Sustainability Marxism: Agenda 21 "We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. Dave Foreman (Co-founder of Earth First) “If we don’t overthrown capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecology sound society under socialism. I don’t think it’s possible under capitalism.” Judi Bari (Earth First)

We’ve been saying it for years – sustainable development is really just a disguised Marxism, with its top down control of economic decisions, violation of private property rights and emphasis on Social Justice, a term, incidentally, coined by non- other than Karl Marx (so what was your first clue?). Well, as Agenda 21 has been enforced in more and more policy, the perpetrators have grown more and more bold in openly revealing the truth – it really is a not-so disguised Marxism after all. But, of course, I’m just the lunatic fringe. So, let them tell you in their own words.

We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects.”
Dave Foreman (Co-founder of Earth First)

“If we don’t overthrown capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecology sound society under socialism. I don’t think it’s possible under capitalism.” Judi Bari (Earth First)

“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization we have In the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” Michael Oppenheimer (Environmental Defense Fund)

So when (people like Tom DeWeese) react to… Climate Change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because they are paranoid… It’s because they are paying attention.” Naomi Klein (writing in The Nation Magazine, 11/28/11)

“Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective.” Harvey Ruvin (Vice Chairman, ICLEI)
“Only socialism and the global solidarity of all working peoples can free both humanity and the earth from the fatal threat of global capitalism.” Third Annual Conference of the World Association from Political Economy) Langfang, China, May 23 – 25 – 2008

We call for “Zero Economic Growth.” Speaker at the UN’s Rio+20 Summit, June, 2012.
“What is occurring here, not just in Doha, but in the whole climate change process, is the complete transformation of the economic structure of the world.” Christiana Figueres (Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, November, 2012)

Ravings of a Sustainable Lunatic
So, Marxism is all the rage in the international circles, but local proponents, planning groups, planning departments and elected officials deny any such connections to their planning programs. Is there one? Let’s let an avowed Marxist author Ted Trainer explain how and why to impose the local process as he described it in his book, “Transition to a Sustainable and Just World.” See if you don’t recognize some of your community’s local planning programs.

According to Trainer:
The global economy is massively unjust. It delivers most of the world’s resources to the few in rich countries, and gears Third World productive capacity to rich world super-markets, not to meeting the needs of the world’s poor billions. Rich countries must move down to living on their fair share of global wealth. Local planning is based on this theory – YOU MUST LIVE ON LESS.

These faults cannot be fixed within or by a society driven by growth, market forces, production for profit, or affluence. These are the causes of the global sustainability and justice problems. Consumer society cannot be reformed to make it sustainable or just; it must be largely replaced by a society with fundamentally different structures. Local planning focuses on curtailing energy and natural resource and land use.
The alternative has to be THE SIMPLER WAY, a society based on non-affluent lifestyles within mostly small and highly self-sufficient local economies under local participatory control and not driven by market forces or the profit motive, and with no economic growth. (sound familiar – Rio +20) There must be an enormous cultural change, away from competitive, individualistic acquisitiveness.

What then is the most effective transition strategy? The essential aim is not to fight against consumer- capitalist society, but to build the alternative to it. This revolution cannot be achieved from the top, either by governments, green parties or proletarian revolutions. This can only be a grassroots transition led by ordinary people working out how they can cooperatively make their local communities viable as the global economy increasingly fails to provide. The Eco-village and Transition Towns movements have begun the general shift, but…

Local self-sufficiency initiatives such as community gardens and Permaculture must be informed by the awareness that reforms to consumer-capitalist society cannot achieve a sustainable and just society. Nothing of lasting significance will be achieved unless it is clearly understood that our efforts in these local initiatives are the first steps to the eventual replacement of the present society by one which is not driven by market forces, profit, competition, growth or affluence. This awareness is far from sufficiently evident in present green initiatives. The most important contribution activists can make is to join community gardens ,

Transition Towns movements etc. in order to help to develop this wider and radical global vision within participants. THIS IS WHAT YOUR LOCAL PLANNNERS AND DEVELOPMENT PLAN S ARE DESIGNED TO DO. THIS IS THE DIRECT CONNECTION BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL MARXISM AND YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT PLANS!
Ted Trainer’s book, “Transition to a Sustainable and Just World,” is the blueprint for establishing Marxist principles into your local community.


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Leftist policies drive an iconic American city into bankruptcy How the Democrats Destroyed Detroit: Detroit residents have had fifty years to fix their own problems. They’ve elected Democrat after Democrat, bringing the city to the brink of bankruptcy. It is hard to imagine an emergency manager could do worse,

Last Friday, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, announced that the state will proceed with a takeover of Detroit’s Democratic city government. “The current system has not been working. We have not stopped the decline,” said Snyder. “This is time for us not to argue or to blame, but to come together as Detroit, Mich., not Detroit vs. Michigan, and bring all of our resources to bear.” Snyder may not want to point the finger, but it is obvious that decades of Democratic rule and economic policies have brought this once great city to its knees.

The move, one step short of declaring municipal bankruptcy, means Snyder will be appointing an emergency manager with sweeping powers similar to that of a bankruptcy judge. Such powers include the ability to toss out unaffordable contracts with public employee unions and vendors, put city assets up for sale, consolidate or eliminate government departments, make further service cuts, or recommend municipal bankruptcy—all of which can be implemented with little to no input from local elected officials.

Democratic Mayor Dave Bing has a 10-day window to request a hearing on the decision. If he does the hearing will take place on March 12 in Lansing. If the appeal is denied, Snyder will appoint the manager. As of now that person hasn’t been identified, but the Governor says he has someone in mind. After 18 months, the emergency manager would be subject to review by local officials, at which time he could be removed or replaced.

Mayor Bing sounded like he was leaning towards appeal. “The Governor has made his decision, and it was his decision alone to make,” said Bing. “While I respect it, I have said all along that I do not favor an Emergency Manager for the City of Detroit. I will look at the impact of the Governor’s decision as well as other options, to determine my next course of action.”

Democratic politicians and civil rights organizations in a city where the population is 82.7 percent black were far less sanguine. “For one individual to be able to wipe out the duties of our duly-elected officials, that’s more or less a dictatorship, and it’s against everything that America is supposed to be about,” said the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the local NAACP.

The “dictatorship” meme was echoed by other Democratic officials. State Rep. Brian Banks, who represents parts of northeast Detroit, contended the Governor should not have the largest voice when deciding what’s best for Detroit.” State Sen. Bert Johnson (D-Highland Park) characterized the appointment of an emergency manager as “a death in the family.” Activist minister Malik Shabazz claimed that the “governor and the right wing in Lansing are destroying democracy and moving us into plutocracy.” And Rev. D. Alexander Bullock, president of the Detroit Chapter of Rainbow-PUSH, claimed the development “will add to the growing tension in Michigan.”  “We wait to see if austerity will trump democracy and prosperity,” he added.

What prosperity? Detroit’s downward spiral has been legendary. Once the fourth largest city in the nation, and home to its largest industry, Detroit’s population has been cut in half, from 1.5 million in 1970, to less than 700,000 in 2012. Median household income is $27,862 compared to the state median of $48,669. The poverty level is 36.2 percent compared to a statewide level of 15.7. The murder rate is 11 times that of New York City, and the unemployment rate is above 18 percent, more than double the national average. Detroit Public Schools (DPS) have been under emergency management since 2008. In late February, the state review board revealed that the city faces a short-term cash $327 million budget deficit and an estimated $14 billion in long-term debt, primarily driven by unfunded pension and retirement health care obligations.
As a result, the city can’t provide basic services. The Detroit Fire Department is so short of critical resources, rotating “brownouts” of fire companies are required. Forty percent of the city’s street lights are broken. For the past two years, the Bing administration has slowly adopted a city “triage” system, best described by the Detroit Free Press. “Infrastructure improvements, demolition activity, outdoor maintenance and development incentives will henceforth be concentrated in a relatively small number of neighborhoods that boast the high numbers of owner-occupied homes and little evidence of residential and commercial blight,” it reports.

To accord with this plan, the city’s 139 square miles have been broken down into four categories by Detroit’s Planning and Development Department: “steady,” as in little blight and a high number of owner-occupied homes; “transitional,” as in a neighborhood on its way up or down; “varied” as in some streets are stable and others are not; and “distressed” as in large amounts of blight, and few amenities, such as grocery stores.

47 percent of the owners of Detroit’s 305,000 properties didn’t pay their property taxes in 2012

Detroit residents have responded in kind. A staggering 47 percent of the owners of Detroit’s 305,000 properties didn’t pay their property taxes in 2012. Homeowner Fred Phillips illuminated the frustration many of those residents feel. “Why pay taxes?” he asks. “Why should I send them taxes when they aren’t supplying services? It is sickening….Every time I see the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came.”
Yet it’s even worse than that. Detroit has some of the highest big city property taxes in the nation, and property assessments remain overly inflated, amounting to as much as ten times the market price of the property, according to recent research compiled by two Michigan professors.
This has led to another phenomenon. Property owners are allowing themselves to be foreclosed upon, and then re-buying the same property at a reduced price, legally eliminating their outstanding debt in the process. Six hundred properties were repurchased in this manner in 2012, triple the number that occurred in 2010.

In short, Detroit is a city on the brink of ruination

In short, Detroit is a city on the brink of ruination. At the center of that ruination is 50 years of Democrat rule. The last Republican Mayor the city had was Louis C. Miriani, who lost his reelection bid in 1961 and ended up spending 10 years in prison for tax evasion. Incoming mayor, Democrat Jerome Cavanagh, brought the “Model City” program—fashioned after Soviet Union centralized efforts to transform entire urban areas at once—to a nine-square-mile section of the city. Using a commuter tax and a new income tax as his vehicle, Cavanagh promised residents “the rich” would pay for it all. Yet because people were being told by government how to run their businesses and their lives, in exchange for government goodies, the program ended up failing spectacularly.

1967 Detroit Race Riot and “white flight”

In 1967, after police broke up a celebration at an after hours club, an enraged neighborhood began to riot, igniting the worst race riot of the decade. Black-owned business were looted and burned to the ground. Forty people were killed and 5,000 were left homeless, and the “white flight” out of the city center, totaling 140,000 people over an eighteen month period, ensued. The city was never the same.
An unbroken series of Democratic mayors followed, all of whom had a hand in implementing the full panoply of progressive policies, highlighted by the giveaways to public service employees. Their outlandish salaries and benefit packages, coupled with highly inefficient work rules, killed the golden goose: the auto industry, and its attendant industrial community headed South, where lower taxes and right-to-work rules kept their businesses afloat.

The same swath of progressive policies destroyed the public school system as well. Perhaps nothing illustrates the corrupting influence of those policies better than the Detroit Federation of Teachers’ success in scuttling a $200 million offer by businessman and philanthropist Robert Thompson to build 15 charter schools in the city in 2003. Ten years later, the Detroit Public School (DPS) system remains a cesspool of failure, corruption and bankruptcy, all of which is chronicled here.

Considering some of the men who have run this city, Detroit’s descent into socialistic ruination should surprise no one. From 1974 to 1993, Coleman Young, who was subsequently revealed to be a member of the Communist Party, was mayor of the city. He failed to stem Detroit’s descent into chaos, and in 1992 his police chief was convicted of stealing $2.6 million from city taxpayers, even as Young defended him. Michigan’s hard-left U.S. Senator Carl Levin was Young’s chief supporter, serving as Detroit City Council president.

Kwame Kilpatrick, who served as Mayor from 2002 to 2008, represents the epitome of corruption. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to two felonies and no contest to a third one, receiving a sentence of 120 days. In 2010, he received a five year sentence for probation violations stemming from his obstruction of justice conviction. Currently Kilpatrick, along with his father, Bernard Kilpatrick, and his longtime contractor friend Bobby Ferguson, who got millions of dollars in city work, are awaiting a jury verdict on racketeering, bribery and tax charges that could send them all to jail for 20 years.

All of these polices and politicians have had their effect. In 2012, Forbes Magazine rated Detroit the most dangerous city in America. A Detroit News poll revealed that “Detroit’s crime crisis” has gotten so bad, a staggering 40 percent of its residents intend to leave the city within five years. Another two-thirds say the city is on the wrong track. The poll also found that all of Detroit’s public officials were held in low esteem, except for Police Chief Ralph Godbee—who retired due to a sex scandal after the poll was taken.

Now one might think that those living in the epicenter of Democrat-inflicted misery for fifty years might consider changing course. One would be completely wrong. On Nov. 6, Barack Obama received 98 percent of the vote. On the same night Detroit voters elected a convicted felon, Brian Banks, to serve in the state legislature. Other election results show overwhelming margins of victories for Detroit Democrats as well.

Thus, the self-inflicted misery continues, even as it is almost certain that Detroit’s Democratically-dominated city government will resist the efforts of Gov. Synder, and the Republicans who run the state legislature, to keep the city from going under. It is also likely that much of that resistance will be framed in racial terms, a theme that has already been stoked by U.S. Rep John Conyers (D-MI), who has represented Detroit for 47 years. “How come all of the jurisdictions put under emergency management are majority African American? Has anybody noticed that?” he wondered. Here’s what some people have “noticed,” Mr. Conyers: the top ten most dangerous cities in the nation are each led by a Democrat mayor.

Gov. Snyder frames the issue correctly. “There’s probably no city that’s more financially challenged in the entire United States,” he said. “We need to start moving upward with the city of Detroit.” Eric Lupher, director of local affairs for the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, put it even more bluntly. “The city could stop doing all of its current operations today—no more police and fire, no more garbage collection, no more street lights—and the city would still have billions of dollars of debt and promises made for future payments that it would have to pay.”

Detroit residents have had fifty years to fix their own problems. They’ve elected Democrat after Democrat, bringing the city to the brink of bankruptcy. It is hard to imagine an emergency manager could do worse,


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One last time Ronmey Vs Obama: Romney Blasts Obama’s Sequestration: He Could've Brought Nation Together But Is ‘Flying Around the Country .. Berating Republicans’

CHRIS WALLACE, 'FOX NEWS SUNDAY' ANCHOR: How do you think the president has handled the sequester, the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts?

MITT ROMNEY:  Well, no one can think that that's been a success for the president.  He didn't think the sequester would happen.  It is happening, but to date, what we've seen is a -- the president out campaigning to the American people, doing rallies around the country, flying around the country and berating Republicans and blaming and pointing.

Now, what does that do?

That causes the Republicans to -- to retrench and to put up a wall and to fight back.  It's a very natural human emotion. The president has the opportunity to lead the nation and to bring Republicans and Democrats together.  It's a job he's got to do and it's a job only the president can do.

WALLACE:  The Obama administration is, right now, releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants who had been slated for deportation because they say they can't afford to hold them.  What do you think of that?

MITT ROMNEY:  Um, I think the president has to act in the interest of the country and -- and that means if we need an aircraft carrier in the -- in the Gulf -- and I believe we -- we do, I thought we needed one more -- that he should do it.
I -- I think if there are people who are incarcerated, uh, he should make sure that -- that, uh, we're able to keep them in jail// Look, it's -- again, it's -- it's politics.  It's, OK, how do we do something that will get a headline that will make it look like those terrible Republicans aren't willing to come together?

The White House Court Jesters of Sequester: Obama has been warning America that if Congress allows mandatory spending "cuts" of a piddly-widdly 2 percent to go into effect this week, the sky will fall. The manufactured crisis of "sequestration" was Obama's idea in the first place. But that hasn't stopped the Chicken Little in Chief

Traffic alert: There's a massive clown car pileup in the Beltway. And with the White House court jesters of sequester behind the wheel, no one is safe. Fiscal sanity, of course, is the ultimate victim.
President Obama has been warning America that if Congress allows mandatory spending "cuts" of a piddly-widdly 2 percent to go into effect this week, the sky will fall. The manufactured crisis of "sequestration" was Obama's idea in the first place.

But that hasn't stopped the Chicken Little in Chief from surrounding himself with every last teacher, senior citizen and emergency responder who will be catastrophically victimized by hardhearted Republicans. Curses on those meanie Republicans! How dare they acquiesce to the very plan for "cuts" -- or rather, negligible reductions in the explosive rate of federal spending growth -- that Obama himself hatched?
How low will the kick-the-can Democrats go? Among the ridiculous claims the administration is making: The National Drug Intelligence Center will lose $2 million from its $20 million budget. That scary factoid appears in an ominous Office of Management and Budget report purporting to calculate the Sequester Disaster. So lock the doors and hide the children, right?

Wrong. As Reason magazine's Mike Riggs points out, the NDIC shut down in June 2012, and some of its responsibilities were absorbed by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Ready for more reckless, feckless farce? Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano played Henny Penny during a panicked speech at the Brookings Institution Tuesday. She warned that her agency's "core critical mission areas" would be undermined by the sequester. To cynically underscore the point, "waves" of illegal aliens were released this week from at least three detention centers in Texas, Florida and Louisiana, according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed the release of some illegal immigrants Monday night, but would not say how many or from which detention centers.

The real punch line, as I've reported relentlessly, is that the catch and release of criminal illegal aliens has been bipartisan standard operating procedure for decades. The persistent deportation and removal abyss allows hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens -- many of them known repeat criminal offenders -- to pass through the immigration court system and then disappear into the ether because we have no determined will to track them down and kick them all out of the country.

While Napolitano shrieks about decimation of the DHS workforce, DHS workers tell me that the double-dipping of retired ICE brass -- who get back on the payroll as "rehired annuitants" -- is rampant.
While this open-borders White House phonily gnashes its teeth over the sequester's effect on national security, its top officials are lobbying for a massive nationwide amnesty that would foster a tsunami of increased illegal immigration for generations to come. The shamnesty beneficiaries will be welcomed with open arms, discounted college tuition, home loans and Obamacare. And as every outraged rank-and-file border agent will tell you, DHS top officials have instituted systemic non-enforcement and sabotage of detention, deportation and removal functions.

In another emetic performance, Obama parachuted into a Virginia naval shipyard this week to decry Pentagon cuts that would gut our military. But I repeat: The reductions in spending are CINO: Cuts In Name Only. If the sequester goes into effect, Pentagon spending will increase by $121 billion between 2014 and 2023. Fiscal watchdog GOP Sen. Tom Coburn adds that $70 billion is spent by the Defense Department on "nondefense" expenditures each year.

Send in the clowns. Wait. Don't bother. They're here.

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/02/27/the-white-house-court-jesters-of-sequester-n1521244/page/full/

The White House has posted a fact free list of disastrous outcomes we can expect if Obama doesn't get his way on sequestration. Don't believe a word of it White House Dumps a Diaper Load on Sequestration

Who knew the government could make a mere $85 billion go so far? Cops and teachers will be fired, first responders gone, never mind that they’re not paid by the federal government in the first place.

Planes won’t fly, no more security at airports, massive lay offs and furloughs of essential government contractors. The end of medical research. Illegals will swarm the border. Oh, wait. Never mind on that one.
Our government is getting all of that for a lousy $85 billion?

Even the number is deceptive. There is no “cutting” being proposed; merely less of an increase over the last budget. For all of the democrat bleating over draconian cuts, 2013 spending is still going to be higher than 2012 spending.

For all of his squawking about the coming sequester apocalypse, the whole mess was Obama’s idea in the first place. The only untouchable sacred cows? Not our military, but food stamps and medicaid. Those programs won’t be affected, but our military will take a hit. That alone should identify the plan as Obama originated

If Obama were serious about saving money, there’s plenty of lard to slice out of government spending; massive bureaucracies run by somnambulant desk jockeys. Let’s take a good look at how much redundancy across useless agencies we’re paying for right now. That is a much better place to start than the DOD.
Senator Rand Paul had a few good suggestions on Sean Hannity’s show. How about not replacing a few pencil pushers who retire and use natural attrition to cut back on federal money wasting? Or perhaps we could live without the $5 million goldfish study? There’s plenty of junk to cut.

Most telling of all, Senator Paul pointed out that there already is $100 billion in the federal budget that can’t be accounted for.

The White House has posted a fact free list of disastrous outcomes we can expect if Obama doesn’t get his way on sequestration. Don’t believe a word of it.


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The middle class wasn't wiped out by the individual accumulation of wealth, but by the political accumulation of wealth and power Capitalism: A Hate Story

 Year 1 of Obama, two fat cats named Michael Moore and Harvey Weinstein released a movie. Their magnum opus was “Capitalism: A Love Story”. The unsubtly sarcastic point after the colon was that capitalism was an unmitigated bag of evil. And to reaffirm the faith of capitalism-haters in the evils of capitalism, here was a movie put out by a bunch of corporations owned by millionaires.

he traditional image of the anti-capitalist as a ragamuffin who dies of consumption in his garret has always been at odds with the real image of the anti-capitalist as a rich man or the son of a rich man. When Obama launched his big push for higher taxes, he enlisted as his ally none other than the richest man in the country. And when Occupy Wall Street’s demographics were broken down, the courageous opponents of capitalism turned out to be the sons and daughters of the upper class.

This sort of thing isn’t a surprise, it’s history. Lenin’s father was a nobleman. Cuba’s dictator attended Castro’s wedding. The man of the people is rather often stuck at the bottom of the top of the pole. The people who make revolutions are not the dispossessed, but those who are close enough to see what power really looks like, but have no hope of wielding absolute power unless they enlist the mob. They are close enough to see the throne, but not close enough to non-violently sit down in it.

That’s not even the case in America. Here we instead have the bizarre spectacle of Nicholas II and Batista calling for a revolution against the petite bourgeoisie. It’s a class war being waged by billionaires against people earning six figures a year. It’s millionaires making movies for profit using workers to denounce the practice of making things for profit using workers.



All of this is done in the name of democracy. Just look at the Democracy Alliance, an alliance of left-wing billionaires spending huge amounts of money to win elections. What could be more democratic than that except actually paying individuals for their vote. But just as there are bad capitalist movies and good capitalist anti-capitalist movies, there are bad billionaires who use their fortunes to influence the political process and good billionaires who use their fortunes to etc…

The Koch Brothers are bad. George Soros is good. Sheldon Adelson is bad. The Sandlers are good. The good billionaires on this list have arguably done far more damage to the little people and to the political process, but good money and bad money have nothing to do with real world consequences. Good billionaires give money to the left. Bad billionaires give money to the right or just swim in giant piles of it every evening before taking a cruise on their solid gold yachts.

Outrageous compensation packages for CEOs in non-profit companies

We are told incessantly that income inequality is a serious issue by organizations receiving millions from the holders of billions to say that. But income inequality is only a serious issue in some sectors. It’s fashionable to talk about the outrageous compensation packages for CEOs in for-profit companies, but not the outrageous compensation packages for CEOs in non-profit companies.

The president of a snack food companies who uses corporate profits to cover a huge salary is an evil pig, but the president of a charity who pulls in a huge salary using donations and government grants is a humanitarian. Again, the non-profit president is arguably a worse human being than the for-profit president, but it’s not about the consequences or the moral weight of the act.

Good evil CEOs work at non-profits and do nothing while chewing up public money that is taken by force from the people. Bad evil CEOs oversee the production of productions that people voluntarily buy.
Similarly the university presidents of liberal arts colleges who saddle their students with six-figure debts in exchange for useless degrees are advancing the cause of knowledge, no matter how many dirty deals they make with financial institutions. But the presidents of for-profit schools that hand out useless degrees in exchange for five-figure debts are a blight on the educational landscape. It’s not just anybody who can hand out useless degrees in exchange for debt. You have to know some Latin too.

Good people support taxing the middle class and bringing in huge numbers of unskilled workers to the country to work cheaply and then tax the middle class some more to cover their social benefits. And of course they’re good people. They even offer the children of the middle class a chance to go to college and rack up six figures worth of student debt that they can then use to write essays protesting income inequality.
And there’s no conspiracy to see here. If you think that you might as well suspect that the Democracy Alliance wasn’t really about promoting democracy, but about using giant piles of ill-gotten loot to hijack that democracy.

Ever since the birth of democracy and even before it, politics has come down to who claims to care the most for the people. There was hardly a monstrous tyrant who didn’t claim that his heart bled red for the people. Usually it was the people who ended up bleeding red, but the sentiment was there. We still suffer from a surplus of humanitarians who ache for the opportunity to take power and do the will of the people. And by the will of the people, they mean their own will.

It doesn’t really matter if you call it capitalism or socialism or anythingism. Power is about power and money is about money

It doesn’t really matter if you call it capitalism or socialism or anythingism. Power is about power and money is about money. Strip away the labels and you have a lot of powerful people trading money for power with the agenda of accumulating more of both. It doesn’t really matter what you call a billionaire who makes his fortune on currency speculation trying to dictate elections or a former politician who uses his clout to promote a crisis that his investments tend to profit from.

They’re the good guys, if you listen to the people concerned with income inequality, which is to say that they give piles of money to the right causes and it would be impolite for all the good guys to notice that they make even bigger piles of money bashing capitalism.

The concern trolls of income inequality tell us that the escalating gap is a crisis, but that’s another distraction. The issue isn’t how big the gap between you and the CEO of Sears is. The issue is how much of a challenge it is for people to make it to the middle class and stay in the middle class. And that’s not a problem that can be solved by taking more money from the CEO of Sears.

Confiscating wealth may be a tempting strategy if you’re a Russian peasant in 1918, but the wealth redistribution invariably applies more to the largest segments of the population because even in a country where the poor really are poor, their resources can be indefinitely confiscated, while those of the rich cannot be.
The revolution may start with the merchants, but when all the wine is drunk and all the mansions are sacked, and Lenin has sold the best paintings in the museums to Armand Hammer (another good lefty tycoon) it trickles down to the peasants who retain wealth through sheer numbers. Armand Hammer flies the paintings home and the peasants get marched off to collective farms. The income inequality problem doesn’t actually get solved, but no one talks about it anymore for fear of being shot.

It’s always easy to frame the problem in terms of the hoarding of capital by the wealthy, but the wealthy aren’t actually hoarding their wealth. The wealthiest Americans tend to give their wealth away through various foundations. Bill Gates is spending his fortune trying to wipe out Cholera. Ted Turner has plugged it into the United Nations. David Koch had given hundreds of millions of dollars to Lincoln Center and MIT. It’s not a new tradition either. The names of Carnegie and Rockefeller are all over landmarks in New York City, including libraries and theaters.

If the ladder up the classes has gotten shakier, it is doubtfully the fault of the plutocrats for being rich. The 1 percent is not a new phenomenon in the country’s history, nor is the denunciation of them for being rich. Americans have had a complicated relationship with wealth for a long time and that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the rise of a third factor.

It’s silly to talk about the conspicuous consumption of even the most outrageous rich, when the government rips through more money in a day than every billionaire combined could possibly spend. And that spending has been driven in no small part by agitation from political organizations funded by billionaires and millionaires, sometimes out of an insistence on political philanthropy and sometimes for darker motives.
Incomes haven’t become more unequal because the rich have grabbed all the money and stuffed it into a vault, but because the traditional ladder of success has been cut away and replaced with a clumsy government elevator that sometimes comes and sometimes doesn’t, and requires a whole lot of maintenance. But its defenders say that elevators are modern and smooth. They may not fit many people, but it is a quick easy ride. And the people down below are told to demand that the rich make more elevators for them and then everything will be alright.

The middle class wasn’t wiped out by the individual accumulation of wealth, but by the political accumulation of wealth and power

The middle class wasn’t wiped out by the individual accumulation of wealth, but by the political accumulation of wealth and power. The shift from capitalism to socialism means that the poor live better than they used to, but that they have nowhere to go. And that the middle class is on the road to joining them in a society with a small upper class and a huge lower class that is somehow meant to subsidize its own government benefits. The capitalist ladder over which millions could swarm has been traded in for a socialist elevator that takes you to the top floor if you denounce capitalism often enough, but mostly never goes anywhere.
Rather than a society of aspiring merchants and builders, we instead have a society of beggars and philosopher-kings. The beggars are expected to be angry and the philosopher-kings are expected to be charitable. Eventually the philosopher-kings will expect the beggars to work for very little in exchange for that charity and the beggars will find that social justice protests don’t work well against machine gun nests. Some might think that’s conspiracy, but it’s mostly just history.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53392?utm_source=CFP+Mailout&utm_campaign=c0fc02e287-Call_to_Champions&utm_medium=email

Michigan Gov.: States Dealt with Budget Cuts Larger Than Washington, ‘And We All Got the Job Done

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on Monday said that if states “got the job done” despite dealing with larger budget cuts than Congress has to make in the federal budget, why can’t Washington do the same.
“When you look at the states—I was sitting in the governors meeting yesterday, and as I looked around the room, probably most of us in that room had to deal with budget cuts in the last two or three years larger than what they’re talking about, and we all got the job done. And the question is why can’t it be done here in Washington in a more effective, thoughtful way?” the Republican governor said on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.”

C-SPAN referenced a New York Times story on the sequester that said President Barack Obama is proposing a drop in aid to states. “What are you bracing for in Michigan?” C-SPAN asked Snyder, who was in Washington for the National Governors Associations’ annual meeting.

Snyder said his state is “looking at cuts in many ways.”

“One of the things I’d say though, though is this whole issue of getting to the sequester’s a failure. That was the point of putting it in place to begin with – it wasn’t supposed to happen, and that illustrates the mess in Washington compared to the states,” he said.

Snyder proposed cutting the federal deficit by getting rid of “a number of the prescriptive programs.” There are “way too many programs from the federal government, and I’m not asking for a block grant, but let’s do outcome-based programs,” he said.

There are over 40 workforce programs, for instance, Snyder said. He suggested cutting all but five based on outcomes “and I’m not asking for a block grant, but let’s do outcome-based programs.”
“That would reduce costs substantially, and we could provide better service,” he added.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michigan-gov-states-dealt-budget-cuts-larger-washington-and-we-all-got-job-done

Sequester 'Not Fair,' Says the President Who Signed Off On It

(CNSNews.com) - The mandatory reductions in anticipated federal spending, required by the Budget Control Act that President Obama signed in 2001, are "not fair," the president said on Tuesday.
“They’re not smart. They’re not fair. They’re a self-inflicted wound that doesn’t have to happen,” the president told workers at Newport News Shipbuilding.

The president invoked the concept of fairness twice in his speech. The second time, he used it to buttress his argument for more taxes on the wealthy:

"We can’t just cut our way to prosperity," Obama told shipbuilders. "We can't ask seniors and working families like yours to shoulder the entire burden of deficit reduction while asking nothing more from the wealthiest and the most powerful. We're not going to grow the middle class just by shifting the cost of health care or college onto families that are already struggling, or forcing communities to lay off more teachers or cops or firefighters or shipbuilders, and then folks who are doing really well don’t have to do anything more. That’s not fair, and it's not good for the economy."

Obama's solution to the automatic, indiscriminate spending reductions (the sequester)  is more tax increases, something Republicans so far have refused to go along with because they just approved tax-rate hikes demanded by Obama and his fellow Democrats.

As Republicans back in Washington railed against the president's constant campaigning instead of negotiating, Obama told shipyard workers to "keep up the pressure" on Congress. "If you stand up and speak out, Congress will listen," he said.

Obama described himself as open to compromise and  negotiation: "If the Republicans in Congress don’t like every detail of my proposal, which I don't expect them to, I’ve told them my door is open. I am more than willing to negotiate. I want to compromise.  There's no reason why we can't come together and find a sensible way to reduce the deficit over the long term without affecting vital services, without hurting families, without impacting outstanding facilities like this one and our national defense."

Obama also told shipbuilders, "I'm not interested in spin; I'm not interested in playing a blame game. At this point, all I'm interested in is just solving problems."

Shortly before Obama said he's not interested in playing a blame game, he indicated that Congress should be blamed if the sequester produces another recession: "Now, all of you, the American people, you’ve worked too hard for too long rebuilding and digging our way out of the financial crisis back in 2007 and 2008 just to see Congress cause another one."

Obama said after four years as president, "you get pretty humble."

"You’d think maybe you wouldn't, but actually you become more humble. You realize what you don't know. You realize all the mistakes you’ve made. But you also realize you can't do things by yourself. That's not how our system works. You’ve got to have the help and the goodwill of Congress, and what that means is you’ve got to make sure that constituents of members of Congress are putting some pressure on them, making sure they’re doing the right thing, putting an end to some of these political games."

Obama certainly is not generating any goodwill among House Republicans.
House Speaker John Boehner said on Tuesday he doesn't think the president wants to find a solution to the sequester:

"The president has been traveling all over the country, and today going down to Newport News in order to use our military men and women as a prop in yet another campaign rally to support his tax hikes," Boehner told a news conference on Capitol Hill.

“Now the American people know if the president gets more money, they’re just going to spend it.  The fact is is that he’s gotten his tax hikes. It’s time to focus on the real problem here in Washington, and that is spending.

“The president has known for 16 months that the sequester was looming out there when the super committee failed to come to an agreement.  And so for 16 months the president’s been traveling all over the country holding rallies instead of sitting down with Senate leaders in order to try to forge an agreement over there in order to move a bill.  We have a moved a bill in the House twice, we should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something.”

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/sequester-not-fair-says-president-who-signed-it

Testimony: DHS No Longer Uses Control of Border as Measure of Border Patrol.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security no longer uses control of the actual border as a measure of how well the Border Patrol is doing its job, according to written testimony released today by the Government Accountability Office.
The GAO said that by the end of fiscal 2010, the Border Patrol had been able to secure “operational control” of only 44 percent of the U.S.-Mexico border. Then, with 56 percent of the border not under “operational control,” DHS simply stopped using “operational control” as a measure of the Border Patrol’s performance.

Since then, DHS has counted the number of illegal border crossers the Border Patrol apprehends, and used this count as an “interim” measure of whether the Border Patrol is accomplishing its mission.
According to GAO, this “interim” measure limits DHS’s accountability and Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the department.

“At the end of fiscal year 2010, DHS reported achieving varying levels of operational control of 873 (44 percent) of the nearly 2,000 southwest border miles,” Rebecca Gambler, the GAO’s director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on the Border.
“In fiscal year 2011, citing a need to establish new goals and measures that reflect a more quantitative methodology and an evolving vision for border control, DHS transitioned to using the number of apprehensions on the southwest border as an interim goal and measure,” Gambler said. “As GAO previously testified, this interim measure, which reports on program activity levels and not program results, limits DHS and congressional oversight and accountability.”

Starting in 2004, Congress provided the Border Patrol with a significant increase in resources, which until 2010 were focused on actually securing the physical border of the United States.

“For example, from fiscal years 2004 through 2011, the number of Border Patrol agents on the southwest border nearly doubled, from about 9,500 to about 18,500; and DHS reported that since fiscal year 2006, about $4.4 billion has been invested in southwest border technology and infrastructure,” Gambler testified. “Through fiscal year 2010, these resources were used to support DHS’s goal to achieve 'operational control' of the  nation’s borders by reducing cross-border illegal activity.”

The Border Patrol said it had “operational control” of a mile of border when it could not only detect illegal border crossers there but actually interdict them when they crossed.

“The extent of operational control—also referred to as effective control—was defined as the number of border miles where Border Patrol had the capability to detect, respond to, and interdict cross-border illegal activity,” Gambler testified.

In its most recent strategic plan for DHS, the Obama Administration indicated that it intended to begin focusing resources on “mitigating risk” from illegal penetration of the U.S. border rather than increasing the security of the border itself.

But GAO concluded that the interim measure of counting the illegal border crossers the Border Patrol actually apprehended was not a good measure of the agency's effectiveness.

“Further, studies commissioned by CBP have documented that the number of apprehensions bears little relationship to effectiveness because agency officials do not compare these numbers with the amount of cross-border illegal activity,” Gambler testified.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/testimony-dhs-no-longer-uses-control-border-measure-border-patrol

DEBUNKER: OBAMA SAYS DEFICIT CUT BY $2.5 TRILLION. REALLY?

In his weekly radio address on Feb. 9, President Obama said, “Over the last few years, Democrats and Republicans have come together and cut our deficit by more than $2.5 trillion through a balanced mix of spending cuts and higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.” The next day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) chimed in: “The fact is, we have had plenty of spending cuts, $1.6 trillion in the Budget Control Act.”

BUNK

In 2009, the year Obama was first inaugurated, the deficit was a whopping $1.4 trillion. If it had been cut by $2.5 trillion since then, the federal government would have run a surplus of more than a trillion dollars in 2012. Instead, it ran a deficit of more than $1.3 trillion. By 2012, the record 2009 deficit had decreased not by $2.5 trillion, as Obama claims, but by just $86 billion. In reality, this deficit reduction was about 3 percent of the president’s claim. Meanwhile, the national debt increased bymore than one-quarter.

Moreover, this deficit reduction was not due to any “spending cuts,” as Obama claims, but entirely to increased revenues:

From 2009 to 2012, revenues increased by more than 17 percent. Nor were these increased revenues due to “higher tax rates,” as the president claims, but to lower tax rates: This revenue growth occurred during the era of the much-maligned Bush tax cuts.

THE DEBUNKER

If this 17 percent revenue growth had been matched in a “balanced mix” including “spending cuts,” as Obama claims, spending during this period would have decreased by roughly 17 percent as well. Instead, spending increased nearly 8 percent. Far from “spending cuts,” as the president claims, this was a spending increase.

If there had actually been a “balanced mix” in which the increased revenues were matched by “spending cuts” (rather than a spending hike), as Obama claims, the deficit would have been reduced by more than 30 percent – 10 times the actual decrease.

The president added, “I believe we can finish the job the same way we’ve started it – with a balanced mix of more spending cuts and more tax reform.” In reality, Obama has already gotten substantial new taxes and tax hikes with no spending cut – with a net spending hike, in fact. Proceeding “the same way we’ve started” would mean even more tax hikes, while spending continues to climb.

We can either proceed “the same way we’ve started,” or we can pursue a “balanced mix.” – but not both. Since the president’s already gotten tax hikes, to pursue a “balanced mix,” Congress must now proceed with spending cuts. To avoid sequestration, it must come up with $85 billion in cuts – about 2 percent of Obama’s budget this year.

That’s not difficult. As we have observed before, a 2011 GAO report identified waste, fraud and abuse totaling $135 billion in the Department of Defense, $125 billion in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, $85 billion in the Department of Transportation, etc. In addition, a Cato Institute report last year found that corporate welfare costs $100 billion per year. Cutting these might be painful to politicians and their special-interest donors, but would be beneficial to the American public.

Obama and Pelosi talk the talk about spending cuts, but they refuse to walk the walk.

President Obama is right: We should pursue a “balanced mix.” That means real spending cuts.

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/02/25/debunker-president-says-deficit-was-cut-by-2-5-trillion-really/

Oil boom in North Dakota is an example of what the nation could achieve: 3 percent unemployment, 7 percent economic growth FACT CHECK: Is Obama Responsible for Production Increases?

“I’m proud of the fact that under my administration, oil production is higher than it has been in a decade or more. We have seen a doubling of fuel efficiency standards on cars over the next several years, so that is saving people money at the pump,” Obama said.

President Obama still doesn’t seem to get it. Yes, oil production is higher than it has been in a decade or more. But, that is not because of actions taken under the Obama Administration. Rather, it is because of state policies and regulations that have encouraged exploration and development on private and state lands, according to the Congressional Research Service. In fact, 96 percent of the increase in oil production over the past 5 years has been on private and state lands, where President Obama and his administration have no input. On federal and Indian lands, where federal policies and regulations are in force, it takes an extremely long lead time to produce energy, and the Obama administration has repeatedly used delaying tactics and moratoria that have reduced production. In fact, between fiscal years 2010 and 2011, oil production on federal and Indian lands declined by 13 percent.


President Obama also claims that a doubling of fuel efficiency standards over the next several years (actually, a dozen years, by 2025) will save people money at the pump. Mr. Obama must be oblivious to the fact that average gasoline prices have increased by 55 percent between 2009 and 2012, are currently rising, and are at the highest levels recorded for this time of year. This price increase has occurred during his administration.

Does President Obama believe that doubling fuel economy standards by 2025 will make the American public feel better about rising gasoline prices when they won’t be able to afford the new, more efficient cars that are mandated? Does he believe that American parents will feel okay transporting their children in cars of much less weight, which is the only way to achieve such standards? People are keeping their existing cars longer, leading to historic numbers of older cars on the road. In 2011, for example, the average car on U.S. streets was 11 years old, up 12 percent from the previous 5 years. With a bad economy and rapidly rising auto prices in part due to government mandates such as fuel economy, people cannot afford new vehicles, particularly the higher-priced vehicles that stricter economy standards force into the market.
Studies have shown that the Obama fuel economy mandate will force about the 7 million drivers out of the market because the mandate increases the price of automobiles.[ii] Even though these people will not be able to afford a new more efficient car to take to the pump, the President will presumably state that they “saved money at the pump.”

Oil Production on Federal Lands

In February 2009, at the start of the Obama administration, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar beganwithdrawing tractsof public land that had already been approved for oil and gas leasing, even though most of the tracts had undergone a thorough, seven-year-long environmental review.[iii] Then, after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration put a six-month moratorium on both shallow and deep offshore drilling, even though the oil spill accident occurred in deep water and drilling in shallow water had spilled only 15 barrels in the previous 15 years. Although the administration ostensibly lifted the moratorium in October of 2010, drilling permit approvals did not take place, resulting in a so-called “permitorium”. These delays led a Federal Court to hold the Administration in contempt for its actions of slow-walking permits.[iv] Further, the Obama administration did not put in place President Bush’s offshore lease plan for fiscal years 2010 to 2015 that would have opened new areas to drilling, and waited until late 2011, to put forth its own offshore lease plan for the 2012 to 2017 period that reverted basically to the original areas that had been opened to offshore drilling.
Data from the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of Interior shows just how bad the leasing statistics are under President Obama’s administration. According to a study by Nobel Royalties Inc., the number of acres leased on federal onshore lands in the lower 48 states in 2010 was at a 30 year low, with 38.9 million acres leased in 2010 compared to 126.6 million acres leased in 1984—a drop of 69 percent. That study also states that on federal lands, 91 percent of resources are either inaccessible or restricted due to government policies. If the federal government were to allow leasing to gradually trend up to normal levels, the government would receive $442 billion in royalties from federal onshore lands and $363 billion from federal offshore projects between 2013 and 2042, for a total of about $800 billion. Once drilling on federal lands is fully operational and production levels have peaked, however, annual royalty payments could reach $100 billion, putting federal royalty income at $1 trillion over 10 years.[v]
But limiting the leases available on federal lands is not the only destructive policy that the Obama administration has undertaken. The administration dramatically increased the time it takes to get a permit to drill to 307 days in 2012. That’s a 100 percent increase since 2005. By comparison, it takes the oil producing states less than a month to grant a permit to drill on private and state lands. North Dakota, for example, where the unemployment rate is around 3 percent and the state economy is growing at 7 percent annually, takes only 10 days to grant a permit. North Dakota now ranks second among the states in oil production, recently surpassing Alaska in output despite having one sixth the land mass and no offshore oil reserves.

Efficiency Standards for Automobiles

The Institute for Energy Research has already assessed the problems with President Obama’s corporate average fuel economy standards in a recent publication. Basically, there is a trade-off between fuel efficiency, horsepower, safety, and cost. The automobile manufacturers can only go so far in increasing fuel efficiency without reducing the weight of the vehicle, thereby affecting safety. Further, increased fuel economy comes with a cost, so there is a further trade-off between purchasing a new vehicle versus just spending more at the pump. With the economy contracting, it will be more difficult for a middle class family to afford buying the new, more fuel efficient car that President Obama is touting.

Conclusion

If Obama wants more federal revenue, he can get it without raising taxes by just relaxing the restrictions on drilling on federal lands both on and off shore. The new revenue from taxes and royalties would be large, jobs would be created, and the economy would grow rather than contract. The oil boom in North Dakota is an example of what the nation could achieve: 3 percent unemployment, 7 percent economic growth, if only he would embrace oil and gas drilling and innovation in this country. While his rhetoric tries to take credit for growing production, his actions show another story entirely.

Auto Blog, Average U.S. vehicle age rises 12% in the last five years, January 20, 2012
[ii] Proposed Fuel Economy Rules Cut 7 Million Car Buyers Out of New-Vehicle Market, April 12, 2012

[iii] Forbes, Putting the Truth-o-Meter on President Obama’s State of the Union Energy, December 13, 2013

[iv] Bloomberg, U.S. in Contempt over Gulf Drill Ban, Judge Rules, February 3, 2011
[v] The Institute for Policy Innovation, Smart Energy Policy Would Make Obama Look Like an Economic Genius, December 21, 2012

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53371?utm_source=CFP+Mailout&utm_campaign=d03792bacc-Call_to_Champions&utm_medium=email