Liberals Have Nearly Destroyed The Black Community, It's Time To Return The Favor

Elbert Guillory, an eloquent, conservative black politician, has been a Louisiana State Senator since 2009. In announcing the creation of the Free At Last Pac, a political action committee with the goal of electing black conservatives, Mr. Guillory had this to say:



I concur with everything Mr. Guillory said - and his mission is critical to our nation. The plight of far too many black Americans is an obscenity in 21st century America. And it is a travesty that conservatives have written off the black vote because of the success of the racial grievance industry in playing the race card. If there is one thing conservatives should do over the coming years to help our nation, it is to take the message of conservatism into the black communities. Mr. Guillory is precisely right when he says that libs have "nearly destroyed the black community" and that it is "time to return the favor." Actually, it is far past time.

(H/T Seraphic Secret)

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Obama's Radical Friends - & Appointments

Over the weekend, Obama used his power to make recess appointments to appoint Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. This is an incredibly radical appointment as Becker, former counsel for the AFL-CIO and the SEIU is pro-union to a degree that would make an old Soviet proud. As the Washington Examiner explains some of his more radical positions:

Craig Becker . . . claims management should be barred from National Labor Relations Board hearings on labor-management disputes, and he is a strong advocate of Card Check, the union bosses' proposal to do away with secret ballots in workplace representation elections. . . .

So why is President Obama using his power of recess appointments -- the right of a president to put somebody in an executive branch position until the next Congress convenes, which in the present case will be January 2011 -- to install Becker as the deciding vote on the NLRB? The answer to that question, of course, starts with what the five-member NLRB does, which is oversee the administration of the National Labor Relations Act, the basic rule book for labor-management relations since it was signed by FDR in 1935. There is also the fact that last month Becker's nomination fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to defeat a threatened Republican filibuster in the Senate, which left a recess appointment as the only way Obama could get his man on the NLRB.

Expect Becker to come on like a man possessed once he is ensconced at the NLRB because nobody expects the next Congress to be any more receptive to his appointment than the current one. But nine months of Becker on the NLRB is better than nothing, especially because the Senate has been markedly unsympathetic to Card Check, despite it being the union bosses' No. 1 legislative priority.

This insane appointment is one that could well damage our already weak economy - changing the relationship between employers and unions in fundamental ways - and all outside the ballot box.

Of course, this is far from Obama's only appointment of radical individuals far outside the mainstream. Let's go down a short list:

Andy Stern - as head of the SEIU, represents numerous public sector union employees - the scourge of state and local budgets across America. Public sector unions operate outside of market forces and have every reason to seek bigger government and higher taxes. Obama appointed Stern to his deficit reduction commission which is to do the job of Congress and the President in deciding how to direct the future of taxes and spending in America.

Kevin Jennings - a radical homosexual who advocates sexualizing our children beginning at Kindergarden and, in the past, has taught "fisting" to students as young as fourteen years old. This man has no business being allowed near a single child, yet he was given an appointment outside of Congressional purview as Obama's Safe Schools Czar.

David Axelrod - Obama's counterpart to Karl Rove; is a purely political advisor with no experience in the military or in intelligence. What makes Axelrod a radical choice is that Obama includes him not merely in political decision making, but in all aspects of Presidential decision making, including military and intelligence decisions. That is a radical change from prior Presidents and marks the fact that Obama sees everything, including our national security, as subordinate to political concerns.

John Holdren - Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. He has in the past advocated for forced abortions and the use of sterilizing agents in drinking water in order to control America’s population. He believes that a baby may only ultimately become a human being if given the proper resources during the early years after birth. He is also a ridgid advocate of Global Warming who has dismissed Climategate out of hand as meaningless.

David Ogden - appointed by Obama to the post of Deputy Attorney General. He has in the past taken positions supporting abortion on demand, child pornography, and come out in opposition to parental notification laws on abortion.

Leon Panetta - this appointment was a purely political appointment to head our nation's major intelligence agency in time of war. Panetta had zero experience in intelligence. It is impossible to know how bad a job he has done since virtually all that the CIA does is shrouded in secrecy. Whatever may be the case, the appointment of a neophyte to this agency during two wars and an omnipresent terrorist threat was radical indeed. It marked Obama as elevating politics over national security.

Dawn Johnsen - Obama nominated her for, but has yet to appoint her to, the position of heading the Office of Legal Council. That is a critical a position that requires the occupant to, among other things, provide opinions of legality of proposed operations by the CIA. She is a doctranaire leftist idealogue whose previously articulated positions would virtually tie the hands of our government in dealing with terrorists.

Melody Barnes - appointed by Obama to the Head of Domestic Policy Council. She is a radical, progressive femenist who supports unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand. She also see capitalism as a "flawed economic philosophy."

Harold Koh - a lawyer who adheres to the radical position that international law should play a central role in interpreting our Constitution, essentially rendering the terms of our Constition meaningless and amenable to any personal policy preferences of five justices on the Supreme Court. It would substitute the policy preferences of unelected justices for the legislature. Moreover, Koh has led an attack on the first amendment right to free speech, finding it too liberal and advocating that court's interpret it more restrictively. And he has advocated allowing for use of Sharia law to be applied in appropriate cases in U.S. courts.

Van Jones - formerly appointed by Obama as the Special Advisor of Green Jobs to the White House, Jones was a self-described communist and a 9-11 truther.

Mark Lloyd - Obama's appointment to Diversity Officer for the FCC. Lloyd is sort of the Rev. Wright of the FCC. He would subordinate concerns with "freedom of speech and the press" to racial and other policies. His biggest concern as diversity officer is getting rid of whites. "We have to be conscious of the need to put more people of color, gays, and other people in the positions of power that white people currently hold. We're in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power." He is, not surprisingly, a big supporter of the Fairness Doctrine as a means of silencing conservative opinion.

Chai Feldblum - appointed by Obama as Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Feldblum is a radical advocate of gay lesbian transgender rights in America and does not advocate merely equality for the LGBT community, but would seemingly support advocating for an LBGT lifestyle as the new norm in American society. Indeed, Feldblum would evlevate LGBT rights above the conscious of Christians and others who do not wish to accept the LGBT lifestyle on religious grounds. Some of his recent comments on this topic: “[F]or all my sympathy for the evangelical Christian couple who may wish to run a bed and breakfast from which they can exclude unmarried straight couples and all gay couples, this is a point where I believe the “zero sum” nature of the game inevitably comes into play. . . . Government should “not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity that adversely affect LGBT people. . . . “[I]t is essential that we not privilege moral beliefs that are religiously based over other sincerely held core, moral beliefs” about homosexuality."

I could go on and on, but am tired of writing and linking at this point. There are many other radical "progressives" Obama has appointed to positions of power. And indeed, they will clearly effect our nation in fundamental ways. The job of the next President will not be merely to roll back all the damaging legislation put in place by Obama and Crazy Nancy, but to undo the destructive influence of the radical progressives Obama has put in positions of power virtually throughout the government.

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Throwing Green Fuel On An Economic Fire

With the decision of the Obama EPA to declare carbon dioxide a green house gas that threatens public health, Obama has set us squarely on the road to economic chaos.

A sea change, in the long run of far more import than the mountain of debt Obama has placed us under, occurred on Friday. On that day, Obama's EPA:

. . . issued a proposed finding ... that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare.

"This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President (Barack) Obama's call for a low carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation," said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

"This pollution problem has a solution -- one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country's dependence on foreign oil.

"As the proposed endangerment finding states, 'In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act,'" she added.

This finiding comes as ever more evidence mounts that antrhopogenic global warming is a canard. Objective evidence - as opposed to computer models - shows quite plainly that we are getting cooler. [Update: See this from Big Lizards, discussing the current global cooling trend in the context of continuing denial by the greenies] Indeed, the EPA's decision came on the same day that the British Antarctic Survey released word that actual testing of sea ice in Antarctica, home to 80% of the world's ice, shows that it has significantly expanded over the past thirty years. Indeed, as author Dr. Richard North points out in his blog EU Referendum today:

. . . [W]e are no longer seeing a warming trend and, over the last seven years there has in fact been a distinct cooling trend. With the climate models sharply diverging from reality and an ominous quiet sun, there is now real, observable evidence to suggests that we are going to have severe global stress on crop production.

And to add a real bit of irony to that thought, any student of 7th grade science can tell you, carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas necessary for life. We breathe and exhale the stuff. Plants have to have it for photosynthesis. Not surprisingly, recent tests confirm that plants, including agricultural crops, thrive in environments with higher carbon dioxide concentrations, showing significant expansion in crop yields. This would all be comical if the the stakes in getting this issue right were not near existential.

At any rate, in another bit of irony, on the same day the Obama EPA announced its new finding, Rasmussen released a poll showing that belief in man made global warming, as opposed to natural planetary trends, is down to 34% among Americans.

Regardless, we now face with absolute certainty the reality that the left is going to use the canard of saving the planet through reducing carbon emissions as the lever to vastly expand intrusion into our lives and drive upwards the costs of energy exponentially. Those costs, both direct and indirect, will be paid to the penny by individual Americans. For example, this from the WSJ:

American Electric Power, a utility giant with 5.2 million customers in states from Texas to Michigan to Virginia, is already considering what coal plants would have to be shuttered and how high rates would have to go to comply with either a regulatory or legislative mandates to curb carbon dioxide. AEP spokesman Pat Hemlepp said rate increases stretch from 25% to 50% and beyond, depending on the climate change strategy that finally emerges from Washington.

[Update: According to this post at Hot Air, estimates now are that the cap and trade policies of Obama are estimated to cost each family in America nearly $4,000 annually. If that is correct, it will work untold mischief on our economy and be an absolute disaster for the lower class and lower middle class]

This is all part of the Obama / radical left plan to take our economy off coal and oil and into green energy that, at the moment, does not exist in the real world. Yet according to the left's dogma, not only will we enter this brave new world of green energy, but it will create "millions of new green jobs." This from Dominic Lawson today, writing in the London Times:

. . . Barack Obama . . . recently defended a vast package of subsidies for renewable energy on the grounds that it would “create millions of additional jobs and entire new industries”.
. . .
There is a . . . serious misconception behind the idea that ploughing subsidies into the “green economy” is a sure-fire way of boosting domestic employment. At best it will move people from one economic activity to another. . . .

The key to a successful, wealth-generating economy is productivity. Saving energy is what businesses have done already, because it lowers their production costs. The problem with any form of subsidy is that it makes the consumer (through hidden taxes) pay to keep inherently uneconomic businesses “profitable”.

And that payment portends to be severe if the left has their way. The odious Henry Waxman (D-Cal.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, plans to mandate a massive twenty percent reduction in carbon emissions and, at least equally if not more ominously, to give a true skeleton key to the courthouse to the radical left.

The left long ago discovered its most effective blueprint - resorting to courts to get what it could not through the ballot box. (And as an aside, it is the activist wing of the Supreme Court that in essence paved the way for this EPA ruling in a decision two years ago.) This has already cost us untold billions, if not trillions, over the past near four decades since the Clean Air Act and other environmental legislation was passed, most of which gave standing to individuals to bring law suits to enforce the provisions of the acts. This is not to suggest that the Clean Air Act was unnecessary or that it has not done some good. That said, its abuse by the left has been wide ranging, making the cure itself more insidious than the harm it was designed to overcome. Now with carbon listed as a dangerous gas, the potential for lawsuits to vastly slow down and increase costs to every aspect of our economy has grown exponentially. And yet Waxman would grow it even more to unprecedented / economy busting / insane levels. This from the Washington Times:

Self-proclaimed victims of global warming or those who "expect to suffer" from it - from beachfront property owners to asthmatics - for the first time would be able to sue the federal government or private businesses over greenhouse gas emissions under a little-noticed provision slipped into the House climate bill.

Environmentalists say the measure was narrowly crafted to give citizens the unusual standing to sue the U.S. government as a way to force action on curbing emissions. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees a new cottage industry for lawyers.

"You could be spawning lawsuits at almost any place [climate-change modeling] computers place at harm's risk," said Bill Kovacs, energy lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

. . . The measure sets grounds for anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part," to government inaction to file a "citizen suit." The term "harm" is broadly defined as "any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring."

It would allow citizens to seek up to $75,000 in damages from the government each year, but would cap the total amount paid out each year at $1.5 million, committee staff said. It is unclear whether the provision would actually cap damages at $75,000 per person, because the U.S. law referenced does not establish payouts by the government.

Coming on top of the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression, all of this really does have the potential to bring our economy to its knees. In fact, is widely believed that the Great Depression of the 1930's was made far worse when our government actually raised taxes in the face of declining revenues and engaged in protectionism, setting off a trade war. That seems precisely what this portends. This will add a massive hidden tax within our economy, it will surely drive more production overseas, and it will hurt our remaining domestic production by making it less competitive with goods from the giants of Asia, India and China, both of whom refuse to join us in this madness. With that in mind, there is this:

Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, had some soothing words for US manufacturing companies that complained that the new policy will make them even less competitive with Chinese exporters . . . [Chu] suggested that America might have to introduce some sort of “carbon-intensive” tariff on Chinese goods. One of China’s envoys, Li Gao, immediately retorted that such a carbon tariff would be a “disaster”, since it could lead to global trade war.

If our economy rebounds in full before massive inflation kicks in, then we can eventually pay off the mountain of debt Obama has just saddled us with - though it may be in the lifetime of our grandchildren. Up until Thursday last, we could maintain a realistic hope of that outcome. The chance of that outcome is fast diminishing. What we are looking at is something that will make us pine for the days of the Jimmy Carter economy. Perhaps summing up the likely future best is Dr. Richard North:

In the end, there are going to be two groups of people in this world: the greenies and the people who shoot greenies. It's kill or be killed, and the greenies will be the death of us all if this madness continues.

Update: Thanks to Vinny, author of the blog Vinny's Rants, for pointing out this from a CNS News article excerpted at Michelle Malkin's site on the green jobs canard:

Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration.

President Obama, in fact, has used Spain’s green initiative as a blueprint for how the United States should use federal funds to stimulate the economy. Obama’s economic stimulus package,which Congress passed in February, allocates billions of dollars to the green jobs industry.

But the author of the study, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, said the United States should expect results similar to those in Spain:

“Spain’s experience (cited by President Obama as a model) reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created,” wrote Calzada in his report: Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.

This just gets worse and worse.

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Blasphemers

Let he who blasphemes suffer the pains of hell until he repents. Or in the modern parlance of NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, let's jail people for "crimes against humanity" if they should question the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.
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The far left of today have a lot of historical antecedents, particularly among the inquisitors who ruthlessly punished any who questioned their dogma. This from Fox News:

The heads of major fossil-fuel companies who spread disinformation about global warming should be "tried for high crimes against humanity and nature," according to a leading climate scientist.

Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, sounded the alarm about global warming in testimony before a Senate subcommittee exactly 20 years ago.

He returned to the topic Monday with a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., given to the Worldwatch Institute.

"Special interests have blocked the transition to our renewable energy future," Hansen writes in an opinion piece posted on the institute's Web site. "Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil fuel companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, just as tobacco companies discredited the link between smoking and cancer. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming."

"CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of the long-term consequences of continued business as usual," Hansen continues. "In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature."

Read the entire article. The fact that a sizable portion of the scientific community disagrees with Dr. Hensen's assessment is apparently of no consequence.

This attitude towards free speech and dissent is typical across the spectrum of the radical left today, of which the global warming crowd are but one subset. As we speak, a law school in Massachussets is planning a meeting in September to draw up war crimes charges against Bush, et. al for capital offenses. Obama has said one of his first actions in office will be to initiate criminal investigations of the prior administration. The far left is not merely opposed to freedom of speech, they demonize any who express opinions at variance with their own and they seek to criminalize any dissenting speech.

If not else, people like Dr. Hensen should give everyone renewed resepct for those wise men who drafted our Constitution over two centuries ago. That they thought to include protection of freedom of speech in the very first Amendment of the Bill of Rights seems very prescient at the moment.

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