Rep. Barney Frank is CAGW’s 2009 Porker of the Year
February 26, 2010
Note: This is why we need this guy out of office. Scott Brown was able to do it, perhaps Mass. is coming to its senses and will remove his guy? – FedUpEditor
CAGW President Tom Schatz announced the results of the online poll for 2009 Porker of the Year on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on February 2. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, (D-Mass.) finished first in a field of six with 49 percent of the vote. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) came in second at 26.3 percent, while third-place honors went to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) at 6.6 percent. Chairman Frank garnered the lion’s share of the vote as a result of his relentless and garrulous role in the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), which the federal government took into conservatorship in September, 2008 after they began to collapse and which remain on life support even after an infusion of $112 billion in taxpayer funds. Chairman Frank safeguarded the GSEs’ lavish franchises and fended off any attempts to establish greater oversight even when it became clear that their precarious condition threatened the entire financial system. “The seeds of the GSE meltdown were sown by politicians like Barney Frank,” declared Schatz. Read more about the results of the 2009 Porker of the Year poll.
Weigh in on the White House Health Care Summit!
February 25, 2010
Urge the President and Senate Democrats at the White House Health Care Summit to Renounce Jamming through Obamacare in the Senate with only 51 votes! Take Action!
February 25, 2010
The White House Health Care Summit is underway and we’d like to draw your attention to Citizen Tube-where you can watch the summit LIVE from your computer at work or at home and submit your questions and ideas on health care during the event, and vote on which questions and ideas you think are the best!
The questions and ideas with the most votes at the conclusion of the summit will be asked of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).
Eagle Forum strongly encourages you to join Senator Lamar Alexandar (R-TN) and his fellow Republicans at the summit and ask both President Obama and his liberal Democrat leaders in the Senate to renounce using the Budget Reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes, to jam through Obamacare.
We encourage you to participate and to also submit calls and comments both through Citizen Tube and through the White House comment line and via their website. The White House is targeted in this action alert, so all you have to do is “Take Action” as usual and your input will be relayed to the Executive Branch.
White House Comment Line:
202-456-1111
Obama is Stuck On Stupid
February 23, 2010
It’s a shame General Honore didn’t leave the Army and run for office. He had the ability to tell it like it is and screw it if he hurt someone’s feelings. After the Hurricane Katrina devastation during the cleanup, the general berated one of the reporters by telling him he was “stuck on stupid.”
Perhaps someone could relay this message to Obama. After all the Tea Parties and Sick-ins, what does he do? He’s back on health care! He has said repeatedly that he believes he just hasn’t explained it well enough. To the contrary, he has made more than a speech a day, most of them on his health care initiative, and we don’t want it. What’s not clear?
Remember the old saying (paraphrasing), “God gave you two ears and one mouth so you would listen more than you talk.” Perhaps Obama should take that advice. Perhaps he is so busy talking (over 400 speeches in one 365 day year) that he can not hear us.
Listen up, Mr. President. I DO NOT WANT YOUR HEALTH CARE PLAN… NOT NOW, NOT EVER!
Sane people must be asking, why do the Democrats keep coming back to this even when the idea is wildly unpopular? Aren’t they there to do the people’s business? If we don’t want it, then why continue spending money and time on this legislation? Who will it benefit? If you guessed Democrats, you would be right… at least that is what they think. In 2010 they will find out the truth. Special elections have already sounded the death knell of liberalism, yet they keep moving forward! It’s like “Night of the Living Dead” where the zombies just keep coming all over again!
Republicans beware. This meeting with the President is a rope-a-dope. The plan is already outlined and there is no bi-partisan compromise in it. No wonder people are thinking third party… nobody in Washington is listening! Are Republicans afraid of being the “party of no”? As Rush Limbaugh says, they should be the “party of HELL no!”
After almost a solid year of fighting off this health care plan with Sick-Ins and Tea Parties, the bickering in the House and Senate from Democrats who should have the votes to pass anything, the Pelosi,”We don’t have the votes to pass it,” speech, here we are again. Why? Because Obama and the Democrats are “Stuck on Stupid!”
- FedUpEditor
More money for fewer jobs…again
February 17, 2010
In February 2009, President Obama signed into law the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. One year later, the tab for this so-called “stimulus” bill has grown to a staggering $862 billion — and the spending has done very little to actually improve our sinking economy.
The left boasted that their big-government program would “create or save” about five million new jobs by December 2010 and cap unemployment at eight percent. But so far, it’s not living up to these promises. As Heritage’s Conn Carroll explains, four million jobs have been lost since the bill went into force, and unemployment rose above 10 percent, though it now stands at 9.7 percent. The President’s stimulus would require a mighty turnaround to be deemed anything other than a dismal failure.
» Today at 11:00 Eastern, Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) is joined by Reps. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Scott Garrett (R-NJ) and Tom Rooney (R-FL) to discuss the “stimulus.” And they’ll be taking questions live from Heritage’s Facebook fans! Become a Fan of The Heritage Foundation on Facebook to participate.
But the left won’t admit to the shortcomings of their stimulus bill. In fact, the White House Council of Economic Advisors audaciously reports that last year’s stimulus bill created two million new jobs. Heritage experts beg to differ. In a new Heritage analysis, economist Karen Campbell dissects the CEA’s report and argues that its findings “fail basic standards of economic analysis” and do little to prove anything about the stimulus.
Nevertheless, the left is forging ahead with its big-spending ways, and wants yet another stimulus, this time dubbed a “jobs bill.” The House of Representatives has already passed a $154 billion stimulus package and the Senate is considering one costing taxpayers $15 billion. Both proposals are highly partisan and, like the 2009 stimulus, will do nothing to stop the recession and curb unemployment.
The $15 billion “jobs bill” the Senate is considering is a far cry from the bipartisan compromise bill the Senate was originally drafting. Even The New York Times editorial board panned this substitute bill, brought forth by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), as “pathetic…as an example of legislation deemed capable of winning bipartisan support.”
Reid’s bill is full of bad liberal ideas and reflects typical political posturing. What we need instead are real reforms. These reforms, as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) writes in the Wall Street Journal, would “limit government’s burden of spending, mandates and regulation[, ensure] the opportunity for individuals to fulfill their human potential and enjoy the satisfaction of their own achievements—and [secure] the distinctly American legacy of leaving the next generation better off.” (Read Heritage’s take on Ryan’s road map on The Foundry.)
Indy Mac SCAM! How the Bailout Screwed Us All!
February 14, 2010
Two loan specialists explain the back room deals made by our current administration with the bailout. Listen here and learn.
Congress Goes Back to Write an Unconstitutional Law – OPINION
February 12, 2010
Let me start the discussion by saying that if a law is unconstitutional, then writing another one just like it will be unconstitutional as well. What they need to do, if they are serious, is change the constitution! Take out the first amendment and be done with it.
I am sick of Democrat lawmakers and their heavy handedness. They passed laws that limited the ability for corporations to fight back and send campaign contributions to candidates who support the free market and big business. McCain-Feingold was the crown jewel of that effort, and in one Supreme Court Ruling all that was wiped away. After all, if corporations have to live by the laws being passed, shouldn’t they have the right to influence who gets elected to write those laws? After all, unions are nothing more than big corporations with special interests, and they get to contribute to influence elections.
Besides, the Supremes are hardly all conservatives. In fact, one could make the argument that the court is more liberal leaning than conservative. Yet once again liberals are grousing that the court they once supported is “off the reservation on this one”. Liberal lawmakers want to have it they way they want to have it. Let me divert the discussion for one moment to give an example.
When we had heat waves, droughts and little snowfall, it was caused by global warming. Now that we are having excessively cold weather and massive blizzards in places that have seen little snow over the last couple of decades, it is being caused by the same global warming. Huh? They want it both ways. Liberalism is much like dealing with a spoiled child.
Back to the topic. Congress passes laws that affect businesses, mostly to their detriment, and recently the high court said laws prohibiting them from contributing to campaigns was unconstitutional and an assault on free speech. So what does Congress do? As I am writing this, Democrat lawmakers are on C-SPAN doing a press release about how they are passing this new law to protect us from the evil corporations (the ones that hire people)… a law whose essence has already been found unconstitutional. Talk about arrogance! The only way to successfully make it constitutional would be to… change the constitution!!!
My gut tells me they will pass it as quickly as possible so it takes effect before the 2010 election where Democrats already stand to lose big. They hope this law will stanch the bleeding and cause them to not lose as many seats. Then once passed, it could take years to find its way back to the Supreme Court where their expectation is the court will have changed dynamics. Regardless, whether it’s upheld or struck down at a later date, it’s irrelevant as long as it gets enacted before the election; that is the objective.
The people should be outraged. Here we are in the middle of a recession and massive job losses. What do our best and brightest come up with in the middle of that global warming snow blizzard? Their idea of a jobs bill was to extend unemployment benefits so they can say, “Okay, jobs problem fixed. No, let’s not fix the economy so businesses will start hiring again. Let’s just print and borrow more money to pay the extended jobless claims.” Now with the the jobs problem fixed, what’s next? Campaign contributions? Give me a break!
- FedUpEditor
Don’t Ever Trust Government! – OPINION
February 10, 2010
For years we have been told the only way to cut traffic and to reduce pollution was to use public transit or car pool. Not so long ago even hybrids with only one driver were approved to drive in the HOV (high occupancy vehicles) lane as a “reward” for being green. On the Golden Gate Bridge, car pools have been getting a FREE ride through the toll booths for years… but that is about to come to an end.
If you trusted government to continue to reward you for your environmental efforts, think again. In a recent story from the San Francisco Chronicle, the GGBD District, a special district and bureaucracy formed to manage the bridge and all its issues, is considering charging car pools for crossing. Oh, you will still get a half price discount, but that is not what you were promised for cramming 4 or 5 people into a Prius, was it? And do you know the best part? THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. The Golden Gate Bridge District is a self-governing body that answers to nobody. In other words, we can’t vote them out!
Once again, it has nothing to do with “saving the planet” but more about “show me the money!” If the Golden Gate Bridge were put under contract to a private company, I would bet they could reduce expenses and turn a profit within a year. After all, what other choice do we have if we want to get into the City? The ferry? Only if you have several hours to kill both directions.
Like all government or government-like bureaucracies, the GGBD is running out of money and needs to boost its rates… all those expensive Supervisors, I guess. The pull quote from the Chronicle reads, “The carpool tolls are expected to generate about $1.3 million a year.” Another caveat is that all carpoolers will have to use FasTrak, another scam put forth by our government to collect tolls BEFORE we use the system. An amount of anywhere between $25 to $50 is charged on your credit card. A positive balance is maintained until it reaches a threshold where another charge is made to keep your balance of unused dollars up there. Multiply that by many thousands of drivers and you can see it adds up to an extra stash of cash for our FasTrak bureaucracy.)
On the positive side for FasTrak, it has cut the back ups at the bridge toll booths. The downside? Traffic now piles up just past the toll booths on Doyle Drive! Great fix. But don’t worry. San Francisco got some of that Obama cash to improve the 19th St. off ramp and the road down to the Richardson Drive off ramp, so we will have to wait to see if it gets better after it gets worse from all the construction.
Once again, the sheep who fell in line with the nonsense that only carpools and hybrids would save our planet are being “fleeced” again. I say it serves them right for trusting the government.
- FedUpEditor
PS: There was a rumor that the state was considering putting transponders in the HOV lanes and charge people for using them. As our state runs up its deficit, you can bet this idea will get some traction.
San Francisco Against Property Rights!
February 10, 2010
Supervisors advocating the expansion of San Francisco’s rent control ordinance were unable to muster the required eight votes to override the mayor’s veto of an ordinance proposed by Supervisor John Avalos that would have extended just cause eviction protections to tenants residing in units for which a certificate of occupancy was issued after the effective date of the city’s Rent Ordinance, June 13, 1979.
REALTORS® are urged to send a short note to Mayor Gavin Newsom and the four supervisors who prevented the Board of Supervisors from overriding the mayor’s veto—Supervisors Michela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, Bevan Dufty, Sean Elsbernd. As a suggestion, you might say:
Thank you to for opposing the passage of Supervisor Avalos’ legislation to extend eviction protections to post-1979 construction from becoming law. If such legislation were to become law, it would have a chilling effect on the availability of financing for new housing development in the city.
The mailing and e-mail addresses for the mayor and the supervisors appear below.
Name of Office Holder
City Hall
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102Mayor Gavin Newsom
Gavin.Newsom@sfgov.orgMichela Alioto-Pier
Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.orgCarmen Chu
Carmen.Chu@sfgov.orgBevan Dufty
Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.orgSean Elsbernd
Sean.Elsbernd@sfgov.org
Although the proposed ordinance will not become law this time around, the Board of Supervisors could decide to put the proposed ordinance on the ballot and let the voters decide the issue either in June or November of this year. But Supervisor Avalos has offered to scale-down his proposed ordinance so that it would only offer eviction protection to tenants due to foreclosures. Mayor Newsom has proposed similar legislation.
While Avalos’ legislation is dead, at least for the time being, another tenants’ rights ordinance proposed by Supervisor Eric Mar has been passed by the Board of Supervisors with unanimous support. The ordinance, which Mayor Newsom is expected to sign into law, will prohibit, with limited exceptions, owner move-in evictions of families with a child younger than 18 years old when school is in session.
- San Francisco Association of Realtors
[Note: Laws like this are aimed at pandering to renters versus the property owners who pay the taxes and keep the City running!]
Note on Second Amendment by Assemblyman Hagman
February 6, 2010
Dear Friends:
I would first like to extend my sincerest thank you to everyone who was able to attend my NRA / AB1663 meeting on Saturday at Raahauge’s Shooting Enterprises in Corona, CA. I understand that many of you are not in the immediate area so, for your convenience, I have posted on my website a video of my recent interview on NRA news where I discuss my upcoming legislation and the need to repeal AB 962. It can be found at: www.asm.ca.gov/60
(Please note that this interview was conducted when I originally was going to use AB 373. Since that bill number had an upcoming expiration date, we updated the repeal legislation to AB 1663 so that we could have more time to work with the NRA to spread the message and attract support).
As I continue working with the National Rifle Association in the coming months, I encourage all of you to spread the word about the harms AB 962 will have on your community if it is not repealed. Contact your representatives and let them know why they need to support this legislation. We need to fight together to protect our Second Amendment right. Restriction ammunition sales and imposing on California’s law abiding citizens only creates more problems for businesses and consumers. Criminals will not be deterred and gun crimes will not decrease.
Thank you again for your continued action and support.
Assemblyman Curt Hagman
District 60
Hensarling: I went toe-to-toe with President Obama
February 6, 2010
[Editor's note: Why is it when anyone disagrees with the president or any Democrat, they are labeled as a radical idealogue? All this from left wing radical idealogues! Chris Matthews needs to go. He has brought down his network's ratings long enough!]
Last Friday, I challenged President Obama on national television about his plans to triple the national debt and put government spending on a path to equal almost 25% of our national economy. If you watched ‘Fox News Sunday’ or ‘Meet the Press’ this weekend, you saw it.
Not only did President Obama refuse to answer my question, he questioned my integrity. He said, “That’s factually just not true and you know it’s not true.” I worked hard to become an Eagle Scout, and I consider myself a man of honor. When I am wrong, I will be the first to admit it. But I’m not wrong.
I am now being attacked on the pages of the New York Times as a “radical ideologue” and Daily Kos called our exchange the “most contentious of the afternoon.” ‘Hardball’ host and former Tip O’Neill staffer Chris Matthews called my math “budget bologna”. Clearly the Left is out to discredit me simply because I laid bare the harsh realities about the record-setting spending coming out of Washington.
I’m going to need the full support of grassroots conservatives to push back against the smear campaign the Left has launched at me because I dared to publicly challenge President Obama’s dangerous spending. Will you follow this link to make an immediate donation to help me fight back?
On his radio program Monday, Rush Limbaugh came to my defense. He said, “…Obama actually implied Hensarling was lying in his question about this, but he’s right. The Democrats ran Congress starting in 2007, all of 2008 — and, of course, all of last year. The Democrats ran Congress starting in 2007, all of 2008 — and, of course, all of last year.”
Will you join Rush in helping me fight back against the tax-and-spend Left? Each dollar you generously give today – whether it’s $10 or $100 – will enable me to continue speaking up for fiscal conservatives across the country.
As the #2 Republican on the House Budget Committee it’s my job to know the facts about the federal budget. I have not been afraid to push Republican leaders to take more conservative positions. Our nation simply can’t afford to spend at a dangerous rate that passes trillions of dollars in debt on to our children and grandchildren.
Apparently President Obama hasn’t heard the cries of anger from millions of taxpayers across the country, because his 2011 budget will triple the national debt and puts government spending on a path to equal 25% of the entire U.S. economy.
I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of Washington politicians who claim to be fiscally responsible yet propose budgets that place our nation on the brink of bankruptcy…
I am sick and tired of politicians who pass a trillion dollar stimulus plans that left us mired in 10% unemployment…
…and I am sick and tired of $3.8 trillion Washington budgets costing $32,539 per American household.
Are you sick and tired, too?
I want to rescue the American people… and most importantly, our children and grandchildren… from the fiscal tsunami of deficits and debt that Team Obama and Pelosi have in store for them. So, please join me today and make a generous donation of $10, $25, $50 or more – any amount will help us build a national movement to hold President Obama and the Democrats accountable for the direction they are taking our country.
Sincerely,
Congressman Jeb Hensarling
P.S. On Saturday, I was called “a leading voice among fiscal conservatives” in the Dallas Morning News. While I appreciate that recognition, personal accolades mean little to me personally while we are on a path to fiscal ruin. I stood up to President Obama, will you stand with me? Join my campaign to protect the family budget from the explosive growth of the federal budget with a generous donation of any amount you can afford to give. Let’s send President Obama a message that we want the out of control spending to stop!
