This short video helps us discover the importance of economic freedom and how it relates to a nation’s quality of life.
There is also a Facebook page and Twitter account set up to provide discussion and more information about why economic freedom is vital to a nation’s success.
-By Alan Caruba
The lies being told about Bisphenol-A, BPA, via the print and broadcast media, and via the Internet are a destructive tsunami intended to ban its use. If successful, people will die.
In previous parts of this series on BPA, I have identified environmental organizations and public relations firms that have worked as sponsors and/or purveyors of systematic falsehoods about BPA.
The inescapable conclusion is that there is an intricate matrix of comparable groups behind a global fraud that reeks of the same pathology and methodology as the disgraced and debunked “global warming” hoax. But the results of a successful BPA hoax could have deadly consequences.
BPA has been in use for more than a half century and as such, it is among the most tested substances in use today. It is used to line the insides of metal containers and to make shatterproof safety plastics. Unlike what the junk science merchants would have us believe, BPA is not a carcinogen, it is not mutagenic and it’s not an ‘endocrine disruptor.’
Stated simply, BPA improves human health and safety.
Continue reading “
Banning BPA Will Kill People – The BPA File, Part Six”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Senator Tom Coburn (R, OK) is trying to break heavy with the Tea Partiers — and for that matter his own party — by encouraging Republicans to include massive tax hikes in the on going budget discussions in congress this year.
Coburn appears to feel that a tax hike simply must be part of the discussion to get a deal this year simply because the Democrats control both the White House and the Senate. Apparently Coburn is afraid that a deal must happen this year or the U.S. will become a third world nation over night.
Unfortunately, Coburn’s ideas on the budget have no historical basis at all. Tax hikes have never helped raise a down economy. It seems Coburn is far more interested in the relative success of a deal to solve our economic situation than in what a tax hike means for both the country and his party and whether it will even work or not.
Coburn is fighting both his party and several anti-tax advocacy groups like Americans for Tax Reform.
Continue reading “
Senator Coburn’s Ahistorical, Unworkable Tax Hike Plans”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Green Bay TV reported on June 21 that the teachers union in Green Bay, Wisconsin is incensed that the school district is demanding that teachers work an extra half hour a day, making their hours a set 8-hour day, or a 40-hour work week. In turn, this absurd ire displayed by teachers is incensing local Green Bay residents.
“They need to be the professionals that they are supposed to be. They sound like a bunch of idiots and they look like a bunch of idiots, they make the rest of us look bad,” said a listener to the Vicki McKenna Show.
Naturally the teachers union president assumes all you Green Bayers are stupid, that you don’t understand the issues, and says that she won’t listen to her critics, anyway.
Continue reading “
Wisc. Teachers Protest Working an 8-Hour Work Day”
From the office of Rep. Peter Roskam (R, IL)…
We’re at a crossroads in America. The Obama economy continues to underperform: 9.1% national unemployment, 14 trillion in debt, and a potential double-dip recession on the horizon. Even with all of America’s assets, endless potential, and the unrelenting American spirit, this Administration has led our country astray with one failed policy after another.
Americans are tired of the Obama Administration’s continual underperformance and seemingly never-met expectations: an $800-billion failed “stimulus” and the promise that summer 2010 would be “recovery summer.” Yet, even in the face of proven failure and a weak economy, the Democrats that run Washington continue to cheerlead for their failed policies.
Just weeks ago, Democrat National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz actually told NBC’s Meet the Press that Democrats have “turned this economy around.”
Continue reading “
Roskam: The Dems Are Out of Touch”
-By Rev Michael Bresciani
I have heard of starting an article with a disclaimer but never with an apology. It isn’t so much about breaking new ground in journalism but it is about respect for all our candidates that causes me to say that they all seem like a group of the very best gentlemen and ladies and all deserve to be heard out and considered.
I have enough trouble trying to get Americans to see that while the economy and jobs may be on the top of the list as a campaign war cry that is not all there is to the restoration of America. We must return to the rule of law and stop trying to quash every inference to God from our schools, public discourse and everyday life. Need I mention the abortion scourge and our plunge into unbridled immorality yet once again?
Our moral strength is inextricably entwined with our economic well being. This is a fact I have been pounding away at for years even as I have watched our nation teeter and scramble like so many blind men stumbling and falling just trying to find the door.
Continue reading “
Sarah Palin: America’s Real Frontrunner; Still on the Back Burner?”
-By Warner Todd Huston
There is a jester of a Chicago Alderman named Ed Burke who back in the early 1990s made local radio audiences laugh by his plaintive plea of “what about the horses” on the floor of Chicago’s City Hall. He was worried that horses in downtown Chicago’s carriage trade were somehow being mistreated and so he tried to pass all sorts of absurd new regulations in Chicago to help his equine buddies. His plea rings in my ears as I read this new story of the “unintended consequences” of federal regulations meant to save the horses that has only made their lives more miserable.
Since we became a country there have been businesses geared to dispatch and butcher ailing, broken down, or unwanted horses. These horse abattoirs may be remembered once upon a time as supplying some of the raw materials for glue factories. But they also supplied the meat for zoos, circuses and increasingly for meat markets overseas where consumption of horsemeat by humans does not carry the cultural shock that it might here in the United States.
But congress knew better, you see. Congress had become the ultimate horse whisperers and could read the horses minds to know that they felt abused by these evil slaughterhouses. And so, because congress is oh, so caring, that august body passed laws that materially harmed horse slaughterhouses in America. These rules eventually made such businesses close up and disappear in the USA.
It’s for the horses, ya know?
Continue reading “
For Every Awful Gov’t Action There is An Equally Awful Reaction, Horses Worst Hit!”
From the office of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R, ILL)…
Jerry Halterman, owner of HR Imaging Partners Inc. in Ottawa, IL and U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger (IL-11) joined David Asman on America’s Nightly Scoreboard to discuss how the Administration’s failed policies have created more government regulation and a lack of confidence to expand business.
This interview comes on the heels of Rep. Kinzinger’s small business roundtable with members of the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce. Kinzinger hosted the roundtable to listen and discuss business owner’s ideas to create economic certainty in order to leave future generations with a strong, thriving economy. The roundtable confirmed the recent National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) report, which stated confidence of small businesses has dropped into recessionary levels. Small business owners from Ottawa, IL claimed taxes and regulations contribute to the continued uncertainty over our economy.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Hey, Teamsters members… how pleased are you that your union bosses are spending thousands of you dues money for a Las Vegas vacation?
Courtesy of LaborUnionReport.com…
I wonder, brothers, are your union bigwigs sending YOU to beautiful, exciting Las Vegas for fun in the sun?
… or are you working your fingers to the bone while they cavort in Sin City on your dime?
Continue reading “
Teamster Bosses Having Big Night Out in Las Vegas”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Remember last week how President Obama was railing about how evil ATMs were because they somehow took away people’s jobs. This evil, evil automation was bad on June 14, right? Well today, only eleven days later, suddenly Barack Obama is all about automation and how wonderful it is…
Read the rest at RightPundits.com.
From the office of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R, ILL)…
Washington, D.C. – The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-11) serves on, yesterday passed the North American-Made Energy Security Act, H.R. 1938, with bipartisan support by a vote of 33 to 13. Kinzinger issued the following statement:
“What does the Keystone XL pipeline mean for the United States? For starters it means reducing our addiction to foreign oil and creating directly and indirectly more than 100,000 jobs.
“It means 1.3 million barrels of oil from our friends to the North, which means we will need less oil from the Middle East, less oil from Venezuela, less oil from countries we can no longer rely on.
“And, it means $5.2 billion in new property tax revenue for bankrupt states.
Continue reading “
Kinzinger Supports Bill to Increase North American Energy Production”
-By Daniel Clark
In September of 2000, Republican congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage of Idaho attended a public hearing about wildfires at the University of Montana. It was there that a young environmentalist stormed to the front of the lecture hall, shouted, “you are the greatest threat to the forest,” and struck her with a pie filled with rotten salmon. After his removal, a recess had to be called so that Rep. Chenoweth-Hage could clean all the fishy bits out of her hair and clothing. That’s what happens to people who try to sit down and reason with liberal activists.
This is a lesson that corporate executives never seem to learn. Every time some interest group demands to have a “dialogue,” they come running to show their eagerness to get along. In the end, they always get walloped with the proverbial rancid salmon pie, but they never see it coming, no matter how often it happens. The latest example of this involves a protest by Greenpeace against Mattel, manufacturer of the Barbie doll. If the connection between the two is not apparent to you, that’s only because you are sane.
Eight Greenpeace members rappelled down the side of the company’s headquarters, and unfurled a banner featuring Barbie’s boyfriend Ken, saying, “Barbie, it’s over. I don’t date girls that are into deforestation.” The accusation is that the packaging Mattel uses for its dolls is destroying the “rain forests.”
Continue reading “
Mattel Lacks Mettle: Another Victim of Liberal ‘Dialogue’”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Senator Ron Johnson (R, Wis.) commented in advance of the President’s speech on manufacturing and is here to tell President Obama, “the government doesn’t create jobs, it creates debt and it is the private sector that creates long-term, self-sustaining jobs.”
Today the President is traveling to Pittsburgh to talk about manufacturing. As a person who spent 31 years building a successful manufacturing company, I am curious what President Obama might say about manufacturing. He has little personal experience in manufacturing or business. He has very few members within his administration with success in manufacturing or the private sector.
President Obama needs to change his way of thinking. He needs to realize that government doesn’t create jobs, it creates debt. It is the private sector that creates long term, self-sustaining jobs.
Continue reading “
Sen. Johnson: Obama and his Administration Have ‘Little Experience in Manufacturing or Business’”
-By Warner Todd Huston
I think Delta Airlines should change its name to Omega Airlines because at this point it is the last airline that I’ll ever fly. Not only did Delta try to charge our returning soldiers thousands of dollars to check their bags as they came back from the wars, now the airlines has intertwined itself with Saudi Arabia airlines and have agreed to discriminate against Jews and Christians because of it.
USA Today reported early on Thursday that Delta Airlines would be bowing to Saudi Arabia’s oppressive and racist entry laws by banning Jews — ore even people with “Jewish sounding names” — as well as anything related to Christianity.
As my friend Jeff Dunetz snarked, “Ladies and Gentlemen we are no approaching Saudi Arabia, the Captain has turned on the no Jews light.”
Continue reading “
Delta Airlines: Anti-Soldier, Anti-Jew, Anti-Christian, but Now Pro Racist Muslims”
-By Warner Todd Huston
When Barack Obama threw millions of our tax dollars at General Motors to “save it,” the administration claimed that it would not involve itself in the “day-to-day management” of the venerable car company. New emails obtained by The Daily Caller, however, casts doubt on this claim.
In fact, as Matthew Boyle reports, the emails “reveal that Treasury officials were involved in decision-making that led to more than 20,000 non-union workers losing their pensions.”
It turns out that Treasurer Secretary Timothy Geithner pressured GM, widely derided as Government Motors, to cut the pensions for the salaried, non-union employees at Delphi, a company owned by GM.
Continue reading “
Contrary to Claim, White House Did Control GM’s Daily Business And Cut Workers Pay?”
From the Office of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R, IL)…
Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (IL-11), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, spoke out on the floor of the House in support of H.R. 2021, the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act of 2011. This bipartisan legislation would ease the permitting process in order to increase domestic energy production opportunities, reduce our addiction on foreign oil and create American jobs.
“The American people are beginning to understand that this Administration and its agencies are having real consequences and real impacts on the unemployment rate, on the joblessness and on the price we are paying on a barrel of oil and a gallon of gasoline,” said Kinzinger. “Every dollar that a gallon of gasoline increases, it is a regressive tax on Americans. Meanwhile, we sit around and argue while bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. have their way.”
Development in two of Alaska’s Arctic seas (the Beaufort and Chukchi), which contain up to 27.9 billion barrels of oil and 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, could deliver up to 1 million barrels of oil per day of domestic energy.
Congressman Kinzinger represents the Eleventh Congressional District which is home to three nuclear power plants, hydropower plants, ethanol and biodiesel plants, and an oil refinery. The district embodies the all-of-the-above approach to energy that Kinzinger stands for. Nuclear energy production alone employs more than 2,500 people through the Illinois Valley.
-By Warner Todd Huston
With one regulatory decision after anther, Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has repeatedly abused its position and lent its powers to come to the material aid of Big Labor. This week we see the NLRB coming to the aid of unions yet again by changing rules to fast track union votes in businesses not yet suffering under union control.
The NLRB has ruled that unions trying to strong arm their way into businesses will now be afforded a sort of fast tracked voting process meant to give both businesses and employees far, far less time to learn about and understand the issues surrounding a vote in favor of unionization.
Currently when a union wants to get itself certified in a new company the NLRB takes between five and six weeks to conduct the elections. Under the NLRB’s new rules that time period will be shorted to a scant 10 to 21 days.
Continue reading “
Obama’s Union-Sold Regulatory Agency Goes Even Further for Unions”
Following the passage of a record tax hike earlier this year, politicians from both parties promised fiscal austerity. As some would tell it, they’ve delivered on that promise by passing a budget containing cuts.
But the truth is they have not delivered on that promise. At least not yet.
Our analysis shows how – contrary to promises and reports of a leaner budget – the plan passed by the General Assembly amounts to a significant spending increase compared to last year. This budget will lead to billions in new deficit spending over the coming decade, while setting the stage for extending the tax increases. It cannot stand. To learn more about this, watch this video of highlights from our press conference yesterday:
Bottom line: Spending is still too high. The credibility of politicians who promised an end to tax-and-spend habits and gimmickry is on the line. Additional reductions must be made, and they must be made now.
Call your state legislator today, and let them know what you think about unchecked spending growth.
Kristina Rasmussen
Executive Vice President
Illinois Policy Institute
Continue reading “
A Spending Increase in Springfield”
-By Warner Todd Huston
President Barack Obama came before the American people tonight to unleash his latest campaign speech disguised as a foreign policy address. It was a presentation that even Politico calls “boring and predictable, balanced to please critics,” and one that “did not change the debate about the war.” But, one thing does seem like news. Obama never used the word victory and he also said we’d negotiate with the Taliban – an enemy he annoyingly insists on calling the Tahleebahn.
One singular theme emerged from this speech. Apparently, to President Obama, “victory” does not mean a win, but it only means a settling with negotiations with our enemies. Very Chamberlainesque, isn’t it?
But there were quite a few odd statements made by the president tonight. One was his claim that Usamma bin Laden was the “only leader al Qaeda has ever known.” This is absurd. There have been dozens of al Qaeda leaders and we killed many of them long before we finally got to bin Laden.
Continue reading “
Obama: Who Needs Victory When We Can Negotiate With The TahleeBahn?”
-By Frank Hyland
The issue everywhere in the media, at the White House, on Capitol Hill, and around your supper table is healthcare, whether Medicaid, Medicare or the aptly labeled Obamacare. The burning part of the issue is whether “they” owe us healthcare; that is, are we “entitled” to it.
If I walk into a store expecting that I can have anything and everything on the shelves without paying for it, I’d be called a shoplifter, a thief. Gasoline pumps across the nation, including the ones you patronize, feature a photo of a State Trooper warning against filling up and driving off without paying. When the Plumber fixes your Bathroom leak and you pay him with a check that bounces, you have committed fraud and theft. In all these cases, you received something of value from a person (the Plumber) or a group of people (the gasoline station) and you took their product without paying for it.
Why in the world, then, would anyone think they can go to any other individual — a Doctor — or a group of people — a clinic or hospital — and believe that they can have their product without paying for it? Doctors, Nurses, and their staffs, in case some don’t realize it, have families, mortgages, car payments, tuition payments, and grocery bills just like everyone else, like all of us.
Continue reading “
Healthcare Delusion”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Herman Cain appeared at last weekend’s RightOnLine conference (June 18) to two standing ovations. His rousing campaign speech apparently hit all the right notes with the conservative audience in attendance. But afterward, in the blogger access room, there were a few sour notes, in one case Cain even angrily yelled at a blogger over a question hard pressed.
The RightOnLine conference is a get together held annually by Americans For Prosperity and aimed at helping citizens become more involved in their government both on and off the Internet. This year’s event was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota but Cain has spoken at this conference several times in the past.
This time, though, Cain is running for president and questions were a tad less fawning in the blogger access session. Several questions about his refusal to sign the abortion pledge, how his foreign policy ideas are perceived as weak, and his statements on Muslims in his administration got Cain passion flowing and his eyes flashing.
I was at this meeting and was able to get a full video of the session.
Continue reading “
VIDEO: Herman Cain Raises Voice at Blogger, Holds His Ground”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Barack Obama’s interference in the business operations of Boeing new Dreamliner manufacturing project will likely cause thousands of workers in South Carolina to lose their jobs. Because of this, one Palmetto State worker is suing the federal government for its part in his probable future job loss.
This is a story about Obama’s status as the top bought-and-paid-for union hack in the country and how he is attempting to use his powers to wield regulations as a tool to punish an American business for wanting to open a new manufacturing plant in South Carolina all because the president feels that a union will be hurt in the process of the creation of thousands of new jobs.
As it happens, airplane manufacturer Boeing wants to open a new manufacturing plant in South Carolina for its new Dreamliner plane because the manufacturer had been having so many union-caused troubles in its Washington State plant.
Continue reading “
South Carolina Worker Sues Federal Gov’t Over Possible Loss of His Job”
-By Selwyn Duke
There is no better way to proclaim your lack of spiritual and philosophical depth than by, two decades after the fall of communism, disclosing that you’re Marxist. Yet this is precisely what Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama did during a speech before 150 Chinese students at the University of Minnesota this month. Journalist Tsering Namgyal reports on the story at Religion Dispatches, writing, “‘as far as socio-political beliefs are concerned, I consider myself a Marxist.’ ‘But not a Leninist,’ he [the Lama] clarified.”
Well, that’s a relief. Those Leninists can really kill ya’. Marxists will just murder you.
This isn’t the first time the Lama indicated that his soul is as red as the robes he wears. During a lecture in NYC on May 19, the Tibetan leader credited “capitalism” with bringing new freedoms to China but then said, “Still I am a Marxist”; he then explained that Marxism has “moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits.” That’s some deep thinking right there.
Continue reading “
Dalai Lama: ‘I am a Marxist’”
-By Warner Todd Huston
As the Daley years wound down, Chicago’s public schools teachers were handed an automatic 4 percent raise across the board that was supposed to take effect next year. However, that largess from the taxpayers has just been rescinded by a unanimous vote of the Chicago Public Schools board.
Citing the $712 million budget deficit, the CPS announced that the automatic, meritless raise was simply unjustifiable.
In a statement, schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard said, “I have the utmost respect and admiration for teachers and all that they do for our children. But today’s board action was taken in response to the massive financial crisis facing our system. My team is now tasked with developing a balanced budget and presenting it to the Board and the public in August and our promise remains to minimize any impacts on the classroom and our kids.”
Continue reading “
Chicago Teachers Losing Their Raises”
Obama and his cohorts want to sell the American people a bill of goods. DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz is telling the country that Democrats “own” the “recovery.” Only one problem. There ain’t one.
Don’t buy the lies, folks. Don’t do it.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Presidential candidate Herman Cain (R) recently spoke with FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Neil Cavuto about the dispute between the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Boeing and its impact on the United States economy. Cain said what the NLRB is trying to do keeping Boeing out of Charleston is “a direct assault on the free market system” and he hopes Boeing will “fight it all the way to the Supreme Court if that’s what they have to do.” Cain went on to say it is “uncertainty” that is preventing the U.S. economy from adding jobs in the “private sector” which must be “the engine” for economic growth and it is issues like the NLRB/Boeing dispute that are “killing the engine.”
Cain says that the reason business aren’t hiring is because of the uncertainty that Obama’s policies have visited upon the nation. The “uncertainty about the impact of Obamacare” chief among them.
“We don’t know what the tax rates are going to be at the end of 2013. This economy is stalled. This economy is like a train stuck on the tracks. You have a boxcar full of 15 million people who don’t have jobs, you have a boxcar of businesses that are hanging on. You have a caboose and no engine. They keep feeding the caboose. The caboose can’t pull the train. The private sector has to be the engine. Everything that they are doing, including this National Labor Relations Board issue, is killing the engine.”
Continue reading “
Herman Cain: Obama’s NLRB ‘A Direct Assault on the Free Market System’”
(Ed’s note – I will be flying to Minneapolis to attend the RightOnline.com conference this year. If you have the time or are in the Minneapolis area, do come on out)
-By Erik Telford
Arianna Huffington’s recent mega-payday from AOL was powerful evidence of the tight connection between the hard-left netroots and the online establishment. And AOL isn’t the only web giant to provide apparently favorable treatment to the left. Google has been accused of blocking certain right-wing websites or lowering their standing in search results, and its YouTube subsidiary seems to remove files uploaded by conservatives far more often than offensive content posted by liberals.
The love affair between the tech giants and the big-government left can be traced not only to Silicon Valley’s geographical proximity to San Francisco but also to the two groups’ shared agenda. President Obama’s stated goal of having the FCC regulate the Internet will ensure that bandwidth-heavy websites will not have to pay for the billions of dollars in investments that private broadband companies made. Of course, money from the technology industry flows freely into Democratic coffers.
Yet somehow the right is more than holding its own in the online activism arena.
Continue reading “
Against The Odds, Right Leads Online”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is headed to The Hill to testify about the Obama Administration’s newest proposed environmental regulations. Obama’s EPA is claiming that the new rules will bring all sorts of economic growth, but a new report by the National Taxpayers Union puts the administration’s claims in question and shows that the EPA’s “benefits” have no basis in reality.
The new report features economist David Montgomery who reveals the very large net regulatory benefits touted by EPA rely on apples to orange comparisons, where the vast majority of the benefits have none of the financial reality that the costs do. (Click here for a .pdf of the report)…
Read the rest at RightPundit.com.
-By Warner Todd Huston
On Monday I alerted you all to a jobs-killing, union-favoring amendment being considered in the House of Representatives in Washington, one that needed to be defeated. Unfortunately, the amendment was successful and now, in this dour economy, unions will be able to make matters worse just when we need a shot in the arm. (See previous post for particulars of the bill.)
Sadly, we lost this battle by one stinking vote and this example shows that even though we may have a GOP controlled House of Reps. they still don’t always support conservative measures — and they need to be carefully watched! Those supporting this jobs-killing amendment numbered 204 and those voting in favor of economic success only numbered 203. (25 representatives did not vote at all)
Now, seeing as how I am from Illinois — the most corrupt state in the union — I focused in my previous post on those of the Illinois Republican delegation that had in the past supported Big Labor bills similar to the one in question. So, this is a follow up to that report.
Continue reading “
Illinois Congressmen Help Tip in Big Labor Amendment”
-By Warner Todd Huston
President Obama claims that he wants to “create jobs,” and is happily touting several policies that he claims will create jobs in this jobless, non-recovery. Unfortunately, all his polices really do is shore up the high cost unions that kill job growth. As GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConell says, Obama has “relentlessly pursued an agenda that is radically opposed” to job growth.
Speaking on the floor last Tuesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “For two and a half years, Democrats in Washington have paid lip service to the idea of job creation — even as they’ve relentlessly pursued an agenda that is radically opposed to it… Democrats don’t want to admit that the government-driven policies of the past two and a half years are part of the problem. And until they do, nothing will change. Unless Democrats change their priorities and their policies, the threats of a downgrade won’t go away. The debt won’t get any smaller. Businesses won’t create the kind of jobs we need to build prosperity.
Continue reading “
Obama Puts Unions Ahead of a Healthy Economy, Free Trade”