Peter Schaumber appeared on Fox’s Your Worldwith Neil Cavuto to discuss a troubling new development within the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Board Chair Mark Pearceis introducing a series of new regulations. One of these regulations, if passed, would require businesses to surrender their employee’s personal contact information to campaigning union heads.
“If the National Labor Relations Board gets its way, companies could be forced to hand over your contact information, whether you like it or not, to union leaders,” Fox host Neil Cavuto said. “Union leaders having access to your phone number, your email address?”
Schaumber, himself a former NLRB chairman, joined Cavuto to discuss his great fear: that unions will use that information to harass people not in a union.
“I think it’s terrible. Workers have a right to be left alone,” Schaumber said.
“They have a right not to be harassed during a union organizing campaign. If a worker has given his or her employer their home phone, their personal email address, their cell phone, it was in the expectation that it wasn’t going to be given to third parties but was going to be used by the employer for the purposes of what it was intended to be given for. And in most instances that’s to contact the employee under emergency situations.”
FirstEnergy Corp. will close 6 coal power plants. They cite new government regulation as the reason. President Obama promised to destroy the coal industry. This looks like one campaign promis he is keeping.
Akron, Ohio, January 26, 2012 — FirstEnergy Corp. generation subsidiaries will retire six older coal-fired power plants located in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland by September 1, 2012.
The decision to close the power plants is based on the U.S.Environmental Protection AgencyMercury and Air Toxics Standards, which were recently finalized, and other environmental regulations.
The total capacity of the competitive plants that will be retired is 2,689 MW. Recently, these plants served mostly as peaking or intermediate facilities, generating, on average, about 10 percent of the electricity produced by the company over the past three years.
The following plants will be retired: Bay Shore Plant, Units 2-4, Oregon, Ohio; Eastlake Plant, Eastlake, Ohio; Ashtabula Plant, Ashtabula, Ohio; Lake Shore Plant, Cleveland, Ohio; Armstrong Power Station, Adrian, Pa.; and R. Paul Smith Power Station, Williamsport, Md.
In total, 529 employees will be directly affected. Existing severance benefits will apply to eligible, affected employees. However, the final number of affected employees could be less as some are considered for open positions at other FirstEnergy facilities and work locations, and eligible employees take advantage of a retirement benefit being offered to those 55 years and older.
President Obama ‘s original plan was to bankrupt the coal industry by charging power plants for CO2 emissions under a Cap-and-Trade bill. That bill failed to get past the Senate. Plan B is to regulate them out of business by ratcheting up other regulations that don’t require new laws.
Cuba will begin exploratory drilling in search of oil this weekend, when drilling will start on a rig just 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Florida.
The operation is raising concerns over what happens under the terms of the US embargo, in the event of an incident at sea.
The embargo states that neither American firms nor the coast guard could come to Cuba’s assistance or provide equipment to help contain or clean up any oil spills.
Last night, Pres. Obama reaffirmed his determination to protect our country’s children from the dangers of mercury, despite his vigorous defenseof a mandate that all Americans put more of it into their homes.
“I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury poisoning,” Obama promised in last night’s State Of The Union address.
But, Pres. Obama, apparently, isn’t concerned with the health risk he’s subjecting Americans to by requiring them to put mercury light bulbs in their homes – a risk his own EPA even warns about on its Web site.
When the mercury light bulb breaks in a home, “some of the mercury is released as vaporand may pose potential health risks,” the EPA says. [Emphasis added]
“Just a few weeks ago, thanks to the hard work of so many of you, Lisa and I were able to announce new common-sense standards to better protect the air we breathe from mercury and other harmful air pollution.”
And, let’s not forget the extravagant clean-up requirements and potential costs associated with getting rid of this hazardous substance if you break one of these mercury bulbs.
So, exactly how is Obama “protecting our kids from mercury poisoning?”
How embarrassing this must be for President Obama, whose major speech theme so far this campaign season has been that every single American, no matter how rich, should pay their “fair share” of taxes.
Because how unfair — indeed, un-American — it is for an office worker like, say, Warren Buffet’s secretary to dutifully pay her taxes, while some well-to-do people with better educations and higher incomes end up paying a much smaller tax rate.
Or, worse, skipping their taxes altogether.
A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama’s executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven’t paid any share, let alone their fair share.
Previous reports have shown how well-paid Obama’s White House staff is, with 457 aides pulling down more than $37 million last year. That’s up seven workers and nearly $4 million from the Bush administration’s last year.
Nearly one-third of Obama’s aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each.
The IRS’ 2010 delinquent tax revelations come as part of a required annual agency report on federal employees’ tax compliance. Turns out, an awful lot of folks being paid by taxpayers are not paying their own income taxes.
The reportfinds that thousands of federal employees owe the country more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. That’s up 3% in the past year. [Emphasis added]
That scale of delinquency could annoy voters, hard-pressed by their own costs, fears and stubbornly high unemployment despite Joe Biden’s many promises.
The tax offenders include employees of the U.S. Senate who help write the laws imposed on everyone else. They owe $2.1 million. Workers in the House of Representatives owe $8.5 million, Department of Education employees owe $4.3 million and over at Homeland Security, 4,697 workers owe about $37 million. Active duty military members owe more than $100 million.
The Treasury Department, where Obama nominee Tim Geithner had to pay up $42,000 in his own back taxes before being confirmed as secretary, has 1,181 other employees with delinquent taxes totaling $9.3 million.
As usual, the Postal Service, with more than 600,000 workers, has the most offenders (25,640), who also owe the most — almost $270 million. Veterans Affairs has 11,659 workers owing the IRS $151 million while the Energy Department that was so quick to dish out more than $500 million to the Solyndra folks has 322 employees owing $5 million.
The country’s chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, has 2,069 employees who are nearly $17 million behind in taxes. Like Operation Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder has apparently missed them too.
Warren Buffett’s secretary pays so much in taxes, she can’t afford a third home.
By Jim Treacher
January 26, 2012
America has a brand-new sweetheart: Debra Bosanek, Warren Buffett’s executive assistantsecretary. She sat next to Michelle at the State of the Union address, so Barry could use her as a prop in his latest lecture on how your taxes aren’t high enough.
Despite a heavy tax burden, Warren Buffett’s secretary last year was able to purchase a second home in Arizona, a residence complete with a swimming pool and a “professional PGA putting green,” according to real estate records.
Debra Bosanek, 55, and her husband Gerald bought the 2100-square-foot homein Surprise, a city outside Phoenix. The Bosaneks paid $144,000 for the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath property (the purchase was financed, in part, by a $115,200 mortgage).
The principal Bosanek residence is in Bellevue, Nebraska, several miles from Buffett’s corporate headquarters in Omaha. The couple’s 2568-square-foot home, built in 2000, also has four bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths. But the modest property, which Sarpy County assessors last year valued at $217,716, offers no outdoor amenities for swimmers or golfers.
Surprise! And you thought you had it bad? She! Is! The 99%! She! Is! The 99%! (Come on, chant.) She! Is! The 99%! (Why aren’t you chanting?) She! Is… oh, forget it.
WHAT OBAMA FAILED to MENTION in his SOTU Address………
Pssst……Hey Obama! WHY didn’t you bring up the fact Buffett stands to make even MORE $$$ if Buffett’s Bershire Hathaway gets a contract to use his railroad for hauling TransCanada oil instead of “Investing in the Middle Class of America building the Keystone Pipeline?
Warren Buffett, whom President Obama likes to cite as a fair-minded billionaire while arguing for higher taxes on the wealthy, stands to benefit from the president’s decision to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.
The Obama Administration rejected TransCanada’s request for a permit on Jan. 18, saying there was not enough time to review the proposal by Feb. 21, the deadline imposed by congressional Republicans eager to see the pipeline built. The decision came from the State Department, although Mr. Obama said he agreed with it.
TransCanadasaid it plans to submit another proposal that would avoid an environmentally sensitive route through Nebraska. The State Department had been reviewing the pipeline project for three years when it rejected the permit.
If completed, the $7 billion Keystone XL would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude from oil sands in Canada to Texas refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It would traverse about 1,600 miles.
The State Department’s review of the project said shipping oil via rail is more costly than delivering it to refineries by pipeline.
Republicans, labor unions and even some Democrats have criticized the administration’s rejection of the pipeline permit, saying it would create up to 20,000 jobs.
The Obama administration is financing offshore drilling off the coast of Brazil. According to the Wall Street Journal,
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
The oil reserves in Brazil’s Tupi oil field are likely to make Brazil one of the world’s top oil exporters. In the U.S., however, domestic companies are denied access to rich oil reserves in Alaska and off the East and West Coasts. This leaves us all to wonder: why is Obama in favor of drilling off Brazil’s coast, but not our own? And if drilling is so wrong, why in the world are we paying for it?
UPDATE: Bloomberg is reporting an interesting link between Obama’s Petrobras deal and billionaire George Soros:
His New York-based hedge-fund firm, Soros Fund Management LLC, sold 22 million U.S.-listed common shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian oil company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Soros bought 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares.
Soros is taking advantage of the spread between the two types of U.S.-listed Petrobras shares, said Luis Maizel, president of LM Capital Group LLC, which manages about $4 billion. The common shares were 21 percent more expensive than preferred today, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. …
Petrobras preferred shares have also a 10 percent additional dividend, said William Landers, a senior portfolio manager for Latin America at Blackrock Inc.
“Given that there will most likely never be a change in control in the company, I see no reason to pay a higher price for the common shares.” Brazil’s government controls Petrobras and has a majority stake of voting shares.
Hmm. Isn’t it a strange coincidence that Obama-supporter Soros would reposition himself within Petrobras to receive dividends just days before Obama’s $2 billion in loans and guarantees for the country’s offshore drilling operations?
========================
***After “investing” TWO BILLION dollars of taxpayer funds, this is the “THANK YOU” Brazil gives the U.S.****
BUENOS AIRES — Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro — below a mile of water and two miles of shifting rock, sand and salt — is an ultradeep sea of oil that could turn Brazil into the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, behind Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
The country’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, expects to pump 4.9 million barrels a day from the country’s oil fields by 2020, with 40 percent of that coming from the seabed. One and a half million barrels will be bound for export markets.
The United States wants it, but China is getting it.
Less than a month after President Obama visited Brazil in March to make a pitch for oil, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was off to Beijing to sign oil contracts with two huge state-owned Chinese companies.
The deals are part of a growing oil relationship between the two countries that, thanks to a series of billion-dollar agreements, is giving China greater influence over Brazil’s oil frontier.
Chinese oil companies are pushing to meet mandatory expansion targets by inking deals across Africa and Latin America, but they are especially interested in Brazil.
“With the Lula and Carioca discoveries alone, Brazil added a possible 38 billion barrels of estimated recoverable oil,” said Luis Giusti, a former president of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, referring to the new Brazilian oil fields.
“That immediately changed the picture,” he said, adding that Brazil is on track to become “an oil giant.”
During Mrs. Rousseff’s visit to China, Brazil’s Petrobras signed a technology cooperation deal with the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec.
Petrobras also signed a memorandum of understanding with Sinochem, a massive state-owned company with interests in energy, real estate and agrichemicals.
The Sinochem deal aims to identify and build “business opportunities in the fields of exploration and production, oil commercialization and mature oil-field recovery,” according to Petrobras.
The relationship with China goes back to at least two years before Mr. Obama came to Brazil to applaud the oil discovery and tell Mrs. Rouseff:
“We want to work with you. We want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and, when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”
China rescued Petrobras in 2009, when the oil company was looking at tight credit markets to finance a record-setting $224 billion investment plan. China’s national development bank offered a $10 billion loan on the condition that Petrobras ship oil to China for 10 years.
A chunk of Brazil’s oil real estate appeared on China’s portfolio in 2010, when Sinopec agreed to pay $7.1 billion for 40 percent of Repsol-YPF of Brazil, which has stakes in the now internationally famous Santos Basin, and the Sapinhoa field, which has an estimated recoverable volume of 2.1 billion barrels. Statoil of Norway also agreed that year to sell 40 percent of the offshore Peregrino field to Sinochem.
One could argue Obama just wants to promote “Green Energy Jobs”
How has that been working out?
SOLYNDRA
LIGHTSOURCE
CHEVY VOLT
********
Washington Post: Obama Green Jobs Cost $5 Million Each
Will networks report massive cost for failed program?
By Dan Gainor
September 15, 2011
The Washington Post might be a day late and $38 billion short, but it’s being honest about Barack Obama’s failed green jobs program. According to the Post, the “$38.6 billion loan guarantee program” has created just “3,545 new, permanent jobs” “after giving out almost half the allocated amount.”
For those not doing the math at home, that means more than $5 million per job.
The Post outlined Obama administration promises to “create or save 65,000 jobs” in the green jobs category. What it left out was that, while campaigning, Obama promised to create 5 million “green” jobs. He’s about 4,996,455 short.
The green jobs program has come under scrutiny following “the collapse of Solyndra, a solar-panel maker whose closure could leave taxpayers on the hook for as much as $527 million.”
According to the Post, the White House won’t even admit it’s failing. “The Energy Department says that the green-jobs program is still on track to meet its employment goals. It claims credit for saving 33,000 jobs at Ford Motor Co. – about half of the Detroit automaker’s entire hourly and salaried U.S. workforce.”
At least, however, the Post is reporting it. The broadcast networks are not. The Business & Media Institute analyzed the results of a Nexis search for the term “green jobs” and found only 4 stories out of 52 (roughly 8 percent) between Jan. 17, 2009, and Aug. 17, 2011, included any criticism. That means 92 percent had no criticism. An additional 10 stories focused on Obama’s former green jobs “czar” Van Jones resignation (because of his 9/11 Truther views) were excluded from the analysis.
Warren Buffett, whom President Obama likes to cite as a fair-minded billionaire while arguing for higher taxes on the wealthy, stands to benefit from the president’s decision to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.
The Obama Administration rejected TransCanada’s request for a permit on Jan. 18, saying there was not enough time to review the proposal by Feb. 21, the deadline imposed by congressional Republicans eager to see the pipeline built. The decision came from the State Department, although Mr. Obama said he agreed with it.
TransCanadasaid it plans to submit another proposal that would avoid an environmentally sensitive route through Nebraska. The State Department had been reviewing the pipeline project tor three years when it rejected the permit.
If completed, the $7 billion Keystone XL would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude from oil sands in Canada to Texas refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. It would traverse about 1,600 miles.
The State Department’s review of the project said shipping oil via rail is more costly than delivering it to refineries by pipeline.
Republicans, labor unions and even some Democrats have criticized the administration’s rejection of the pipeline permit, saying it would create up to 20,000 jobs.
Time and Newsweek may have opted to shift their chief news focus away from the GOP and bury the Keystone decision as fast as possible, but the only question that will matter come November is: will the public buy it?
Remember during the 2008 Presidential Election Obama said he wanted to push for Green Energy jobs because it would take 3-5 years to produce our own oil and natural gas?
Sarah Palin said “Drill Baby, Drill”……
It has NOW been 4 years since the presidential elections……….How close are we in America to energy production?
How has our RETURN on investing TWO BILLION dollars in Brazilian Petrobras oil been?
Has Obama failed in his Energy Policy for America?
My friend Jim is working with Bongino’s campaign and filmed a brief snippet of a speech he gave at a Tea Party rally this past October. The speech is short, but quite powerful. Take a look. I think you’re going to like him quite a lot.
U.S. Senate Candidate Dan Bongino speaking at the Tea Party Caucus rally in Annapolis Maryland on October 18, 2011
If you’re so inclined, he could use your help. Whether you kick him a few bucks or sign up to volunteer to help him beat Senator Cardin, I’m sure he’ll put what you give to very good use. He doesn’t seem like a man who wastes what he’s given.
In 2004 Democratic Socialists of Americatargeted local races where control of state houses were up for grabs and where statewide electoral-vote outcomes hinged on successful local district turnouts.[3]
In a companion two-borough state Senate race, social workers union leader Diane Savino is posed to win an open seat, potentially threatening Republican control of the legislative chamber. NYDSA activists are also backing David McReynolds in what the local views as a spirited and needed educational campaign for U.S. Senate.”
We reported on the candidates that DSAers were supporting in the last issue of Democratic Left. How did they do?
New York State looks like politics as usual on the surface… David Soares, backed by both Democrats and the Working Families Party, won his race for District Attorney in Albany County, a victory that is seen as a blow against the punitive Rockefeller drug laws as well as against the Democratic establishment. Moreover, several seats in the State Senate shifted from Republicans to Democrats, with one race still too close to call. (One of these new winners, Diane Savino, was featured in the earlier DL article.).
The big gains were at the state level. State Senate seats were won by some progressive Democrats:
Democrat Diane Savino won the Brooklyn-Staten Island seat of a retiring Democrat, and her victory was important given the strong grassroots labor component to her campaign.Savino is vice president for political action of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 37, the largest in the country.
There is just no way to describe this without a smirk and a chuckle. When you read how some of New York’s Russian immigrants (who know Soviet-style Communismall-too-well) are aligning with Republicans—because they view Democrats’ policies to be too similar to the failed policies of their homeland—there is just something richly ironic there. However, when you read how their never-met-a-Marxist-she-didn’t-love Democrat legislator reacts to be having her party compared to Soviet Russia, now that is just over-the-top funny:
Businessman Arkadiy Fridman said that the newly formed Citizens Magazine Business Club, a confederation of more than 50 Russian-owned businesses here and in Brooklyn, has aligned itself with the Molinari Republican Club (MRC) in an effort to increase the Russian community’s political and economic clout.
CLOSE TO OWN VISION
“We decided we had to support this club,” said Fridman, a former Soviet Army officer who came to the United States in 1992. “They are very close to our political and business vision.”
[snip]
Fridman said that the Democrats “are going in an absolutely different direction,” focusing on “income redistribution” and rich-versus-poor “class war.”
“It’s too socialistic,” said Fridman, head of the non-profit Staten Island Community Center and president of Citizens Magazine, a public affairs publication. “It’s very painful for us to see.”
And, if that weren’t bad enough, the Democrats’ are reminding the Russian immigrants of something they thought they left behind:
The Big Brother approach reminds Fridman too much of what he left behind in the former Soviet Union.
“It’s the same rule like it was there,” said Fridman, who estimates there are around 55,000 Russian immigrants here.
Michael Petrov of the Digital Edge data management firm in Bloomfield, said that he objects to the “micro-managing of the economy” he’s seen from city as well as federal officials.
“Government is affecting small business more and more,” said Petrov, who came to the United States in 1994. “It’s the same as what’s happening in Russia.”
The Russian immigrants seem to know the path the Democratic Party is leading the nation down far better than many Democrats, which is why it seems the GOP is a better fit for the Russians.
Of course, the danger of being exposed is not lost on their Marxist legislator,union-boss-turned-Democrat-politician, State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn), who just seems to cringe at the thought of being exposed and being labeled either a Socialist or a Communist:
State Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn) said she understands the Russian aversion to anything that looks like big government, but thinks the criticism of the Democratic Party is off-base.
“You can’t ignore the fact that the Russian population here came of age during the Soviet era,” said Ms. Savino, who counts many Russians among her Brooklyn constituents.
“They have different thoughts on what communism and socialism mean. They are a little more sensitive to it.
“But, that being said,” she added, “you can’t compare the policies of the Democratic Party with communism. It’s absurd.”
“The President did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight. But he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse: the percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades. One in five men of prime working age, and nearly half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today.
“In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead. The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.
“The President’s grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it.
“The President’s grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it.
“Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are those unemployed or underemployed tonight, and those so discouraged that they have abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one has been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did.
“As Republicans our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life’s ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves.
“Contrary to the President’s constant disparagement of people in business, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name he had – created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say ‘First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you’ll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love.’
“That means a dramatically simpler tax system of fewer loopholes and lower rates. A pause in the mindless piling on of expensive new regulations that devour dollars that otherwise could be used to hire somebody. It means maximizing on the new domestic energy technologies that are the best break our economy has gotten in years.
“There is a second item on our national must-do list: we must unite to save the safety net. Medicare and Social Security have served us well, and that must continue. But after half and three quarters of a century respectively, it’s not surprising that they need some repairs. We can preserve them unchanged and untouched for those now in or near retirement, but we must fashion a new, affordable safety net so future Americans are protected, too.
“Decades ago, for instance, we could afford to send millionaires pension checks and pay medical bills for even the wealthiest among us. Now, we can’t, so the dollars we have should be devoted to those who need them most.
“It’s absolutely so that everyone should contribute to our national recovery, including of course the most affluent among us. There are smart ways and dumb ways to do this: the dumb way is to raise rates in a broken, grossly complex tax system, choking off growth without bringing in the revenues we need to meet our debts. The better course is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need, and stop providing them so many tax preferences that distort our economy and do little or nothing to foster growth.
“It’s not fair and it’s not true for the President to attack Republicans in Congress as obstacles on these questions. They and they alone have passed bills to reduce borrowing, reform entitlements, and encourage new job creation, only to be shot down time and time again by the President and hiis Democratic Senate allies.
“This year, it falls to Republicans to level with our fellow citizens about this reality: if we fail to act to grow the private sector and save the safety net, nothing else will matter much. But to make such action happen, we also must work, in ways we Republicans have not always practiced, to bring Americans together.
“No feature of the Obama Presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others. As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat. If we drift, quarreling and paralyzed, over a Niagara of debt, we will all suffer, regardless of income, race, gender, or other category. If we fail to shift to a pro-jobs, pro-growth economic policy, there will never be enough public revenue to pay for our safety net, national security, or whatever size government we decide to have.
“You know, the most troubling contention in our national life these days isn’t about economics, or policy at all. It’s about us, as a free people. In two alarming ways, that contention is that we Americans just can’t cut it anymore.
“In word and deed, the President and his allies tell us that we just cannot handle ourselves in this complex, perilous world without their benevolent protection. Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb!
“A second view, which I admit some Republicans also seem to hold, is that we Americans are no longer up to the job of self-government. We can’t do the simple math that proves the unaffordability of today’s safety net programs, or all the government we now have. We will fall for the con job that says we can just plow ahead and someone else will pick up the tab. We will allow ourselves to be pitted one against the other, blaming our neighbor for troubles worldwide trends or our own government has caused.
“2012 must be the year we prove the doubters wrong. The year we strike out boldly not merely to avert national bankruptcy but to say to a new generation that America is still the world’s premier land of opportunity. Republicans will speak for those who believe in the dignity and capacity of the individual citizen; who believe that government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them; who trust Americans enough to tell them the plain truth about the fix we are in, and to lay before them a specific, credible program of change big enough to meet the emergency we are facing.
“We will advance our positive suggestions with confidence, because we know that Americans are still a people born to liberty. There is nothing wrong with the state of our Union that the American people, addressed as free-born, mature citizens, cannot set right. Republicans in 2012 welcome all our countrymen to a program of renewal that rebuilds the dream for all, and makes our ‘city on a hill’ shine once again.”
On Monday, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) delivered a fervent speech at the March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. West, who opened his impassioned address by reading from a devotional called “In God We Still Trust,” invigorated the audience with references to Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson.
Rep. Allen West (Florida)
In reading a selection from the devotional, West shared the Bible versewithin it – 1 Timothy 6:13, which reads, “In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you” (NIV).
…we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.
Based on reaction from the audience, these powerful themes resonated. West concluded his speech with the following words of encouragement for the protesters:
“You are here today because Thomas Jefferson said you have an unalienable right that comes form your creator. First and foremost is life. And that’s what we stand here — that’s what I stand here for…and may God bless you today. This fight shall not end until we protect our unborn.”
Instead of Leftists/Obama promoting abortion as a means of “fulfilling dreams” and end “punishment with a baby”, why NOT TEACH MORALITY, and VIRTUES INSTEAD?
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