Reps. Ed WReps. Ed Whitfield, Lee Terry see Keystone rejection from Obamahitfield, Lee Terry see Keystone rejection from Obama

A pair of House Republicans said Wednesday they think President Obama will reject the Keystone XL pipeline, adding that the project's uncertain fate is hurting relations with Canada.

“I’ve been a little bit pessimistic about the fact I don’t think the president is going to approve the Keystone pipeline,” said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power.

“I hope I’m wrong,” Whitfield continued at the event hosted by TransCanada Corp., the Consumers Energy Alliance and others at the Canadian embassy in Washington.

Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., another senior member on Energy and Commerce, added he doesn’t “have the confidence” that Obama will green light the pipeline that would deliver oil from the Canadian tar sands to Texas.

Keystone’s unclear future has “strained” ties between Canada’s government and the United States, Terry said, calling the lengthy process a “disrespect” to Canada.

Terry acknowledged the nations’ trading links and mutual border will prevent them from drifting apart, but said Canadian officials and members of parliament have express dissatisfaction.

“They are very frustrated with the United States on this,” Terry told reporters.

TransCanada’s proposed pipeline is currently under review at the State Department. The agency is reviewing comments on a draft environmental assessment before moving onto the final version, which will be used to determine whether building Keystone is in the national interest. It, however, hasn't set a timeline for finishing the review.

Obama said in a June speech on climate change that he would nix Keystone if it “significantly exacerbates” carbon emissions.

Via: Washington Examnier

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BLAZE SOURCES: OBAMA PURGING MILITARY COMMANDERS

 Nine senior commanding generals have been fired by the Obama administration this year, leading to speculation by active and retired members of the military that a purge of its commanders is underway.

Retired generals and current senior commanders that have spoken with TheBlaze say the administration is not only purging the military of commanders they don’t agree with, but is striking fear in the hearts of those still serving.

The timing comes as the five branches of the U.S. armed forces are reducing staff due to budget cuts, and as U.S. troops are expected to withdraw from Afghanistan next year.

“I think they’re using the opportunity of the shrinkage of the military to get rid of people that don’t agree with them or not tow the party line. Remember, as (former White House chief of staff) Rahm Emanuel said, never waste a crisis,” a senior retired general told TheBlaze on the condition of anonymity because he still provide services to the government and fears possible retribution.

“Even as a retired general, it’s still possible for the administration to make life miserable for us. If we’re working with the government or have contracts, they can just rip that out from under us,” he said.

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, said the White House fails to take action or investigate its own, but finds it easy to fire military commanders “who have given their lives for their country.”

“Obama will not purge a civilian or political appointee because they have bought into Obama’s ideology,” Vallely said. “The White House protects their own. That’s why they stalled on the investigation into fast and furious, Benghazi and Obamacare. He’s intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”

Via: The Blaze

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Why Democrats Can’t Embrace Public Sector Union Reform

“Public employees have a private interest in taking more and more of the taxpayer-generated revenue for themselves. In other words, public employees have a private interest in diverting public funds from public services to their wages and pensions. In this sense, the increasing numbers of public employees and their increasing wages and benefits threaten to hollow out public services in our country.”  –Roger Berkowitz, Executive Director, Hannah Arendt Center

The above quote explains quite well the intrinsic conflict of interests that accrues to public sector unions. This conflict of interest is the primary distinction between public sector unions and private sector unions. It is the reason that private sector unions can muster strong arguments for their continued relevance in society, whereas the very legitimacy of public sector unions is questionable. And lest anyone suggest that calls for reform – if not abolition – of public sector unions emanates solely from the “extreme right wing,” consider the provenance of the above quote, and go away. The highly regarded, intellectually elite Hannah Arendt Center boasts perhaps the most impeccable nonpartisan, anti-ideological credentials of any comparable institution in the world.

The reason Democrats don’t support public sector union reform is quite obvious. There is no special interest in America that donates more money to the Democratic party than public sector unions. The data in the table below makes this quite clear. If you go to the source of this data OpenSecrets.org, you will see that the vast majority of the $535 million contributed to Democrats between 2000 and 2010 came from public sector unions, whose membership in absolute numbers now exceeds that of private sector unions. Needless to say, in California, where public sector union spending on state and local campaigns and lobbying exceeds $500 million per two-year cycle, the same percentages apply.

Via: California Political Review

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Flashback: If You Like Your Doctor, You’ll Be Able To Keep Your Doctor

Never gets old.

Via: Weasel Zippers

PBS Host Calls MSNBC Anchor and MSNBC Contributors 'Advocates' - To Their Faces

Talk about calling a spade a spade.

On MSNBC's NOW Wednesday, PBS's Jeff Greenfield called host Alex Wagner as well as the MSNBC contributors on the panel - David Corn, Joy Reid, and Katrina vanden Heuvel - "advocates" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 JEFF GREENFIELD, PBS: One of the things that struck me about Obama when he came out – and frankly, I’ve felt this about the President since he was campaigning - he talks too much.

ALEX WAGNER, HOST: So you think he should be less transparent?

GREENFIELD: No wait - a 28 minute speech is 26 minutes too long about what happened, surrounded by the same kind of, you know, human props, that poor pregnant diabetic who almost collapsed. It was too long. It was, what he might have learned from Winston Churchill was to begin by saying, “We screwed up.”

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, THE NATION: But he did say that.

GREENFIELD: “We screwed up, we screwed up, and we are going to fix it.” I’ll tell you the other thing, look, I realize, you know, sometimes networks can be, I want to just, want to be a counter-arguer.

[Laughter]

WAGNER: You’re allowed to do whatever you want.

GREENFIELD: Because I don’t represent myself, I represent myself as a humble country journalist, not an advocate. But what you said…

WAGNER: I think many people at this table would consider themselves journalists, too, not advocates.

GREENFIELD: Who are also advocates.

WAGNER: No, we’re not.

GREENFIELD: [Turning to Vanden Heuvel] Progressives and liberals.

VANDEN HEUVEL: [Nods]

WAGNER: We can get into that discussion later.

Via: Newsbusters
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Red Sox Take Game 1 of World Series 8-1

The Red Sox have won game one of the the 2013 World Series with a masterful pitching performance by John Lester who went 7 2/3 innings, struck out 8 and not giving up a run.

Go to ESPN for more details.

Obamacare mandate may be delayed - Official says deadline to have insurance could be postponed

The Obama administration may give Americans extra time to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, postponing when penalties for failing to buy coverage will go into effect, MarketWatch has learned.

The health care law requires most people to have health insurance by Jan. 1, 2014, but allows for “short coverage gaps” of up to three months before imposing the penalty, which is $95 or 1% of an individual’s income (whichever is greater) next year. That means someone must be covered by March 31, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed, which is the final day that people will be able to purchase health insurance on the public exchanges, or marketplaces, created by the ACA.

Via: Market Watch

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Could 12,000 Lawmakers Fix What Ails California?

The one thing most Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on is that special interests have too much influence in politics. The little guy is feeling less and less relevant — especially at the voting booth.

John Cox says the best way to fix this is by electing a larger Legislature. He’s the author of the Neighborhood Legislature initiative. I interviewed Cox for a third time since March to follow up on his progress.

Because legislators have largely become professional fundraisers, and the individual voter has so little influence, Cox is working to develop a system to elect 12,000 state lawmakers in California, rather than the current 120, to allow for better representation, closer to home.

Cox anticipates his plan would take the big crony bucks out of campaigns, and allow neighbors to campaign door-to-door, in a real grassroots campaign. “You can do it with shoe leather and a few flyers,” Cox said.

For democracy to work, it must be representative democracy. It must be a government of, by and for the people.

The Neighborhood Legislature

With 38 million California residents, there are only 120 state legislators. There are nearly 500,000 residents for each member of the Assembly, and nearly 1 million per state Senator.

Districts this large cost candidates millions of dollars to win an election, leaving special interests, public employee and labor unions, and big corporations funding the bulk of the campaigns. As a result, average Californians are left out of the process.

Compare California’s meager representation with New Hampshire. The “Live free or die” state is small, with only 1.3 million residents. However, New Hampshire has 424 elected legislators. Known as the General Court of New Hampshire, it consists of two chambers, the House of Representatives and the Senate. There are 400 Representatives and 24 Senators.

Via: California Political Review

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Hill Democrats frustrated by Obamacare rollout

House Democrats voiced growing frustration and anger with the broken Obamacare enrollment site on Wednesday as administration officials tried to reassure them that HealthCare.gov will be repaired.

Democrats, who labored to get the Affordable Care Act through Congress in the first year of the Obama presidency, said they wanted the administration to share details of what’s wrong and when it will be fixed.

“It’s screwed up,” Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) said, summing up the whole situation.

(Understanding Obamacare: A guide to the ACA)

The disastrous rollout three weeks ago of HealthCare.gov was obscured initially by the government shutdown, but now it’s Topic A on the Hill. Republicans are pouncing on ineptitude — and demanding delays. They had demanded a briefing too —and House Speaker John Boehner’s office said HHS had agreed and details were being worked out.

“It’s not clear why Republicans were excluded in the first place, but we look forward to getting answers to how the administration botched this enormous use of taxpayer dollars so badly,” a spokesman emailed reporters.

And Democrats are none too happy about all the problems of a program that they have a lot riding on. Expanding health care coverage is a longtime Democratic goal — but it’s also been politically costly and they need it to work.

Via: Politico

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Megyn Kelly revisits how Obamacare was shoved down our throats…

I must say I’ve been more than impressed at the topics Megyn Kelly has covered on her new show The Kelly File. And on last night’s show she took the time to remind America how Obamacare was passed in the first place, or as I like to put it, shoved down our throats. In doing so, she’s basically giving credence to the fact that so many Americans still so passionately oppose Obamacare.

Watch:

Via: The Right Scoop

Tech Expert: HealthCare.gov Discredits Liberalism

The Internet does weird things to people. One of those weirdnesses comes from the tech-savvy community on the left, who sincerely embrace an agile, entrepreneurial, bottom-up culture in their professional and voluntary pursuits, yet forcefully argue for the top-down paternalism of forcing people to buy health insurance, imposed by a bureaucracy that can’t build a website.

President Obama wants you to believe the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov won’t impede the same bureaucracy from implementing Obamacare more broadly. But the odds aren’t good, for reasons that go far beyond the website itself.

HealthCare.gov is an object lesson in the perils of big bureaucracy and crony capitalism. These issues are at the heart of the broader conservative critique of big government. Liberal blogger Matt Yglesias tries to argue that HealthCare.gov doesn’t discredit liberalism. He is right to be concerned that it might.

No one has a better understanding of this issue than Clay Johnson, who traded partisan politics (including helping to elect the President in 2008) for helping government build better technology. He is furious, and rightly points out that the issue stems from federal procurement laws.

But things like bad procurement laws don’t come out of nowhere. They arise in dysfunctional cultures that are the result of highly politicized decision-making processes. Part of the blame lies with successive Congresses. But part of it, if we’re being honest, is the rigidly bureaucratic culture of government itself. No one who values getting things done quickly and efficiently would ever build a system like the one we have now.

Via: The Foundry

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