pamibe

“…the justice department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act…”

This is another one of those head shake moments…

We know he’s surpassed Carter as the worst president ever, but Jon Stewart claims that in some ways, the One is worse than President Bush. Poor leftists; the shock will take some time to wear off…

Otherwise known as H.R. 5175. “Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections” Give me a break.

Official Summary
4/29/2010–Introduced.Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act or DISCLOSE Act –
Amends the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) to prohibit:

(1) independent expenditures and payments for electioneering communications by government contractors if the value of the contract is at least $50,000; and

(2) recipients of assistance under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) from making any contribution to any political party, committee, or candidate for public office, or to any person for any political purpose or use, or from making any independent expenditure or disbursing any funds for an electioneering communication. Applies the ban on contributions and expenditures by foreign nationals to foreign-controlled domestic corporations.

Treats as contributions:

(1) any payments by any person (except a candidate, a candidate’s authorized committee, or a political committee of a political party) for coordinated communications; and

(2) political party communications made on behalf of candidates if made under the control or direction of a candidate or a candidate’s authorized committee.

Revises the definition of independent expenditure to mean, in part, an expenditure that, when taken as a whole, expressly advocates the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate, or is the functional equivalent of express advocacy.

Requires any person making independent expenditures exceeding $10,000 to file a report within 24 hours.

Increases the period before a general election during which a communication shall be considered an electioneering communication.

Requires corporations, labor organizations, and other covered organizations to include specified additional information in reports on independent expenditures of at least $10,000.

Sets forth special rules for the use of general treasury funds by covered organizations for campaign-related activity.

Authorizes covered organizations to make optional use of a separate Campaign-Related Activity Account for making disbursements for campaign-related activity.

Prescribes additional information to be included in certain radio or television communications by persons (including significant funders of campaign-related communications of a covered organization) other than a candidate, a candidate’s authorized committee, or a political committee of a political party.

Amends the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 to require registered lobbyists to report information on independent expenditures or electioneering communications of at least $1,000 to the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives.

Requires certain covered organizations to disclose to shareholders, members, or donors information on disbursements for campaign-related activity.

Authorizes judicial review of the provisions of this Act.

Wow. Tea Party and political action committees, look out. Any organization, really.

Most organizations are understandably appalled by H.R. 5175, like Wisconsin Right to Life:

In yet another move to curtail free speech in America, the House of Representatives plans to vote on a measure, the “Disclose” Act (H.R. 5175), which is intended to make it extremely difficult for corporations, including groups like Wisconsin Right to Life, to freely participate in the election process. The House bill carves out exceptions for labor unions and the National Rifle Association, making the measure especially insulting.

It is completely discriminatory for certain “favored” organizations to be allowed free speech while Wisconsin Right to Life, its chapters, its parent organization, and its colleagues in other states are restricted and even silenced.

Congress is attempting to put these new restrictions in place as soon as possible to blunt the impact of the January 2010 Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision which overturned previous speech restrictions enacted by the Congress.

Clearly, the provisions in the “Disclose” Act will ultimately be found unconstitutional.
The goal appears to be to mute the voices of citizen groups for the November elections and for as long as they can get away with it.

The GOP is actively attempting to destroy this monstrosity while the NRA worked for an exception and got it. They feel a bit guilty about it, too. One look at the language of their recent email confirms this. The ‘we needed to do this for you…’ for example.

So they made a deal with the democrats. Some people may call this selling out, but I think they were simply playing inside the beltway politics and won. Good for them. Didn’t say it was ‘right’; it is what it is. Unfortunately, there are many other gun owner and sportsmen organizations out there that would be silenced.

The National Rifle Association believes that any restrictions on the political speech of Americans are unconstitutional.

In the past, through the courts and in Congress, the NRA has opposed any effort to restrict the rights of its four million members to speak and have their voices heard on behalf of gun owners nationwide.

The NRA’s opposition to restrictions on political speech includes its May 26, 2010 letter to Members of Congress expressing strong concerns about H.R. 5175, the DISCLOSE Act. As it stood at the time of that letter, the measure would have undermined or obliterated virtually all of the NRA’s right to free political speech and, therefore, jeopardized the Second Amendment rights of every law-abiding American.

The most potent defense of the Second Amendment requires the most adamant exercise of the First Amendment. The NRA stands absolutely obligated to its members to ensure maximum access to the First Amendment, in order to protect and preserve the freedom of the Second Amendment.

The NRA must preserve its ability to speak. It cannot risk a strategy that would deny its rights, for the Second Amendment cannot be defended without them.

Thus, the NRA’s first obligation must be to its members and to its most ardent defense of firearms freedom for America’s lawful gun owners.

On June 14, 2010, Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives pledged that H.R. 5175 would be amended to exempt groups like the NRA, that meet certain criteria, from its onerous restrictions on political speech. As a result, and as long as that remains the case, the NRA will not be involved in final consideration of the House bill.

The NRA cannot defend the Second Amendment from the attacks we face in the local, state, federal, international and judicial arenas without the ability to speak. We will not allow ourselves to be silenced while the national news media, politicians and others are allowed to attack us freely.

The NRA will continue to fight for its right to speak out in defense of the Second Amendment. Any efforts to silence the political speech of NRA members will, as has been the case in the past, be met with strong opposition.

This unconstitutional piece of leftist trash might come to the House floor as early as today. I’d say now is the time to contact members of congress about H.R. 1575.

…the Barack Hussein Obama administration made a move designed to separate us from our guns. Or did they?

U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade

(Reuters) - The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto.

The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush’s administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States would support the talks as long as the negotiating forum, the so-called Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, “operates under the rules of consensus decision-making.”

“Consensus is needed to ensure the widest possible support for the Treaty and to avoid loopholes in the Treaty that can be exploited by those wishing to export arms irresponsibly,” Clinton said in a written statement.

While praising the Obama administration’s decision to overturn the Bush-era policy and to proceed with negotiations to regulate conventional arms sales, some groups criticized the U.S. insistence that decisions on the treaty be unanimous.

“The shift in position by the world’s biggest arms exporter is a major breakthrough in launching formal negotiations at the United Nations in order to prevent irresponsible arms transfers,” Amnesty International and Oxfam International said in a joint statement.

However, they said insisting that decisions on the treaty be made by consensus “could fatally weaken a final deal.”

“Governments must resist US demands to give any single state the power to veto the treaty as this could hold the process hostage during the course of negotiations. We call on all governments to reject such a veto clause,” said Oxfam International’s policy adviser Debbie Hillier.

The proposed legally binding treaty would tighten regulation of, and set international standards for, the import, export and transfer of conventional weapons.

Supporters say it would give worldwide coverage to close gaps in existing regional and national arms export control systems that allow weapons to pass onto the illicit market.

Nations would remain in charge of their arms export control arrangements but would be legally obliged to assess each export against criteria agreed under the treaty. Governments would have to authorize transfers in writing and in advance.

The main opponent of the treaty in the past was the U.S. Bush administration, which said national controls were better. Last year, the United States accounted for more than two-thirds of some $55.2 billion in global arms transfer deals.

Arms exporters China, Russia and Israel abstained last year in a U.N. vote on the issue.

The proposed treaty is opposed by conservative U.S. think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, which said last month that it would not restrict the access of “dictators and terrorists” to arms but would be used to reduce the ability of democracies such as Israel to defend their people.

The U.S. lobbying group the National Rifle Association has also opposed the treaty.

A resolution before the U.N. General Assembly is sponsored by seven nations including major arms exporter Britain. It calls for preparatory meetings in 2010 and 2011 for a conference to negotiate a treaty in 2012.

This doesn’t tell us an awful lot and neither do recent emails stating that Clinton has already signed the treaty; she has not.

Jeff Mowry at Before It’s News tried fact checking the treaty but as Nancy Pelosi once said: ‘we have to pass it to see what’s in it’. Many organizations have come out with statements about the treaty, but what is the actual language?

And remember – two thirds of the Senate must approve international treaties before they go into effect. A call or email to your congressman about this topic wouldn’t go amiss, but it could be 2012 before any action is taken. Maybe by then we’ll have the text of the thing?

The Dutch offered help with the Gulf oil spill 55 days ago but were rebuffed. Now the powers that be have decided to accept their offer of help.

Apparently EPA regulations had to be changed or circumvented in some way to allow the skimmers to work.

The U.S. Government has apparently reconsidered a Dutch offer to supply 4 oil skimmers. These are large arms that are attached to oil tankers that pump oil and water from the surface of the ocean into the tanker. Water pumped into the tanker will settle to the bottom of the tanker and is then pumped back into the ocean to make room for more oil. Each system will collect 5,000 tons of oil each day.

The Dutch offered to fly their skimmer arm systems to the Gulf 3 days after the oil spill started. The offer was apparently turned down because EPA regulations do not allow water with oil to be pumped back into the ocean. If all the oily water was retained in the tanker, the capacity of the system would be greatly diminished because most of what is pumped into the tanker is sea water.

The president speechified last night and though I could only sit through 5 minutes of it, others had to brave the entire thing. Thank goodness for transcripts.

I’ve noticed that obama talks about money quite a bit. Specifically, in every interview and speech he’s given, the president says that he’s going to somehow force BP to hand over money to the Gulf coast. Now he has a figure and it’s in the billions.
It’s probably the ambulance chaser in him… but that’s not going to cap the spill and clean up the mess.

AP fact checked his speech and found discrepancies. The following is quite possibly my favorite:

OBAMA: “We have approved the construction of new barrier islands in Louisiana to try and stop the oil before it reaches the shore.”

THE FACTS: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and local officials pleaded for weeks with the Army Corps of Engineers and the spill response command for permission to build about 40 miles of sand berms along the barrier islands.

State officials applied for an emergency permit to build the berms May 11, but as days went by Jindal became increasingly angry at federal inaction. The White House finally agreed to a portion of the berm plan on June 2. BP then agreed to pay for the project.

The corps was worried that in some cases such a move would alter tides and drive oil into new areas and produce more harm than good.

The inaction of the various agencies while obama points at BP and demands money is frustrating in the extreme.

But best of all, the leftist triumvirate of Matthews, Olbermann and Fineman were beside themselves last night. Citing things like ‘no details’ and ‘meritocracy’, the three turned their scorn on the man they’d once touted as the One who would save us all. H/T Erinyes.

KEITH OLBERMANN: Chris, I`m going to start with you. Maybe I missed something. I thought it was a great speech if you`ve been on another planet for the last 57 days. But was that what was needed tonight? Didn’t he shoot really low?

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, I think there was one bit of news there and I don`t whether it`s optimistic beyond belief, which is, “in the coming days and weeks, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well.” Well, that`s the first I`ve heard of that. In coming days, we`re going to have this thing capped? We`re going to effectively solve the problem? Secondly, he never mentioned what power he has as chief executive of the country to make them understand they need to put this escrow account in third party hands. Is he going to litigate? Is he going to file an amicus brief with a class action suit? Wait seven years for this to happen? Or is he really going to demand it happen? He said, “I can ask them to do this.” I`m amazed he just says he has that power. We`ll see.

And as for the energy bill, I think you hit on something important there. Cap and trade passed the House. It hasn`t gotten anywhere in the Senate. And one reason it has gotten there is, remember how they jumplined for immigration after Harry Reid for a while there? He had the bill in the queue. He pushed it aside for immigration, knowing he wasn`t going to be able to get immigration through, or even come with an ID card as part of it as a comprehensive solution. And then he pushed it aside and then he put it back in line again. It`s not clear.

Now, the hard part of this is the heavy-lifting of energy transition. He said we have to accelerate this thing, accelerate the transition to renewables. That is the hardest thing in the world. That`s what broke Jimmy Carter. That`s what Ronald Reagan took a buy on completely. And Bill Clinton didn`t deal with It`s the hardest thing in the world, and he`s saying I`m going to do it, and then no more information.

OLBERMANN: Nothing. Nothing specific. Nothing specific at all.

OLBERMANN: Howard, I got the feeling, Howard, that the President would have said, hey, I was as surprised by this as you were. He talked about how he had approved the expansion of the offshore drilling and said he`d been assured everything was going to go all right. And then he had the analogy, which many people expected would be more contemporary about 9/11, was instead about World War II. And he said something I found just extraordinary, it`s nice speechifying. But let me read it again. “Our determination to fight for the America we want for our children, even if we`re unsure exactly what that looks like, even if we don`t yet know precisely how we`re going to get there, we know we`ll get there.” It`s nice, but again, how? Where was the “how” in this speech when the nation is crying out for how?

HOWARD FINEMAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. you said he aimed too low. I don`t think he was specific enough, Keith. You talked about the energy bill. The fact is that Harry Reid has told him there aren`t 60 votes in the Senate to get beyond a filibuster with cap and trade. That`s the detail of it. But beyond that, I think the American people, both in the Gulf and everywhere else, wanted to know more how this was going. Somewhere between earlier today and tonight, this went from being a war and all about an assault on the Gulf to an epidemic. That`s one thing that I thought was interesting. The commander-in-chief thing was lost. And I thought it was a, he had to confess but in a way didn`t confess enough. Why he had approved offshore oil drilling and he had accepted these assurances? Who were these assurances from? Who were they from?

OLBERMANN: -we know we`ll get there. There wasn`t any specificity to it. I`m going to revise my remark, Chris. I don`t think he aimed low. I don`t think he aimed at all about this. It`s startling to have heard this, isn`t it?

MATTHEWS: Well, I thought a couple of things were surprising to me. Why does he continue to say that the Secretary of Energy has a Nobel Prize? I mean, it`s almost gotten ludicrous. We had Carol Browner do it again tonight. I know I`ve mocked him for doing it, saying I`d barf if he did it one more time. But it`s not important. This meritocracy has gone too far. This, they’ve named the new guy here, the head of MMS. I`m not sure whether these degrees are going to help or these awards from overseas.

I don`t sense executive command. And I thought that was the purpose of this speech tonight, command and control. I`m calling the shots. My name is Barack Obama. I`m the boss. I`m telling people what to do. I didn`t get that clarity. And I think that command and control, a phrase that`s made, worked its way around the White House, is essential here. He must be chief executive. He can no longer be Vatican observer or intellectual, or a guy calling in experts, or naming commissioners or whatever. I think he`s, or citing people for their Nobel prizes, I think he has to be the boss. And he never mentioned here anything beyond BP, like, aren`t there other oil companies that could help clean up this mess? You know, we`ve had Hofmeister on, the former Shell executive, saying you`ve got to get all these tankers in there, all these people out there skimming. I don`t sense this as a real national effort yet.

And, by the way, why not ask the American people, I`ve said this before, 100 times he`s got to get the American people, young people especially, get our spirit up again, get people down there as volunteers, form a new CCC. Get people down in the Gulf cleaning up this muck, thousands, tens of thousands of people. We’d feel a lot better about it, I think.

Is the purple haze lifting? Can they finally see who and what he is, or will that take a bit longer…?

Like the Mickey Mouse club, only featuring a different big eared rat.

Erinyes just emailed this video in which obamacare is touted. Most of the propaganda films feature fresh faced cherubs warbling about how wonderful the One is… this one has a distinctively different flavor and I’d completely forgotten about it…

This particular vid of Obama Youth was shot at Urban Community Leadership Academy in Kansas City, Missouri in 2008.

From what I can gather, the teacher did get into trouble… for posting the video on the internet.

Yes, we can!

Ugh.

Moratorium

President obama kneejerked when Deepwater Horizon started gushing crude, instituting a six month oil and gas drilling moratorium that will cost thousands of Americans their jobs.

He also shut down the other 32 rigs pumping oil in the Gulf.

Possibly a case of the cure being worse than the illness. Thousands of jobs lost, many permanently, does not sound like a solution.

The oil spill has been a disaster for Louisiana. But a part of the federal response to the disaster, the worst of its sort in U.S. history, may prove even more calamitous for the state.

“The moratorium on drilling is having the direst effect on jobs in Louisiana,” said Professor Eric Smith, director of Tulane University’s Institute of Energy.

A six-month federally imposed moratorium on all oil and gas drilling in the Gulf has been in effect since late May. On April 20 the Deepwater Horizon rig, operated by BP, exploded. Oil has been gushing from the ruptured well ever since, while efforts are ongoing to plug the leak and capture the oil. The shorelines of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida have been reached by the spreading oil, which has been detected as far south and east as the Dry Tortugas.

There were 33 rigs in operation in the Gulf when the Deepwater Horizon blew, and the other 32 have been shut down by the government order. According to Smith, another 9 rigs were due to soon go into operation.

“Each rig employs 240 workers,” Smith said. “We calculate that four jobs are affected for each job on a rig. Right now, conservatively, 10,000 people are out of work because of the moratorium, and that number is only going to grow as the moratorium continues.”

Brazil?

If the moratorium continues much longer, the rigs will be able to break their contracts and will leave for work elsewhere, in South America, for example, Smith said.

“Once contracted off the coast of Brazil, they will not be coming back here, even when the moratorium is lifted,” he said. “Then the jobs situation and the economy, for the state, the region and the rest of the country will worsen.”

IBT

Louisiana’s Senator Mary Landrieu recently wrote a letter to the president, asking him to reconsider the moratorium and outlining 8 measures: ‘The proposals basically allow drilling to resume with greater precautions and under a more watchful eye.’

She has not heard back from the president.

‘Roll back tax breaks’

And, since he cannot resist using a crisis to its best advantage, obama wants to roll back oil company tax breaks.

President Barack Obama says it’s time to roll back “billions of dollars in tax breaks” for oil companies and use the money for clean energy research and development.

He said the catastrophic Gulf oil spill shows the country must move toward clean energy by embracing energy efficiency, tapping natural gas and nuclear power and eliminating tax breaks for big oil.

Obama said that the Gulf spill “may prove to be a result of human error — or corporations taking dangerous shortcuts that compromised safety” — but that deepwater drilling is inherently risky and America cannot rely solely on fossil fuels.

AP

Or as it’s more commonly known, we don’t care about stimulating business and the economy, we just want your money.

The House passed the bill to rescind tax breaks 236-182; now it goes to the Senate.

Cap and Tax

Again, never let a good crisis go to waste. Pushing the cap and trade bill is an added bonus.

Obama reportedly hopes the spill will reinvigorate efforts in Congress to pass a cap-and-tax bill. The Gulf oil spill is a tragedy, but it doesn’t change the basic calculus about cap-and-tax — namely that, among other things, it:

1. reduces, not increases, employment by giving companies an incentive to move production to countries without caps on carbon dioxide emissions;

2. represents an enormous opportunity for politicians to game the system by favoring certain industries over others (and certain firms over their competitors — would Toyota really get the same terms as Government, er, General Motors?) in the allowances granted and the initial prices charged for those allowances; and

3. has worked poorly where it’s been tried (for carbon dioxide) so far, most notably in Europe.

Those things were true last summer, when the cap-and-tax bill passed by the House was considered dead on arrival in the Senate. They’re still true now.

AJC

Jindal’s walls

The only statesman like behavior has been from Governor Bobby Jindal, who has been deeply immersed since the Horizon blew. Jindal has taken action and ordered barrier walls be built nine miles offshore. They’re keeping a running tally of costs and will send the bill to BP.
I like Bobby Jindal.

No Fly Zone

Traveling Woodbury posted the reason why obama has decreed the entire Gulf region, including coastlines, a no flyover zone.

As of right now I can see commercial traffic flying over the Gulf of Mexico on FlightAware, so I don’t know which area would be no flyover and/or when.

Tonight’s speech should prove to be a melange of progressive rhetoric, mostly aimed at separating more Americans from their money and advancing obama’s marxist agenda. Should be about as much fun as a clap check.

People in Georgia, Minnesota, Alabama, Kansas and Texas are reporting large scale National Guard mobilizations.

Looks like something big is up. Knowing obama, who recently told the Egyptian foreign minister that he is a muslim, we’ll be attacking Israel.

“He was still a Muslim, the son of a Muslim father, the step son of Muslim stepfather, that his half brothers in Kenya are Muslims, and that he was sympathetic towards the Muslim agenda.”