AMERICA NEEDS A READY AND MODERNIZED FIGHTING FORCE The President’s Budget The Obama Blueprint: While a robust starting point, the Obama budget blueprint fails to fully fund the core defense needs of the United States by about $30 billion in the base defense budget. Creates 10-Year Shortfall: The shortfall likely exceeds $1.3 trillion cumulatively over 10 years against the 4% of GDP benchmark identified as the cost to train, equip, and modernize America’s military for the next five to 10 years. Balanced Defense Program: Congress has sought to restore balance to the …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmDiDJ7QrdU&feature=related[/youtube]Times certainly aren’t what they used to be for corporate executives, with so many of the perks formerly enjoyed being cut back or eliminated. But all is not lost, at least according to JetBlue, which is trying to make lemonade out of corporate CEO lemons. In a creative, presumably tongue-in-cheek, ad campaign, the air carrier makes a bid for business from grounded CEOs. It’s worth a look.
Rian Wathen, Former Organizing Director for the UFCW, discusses card check. He discusses how union organizers can use corrupt methods to get people to sign cards that, under the Employee Free Choice Act, would authorize a union without a secret ballot election. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZhAvhEnO34[/youtube]
On April 8, 1952, President Harry Truman ordered Commerce Secretary Charles Sawyer to seize and take over operation of most of the country’s steel mills. Truman cited no legislative authority for his actions. Instead, he cited the Korean War. Truman claimed there was a national emergency and his presidential war powers were all the authority he needed to nationalize the steel industry. The steel companies fought back, and in the landmark case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer the Supreme Court found Truman’s actions to be unconstitutional. Justifying President …
Out-of-control spending has been the theme of 2009. In his first fifty days in office, President Obama and the 111th Congress spent one billion dollars an hour. Using money to bail out the states, 40 of which are running state deficits, simply encourages more spending. In response, Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) wrote a letter to the South Carolina state legislature explaining his decision to ask President Obama for a waiver allowing him to use federal stimulus money to pay down state debt. Also in response, and in good timing, the …
Last night, the CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, was fired by the President of the United States. Perhaps not “fired” in the strict legal sense – if legalities matter anymore – but certainly fired for all effective purposes. In a statement by Wagoner released last night, the now-former CEO states specifically that Administration officials “requested that I “step aside”’ as CEO of GM.” “And so I have,” he said. No pretense of an agonized decision, no pretending that the board asked him to go, simply that the White House …
While an earthquake shifts the ground beneath our feet, the United Nation’s climate change proposal would shift trillions of dollars in wealth transfers and entail “ job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes.” And while earthquakes inflict considerable amounts of economic damage, it pales in comparison to the economic burden a carbon dioxide reduction scheme would do – not only in the United States but also in other developed countries and developing countries. The …
President Barack Obama’s FY 2010 budget proposal to cut the tax deductions that wealthy Americans can claim for their charitable donations has been roundly criticized, including by us here and by Harvard University economic professor Martin Feldstein here. But Obama does have his leftist defenders, including New York City Coalition Against Hunger executive director Joel Berg who writes: Combined with other progressive Obama tax proposals, that change would not only start to redress the inequality gap that has engulfed America in recent decades but would also help to pay for …
On June 23, 2005, the United States Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision affirming the state of Connecticut’s right to evict U.S. citizens from their homes for purposes of “economic development.” In Kelo v. City of New London, plaintiff Suzette Kelo, who had recently bought her dream home on the bank of the Thames River, sued to stop New London from using its eminent domain power to condemn and destroy her home. New London wanted to destroy Kelo’s home so that Pfizer, Inc. could build $300 million research facility. …
Before President Barack Obama took office he promised to: not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days. In just his first week in the White House, Obama broke this promise twice signing both Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and Medicare expansion bill without posting the bill for five day comment. Today, Obama will break his promise to the American people yet again, this time by signing the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009.
