Malkin: Why America Hates The GOP-Obamatrade Deal

Constitutional conservatives don't like it. Trade unions abhor it. Obama critics hate it. Environmentalists despise it.

Outside the Beltway bubble, a broad coalition of voters from the left, right and center opposes the mega-trade deal getting rammed through Congress this week by the Republican establishment on behalf of the White House. Here's why.

The Obama administration, House GOP leader John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have sold out American sovereignty. Their so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission will have sweeping authority over trade, immigration, environmental, labor and commerce regulations.

As alert watchdogs U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest and U.S. Rep Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., warn: "By adopting fast-track, Congress would be formally authorizing the President to finalize the creation of this Pacific Union and will have surrendered its legislative prerogatives. Before a word, line, paragraph, or page of this plan is made public, Congress will have agreed to give up its treaty powers. ... In effect, one of the most sweeping international agreements seen in years will be given less legislative scrutiny and process than a Post Office reform bill."

The Obama administration, House GOP leader John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have sold out legislative transparency. Boehner smugly asserts that so-called Trade Promotion Authority puts Congress in charge and promotes "more openness" on trade talks. Nonsense. Under the Boehner/Obama plan, Congress gives up its ability to amend any trade deals under fast track, severely limits the ability to debate and lowers the vote threshold in the Senate from 61 to 51. The 11 international parties negotiating with Obama on TPP refuse to sign their dotted lines until Congress agrees to pre-agree to behemoth global trade pacts -- sight unseen.

As Obamatrade cheerleader and Big Business crony Sen. Orrin Hack, I mean Hatch, admitted, "I don't know fully what's in TPP myself."

The secretive wheeling and dealing on the massive 29-chapter draft (kept under classified lock-and-key and only a tiny portion of which have been publicly disclosed through WikiLeaks) make the backroom Obamacare negotiations look like a gigantic solar flare of openness and public deliberation. Fast-track Republicans, who rightfully made a stink when Nancy Pelosi declared that "we have to pass the [Obamacare] bill so that you can find out what is in it," now have no transparency legs to stand on.

Via: Truth Revolt

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Immigration Advocates Frightened By 99-Pound Blonde by Ann Coulter

Third World immigration advocates Frank Sharry, Ali Noorani and Marc Andreessen aren’t shy about rushing to the press with pabulum quotes about how wonderful immigration is, but they don’t want to debate me, even to lie about all those benefits.

They don’t want you to think about immigration at all.

Although you will miss the lush analytical context of the full case made in my smash new book, Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole, here are some more startling facts from my book that the anti-American crowd doesn’t want you to know:

– If an illegal alien drops a baby on American soil, the entire family can access welfare programs that were supposed to be for U.S. citizens — in addition to the government assistance illegal aliens can collect right away, such as food stamps and housing subsidies, free medical care and free schooling.

– The Constitution did not make U.S. citizenship a game of “Red Rover” with the Border Patrol. Haha! Too late — I had the baby! The 14th Amendment confirmed the citizenship rights oaf former American slaves — not 21st-century freeloaders from China.

– Our ludicrous “anchor baby” policy was invented out of whole cloth by Justice William Brennan and slipped into a footnote in a Supreme Court opinion in 1982.

– On average, college graduates in the United States pay about $30,000 more in taxes each year than they get back in government services, while those without a high school degree get back about $35,000 more in government services than they pay in taxes.

– Only about 7 percent of Americans do not have a high school diploma, but more than a third of legal immigrants under the post-Kennedy immigration act and about 75 percent of illegal aliens do not have a high school diploma.

– Mexican immigrants send $20 billion back to Mexico every year — more than the U.S. sends to that country in direct foreign aid.

– The New York Times was saved from bankruptcy by one of the richest men in the world, Mexican Carlos Slim, whose fortune comes from illegal aliens’ sending money — most of it from the U.S. taxpayer — back to Mexico.

– Anything the Times says on immigration ought to be treated like a press release from a tobacco company about the low risk of disease from smoking.

– Contrary to repeated assertions that fences don’t work (by the Times, as well as a slew of Republicans, such as former Texas governor Rick Perry), after Israel completed a fence along its border in 2013, the number of illegal aliens entering the country dropped to zero.

– The country that put men on the moon can’t seem to build a wall like the one the Chinese built 700 years before Christ.

Via: Human Events

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Homeland Security Secretary nominee Jeh Johnson is loyal to the [Constitution] Obama

Here’s the guy Obama is expected to nominate to replace Janet Napolitano. He’s talking about being in NYC on 9/11:

“When that bright and beautiful day, a day something like this, was shattered by the largest terrorist attack on our homeland in history, I wandered the streets of New York that day and wonderered, and asked, ‘What can I do?’ Since then, I have tried to devote myself to answering that question. I love this country. I care about the safety of our people. I believe in public service. And I remain loyal to you, Mr. President.”

He remains loyal to Barack Obama? What happened to supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bearing true faith and allegiance to the same? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go?

Via: Daily Caller

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Campus cop stops student from handing out Constitutions … ON CONSTITUTION DAY

A police officer at Modesto Junior College in California told a patriotic libertarian student that it was against college rules for him to hand out copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus.

Ironically, this flagrant violation of the student’s Constitutional rights took place on September 17th: Constitution Day.

The exchange between student Robert Van Tuinen and a campus police officer was captured on video. Tuinen told the officer that he wished to start a Young Americans for Liberty chapter on campus, and hoped that passing out copies of the Constitution would generate interest in that. The officer, however, maintained that Van Tuinen was not allowed to distribute flyers without college authorization.

“Anytime anything is being passed out it has to be… you have to go through the Student Development office,” said the officer.

The irony of being told to stop distributing copies of the Constitution was not lost on Van Tuinen.

“Do you know what this is?” he responded. “Why are their rules tied to my free speech?”

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right of people to exercise free speech and peaceably assemble in public places.

Nevertheless, the officer brought Van Tuinen to the Student Development office, where administrator Christine Serrano told him that he could only hand out flyers while inside a “free speech zone” on campus.

Via: Daily Caller

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Hey, let’s elect a new Speaker from outside the House

Ed’s headline in the Greenroom for this piece (written by the co-author of “The Republicans Are the Problem”) tells you all you need to know about what an unserious bit of trolling it is, but I’m oddly comforted to see it show up on WaPo’s op-ed page. It’s proof positive that even the most celebrated newspapers aren’t immune from having to scrounge for content in the news desert between Christmas and New Year’s. Coming tomorrow, presumably: “Let’s repeal term limits for Obama.”

Still, it’s worth writing about for two reasons. One: Conservative dissatisfaction with Boehner is real. We may well end up with a new Speaker on January 3. No harm in thinking about alternatives. Two: It’s a useful prism through which to consider the leadership void in the GOP right now.

What if Boehner doesn’t survive? Go to Article I, Section 2: The Constitution does not say that the speaker of the House has to be a member of the House. In fact, the House can choose anybody a majority wants to fill the post. Every speaker has been a representative from the majority party. But these days, the old pattern clearly is not working…

The best way out of this mess would be to find someone from outside the House to transcend the differences and alter the dysfunctional dynamic we are all enduring. Ideally, that individual would transcend politics and party — but after David Petraeus’s stumble, we don’t have many such candidates. It would have to be a partisan Republican.

One option would be Jon Huntsman. By any reasonable standard, he is a conservative Republican: As governor of Utah, he supported smaller government, lower taxes and balanced budgets, and he opted consistently for market-based solutions. As a presidential candidate, he supported positions that were in the wheelhouse of Ronald Reagan. But a Speaker Huntsman would look beyond party and provide a different kind of leadership. He would drive a hard bargain with the president but would aim for a broad majority from the center out, not from the right fringe in. He could not force legislation onto the floor, but he would have immense moral suasion.

Another option would be Mitch Daniels, the longtime governor of Indiana and a favorite on the right. Daniels has shown a remarkable ability to work with Democrats and Republicans, and he is a genuine fiscal conservative — meaning he does not worship at the shrine of tax cuts if they deepen deficits, and he would look for the kind of balanced approach to the fiscal problem put forward by Simpson-Bowles, ­Rivlin-Domenici and the Gang of Six.

Via: Hot Air
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Proposal 4: SEIU union pumps money into Michigan's home health ballot measure

LANSING, MI – The Service Employees International Union has kicked in at least $5.5 million to support Michigan’s Proposal 4, according to campaign finance reports, but it's not clear if more SEIU money is involved.

Proposal 4 on the Nov. 6 ballot would amend the Michigan constitution to create a home healthcare registry and give workers some limited collective bargaining rights. The workers involved would be represented by the SEIU.

The main committee supporting Proposal 4 – Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care – reported raising roughly $9 million overall. The money is listed as coming from Home Care First Inc.

According to Dohn Hoyle, co-chair of Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care: “Home Care First Inc. is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization formed and supported by Michigan’s leading senior and disability rights groups. Home Care First — along with the Michigan Disability Rights Coalition, Michigan Paralyzed Veterans of America, the Area Agencies on Aging Association of Michigan, the Arc Michigan and many more — strongly supports Proposal 4 ... "

Supporters of Proposal 4 have said there’s nothing secretive about their campaign. But former Attorney General Mike Cox has called Home Care First “clandestine” because there hasn't been full disclosure of donors.

Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution is a coalition that opposes Proposal 2, 3 and 4. Nick De Leeuw, a spokesman for Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution, said $1.4 million has been spent on Proposal 4.

Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution is a coalition that includes the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and other business groups.

Via: Michigan Live

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