HARDIN REPUBLIC Mission Statement : We will to the best of our ability, preserve, protectand defend the Constitution of the United States.
Stephen Guy Hardin
Edith Louisa Cavell was an English nurse who was trapped behind enemy lines when the hospital she was in charge of in Brussels was overrun by the Germans in 1915. For several months after the German occupation of Brussels she assisted almost 200 Allied soldiers, who had also been trapped behind German lines, in escaping into Holland and an eventual return to England. She was eventually found out by the Germans and sentenced to death by firing squad.
"Patriotism is not enough," were the last words she spoke before being shot.
"Patriotism is not enough."
The Vid Files
Page Two... News You Might Have Missed
Obama aide condemns 'destructive' Israeli homes plan
Israel move seemed "calculated to
undermine" - courtesy ABC News/This Week
Israel's announcement of plans to build
1,600 homes for Jews in East Jerusalem was "destructive" to peace
efforts, a top aide to Barack Obama says.
David Axelrod said
the move, which overshadowed a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe
Biden, was also an "insult" to the United States.
Israel's prime
minister has tried to play down the unusually bitter diplomatic row
between the two allies.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
last week issued her own stern rebuke.
Mrs Clinton
told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by telephone on Friday
that the Israeli move was "deeply negative" for US-Israeli relations.
'Affront'
Under
the Israeli plans, the new homes will be built in Ramat Shlomo in East
Jerusalem.
The international community considers East Jerusalem
occupied territory and says Israel's building there is illegal under
international law. But Israel regards East Jerusalem - which it annexed
in 1967 - as its territory.
The Palestinians are threatening to
boycott newly agreed, indirect talks unless the Ramat Shlomo project is
cancelled.
"This was an affront, it was an insult but most
importantly it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to
that region," David Axelrod, one of President Obama's closest aides,
told NBC television.
"We have just started proximity talks, that
is shuttle diplomacy, between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and for
this announcement to come at that time was very destructive," he said.
At
a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Mr Netanyahu began by giving a survey of
media coverage of the spat with the Americans.
"I propose not to
be carried away and to calm down," he said. "We know how to handle these
situations, calmly, responsibly and seriously."
He went on to
admit that the announcement of project during the vice-president's visit
had been offensive, but it had been an accident.
Mr Netanyahu
has now set up a committee of senior officials to vet the timing of such
announcements.
However, the BBC's Paul Wood, in Jerusalem, says
it is clear the Americans are not persuaded that this was all just a
bureaucratic mix up.
The ill-timed announcement on settlements
has allowed Mr Netanyahu to shore up his right-wing coalition, our
correspondent says.
But Israel needs the US to deal with Iran's
nuclear programme - and that is an issue which Mr Netanyahu himself has
said is more important than any other facing Israel.
Close to
500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967
occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are illegal under
international law, although Israel disputes this.
The Quartet of
Middle East peace mediators - the US, Russia, the EU and the UN - has
also condemned the Israeli housing announcement and said it would review
the situation at its ministerial meeting scheduled for 19 March in
Moscow.
March 14, 2010
Alexander: Dems Are on "Kamikaze Mission"
GOP Senator Calls Push for Health Care Reform "Most Brazen Act of Political Arrogance" Since Watergate Scandal
(CBS) Calling the Democrats "tone-deaf" in hearing what Americans want in health care reform, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee charged that the president and Congressional Democrats were guilty of the most brazen act of political arrogance since Watergate.
Alexander also disputed remarks by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that Republicans were acting simply to block or stall action in Congress for their own political benefit.
"We're not trying to end the health care debate, we're trying to change it," Alwexander said. "We're trying to say the American people don't want higher individual premiums, higher taxes, Medicare cuts. They don't want an increase in the deficit. They're wondering why if we're trying to reduce costs it costs a trillion dollars?
"So what we ought to do this week is defeat this bill."
"You have said on the record that Republicans will challenge every sentence in this bill. What does that mean?" askedhost Bob Schieffer. "Does that mean you'll try to try to throw up procedural road blocks? Offer amendments? Let's say that the House does pass this and it does come back to the Senate - what happens then?"
"Here's what the House Democrats are being asked to do: They're being asked by the president to hold hands, jump off a cliff and hope Harry Reid catches them in the Senate," Alexander said. "All 41 Republican senators have agreed that we're going to enforce the rules of the Senate, which means, for example, that the only things they can change have to do with taxing and budget. So they try to change abortion, that won't work. We're going to go sentence by sentence through the 3,000-page bill to make sure the rules are followed. That's what the American people would expect us to do."
The reconciliation bill the Democrats are using is not open to a filibuster, the procedure by which any bill lacking 60 votes to pass is almost automatically tabled.
"Will you try, as some say, to filibuster by amendment? Will you offer an endless number of amendments?"Schiefferasked.
"Well, we'll certainly offer a large number of amendments to try to correct the bill," he replied.
Despite Barack Obama winning the 2008 election on a campaign to reform health care, Alexander said, "Through elections, through town meetings, through consistent public opinion surveys, Americans have said 'Don't pass this bill.'
"This is the most brazen act of political arrogance that I can remember since the Watergate years, not in terms of breaking the law but in terms of thumbing your nose at the American people and saying, 'We know you don't want it, we're going to give it to you anyway.'"
While predicting political suicide for Democrats, Alexander said he hoped they did not follow through on their plans: "I hope what the House Democrats decide is, 'We don't want to do that - we don't want a year like 1974 when people came down out of the mountains in Tennessee looking for Republicans so they would know who to vote against, we want to work with the Republicans and try to let people buy insurance across state lines,' to the other things we suggested at the health care summit and reduce health care costs."
"Aren't Republicans also putting everything on the line by just being universally totally against this?'Schiefferasked. "Can a party get elected just by saying 'no'? Is that a successful campaign tactic?"
"No, it's not. It's not what we've done," Alexander said. "What the president is trying to do is to expand a health care system that everybody knows is unaffordable. What we want to do is reduce the cost of the health care system.
"I'm willing to put it to a vote; I hope we don't have to for the country. I mean, the most important words the president may have uttered in the summit were 'That's what elections are for.'
"[President Obama] said last year that the health care debate is not just about health care, it's a proxy for the larger issue of the role of government in American lives. We think he's right about that."
"You have said, I believe, that it would be catastrophic for the Democrats if this legislation passes. From just the standpoint of straight politics, why wouldn't it be a good idea for Republicans toletit pass?" askedSchieffer.
"If we were completely irresponsible, that's what we would do," he replied. "I think it's a political kamikaze mission for the Democrats to insist on this. Pat Moynihan used to say that no big piece of social legislation has been jammed through by a partisan vote. Johnson had Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all had 70 votes.
"I think from the day this passes, if it should, there will be an instant, spontaneous campaign to repeal it all across the country. It will define every Democratic Congressional race in November. And it will be a political wipeout for the Democratic Party. That will be bad for the country, but it will change the leadership of the country.
Republicans Need More Than Opposition: Rove
By Steve Holland
Reuters
WASHINGTON
Karl Rove, architect of George W. Bush's two presidential election wins, says he believes Republicans need to offer more than just opposition to Democrats in the November congressional elections.
Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate have been largely in lock-step opposition to President Barack Obama's proposals on healthcare and spending, drawing charges from Democrats that they represent the "party of no."
Rove sees nothing wrong with a strategy of opposition, but thinks Republicans should offer an optimistic vision of the country and alternatives to Democratic proposals, such as their recently proposed moratorium on targeted pet spending projects called "earmarks."
"It's got to be measured and reasonable dissent from Obama, criticism based on the facts and hard evidence and not just hard rhetoric, matched with a positive and optimistic agenda," Rove said.
"They can't be content to surf the wave of discontent with Democrats through the fall," he said.
Rove spoke in an interview as part of the roll-out of his memoir, "Courage and Consequences -- My Life as a Conservative in the Fight."
Popular with conservatives, Rove is a man Democrats love to hate for advocating what they called a "Rovian," take-no-prisoners style of politics.
For all his successes in helping Bush win back-to-back terms, his vision of seeing a more lasting Republican majority collapsed in 2006 when Democrats took advantage of Americans' fatigue with Bush and gained control of Congress and then won the White House in 2008.
Rove, like most Republicans, believes Obama and his Democrats are headed for trouble on healthcare if their sweeping overhaul passes, because many Americans are unhappy with it.
"This is one of those odd pieces of legislation that the longer the public discussion has gone on, the greater the opposition and the more ardent the opposition," he said.
Obama has rejected this kind of thinking, saying the goal of changing the healthcare system is more important than short-term politics.
"You don't govern by the polls; you govern by principles. You don't put your finger to the wind; you put your shoulder to the wheel," Obama said last week at a fund-raiser for Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill.
Rove said Obama could put Republicans in a tight spot on the subject by scaling back his plan and forcing them to vote on banning health insurance companies from discriminating against anyone based on a pre-existing condition.
Other snippets from Rove's interview with Reuters:
* Bush's book on 12 important decisions he made as president is coming out in November, and its roll-out will prompt him to take on a more visible role than he has had since he left Washington in January 2009.
Bush is about to enter a challenging phase when he has his book edited.
* Republicans considering a run to challenge Obama in 2012 are in "the training season" in which they try out themes and find their voices.
* One presidential wannabe, Mitt Romney, will face questions of consistency and how to explain why the healthcare system adopted in Massachusetts when he was governor is different than Obama's proposals.
* Sarah Palin will face greater scrutiny than other potential Republican candidates such as Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, because she gained a high profile as John McCain's running mate in 2008.
* Daniels could emerge as a sleeper candidate for Republicans with his nerdy, low-profile competent style.
* One of the more amusing experiences of Rove's political career came when he was 25 years old and helping Senator John Warner of Virginia with a speech at a time when Warner was married to movie star Elizabeth Taylor.
Rove, arriving at the Warner home for breakfast, was goggle-eyed when Taylor answered the door wearing a revealing nightgown.
"Dang it, that was one weird experience," he said.
As Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are working on a Senate version of comprehensive immigration reform and it includes a very controversial idea. There is a provision in the draft bill to force all Americans to possess a biometric ID card. Sources on Capitol Hill confirm to Big Government that the idea of a national ID card is part of the comprehensive immigration reform bill being negotiated between Graham and Schumer.
Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.
Under the pre-text of halting illegal immigration, Congress may consider forcing citizens to carry an ID card as a condition of citizenship. For those who mistrust big government and treasure freedom, this idea should be revolting and a shocking example of a bad idea run wild. American citizens’ freedoms have been eroding over the past few years, yet this idea is much more than an erosion of rights. It is an all out assault on the idea that Americans have a natural right to be free of government monitoring.
The Wall Street Journal further reports:
Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker. The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.
Adding the national ID cared idea to the mix will cause both the right and the left to band together against this provision forcing all Americans to carry an identification card containing fingerprints and other biometric information. To say this is an invasion of privacy is an understatement. There is no provision in the Constitution that grants the federal government the power nor the right to force Americans to be fingerprinted and to carry an identification card against their will. This is not a new idea
Senator Schumer stated at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Immigration, on July 21, 2009 that any employer identification system needs to include a means to “authenticate the employee’s identity by using a specific and unique biometric identifier. This identifier could be a fingerprint, an enhanced biometric picture or other mechanism.” Schumer went on to say that “any new biometric-based employment system must have extensive checks at the beginning of the system to prevent illegal aliens from creating a false identity to enter into the new database. And, as I mentioned before this, we need to do this with the entity administering the new employment-verification system — will have access to public records, government databases, to ensure that the person seeking to enter the new employment-verification system is, in fact, the person they claim to be, and the person has legal status.” Schumer supports the creation of a new government bureaucracy to monitor your work status and to audit you if a government bureaucrat decides that your status is suspect. In essence, you are guilty of being an illegal immigrant, until you can prove otherwise.
This is the same federal government that has a hard time maintaining an accurate No-Fly list. The No-Fly list has prevented members of Congress from flying and is known to be riddled with errors, yet we are readying a database containing all American citizens. CBS News reports today
Current and former intelligence, counterterrorismand U.S. government officials provided The Associated Press a behind-the-scenes look at how the no-fly list is created. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues. Despite changes over time, the list remains an imperfect tool, dependent on the work of hundreds of government terrorism analysts who sift through massive flows of information. The list ballooned after Sept. 11 and has fluctuated in size over the past decade. In 2004, it included about 20,000 people. The standards for getting on the list have been refined over the years, and technology has improved to make the matching process more reliable.
The immigration bill is proving to be a heavy lift for Schumer and Graham, why they would add a national ID card to the mix defies logic. More from the WSJ:
The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.
Clearly the Obama Administration recognize that this is a controversial issue that is incidental to the debate on immigration reform. Forcing all Americans to carry ID cards will cause may libertarian leaning liberals, who would usually support a reform effort, to have second thoughts about an immigration reform effort. No matter what you think of comprehensive immigration reform, this issue may prove to be an issue that could take down the bill.
The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.
I would contest that assertion in the WSJ report and say that the biggest objections come from average everyday citizens who don’t want any further freedoms taken away in the name of stopping illegal immigrants from working in the United States. Both conservative and liberal groups will line up against this idea, because it is a frontal assault on basic freedom.
“It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.” Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. “We’ve all got Social Security cards,” he said. “They’re just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That’s all I’m saying.”
The American Civil Liberties Union will line up with conservative groups against this idea. Groups like Gun Owners of America will rightly see this as a first step toward national gun registration and privacy groups will see this as a first step toward the national ID card being used for more than merely proving to an employer that you are a citizen. Right and left have been on record in the past as being against the idea that all Americans have to carry identification cards as a condition of citizenship.
U.S. employers now have the option of using an online system called E-Verify to check whether potential employees are in the U.S. legally. Many Republicans have pressed to make the system mandatory. But others, including Mr. Schumer, complain that the existing system is ineffective.
E-Verify seems like a reasonable alternative to forcing all Americans to carry an ID card, yet business groups and immigrant advocacy groups resist the system’s universal implementation. E-Verify is a government run Internet based system where an employer to electronically verify the eligibility of an employee. This seems like a much less invasive way to take care of the problem than a national ID card.
Most European countries require citizens and foreigners to carry ID cards. The U.K. had been a holdout, but in the early 2000s it considered national cards as a way to stop identify fraud, protect against terrorism and help stop illegal foreign workers. Amid worries about the cost and complaints that the cards infringe on personal privacy, the government said it would make them voluntary for British citizens. They are required for foreign workers and students, and so far about 130,000 cards have been issued.
The Brits seem to have it right. If you are a foreign worker or student, a biometric card makes sense, but the federal government does not have the right to force citizens to carry ID cards. The federal government derives power from the consent of the governed and any strong arm attempt by the federal government to impose a card on citizens ignores the nature of our constitutional democratic republic.
A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said.
Does this sound like the way citizens should be treated in a free nation? Mandatory fingerprinting or scanning the hands of all Americans is a scary idea.
Mr. Schumer said employers would be able to buy a scanner to check the IDs for as much as $800. Small employers, he said, could take their applicants to a government office to like the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their hands scanned there.
This idea by Senator Schumer would allow the federal government to have your biometric data. Furthermore, if you have to go to a state Department of Motor Vehicles, then the state you work in will have your fingerprint and other mandatory biometric data. This is a crazy idea and hopefully it does not get past the idea stage. The fact that his is a bipartisan idea should strike fear in the hearts of all those who mistrust big government. Our elected officials in Washington, D.C. seem to more and more out of touch with the average American citizen every day.
Originally published 05:00 a.m., March 1, 2010, updated 02:09 p.m., March 1, 2010
The so-called "Great Recession" has left Americans depending on the government dole like never before.
Without record levels of welfare, unemployment and other government benefits as well as tax cuts last year, the income of U.S. households would have plunged by an astonishing $723 billion — more than four times the record $167 billion drop reported last month by the Commerce Department.
Moreover, for the first time since the Great Depression, Americans took more aid from the government than they paid in taxes.
The figures show the devastating results of the massive job losses last year and indicate that the economic recovery that began last summer is tenuous and has a long way to go before many Americans resume life as normal, analysts said.
Economic growth typically depends on consumer spending, which is fed by wages, rents, interest and other forms of income. But the tentative revival of consumer spending in the second half of last year appears to have been fed largely by an extraordinary flood of government spending, as growth in other kinds of income has disappeared.
"Governmental support was critical in keeping the economy, particularly consumer spending, from completely collapsing during the crisis," said Harm Bandholz, an economist at Unicredit Markets. He said he is concerned that so much of the economic rebound is a result of government spending rather than a revival of private income and jobs. That situation is unsustainable, he said, because the government has had to borrow massively to prop up the economy and cannot continue that binge for long.
While wages and other job-related income fell by a record $206 billion last year to $7.84 trillion, transfer payments from the government such as unemployment checks and Social Security burgeoned by $231 billion to $2.1 trillion. Meanwhile, the amount of taxes that individual Americans paid plummeted by $325 billion to $2.1 trillion as a result of middle-class tax cuts and because nearly 6 million people were thrown out of work and are no longer paying payroll taxes.
Commerce economists said last year's unprecedented drop of $256 billion in private wages — the mainstay of consumers in ordinary times — was particularly dramatic, and was more than 40 times larger than the drop in wages during the entire 2001 recession.
Equally dramatic, a measure of income that closely tracks the ravages of the recession also plummeted by an unprecedented $384 billion. That measure excludes transfer payments and adjusts for inflation. It has stabilized at $9.1 trillion since the middle of last year, in a sign that the worst of the job and income losses are over.
While most of the government benefits — including Social Security, welfare, Medicaid, food stamps and regular unemployment benefits — are sent automatically to those who qualify, Congress is debating an extension of some benefits enacted as part of the stimulus package last year. Those include jobless benefits and health insurance subsidies for the unemployed.
The Senate on Friday failed to pass an extension of jobless benefits for up to 99 weeks for workers in states with high unemployment rates. Long-term jobless benefits expired Sunday, leaving many Americans dependent on those payments in limbo. With more than 8 million workers laid off during the recession, unemployment benefits have quadrupled from $34 billion in January 2008 to $124 billion at the end of last year.
"Millions of Americans are now relying on unemployment benefits as their only source of income other than food stamps," said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. "They are unable to find work because there are more than six job seekers for every opening. There is literally nothing that most of these workers can do to get a job today. Unemployment benefits are often the only way they can make ends meet for their families and keep a roof over their heads."
The proposed extension in long-term jobless aid was held up Friday by Sen. Jim Bunning, Kentucky Republican, who objected that it added $10 billion to the budget deficit. As a result of record U.S. government borrowing, total debt in the United States has soared to an all-time high of 370 percent of yearly economic output, far exceeding its peak of 300 percent during the Great Depression.
"If we cant find $10 billion somewhere for a bill that everybody in this body supports, we will never pay for anything," Mr. Bunning said.
Democrats vowed to renew the unemployment aid this week to minimize disruption for more than 1 million jobless people who would begin to exhaust their extended benefits on Monday.
"The simple fact of the matter is that this is an emergency situation and should be treated as such," said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat. "The most vulnerable families in America are going to suffer because of this political decision by one senator. … We will be back, we will try to get this done. And to those families: Hang in there."
The massive shift into dependence on the government, while essential in promoting an economic revival last year, has postponed a reckoning for many consumers who went too far into debt to maintain their lifestyles during the boom years, Mr. Bandholz said.
While the government was lavishing aid, banks were cutting credit to consumers by a record $250 billion, nearly as much as the amount consumers gained from government transfer payments.
"This shift only postpones a solution to the problem" by substituting government debt for consumer debt, Mr. Bandholz said. "These elevated debt loads will at least result in sluggish growth rates for the time being — and if the problem is not tackled with determination, it might very well lead to another crisis."
Some economists say the big shift toward dependence on government spending and borrowing is only temporary.
"Sure, temporary government transfers played a role this past year. But that's OK," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. He noted that Americans also accumulated a record amount of savings last year as they stowed away funds out of fear of losing their jobs.
The increase in savings now enables many consumers to increase spending, while the 90 percent of workers who still have jobs can spend more because they are accumulating more income from overtime hours, he said.
"It's a combination and interaction of all these forces — not just one — that will promote more future spending by households and keep the economy going later without government aid," he said.
Jobless benefits and other welfare spending for the unemployed will start to decline when job growth returns. Many economists predict that employment will increase this spring or summer in the next stage of the recovery. Because of bleak job prospects during the recession, some people were forced to go more permanently on the government dole.
In particular, many workers who were nearing retirement age and got laid off started drawing Social Security benefits. The number of retirees taking Social Security at age 62 grew by a record 19 percent in the past year, helping to push up Social Security outlays by $100 billion. Analysts expect those spending levels to stay high and continue to increase as more baby boomers retire.
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