The current recession is causing Americans to take a second look at their household budget. Well, if Congress enacts cap and trade legislation, recently proposed by Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) of the Energy and Commerce Committee and Chairman Edward Markey (D-MA) of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, families will have to take an even harder look at their budget and be forced to make additional cuts. As recently acknowledged by a top White House official, a global warming tax could generate as much as $1.9 trillion in tax revenue over …
Yesterday, four small banks became the first in the country to pay back taxpayer money received from the government. The banks – Old National Bancorp of Indiana, IberiaBank of Louisiana, Bank of Marin Bancorp in California and Signature Bank of New York – returned a total of $338 million to the Treasury. That’s a tiny fraction of the nearly $200 billion in capital provided to banks under the government’s TARP program, but the amounts are expected to swell as more banks join the queue to hand back their subsidies. One …
As you are aware, the President took quite a bit of heat last month from British and U.S. media outlets, when it was reported that he gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of American movies on DVD, as the official gift of his state visit. It turned out that the DVDs were not compatible with British DVD players, and worse, that the Prime Minister had a vision problem that would make the gifts even more distasteful. Gordon Brown gave President Obama a pen holder carved from the timbers of …
President Barack Obama’s nearly $800 billion in deficit spending is just beginning to be spent and already stories are trickling in about how the money is being wasted. Remember that bridge to nowhere in Alaska? Well the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reports that Obama’s stimulus is funding 37 bridges just like it in Wisconsin alone: A vast majority of the Wisconsin bridges awarded construction money in the first wave of federal stimulus funding carry fewer than 1,000 vehicles a day, a Journal Sentinel analysis of federal bridge inspections shows. And many …
Ceding control of financial regulations to the European Union is just the beginning of the Obama Administration war on the sovereignty of the United States of America. Just last week, President Barack Obama nominated former Clinton administration official Harold Koh to become the State Department’s legal adviser. Koh describes himself as a “transnationalist” and in a 2006 Penn State International Law Review article he described what this meant: Generally speaking, the transnationalists tend to emphasize the interdependence between the United States and the rest of the world, while the nationalists …
Anticipating the arrival of Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday, Mexican President Felipe Calderon called for the Obama Administration to violate U.S. citizen’s Second Amendment rights: “It is necessary to reduce the sale of weapons, particularly of high-powered weapons, in the United States.” New federal gun control laws are not the answer to Mexican drug violence. Sen. John Barrasso (T-WY) stood up for American’s rights at a border hearing in El Paso Monday: Some have suggested that we need to ban semi-automatic assault weapons …
Four members of the U.S. Senate on March 31 introduced S. 428S, “The Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act.” A similar measure will follow in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill, as legislation goes, is quite simple: it forbids the President to “regulate or prohibit, directly or indirectly, travel to or from Cuba by United States citizens or legal residents,” and repeals all previous travel restrictions. Ultimately most arguments for lifting the travel ban [and the trade embargo which is clearly the real target of many in Congress] blame …
Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban recently claimed responsibility for the deadly attack that took place at a police academy on Monday in Lahore, Pakistan. But that’s not all. According to Mehsud, the next attack is going to be much closer to home. In a phone interview with the Associated Press, Mehsud indicated that his terrorist organization was planning a devastating attack on Washington D.C. that would “amaze” the world. Heritage analyst James Phillips told Fox News: It should be taken seriously because [Mehsud] has ordered the deaths …
Last week President Obama took another opportunity to discuss his budget plans with the American people. As part of selling his $3.2 billion dollar budget, he has set his sights on defense acquisition reform and the time-honored tradition of promising greater cost savings by rooting out the fraud, waste, and abuse within the system. While reforming the acquisition system is a noble task, buried within the President’s language is the subtle message that he sees acquisition reform not just as an effort towards reforming the acquisition process, but also as …
Earlier today, President Obama delivered a speech at an impromptu event, sans teleprompter, as he was on his way to deliver a thoughtful gift to his British counterparts to reinforce our special relationship. “Let me first start by saying that for the duration of my administration, there will be no more bailouts.” This statement drew a gasp from the crowd of European supporters and press who appeared unprepared for the news. The President continued by laying out a ten point plan for American economic recovery and leadership that seemed to be a …
