Obama: If Minorities Start Thinking Government's The Problem, That Leaves The Marketplace On Its Own

PRESIDENT OBAMA: There is an argument that was made in 1964, 1965 on through the ’80s and ’90s in which those who resisted any change in the status quo, particularly when it came to economic opportunity, made two big arguments. 

Argument number one was, any efforts by government to help folks who were locked out of opportunity, whether it was minorities or the poor generally, unions, any effort by government to help those folks is bad for the economy. And that became a major argument. And if, in fact, people start thinking the government’s the problem instead of the solution, then what that leaves you is whatever the marketplace does on its own. And what we’ve seen is a marketplace that increasingly produces very unequal results. And it – so it – it disempowers our capacity for common action to do something about poverty, to do something to help middle-class families.

And I think the second element to that argument that has been made, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, is that government has hurt middle-class families or hurt white working-class families, because, you know, pointy-headed bureaucrats in Washington are just trying to help out minorities or trying to give them something free. (PBS NewsHour, August 28, 2013)

Via: Real Clear Politics

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MORNING ACTION: LAWMAKERS IN WASHINGTON PLAYING WITH THE SECOND AMENDMENT YET AGAIN

GUNS.  Two Democrat lawmakers are sponsoring legislation that would create 20 percent tax on handguns and a 50 percent tax on ammunition:

Rep. Danny K. Davis and Bill Pascrell are sponsoring legislation to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to include a 20 percent tax on handguns, as well as a 50 percent tax on ammo:

Pascrell believes a new tax on handguns “has been a long time coming.” In announcing the legislation on August 21, Pascrell said, “The tax on handguns was last increased in 1955. Worse yet, the tax rate on ammunition and other types of firearms has remained the same since 1941.”

Besides taxing “pistols [and] revolvers” the bill also contains language indicating a proposed 20 percent tax on firearms “other than pistols and revolvers.”

The proposed tax on handguns would nearly double the current rate of 11%, and the tax would be applied at multiple points of sale — manufacturer, producer, and importer — significantly driving up prices. All government agencies would be exempt from the added tax, and its proceeds would benefit police departments.

EDUCATION. Virginia Walden Ford explains the benefits of school choice as an alternative to failing schools across the country:

Though our work is not yet done, and we will still strive to realize the fullness of the dream, we are now seeing children who were failing in schools across the nation thrive in schools that their parents chose. In just one instance of that accomplishment, it was a special joy for me this year to celebrate with Jordan White, the first DCOSP college graduate. Now she’s headed to a job in Kagoshima, Japan.

Via: Heritage Action

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Report: Anthony Weiner paid for phony supporters at campaign events

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Anthony Weiner is having such a hard time generating support for his limp campaign that he has resorted to paying a rent-a-crowd firm to provide "supporters" for his events, The Post has learned. 

Some of the gung-ho Weiner crowds, including at the Aug. 11 Dominican Day Parade in Manhattan, were really actors who were paid $15 an hour by the California firm Crowds on Demand, according to a source with direct knowledge of the deal. 

The source said surrogates for Weiner approached the Santa Monica-based company days after Indiana-native Sydney Leathers came forward to say that Weiner had continued his digital dalliances after resigning from Congress. 

The campaign asked the company to have actors seem "like either supporters or people who met him and became supporters as a result of that encounter," the source said. 

"The people would initially be skeptical and then they ask him various questions but would appear then to be convinced by his spiel," according to the source, who said the campaign used Crowds on Demand "several times." 

Via: Fox News Politics

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Colorado’s grass-roots revolt against the gun-grabbers By Michelle Malkin

While most Americans will be chillin’ out, maxin’ and relaxin’ this Labor Day weekend, dedicated patriots in Colorado are hard at work preparing for a groundbreaking special election day with nationwide repercussions. George Washington would be proud.

On September 10, Democratic legislator and state Senate President John Morse of Colorado Springs faces a citizen recall for his sellout to New York anti-gun special interests, for his betrayal of transparency and accountability to constituents, and for his destructive economic policies that are driving thousands of jobs away. Also up for recall: Democratic legislator Angela Giron of Pueblo.

In March, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed his left-wing colleagues’ sweeping package of gun- and ammo-control measures — pushed not by Coloradans, but by gun-grabbing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the anti-Second Amendment Brady bunch and the White House. Vice President Joe Biden inserted himself into my adopted home state’s legislative process, phoning up swing Democratic legislators to lobby for the bills personally.

These radically expanded background checks on every individual gun sale and ammunitions restrictions banning the purchase or transfer of magazines with more than 15 cartridges will do little to nothing to prevent the next Newtown or Aurora or Columbine. “Moderate” Hickenlooper publicly admitted their ineffectiveness before surrendering to the gun-control zealots.

Morse and Giron also posed as middle-of-the-roaders. But there’s nothing moderate about gun-control laws that demonize law-abiding gun owners. While Morse brags of his time as a police officer in Colorado Springs, his brethren in the Colorado Springs Police Protective Association have condemned him and support his recall. One of Morse’s extremist proposals, backed by Bloomberg and company, would have made firearms owners, sellers and manufacturers legally liable for any crimes committed with guns. He was forced to back down on that one.

Via: Michelle Malkin

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CORETTA SCOTT KING IN 1991: HOLD EMPLOYERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR HIRING ILLEGAL ALIENS

Pro-amnesty activists trying to co-opt the civil rights messages of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to push immigration reform through Congress seem to be directly contradicting the wishes of the late Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King. Mrs. King carried on her husband's civil rights activism after he was assassinated.

In a 1991 letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Coretta Scott King and other black community leaders argued that illegal immigration would have a devastating impact on the black community. At the time, Hatch was working his U.S. Senate position to undo some enforcement measures laid out in Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty agreement, attempting to weaken interior enforcement and sanctions against employers who hired illegal aliens. 

We, the undersigned members of the Black Leadership Forum, write to urge you to postpone introduction of your employer sanctions repeal legislation until we have had an opportunity to report to you what we believe to be the devastating impact the repeal would have on the economic condition of un- and semi-skilled workers—a disproportionate number of whom are African-American and Hispanic; and until we have had the opportunity to propose to you and to our Hispanic brothers and sisters, what we believe could be a number of effective means of eliminating the discrimination occasioned by employer sanctions, without losing the protection sanctions provide for U.S. workers, especially minority workers.

While the members of the Black Leadership Forum wrote they had “divergent views” at the time on the employer sanctions regarding illegal immigration, they wrote they were “united in three respects.”

Via: Breitbart

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West to Boehner: A leader wouldn’t allow the American people to suffer under Obamacare to score political points

Allen West has strong words for Speaker Boehner, arguing against the notion of allowing Obamacare to ‘implode’. Allen West says a leader wouldn’t allow the American people to suffer under Obamacare just to score political points. That would put them in the same camp as President Obama, he adds. West believes a leader would put the American people’s suffering over the politics of the issue and defund Obamacare to stop it in its tracks:

CAVUTO: You’re right that there’s another way to look at this, that it would be the president bringing on the shutdown. But I think the speaker and other mainstream Republicans, if you will, have said it’s going to be on Republicans, that it’s going to look like the last government shutdown. They’re going to get the blame, they’re going to get the heat – what do you think of that?

WEST: But see that’s the politics of it. And I will be very honest and clear, that’s such a failure of leadership. That’s such a failure to be able to concisely articulate the problems with this and show the American people a clear solution – like what I just did. And you know, look, I was born and raised in Georgia and went to the University of Tennessee. I’m not some Harvard educated gentlemen. But if I an understand that and I can explain it, just like conversation you and I have had, then why can’t Speaker Boehner, the majority leader in the House, the Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explain that just as well?

Let’s stop getting away from “I’m gonna get blamed, you’re gonna get blamed,” let’s stop reading the NY Times and the Washington Post and worrying about the politics of it. See I disagree with people that say you should just let this go through and let the American people suffer and then allow them to come screaming to you. I say that a leader would never allow the American people to suffer under something that they know is not good for the American people. Look at what just happened with UPS. Look at what is happening with Delta. And so you’re going to tell me as a leader you’re going to stand by and allow the American people to suffer just because you want to be able to score political points? That puts you in the camp with President Obama and I think our Republican leadership can do better than that.

Via: The Right Scoop
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Trains to Nowhere

When Democrats and Republicans agree, I get nervous. It often means that they agree to grab my wallet.

Both parties now agree that we don't have extra budget money lying around, but both say government does need to spend more on "infrastructure."

Even conservatives want more spent on roads and mass transit.

The reason, advocates claim, is that infrastructure, unlike most government spending, has a "multiplier effect" -- it creates new wealth by doing things like speeding up travel.

Well, it might.

Advocates also point out something that seems obvious to them: Infrastructure is a job that must be done by government. Who else would launch big projects like the New York City subway system? Subways are what Big Government supporters call a "public good."

They are important to many people, but there's no way that business would build subways or run them, they argue. Subways lose billions of dollars. Entrepreneurs would never invest in subway cars or dig subway tunnels -- there's no profit in that.

But often what we "obviously know" ... is not so.

Most of New York's subways were actually built by private companies. Few New Yorkers even know that. Private companies dug the first tunnels and ran the trains for about 40 years. But when they wanted to raise the fare to a dime, the politicians said they had to "protect" the public. Government took over the system, saying only "public ownership" could guarantee affordable fares.

Via: Townhall

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The Atlantic Magazine Downplays America's Debt Burden

When the senior editor of The Atlantic, Derek Thompson, tried to explain away concerns over the massive unfunded liabilities facing the U.S. government repeatedly pointed out by experts, such as Peter Peterson (the former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations), Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff, and James Hamilton of the University of California, he used a combination of false assumptions, simplistic reasoning, and frivolous complacency to do so.

It was Peterson’s incisive and persuasive book Gray Dawn, published in 1999, that first attempted to warn of the impending crisis. Without immediate and drastic changes to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, those programs would face bankruptcy, declared Peterson. Declining fertility rates and low tax revenues would exacerbate the problem, according to Peterson. In re-reading Gray Dawn in May 2013, professor Doug Erlandson said:

The problem has become worse since Peterson wrote his book. The predicted date of Social Security’s insolvency has been pushed up from 2040 (per Peterson’s projections) to the mid-2030s. The date that Medicare is projected to become bankrupt is even sooner.

Professor Kotlikoff presented his findings in a paper published by the International Monetary Fund in 2010 in which he stated: “The world’s largest economy faces a daunting combination of high and rising costs for health care and pension benefits and constrained sources of revenue that will put enormous pressure on its fiscal soundness.” One of Kotlikoff’s solutions was the immediate doubling of current income tax rates in order to make those two programs solvent. When such a draconian hike was simply ignored as fantasy, the reality of the government’s problems was reflected less than a year later when Standard and Poor’s downgraded America’s sovereign debt for the first time in history.

All of this was just a bit too much for Thompson, who decided to question these conclusions by doing some parsing of definitions. First of all, said Thompson, all that’s owed is “not our debt.” Part of what is owed is what the government has already spent using borrowed money. That’s “real” debt and must be paid back: “Failing to do so would be an illegal and disastrous default.”

On the other hand, the “unfunded liabilities” that Peterson and Kotlikoff are concerned about aren't “as real” because “we can change them whenever we want.” Fixing Social Security would be easy, said Thompson: "For example, raising the taxable income ceiling and slowing down the growth of benefits could reduce the Social Security gap to zero tomorrow."

Via: New American

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Watch Obama Botch the Debt Negotiations. Again. There's an easy way to best the GOP. The White House isn't using it.

How should Obama approach the next installment of our ongoing fiscal groundhog day?

The administration itself appears to be confused on this question. While the White House insists it won’t negotiate over raising the debt ceiling, negotiation appears to be precisely what it’s up to. Politico reports that White House officials are meeting with Republican senators on Thursday to explore a deal that would simultaneously fund the government past the September 30th end of the fiscal year, replace the sequester with a more sane combination of spending cuts and revenue, and raise the debt ceiling before it crushes us in mid-to-late October. 

his, to employ a clinical term, is nuts. Whether or not the White House maintains its no-debt-ceiling negotiation stance within these talks, the whole construct throws the GOP a lifeline where none would otherwise exist. After all, the Republican leadership knows it would be suicidal to force a debt-default by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. It also knows that forcing a government shutdown by failing to fund the government past September 30th would be politically disastrous. (John Boehner has said he believes it could cost Republicans their House majority.) But, of course, rank-and-file Republicans in Congress are demanding that their leadership hold the line on at least one, and preferably both, of those issues. The right-wingers want their leadership to balk at keeping the government open unless they can first defund Obamacare, and to resist raising the debt ceiling unless they extract massive additional spending cuts, particularly from entitlement programs.

Via: New Republic

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Detroit Teachers Moonlight As ‘Sugar Babies’ To Offset Wage Cuts

DETROIT (WWJ) - It’s back-to-school season and many Detroit teachers are struggling in the wake of budget cuts and overcrowded classrooms.

According to the National School Supply and Equipment Association, the average teacher spent at least $485 on school supplies for their classroom last year.

So, what are some Detroit women doing to offset their struggles in the classroom? Well, they’re becoming “sugar babies” of course —  seeking financial assistance from wealthy men online.

In the Detroit School District alone, 201 teachers are moonlighting as sugar babies to offset wage cuts and job losses, according to dating website SeekingArrangement.com.

Brandon Wade, the website’s founder and CEO, said the average public school teacher registered on the site is between the ages of 28- and 33-years-old, and asks for approximately $3,000 a month in financial assistance from her sugar daddy.

Via: CBS Detroit

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