Taxes/Taxation

President Obama’s new “green jobs” czar Van Jones, an avowed militant communist, had been on the board of the pressure group Apollo Alliance, which aspires to flatten the U.S. economy by having government fund “green jobs” scams, according to the “Glenn Beck Program” earlier this week.

Even worse, the green gangster group, which has ties to ACORN, SEIU, and Center for American Progress president John Podesta, has significant pull in Congress and helped to write the stimulus bill.

The Apollo Alliance “is designed to bring together the elements of organized labor with the community organizers with the green groups, the environmental groups, and to access all of the big foundation money that’s been supportive of those causes in the past,” explained Phil Kerpen, director of policy for Americans for Prosperity.

Jones described the group’s “mission as sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes; it ties all these things together,” Kerpen said. He added

They really admire the Apollo mission, the moon-shot mission, and they think that we need a similar centrally-planned, organized massive mobilization to reorder society and take control of energy and their various other objectives. They admire that and they want it like a moon shot.

Beck asked if Wade Rathke, the disgraced founder of ACORN who was expelled by the radical left-wing group last year for covering up his brother’s embezzlement of nearly $1 million in ACORN funds, had been a member of the Apollo Alliance’s board.

Kerpen responded, “Yes. He’s on — he was until this year on the board of the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center, which are the parent organizations that host the Apollo Alliance.”

Another blast from the past.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Urban Institute is clamoring for a new tax aimed aimed at the corpulent members of society.

“Facing the serious consequences of an uncontrolled obesity epidemic, America’s state and federal  policy makers may need to consider interventions every bit as forceful as those that succeeded in cutting adult tobacco use by more than 50%,” the report says.

One of the remedies proposed is a new tax on fattening foods.

They’ll have to take my chocolate bar from my cold, dead hands.

Liberal pressure groups are freaking out that President Obama’s monstrous government-run healthcare plan is running into significant roadblocks as even Democratic lawmakers begin to openly question its wisdom.

And they’re livid that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) dared to say what everyone in the Beltway is already thinking.

Here’s what the senator said, according to a report in the Politico:

“I can almost guarantee you this thing won’t pass before August, and if we can hold it back until we go home for a month’s break in August,” members of Congress will hear from “outraged” constituents, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said on the call, which was organized by the group Conservatives for Patients Rights.

“Senators and Congressmen will come back in September afraid to vote against the American people,” DeMint predicted, adding that “this health care issue Is D-Day for freedom in America.”

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,” he said.

This led to two angry solicitation emails that arrived in my inbox this afternoon. The first was from Organizing for America, which is part of the Democratic National Committee. The second was from MoveOn.org.

Organizing for America’s said

Friend –

Last week, Republican Senator Jim DeMint made it pretty clear why the opponents of health care reform are fighting so hard. As he told a special interest attack group, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Here’s how the President responded:

Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses and breaking America’s economy. And we can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care. Not this time, not now. There are too many lives and livelihoods at stake.

With Congress only days away from finalizing their plans for reform, it’s time to stand up with the President and fight back against this disastrous brand of old-style politics. So we need as many people as possible to publicly support the President’s principles for health care reform and call on Congress to act.

Before the first full votes in Congress, we’ll publish the signatures in newspaper ads across the nation, to make sure your voice is heard.

Watch President Obama’s full response, then add your name in support of reform. [LINK DELETED] Or if you’ve already signed, please forward this message to every one of your friends and neighbors so they can join you.

The President is more dedicated than ever to passing health care reform that satisfies the three requirements he’s been talking about for months: Health care reform must reduce costs, guarantee choice — including the choice of a strong public insurance option — and ensure all Americans have quality, affordable health care.

If we do not reform our broken health care system this year, we will only shackle future generations with spiraling costs and deteriorating care. The cost of inaction is simply more than this country can afford.

But the special interests who profit from the status quo won’t go down without a fight. The ads, the smears, and the attacks — targeting both President Obama and members of Congress who support reform — will only get worse. So it’s crucial that we show huge backing before Congress finalizes their plans this month.

Stand with President Obama on health care reform:

[LINK DELETED]

Thanks for standing up for change.

Thanks,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

MoveOn’s said

Dear MoveOn member,

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”¹

That’s what a Republican senator said last week about health care. Republicans will stop at nothing to kill health care reform and undermine Obama’s agenda for change.

We can’t let that happen.

So we’re ramping up our campaign: from now until health care reform passes, we’ve got organizers planning events from coast to coast, ad-makers working around the clock, and MoveOn members hitting the phones daily.

The next two weeks will make or break health care reform. Can you chip in $20 to help us beat back the right-wing effort to derail health care reform?

[LINK DELETED]

Republicans won’t hold back on using scare tactics and outright lies to stall reform—so we just have to make sure that the voices of regular Americans are so constant and so strong that it overwhelms the opposition’s rhetoric.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll make sure calls are pouring into Congress daily, hold rallies at Senate offices, run ads hitting back at health care opponents, organize a massive day of action for health care reform, and more.

There’s five million of us, and millions more across the country who want—and need—reform now. Without a public outpouring of support, it’s too likely Congress could squander the best opportunity we’ve had in decades for real reform.

If we all step up, though, we can win this. Can you give $20 to support our campaign today?

[LINK DELETED]

Thanks for all you do.

–Nita, Kat, Matt, Laura and the rest of the team   

Source:

1. “Health reform foes plan Obama’s ‘Waterloo,’” Politico, July 17, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51638&id=16628-10523989-0K68aUx&t=5 [LINK DELETED] 

 

Want to support our work? We’re entirely funded by our 5 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here. [LINK DELETED]

Patients United Now, which is a project of Americans for Prosperity Foundation, is now running an effective TV ad opposing President Obama’s socialist healthcare scheme.

It features patient Shona Holmes of Waterdown, Ontario, Canada. As her brain tumor grew, Holmes was told by Canada’s dysfunctional government-run healthcare system that she would have to wait for six months to see a specialist. “In six months I would have died,” Holmes says in the spot. The Mayo Clinic where Holmes received successful treatment tells her story at its website. (Mayo also is fiercely critical of ObamaCare.)

Of course the liberal journalists at CNN who are cheering for ObamaCare attempted to discredit Holmes in a recent news package. They were unable to do so but did manage to find another patient who claims to have received speedy treatment following a cancer diagnosis. Nonetheless on average Canadians have to wait a long time before receiving medical treatment for serious ailments as Canada’s preeminent think tank, the Fraser Institute, has demonstrated time and time again. (See PDF file of the Fraser Institute’s ”Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada,” 2008 Report, 18th edition.)

CNN also managed to pull Canadian Sen. Hugh Segal away from the all-you-can-eat buffet for a quote. Segal is what’s known in Canada as a “Red Tory.” In other words he may belong to the Conservative Party but he’s ideologically a liberal with very little in common with American conservatives. Not surprisingly, this soulmate of Lincoln Chafee defended Canada’s universal healthcare system. (By the way, the Canadian Senate is unelected. Its members are appointed by the Queen on the advice of the prime minister so it bears more than a passing resemblance to the British House of Lords.)

The well-practiced liar who would feel perfectly at home in America’s Democratic Party told CNN his “fellow conservatives” in the U.S. are dead wrong about Canada’s healthcare system. “What you have is a longer life span, better outcomes and about one-third less costs. That’s what you have,” said Segal as he resisted the urge to snarf down a dozen Timbits.

Here is the video featuring Holmes:

Democratic leaders dumped a ton of cash on Democratic backbenchers in the days leading up to the critical cap-and-trade vote that would effectively impose a massive energy tax on Americans, the Politico reports:

Three House Democratic leaders who were whipping members on the climate change bill gave tens of thousands in campaign cash to party moderates around the time of the 219-212 vote on June 26, according to Federal Election Commission records.

It’s impossible to tell if that torrent of cash was an attempt to schmear wavering Democrats — or just part of the usual cash dump made by leaders on the eve of the June 30 quarterly fundraising deadline.

Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) doled out $28,000 to reps who eventually voted yes on June 24, two days before the big vote — on a day when House leaders were doing some heavy-duty arm-twisting.

Clyburn recipients who voted for the bill included a who’s-who of battleground district Dems: Steve Driehaus, D-OH ($2,000); Martin Heinrich, D-NM ($2,000); Suzanne Kosmas, D-Fla. ($4,000); Betsy Markey, D-Colo. ($2,000); Carol Shea-Porter, D-NH ($2,000), Baron Hill, D-Ind. ($2,000); Alan Grayson, D-Fla. ($2,000); Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa ($2,000); Jim Himes, D-Conn. ($2,000);  Mary Jo Kilroy, D-OH ($2,000); Kurt Schrader, D-Ore. ($2,000); Jerry McNerney, D-Calif. ($2,000) and Tom Perriello, D-Va. ($2,000). [...]

Democrats respond by saying the Republicans did the same. The Politico article notes that Democratic leaders also gave money to lawmakers who voted against the bill.

Yes, President Obama’s green jobs “czar” Van Jones is an admitted “rowdy black nationalist,” and a “communist.”

Wow.

(Hat tip: Sam Theodosopoulos at NewsBusters)

Another example of what’s gone wrong in California.

California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a former community organizer, told the Los Angeles Times that support for limited government is tantamount to terrorism.

in the state’s budget battles Republican lawmakers “were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: ‘You vote for revenue and your career is over.’ I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.”

I wonder if Bass, who founded the Community Coalition in south Los Angeles, favors the so-called Fairness Doctrine.

(Hat tip: Neal Boortz)

I was just going through some old files and I stumbled upon New York magazine’s condescending writeup of Democrat Lynn Forester de Rothschild’s warning before Election Day that electing Barack Obama president would be a disaster for America.

Her words were misrepresented by Jessica Pressler who snottily characterized Rothschild’s views as elitist. 

Rothschild, who was at the time a member of the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee, said in September, “I believe that Barack Obama, with MoveOn.org and Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, has taken the Democratic Party – and they will continue to – too far to the left. I’m not comfortable there.”

Rothschild also wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed denouncing the Democratic Party’s “liberal elitism” that “has been a weakness of the Democratic Party for more than half a century.”

After Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) used a procedural trick in the U.S. Senate to torpedo a longshot legislative bid that would have had the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit the Federal Reserve Board, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) expressed his disappointment on the “Glenn Beck Program”:

Frankly, a lot of us here in this country and around the world, are concerned that we’re going to destroy the American dollar and the worldwide reserve currency.

DeMint told substitute host Judge Andrew Napolitano that

If we could get the Federal Reserve under control, it would make it more difficult for the Obama administration, I think, to carry out the continued spending and growing of debt.

Fed deputy chairman Donald Kohn is opposed to the idea. He told a congressional hearing that auditing the primary institutional enabler of Big Government in America would interfere with Fed processes.

If the GAO, a congressional agency, were authorized to audit the Fed, that “could cast a chill on monetary policy deliberations,” Kohn said.

Or Americans could find out where their tax dollars are going from an unaccountable, opaque entity that refuses to identify the recipients of $2 trillion-plus in emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the collateral backing the loans.

Making the Fed more transparent could also put to rest some of the kookier conspiracy theories about it.

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who has supported many worthy free-market causes in his life, explained on the “Glenn Beck Program” Tuesday his curious support for the Democrats’ totalitarian cap-and-trade legislation.

“We haven’t had the leadership in Washington in 40 years to have an energy plan,” Pickens complained to substitute host (retired) Judge Andrew Napolitano. Pickens has spent millions of dollars to date promoting the “Pickens Plan” that is aimed at reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

Pickens hailed the bill, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), as “the most encompassing ” energy legislation ever. The legislation, which is also backed by global warming alarmist Al Gore who compares the struggle against climate change to the war against the Nazis, would kill jobs and regulate every aspect of Americans’ behavior.

Pickens said that cap-and-trade “isn’t my issue” but that the measure has “some good things in it” such as its treatment of wind energy, solar energy, and provisions for electric grid modernization.

Those “good things” are government subsidies for T. Boone Pickens.

“Pickens wants to hard-wire the market to consume the things he’s investing in and have the government lavish him with subsidies in the course of doing so,” according to Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute.