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Recent NorCal Blogs Posts
Breaking News – White House Alters Oil Drilling Safety Report
WASHINGTON – The Interior Department’s inspector general says the White House edited a drilling safety report in a way that made it falsely appear that scientists and experts supported the idea of the administration’s six-month ban on new drilling.
The inspector general says the editing changes resulted “in the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed.” But it hadn’t been. The scientists were only asked to review new safety measures for offshore drilling.
Saving the Nation One Conservative at a Time
by Jack Lee
What is the one thing that Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens and virtually all 3rd party organizations have as a common interest? Well, assuming they work in the private sectors its economic growth and prosperity. But, thanks in part to a global recession and in more recent terms to failed fiscal policies and a government penchant for over regulation and over taxation, there is no job growth because there is no economic growth. You can’t suppress businesses and grow jobs.
At this time the private sector is under severe stress. Is there anyone with an IQ over 80 who would deny this? Many of us believe it’s no exaggeration to say we are facing perhaps our greatest economic challenge since our inception. For example, we needed to create about 20 million new jobs just to accommodate those graduating from high school and college. So, what actually happened?
- The private sector workforce shrank by 3 million jobs between 2000 and 2010, a shortfall of 23 MILLION jobs!
- Private sector workers earned $300 BILLION less in the first quarter of 2010 than they earned in the last quarter of 2007.
- Government grew by 2 million workers, to 22 million. Federal workers earn compensation and benefits that are DOUBLE private sector averages, and non-federal government workers earn 50% more.
Continue reading “Saving the Nation One Conservative at a Time” »
Tagged conservatives, jobs and growth
6 Comments
Making Oil from Plastic
By STEVE AUSTIN
Though plastic is one of the most versatile synthetically produced materials in the world, it also is one of the environmentally unfriendly substances produced by man. And considering its utility in myriad of industries and life spheres, it is impossible to give up plastic all together. Plastic has been charged guilty on several accounts, but the ones that strain the already depleting resources are – the manner in which it is disposed and the production process. Consider this – a single plastic bottle takes about 1,000 years to break down completely.
Europe – Government Workers Soon to be Unemployed
by Jack Lee
It’s the greatest global political shift since 1932. Imagine, the Prime Minister of France has told the powerful trade unions to shove it and his government rose the retirement age. They’ve also made drastic cuts in other socialist government programs and cut a number of redundant government positions. Suddenly the French have seen the light, even though it took an ecominic meltdown to do it.
Across the Channel the Brits have decided they must lay off over 500,000 unnecessary government workers or go bankrupt. This is an unheard of number since the Great Depression. They’ve also made major cuts in others areas such as eliminating the weekly child care subsidy that began back in WWII. England is looking at ways to move away from costly socialist policies just like France. Even Communist Cuba says they will layoff 20% of the government work force in order to deal with their deficits.
In contrast to all this cutting Germany has been a standout when it comes to frugal money management. They have not bought into our bailouts and stimulus gimmicks, instead they’ve managed their economy far more sensibly prior too and during this recession. This has put them in a position of strength at a time when many nations around them struggle just to stay afloat.
So when you see the Germans criticize our President’s latest stimulus plan and his new love affair with big, expensive government programs, they do so with some credibility. But, its not just Germany being critical, its many other nations such as China, Brazil and South Africa, they have all recently criticized the U.S. plans to pump $600bn into the US economy.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the US policy was “clueless” and would create “extra problems for the world“.
“Critics, including some Fed officials, fear that all the money being injected into the economy could ignite inflation or speculative bubbles in the prices of bonds or commodities. Bernanke said those inflation fears are “overstated.” A larger $1.7 trillion program launched during the financial crisis didn’t result in higher inflation, he pointed out. When the economy is on firm footing, Bernanke expressed confidence that the Fed will be able to smoothly soak up all that money without harming the economy.” Source AP
Economic journalist Stuart Varney disagrees with Bernanke, “It’s inexplicable why they (Federal Reserve) want to keep throwing money at it.” Varney points out that interest rates are almost at zero now and its not helping because people are not working.
Paraphrasing Varney, “When you pump $600bn into the economy what you are in effect doing is buying up debt from banks with paper money. This has a direct impact on the money supply and just like any other commodity, if you have too much supply you lower the price. The dollar will fall and then we’re headed for inflation.” He is dumbfounded why the feds insist on continuing to pursue a policy that has produced no results.
President Obama is confident that we just haven’t spent enough on the stimulus yet. His experience as a community organizer tells him he’s on the right tract and that the economists disagreeing with him are simply ignorant fools. California legislators agree and they pride themselves in helping to improve the economy by hiring more state workers are salaries above the private sector. California is now our largest employer with over 320,000 state workers…and growing! We also have the largest deficit, but never mind that, we just need to hire more state workers.
Tagged inflation fears, stimulous money
8 Comments
On Deficits Lies and Accusations
A rebuttal by Tina to comments from Quentin posted to my article, “America – A Conservative Nation”
Quentin: “Oh Tina! The TEA party IS a fringe right-wing element of racists and extremeists. That is why you guys are identified that way. A racist is defined as someone who would criticize the Black guy for doing the same thing the White guy did. An extreme racist would even go out of her way to make excuses for the White guy! ** As an example: the Black guy is roundly criticized for huge deficits. His first year deficit of $1.291 trillion is 125 billion less than the White guy’s last year deficit of $1.416 trillion.
This is all a blatant lie. The two Presidents share the 2009 deficit. GWB presided over the steps taken in October and Obama went on a spending spree in February. The crash can be attributed to many sources but the spread the wealth legislation of Carter and Clinton were Democrat through and through. Also, as we have discussed before, Democrats took over control of budgets in 2006! Obama Reid & Pelosi’s politics and love of spending other peoples money is what explodes deficit spending on into the future as demonstrated by the following chart and quote posted at The Heritage Foundation:
Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s. ** What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. (see article for specific comparisons)
If you read through the Heritage article to the bottom of the page, Quentin, you will discover that war funding was included in these numbers.
The difference that I defend is based in the basic philosophy difference. I wasn’t happy with Bush spending in many cases. I defended him against false accusations and gross overstatements…like the one you made here.
Back to Quentin’s comment: “Another White guy tripled(!) the National Debt–as opposed to the Black guy’s increase of ~8%. Yet the Black guy is pilloried and the White guy is hailed as a saint! That same White guy increased the size of the Federal bureaucracy, but you, Tina, have made excuses for that while being critical of the Black guy’s ‘czars.'”
Sorry Quentin but I don’t respond to generic accusations. I would bet that if you had the guts to actually make a specific accusations, and site my specific words in context, I could easily prove you wrong. We’ve been down this road before if I’m reading between the lines with accuracy.
Quentin once again: “An extremist is defined as someone who would post a story saying the president is spending more cash on a trip to India in a day than he spends on Bush’s war in Afghanistan without verifying it first!
Oh yeah…that’s really extreme…posting a story that everyone is talking about on a discussion blog is well over the top! YOU, SIR, ARE A TOTAL NUTBALL!
We do current events and community discussion here! The story was printed in an Indian paper. The White House, we later discover, denied the figure. It would also not reveal the figure or acknowledge anything about the cost and specifics of the trip. It certainly became moot at that point to attempt to verify the correctness of the amount. Our discussion moved on to speculation about the cost and the greater point of the extravagance, and frankly the tone deafness, of this president.
As I said, this is a discussion page! Since the purpose here is to discuss current events the story proved to be quite useful. We all learned a few things. What are you afraid of, Quentin? Chris did a good job of defending, as you stupidly refer to him, the “black man”, and offering a differing opinion. You, on the other hand, chose to write stupid lies about deficits under Bush and another unnamed “white man”. You chose to attack me (and Jack) as racist and extremist. Well as long as you have chosen to go down that road let’s discuss racism. Your obsession with “black men” versus “white men” suggests it is you who have a problem with race. It’s a very PC problem that disallows criticism of anyone who happens to be black. This PC race problem doesn’t allow you to view either of these human beings, Bush & Obama, as men…you see only the color of their skin no matter what the topic of discussion. I think this attitude or posture is itself incredibly patronizing and blatantly racist!
I would have to say that those media types, left wing opinion columnists and pundits, bloggers, party mouthpieces, and Democrat politicians described you to a “T”
And I would have to say you are wrong and have little else of substance to offer…as usual!
You know, if you weren’t such a complete turkey we might actually have some very interesting discussions…it’s a shame really.
Americans Fed Up with Fringe Funeral Protesters
Take a page, America. Time to shun and rebuke those fringe elements that fail to exhibit decency and respect for our military and their families.
Posted by Tina
WESTON, MO. — People in Weston, Missouri banded together on Saturday. They wanted to protect loved ones who were saying goodbye to a fallen soldier. They stood up to members of the Westboro Baptist Church who planned to protest at Sgt. First Class C.J. Sadell’s funeral. ** Sadell died October 24 from injuries he suffered in a surprise attack in Afghanistan. On Saturday, there was quite a turnout of people who wanted to keep the protesters away from the funeral. ** “I’d say probably half the people in Weston are here,” said Eric Moser, Marine Corp veteran. ** Weston has less than 2,000 residents, but hundreds of people showed up to support the family of First Sgt. Sadell. ** Sadell was in the Arif Kala region of Afghanistan when his unit was ambushed October 5. Five soldiers died and Sadell was badly injured. **
“If you think about it, they’ve all gone to serve just so we could be able to do this,” said Rebecca Rooney who organized the supporters. “He didn’t die in vain.”
We Elected Them – Now What?
by Jack Lee
Polls say that 60% of us are prepared to be disappointed by the newly elected republicans that have seized control in Congress. We elected them, but we have faint hope that this gang will be any better than the last gang. This is not unsound reasoning by any means since many of those still in Congress were around when we were accusing the republican party of not living up to their principles.
What exactly do you expect of them?
Let’s be realistic now, what do you really think the republican’s can and should accomplish by controlling the House of Representatives?
One of the primary functions of the Senate and the House is to come up with a budget, so let’s start there. Republicans should be able to introduce a bill almost immediately to block those nasty earmarks and the good part there appears to be consensus both in the House and the Senate that this would be a good thing, even President Obama has said so. So let’s expect them to deal with earmarks or pork, however you wish to say it.
What’s next? How about blocking stimulus spending and recovering the stimulus money not already spent? This will be a little harder, but it’s doable and they will get a little boost from mildly improving economic news.
Here’s an idea that is shared by many in Congress, let’s de-fund all federal programs that have no provable value? And yes, we can do that from the House because the House has to approve the budget. There is no shortage of waste in Washington and this is a cause worthy the republican agenda. Here’s the good news, this has already started. Here’s the bill written by a Kansas Representative Todd Tiahrt-R (pronounced tee-hart): HR 1802 – To Establish the Commission on the Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies Act (CARFA). Congressman Tiahrt’s bill would require Congress to vote on eliminating wasteful and ineffective spending that would result in billions of taxpayer dollars being saved. The Heritage Foundation has estimated that over $100 billion could be saved by eliminating ineffective federal programs.
So when this ugly business of waste, fraud and abuse is identified the republicans and democrats with a conscience need to expose it and do what they can to stop it. Just the attempt will be seen as valiant in the eyes of voters, but passing this bill would put the onus on the Senate and we’ll see how interested they are about saving billions from waste.
Can you think of anything else the republican’s should do? How about securing the border, illegal immigrant removal, tax reform, deficit spending, dealing with the drug cartels now operating in the US, eliminating crop subsidies, scaling back corporate welfare, or dealing with the war on terrorism spending abuses? There are plenty of important issues, but we can’t spread ourselves too thin. We’re going to need to stay focused on only the most pressing issues in order to get just a few of these things addressed before the 2012 election.
So, lets take some personal interest and encourage our newly elected representatives and those old incumbents to follow through on the key issues that they can and should address and do it in a logical order of importance. That part is up to you and your expectations to make sure they do. Let us know what you expect – we’ll pass it on to the right people and we’ll show you who is stalling and how to target them too.
Mitch McConnell on the Issues
Posted by Tina
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell addressed the two major issues that are most important to the American people right now on the Sunday shows. The New York Times reports:
Mr. McConnell said rejecting an extension would amount to tax increases in the middle of a recession and would raise taxes on “750,000 of our most productive small businesses,” whose payrolls support 25 percent of the American work force.
“Small business is the biggest job generator in America,” he said on “Face the Nation” on CBS…He did not rule out a temporary extension of the tax cuts for perhaps two years or so.
“We’re willing to start talking about getting an extension of some kind so that taxes don’t go up on anybody,” Mr. McConnell said.
Addressing the Obama health care plan, he said his preference was to repeal or replace it, but falling short of that he would consider ways of blocking financing for agencies like the Internal Revenue Service that are charged with enforcing the health care law. Mr. McConnell said the Republicans had “a commitment to the American people to keep this awful 2,700-page monstrosity that took over one-sixth of our economy from going into effect.”
America – A Conservative Nation
The Tea Party Leads the Way
by Tina Grazier
The last election cycle featured certain media types, left wing opinion columnists and pundits, bloggers, party mouthpieces , and Democrat politicians disparaging the Tea Party as a fringe right-wing element of racists and extremists. This ugly labeling of those who cannot be refuted on merit is not an unusual tactic and it has served the extreme left well in many past elections. But it did not work this election cycle. The leftist lablers were not only wrong they were ineffective. The Tea Party had a strong influence on both the Republican and Democrat party candidates.
The Tea Party is a group of ordinary Americans with strong patriotic views and a dedication that springs from their love of American values and principles. Their mission for the election was to express these values and principles politically and influence the outcome of the election. In this they succeeded mightily. Ultimately the message is that America is a conservative nation with strong patriotic roots. George Washington made clear the calling of these American patriots at his innauguration:
“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” America’s role in the world is to preserve and to spread, by example and by action, the “sacred fire of liberty.” – George Washington
The Tea Party represents a groundswell of Americanism. Its individual members and supporters stand together to solidify and make manifest the principles of our founding for today’s world. They favor limited government, free market capitalism, private property rights, and the rule of law. They share a belief that freedom makes it possible for anyone of any race or creed to achieve and succeed. They share the pioneering spirit of neighbor helping neighbor to achieve great results. This is the conservatism of average Americans and their allegiance is to the foundational principles that make America the land of opportunity. The American people are not unique as human beings but our system of government is unique among nations. The Tea Party wants to ensure that this country thrives again and continues to be a beacon of hope for all freedom loving people around the world.
Tony Blair understands the American heart and the heart of the American Tea Party movement:
“American is great for a reason. It is looked up to, despite all the criticism, for a reason. There is a nobility in the American character that has been developed over the centuries, derived in part no doubt from the frontier spirit, from the waves of immigration that form the stock, from the circumstances of independence, from the civil war, from a myriad of historical facts and coincidences. But there it is. . .
That nobility isn’t about being nicer, better or more successful than anyone else. It is a feeling about the country. It is a devotion to the American ideal that at a certain point transcends class, race, religion or upbringing. That ideal is about values; freedom, the rule of law, democracy. It is also about the way you achieve, by your own efforts and hard work. But it is, most of all, that in striving for and protecting the ideal, you as an individual take second place to the interests of the nation as a whole.” – Tony Blair