from climate change by introducing a carbon tax by the time of the G8 and G20, was a changed man by the time the meetings occurred. He cancelled his carbon tax in March, two days after a crushing defeat in regional elections that saw his Gaullist party lose just about every region of France. He got the message: Two-thirds of the French public opposed carbon taxes.

Spain? Days before the G20 meetings, Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, his popularity and that of global warming in tatters, decided to gut his country’s renewable industry by unilaterally rescinding the government guarantees enshrined in legislation, knowing the rescinding would put most of his country’s 600 photovoltaic manufacturers out of business.

Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi similarly scrapped government guarantees for its solar and wind companies prior to the G8 and G20, putting them into default, too.

The U.K may be making the biggest global-warming cuts of all, with an emergency budget that came down the week of the G20 meetings. The two government departments responsible for climate-change policies, previously immune to cuts, must now contract by an extraordinary 25%.

Other U.K. departments are also ditching climate-change programs, the casualties include manufacturers of electric cars, the Low Carbon Buildings Program, and, as the minister in charge put it, “every commitment made by the last government on renewable energy is under review.“

Some areas of U.K.’s economy not only survived but expanded, though: The government announced record offshore oil development in the North Sea, when it granted a record 356 exploration licenses in its most recent round.

Support for global-warming programs is also in tatters in the U.S., where polls show as in Europe, that the vast majority of Americans reject the global-warming agenda. Americans resent repeated attempts to pass cap and trade legislation over their objections, contributing to the fall in popularity of President Barack Obama and Congress.

Will progressive ideologues in the U.S. Congress change their tune quickly to save their jobs? Not likely, ignorance and stubbornness are frequently a fatal combination. In anticipation that cap and trade legislation would be stalled in the senate, the current administration tasked the Environmental Protection Agency with capping carbon emissions.

Public opinion surveys now predict that this November’s elections will see sweeping change in the United States, with legislators who have signed on to the global warming hypothesis being replaced by those who don’t buy it.

One country, Canada and one leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper have stood out for avoiding the worst excesses associated with climate change. Called the Colossal Fossil three years running by some 500 environmental groups around the world, Canada and Stephen Harper are reviled among climate-change campaigners for failing to fall into line.

Not coincidentally, Canada has also stood out for having best withstood the financial crisis that beset the world. Fittingly, Canada and its leader played host to the meetings.

HT: Santa Ana Statehouse Examiner

World Leaders Turn on Al Gore Hoax of Global Warming

A newly released video exposes the radical left’s malevolent strategy to overwhelm America’s system of government, undermine our Constitution, and destroy our free-market economy. The YouTube clip highlights the tactics known as the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” designed to hasten the collapse of capitalism and our democratic system via manufactured crisis and impossible demands on our social structures. These diabolical schemes are already being deployed by Obama and the Democrats to foster fear, fuel instability, and spread chaos and misery across the nation.

The video begins with an ominous warning that most conservatives already know and understand, but many still don’t seem to get or want to believe:

“President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recover, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite in fact.”

It then proceeds to highlight “The Cloward-Piven Strategy” detailed by James Simpson back in September of 2008 in the article “Barrack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis“:

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

The flood of different crisis and large-scale oppressive initiatives that keep on coming from Washington are yet more signs of the perverse tactics the left uses to overwhelm the American public. They are not wasting any opportunity to shove their Marxist ideology forward regardless of consequences.

The President and this Congress simply do not have our interests at heart. They are implementing this strategy on an unprecedented scale by flooding America with a tidal wave of poisonous initiatives, orders, regulations, and laws. As Rahm Emanuel said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” (2:42 in video)

Furthermore, the constant barrage of new legislation, regulations, taxes, and executive orders are not haphazard. “They are not goals in and of themselves except in their ability to deliver power” and continually push America into deeper crisis and further chaos. They also serve a malicious purpose: to distract and demoralize the middle class and beat them down into submission.

In addition to overwhelming the government with demands for services, Obama and the Democrats are overwhelming political opposition to their plans with a flood of apocalyptic legislation. Their ultimate goal is to leave us so discouraged, demoralized, and exhausted that we throw our hands up in defeat. As Barney Frank said, “the middle class will be too distracted to fight.” (2:55 in video)

The prophetic expose by James Simpson back in September 2008 turned out to be accurate. He understood what and who were are dealing with: “They are all radicals, firmly bedded in the anti-American, communist, socialist, radical leftist mesh.”

Let’s just hope that James’ call and prayer can still be heeded by enough men and women of sufficient character, integrity, and courage to challenge the insanity in Washington. We need them now more than ever to stop these malevolent radicals and their suicidal agendas:

God grant those few responsible yet remaining in Washington, DC the strength to prevent this massive fraud from occurring. God grant them the courage to stand up in the face of this Marxist tidal wave.

It is true that liberalism is cruel, corrupt, wasteful, and unjust. But one should never forget its delusion. The delusion is a simple one. It is a belief that government can be made rational and efficient. This delusion leads our liberal friends into disaster after disaster.

Liberals were shocked that President Bush failed to get everyone tucked up in bed in a couple of days after Hurricane Katrina. They knew that a rational and efficient government, run by people like them who believed in government, could do better.

Now President Obama is busy proving them wrong.

Unfortunately, conservatives aren’t helping. In pointing out the serious lapses in the president’s leadership qualities, we conservatives are missing the point. We are encouraging liberals in their delusion. Instead, we should remind everyone that of course a bunch of corporate bureaucrats, combined with a bunch of government bureaucrats, are going to be a bit off the mark.

A bit of presidential leadership might have made a difference, we could have said, but not much. The president brings the talents and experience of twenty years in left-wing organizing to the presidency. In that school, the attitude, the gesture, is all-important. So obviously he’s not going to be much help in a crisis.

But leader or no leader, it takes time to plug a hole — especially a hole under five thousand feet of water.

The big problem for the president is that the Gulf oil spill is his fourth major presidential mistake. The first big mistake was the $787-billion stimulus package. The second was the appeasement of thug dictators, Islamist and leftist. The third mistake was ObamaCare. The fourth is the Gulf.

(The bailouts of the auto industry I count as merely a crime, an assault and battery on the principle of private property and senior creditors, the very foundation of our freedom and prosperity.)

The horrifying thing is that we Americans can’t afford all these mistakes. We can’t afford a president stuck on stupid.

We could afford it if the national debt weren’t hitting 90 percent of GDP. We could afford it if Europe weren’t in the middle of a sovereign debt crisis. We could afford it if the economy were clearly expanding strongly.

It was Adam Smith who said there is a great deal of ruin in a nation. But you have to keep the ruin within certain limits.

The reason we are in this mess is because liberals wouldn’t listen. They had a wake-up call in 1980, when an amiable dunce became president and fixed the economy with lower tax rates, hard money, and an end to economic meddling. But liberals stuck their hands over their ears and insisted that supply-side economics was trickle-down economics.

Then, in 1994, liberals had another wake-up call when Republicans rocketed to control of Congress after President Clinton pushed a big tax increase and HillaryCare. This time liberals were insulted and determined not to concede their cultural and political hegemony to a bunch of right-wing Christians. They refused to consider any reform of the welfare state except in the summer of 1996, when the Republican Congress put a gun to President Clinton’s head.

That’s the way it is with religion. You cling to your faith, sometimes bitterly. Because in the end, that’s all you have.

For President Obama and the liberals, their religion is a secular religion, and their faith is a secular faith. Their faith is a faith in politics and government to right the wrongs of the world. Despite the collapse of their faith with the fall of the Soviet Union and the embrace of capitalism in India and China, these bitter clingers still worship the idols of government programs and their own ethical superiority.

How does a religion collapse? During the Christianization of northern Europe, the monks would topple the idols of the pagan gods. See, they said, our true God is more powerful than your gods.

Is that how liberalism will come to an end? When the Keynesian idols are finally toppled? Most likely the end will catch everyone by surprise, like the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union.

Could the election of 2010 be the decisive earthquake that tumbles the temple of liberalism? Certainly the British press, taking their cue from our mainstream media, are underwhelmed by last weeks’ primaries. The London Economist has a cover this week with Sarah Palin as Alice in Wonderland at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, featuring Rush Limbaugh as the March Hare.

Nobody knows when liberalism will end or when its politics of patronage and its culture of compulsion will destruct.

Is that discouraging? Not at all. The only thing to do is to think and write and organize and plan for a better America.

…An America no longer stuck on stupid.

HT: American Thinker

The Houston Chronicle reports that the Obama administration has ordered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department to implement multiple modifications to their facilities to make life easier, more comfortable, and pleasant for the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants (approximately 400,000) it detains annually. An internal ICE email highlights 28 different changes the organization will have to make to soften the look of the facilities, present a friendlier environment to the illegals, offer better entertainment, organize fun activities, and provide illegals with free access to email and phone services, as well as better dining and training classes.

According to ICE officials all of these changes are part of broader efforts supported by Obama “to make the immigration detention system less penal and more humane.” In reality, these changes are akin to “creating an all-inclusive resort for immigration detainees” according to ICE union leaders.

Some of the changes the White House is demanding include:

• dance classes
• movie nights
• art classes
• cooking classes
• tutoring and computer training
• free and unmonitored phone service
• free email access
• bingo
• arts and crafts
• more variety in dining options
• self-serve beverage stations
• fresh vegetable bars
• fresh carrot sticks
• hanging plants
• recreation in natural setting
• robust aerobic exercise

Also, ICE is expected to eliminate pat-down searches, lockdowns, and light-out for low-risk detainees, as well as provide vastly expanded visitation rights (up to 12 hours per visit) in its facilities.

The changes listed in the ICE e-mail are planned for nine different detention centers owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) across the country. According to the Chronicle, some of the changes “will be implemented within 30 days; others may take up to six months, said Beth Gibson, ICE’s senior counselor to Assistant Secretary John Morton and a leader of the detention reform effort.”

Illegal immigrant advocates are thrilled at the required changes. They have been advocating these transformations for years. Lory Rosenberg, policy and advocacy director for Refugee and Migrants’ Rights for Amnesty International was delighted with the promised improvements: “Many of these points are very important to changing the system from a penal system, which is inappropriate in an immigration context, to a civil detention system.”

However, ICE union leaders are appalled at the cavalier attitude towards the illegal immigrants they oversee and warn of the inherent dangers of such misguided policies. The officials are concerned the mandates will jeopardize the safety of their guards and agents, increase the potential for harm to other detainees, and cost the taxpayers more money in order to transform detention centers into an “all-inclusive resort” for immigration detainees.

“Our biggest concern is that someone is going to get hurt,” he said, taking particular issue with plans to relax restrictions on the movement of low-risk detainees and efforts to reduce and eliminate pat-down searches.

ICE leadership also expressed concerns about safety issues inherent in lowering security standards for almost half million detainees, many of which are violent and have gang affiliations. Tre Rebstock, president for Local 3332, the ICE union in Houston explains:

some detainees may be classified as low-risk because they have no serious criminal history but still may be gang members that “haven’t been caught doing anything wrong yet.”

He also said eliminating lockdowns will make it more difficult to protect detainees from one another.

He said reducing or eliminating pat-down searches could allow contraband into the facilities, including weapons.

These concerns are justified. According to ICE’s own report, as of September 9, 2009, 51% of the detained aliens were felons and 11% of the illegals had committed violent crimes. The report confirms that most common crimes committed by criminal aliens are those involving dangerous drugs, traffic offenses, simple assault, and larceny.

None of this matters to the ivory-tower elitist Obama. He condemned the people of Arizona for passing the SB1070 law that mirrors the US federal law on immigration calling it “misguided” and “irresponsible.” He has refused to listen to the American people, 73% of whom agree with Arizona and its stance on illegal immigration. He stood beside Mexican president Felipe Calderon as he bashed Arizona and its people. He then applauded Calderon’s defamation of America, while Democrats in Congress cheered and shouted their approval. He has refused to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders. He has continued to push for amnesty while a vast majority of the American people are against it.

President Obama wants millions more voters who support his radical leftist ideals. Pandering to illegal immigrants, blaming America, and continually playing the racist card is how he can get there. This is the Democrat’s best chance to overwhelm the American electorate and they’re going for it. Damn the American people, full amnesty ahead!