by Alex Gimarc                                Mon., March 2, 2009

Interesting Items 3/02 -

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Budget
2. Carbon Famine
3. DC
4. School Choice
5. Gaza

1. Budget. Obama’s first budget hit the fan Friday. It is breathtaking in scope and fundamentally evil in execution. The difficulty is that he is going to get most of it passed. The budget deficit for FY 2007, the last year of the big spending, reviled Republican majorities in congress was less than $200 billion, having decreased three years in a row from a high near $400 billion (note: I am interpolating these figures off the graph of projected budget deficits on Drudge over the weekend). In FY 2008, the first year of the new democrat majorities in both houses of congress, that deficit shot back up to nearly $500 billion. Last year, FY 2009, with the financial carnage, that number was estimated at $1.2 trillion in January; and well on its way to $2 trillion after the stimulus. Obama’s budget will double that deficit. The only people who are getting credit for busting the budget are the Republicans. We must change that perception before it becomes engraved in stone. Obama’s budget does the following things:

• Cuts the home mortgage deduction for earners over $250,000 – expect this number to decrease
• Cuts the ability of earners over $250,000 to deduct contributions to charity
• Reduces available deductions for earners over $250,000
• Raise taxes by $353 billion / year for the next decade
• Sets up an over $600 billion fund for universal health care
• Pays for the new health care spending by decreasing the already tight Medicare / Medicaid reimbursements to health care providers

Note that Obama won with a wrap-around coalition – winning the low income earners and the high income earners. McCain-Palin won the middle class. This soak the rich budget cannot help but to erode the top end of his support. Of course, to be fair, the continued and orchestrated financial crash is going to do a lot to impoverish the middle class, and chase them into the arms of the Nanny State Obama and the fascist congress is building. Federal tax receipts are based on the willingness of the wealthiest Americans to voluntarily step up and pay their income taxes. PowerLine Friday ran an article that noted that in 2006, the wealthiest 2% of the population, about 7% of all income tax returns, paid $522 billion, or 62% of all federal income tax receipts. The rich are arguable overtaxed and when they decide not to voluntarily pay any more, we are financially in deep, deep trouble. There will be more about this in the months to come. This is the battle. We must stretch this out as long as humanly possible, so that our countrymen will know what is buried in it.

2. Carbon Famine. AJ Strata wrote about testimony by a Princeton physicist, William Happer to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Friday. Happer reviewed the historical record and concluded that our current atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide at 280 ppm represented a historically low level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – and this is not human history, rather it is geologic history. It should be closer to 1,000 ppm. The hearings were intended to set the stage for the Obama administration and the EPA to st art regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Happer threw a grenade into those plans with his testimony that also included the worldwide benefits of increased carbon dioxide levels. For one thing, more carbon dioxide means larger, happier, more vigorous plants. Given that the greens have forever used the endangered species act as a vehicle to shut down development via the creation of habitats for all manner of bugs, flies, worms, frogs and other vermin, why cannot we conservatives take up the cause of saving endangered plant life, plant life that is dying away in the northern p arts of the country due to the cooler weather, and blame the entire mess on government regulation of carbon dioxide which the plant life needs to live, grow and thrive? It would be a great deal of fun to take the identical arguments against development impacting so-called endangered species and apply them to the Obama administration and the EPA when they attempt to regulate carbon dioxide. It would be public interest litigation, which means that government would be paying both sides of the dance in court, and it could potentially tie them up for decades in fruitless court battles. As we would be using the very same arguments and precedents, we ought to be quite successful in saving the plants while increasing the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

3. DC. The democrat majority in congress in attempting to increase its voting majority in the House by gifting the District of Columbia with a House seat, which would turn Eleanor Holmes Norton into a permanent voting member. To sweeten the pot, they would also add a single seat to Utah, which fell below the line after the last census. I expect the addition of the Utah seat is also a payoff to Orin Hatch (R, UT), to get his support in the Senate Judiciary Committee. This would raise the number of House members to 437. They plan on doing this legislatively. Opposition points out that as the District of Columbia is treated as a special case in the constitution, that it would take a constitutional amendment to make this change. If you extend the logic a bit, you st art wondering why it is acceptable to add a House member and not add two US Senators for DC. Expect this entire thing to end up in the courts, as the smaller states make a very real case that the creation of the new seat in congress dilutes their representation in an unconstitutional manner.

4. School Choice. The $400+ billion omni-pork legislation passed out of the House last week included a provision that shuts down a school choice pilot program in the District of Columbia that touches nearly 1,900 kids yearly. The program st arted in 2004, and is renewed every five years. David Obey and House democrats blocked the reauthorization and have warned the Superintendent of DC public schools to prepare for the return of the voucher youngsters to their home schools. This program was hugely popular and congress was under significant pressure to expand it. House democrats who are beholden to the NEA do not like it and are not expected to support its renewal. Note that Mr. Obama has chosen not to send his two little girls to the DC public schools. Apparently he does not believe that other parents in DC ought to have the same opportunity to choose schools for their children that he does.

5. Gaza. The Obama administration proposes to gift Hamas in Gaza with $900 million for “rebuilding” following their recent war with Israel. Anyone want to guess how much of that money will go to rebuilding their arsenal of Iranian rockets and other weapons and how much of it will go toward rebuilding infrastructure for taking care of the citizens of Gaza? The move has infuriated supporters of Israel, but ought not to be much of a surprise to those that have watched the installation of a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli team in the State Dep artment, intelligence community and DoD. A few conservative commentators have noted that this strong pro-Palestinian turn by the Obamaoids will serve to alienate the strong majority of Jewish voters in the Northeast that supported Obama last year. I strongly disagree, as they are leftists first and Jews last, for if their ethnic heritage were the most important thing in their worldview, they would have voted unanimously for McCain – Palin last year following eight years of the most pro-Israeli foreign policy that this nation has had in decades. They are not going to vote for Republicans, as they are leftists. On the other hand, Israel is quite able to defend itself, and I expect Mr. Netanyahu to be a thorn in the side of the Obama administration for a long time once he is able to form his government. If I were a Mullah in Iran, I would be worrying a bit.

More later –

           - AG

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.