Leftist values

They just LOVE Islam. Both are religions of hate



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Revive conservatism in the GOP

Richard Viguerie

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak to a packed house at the Heritage Foundation about my new book TAKEOVER. If you want to watch the speech on C-SPAN’s Book TV here is the link.

But if you don’t want to watch the speech I’ll cut straight to the chase and give you the highlight here, because I think they are so important to keep in mind as we get into the next few weeks of Republican Primary elections, starting with North Carolina next Tuesday.

Senator Jim DeMint was my 1st choice for President in 2008 and 2012.  I knew Jim DeMint was going to be President. I just didn’t realize it would be President of the Heritage Foundation.

The Heritage Foundation, the conservative movement, and America are fortunate indeed to have Jim DeMint as Heritage’s leader.  Jim DeMint has been the de facto leader of conservatives for many years.

And as our leader, Jim has understood something that that has escaped most conservatives. Conservatives have been losing ground to the Left for the last 100 years.

And during the last 100 years, the entire Democratic Party and most Republican leaders have become unhinged from the Constitution.  Why?

Conservatives, the most important political battle in America is not between Republicans and Democrats. America’s most important political battle is for control of the Republican Party.

For decades conservatives have had their political guns pointed at the wrong targets.  Our main opponents are not Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama.  The people who are keeping limited-government, constitutional conservatives from governing America are big-government Republicans with names like Karl Rove, George Bush 41 and 43, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander.

And this war didn’t start with the arrival of the Tea Party in 2009 or Ronald Reagan’s election as President in 1980.  It started in 1912, 102 years ago, when Teddy Roosevelt left the Republican Party, ran a 3rd party ticket and split the Republican vote allowing the Democrat progressive Woodrow Wilson to become President with less than 42% of the vote. By the way, Teddy Roosevelt is one of big-government Karl Rove’s favorite Presidents.

Sometimes the Big-Government Republican looks like Teddy Roosevelt, Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Bob Dole, John McCain or Mitt Romney.

And TAKEOVER is the only book that describes the past, present and possible future of the 102-year GOP Civil War.  I have included a detailed plan in my book which gives conservatives a road map to take over the Republican Party and govern America by 2017.

Conservatives are like the Biblical Jews who had to wander in the desert for 40 years until that generation of failed, flawed leaders had passed from the scene.  Conservatives are not going to get to the political promised land until we replace this generation of failed, flawed, big-government Republicans with limited-government, constitutional conservatives.

The establishment media and big-government Republicans have done a good job of blaming conservatives for Republican losses.

But the opposite is the truth.  The voters consistently reject big-government, content-free Republicans.

In the last fifty years, the Republicans have had only four big election victories.  In those four big Republican Party victories, the face of the opposition to the Democrats that the voters saw was not big-government Republicans.  It was limited-government, smaller government, lower taxes, less government spending, balanced budget, traditional value candidates.

The voters were presented a clear choice – two very different world views.

These four big Republican victories were: 1980 Reagan’s election as president; 1984 Reagan’s re-election; 1994 the Contract with America, the Gingrich-led revolution; and the Tea Party election of 2010.

In 2006 the Republicans lost the Congress and the White House in 2008, in my opinion, having nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid or Barack Obama, but everything to do with the failed, immoral, corrupt leadership of the Establishment Republicans Denny Hastert, Bill Frist, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, Karl Rove, and George W. Bush.

However, just a few years later in 2010, the voters turned around and gave Republicans their biggest Congressional election in 75-80 years.  But in 2010, these big-government Republicans such as Rove and Bush were nowhere to be seen.

The face of the opposition to the Democrats was the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, and the voters liked that and gave the Republican Party a big victory.

So that’s why I paraphrase James Carville, who in 1992 famously said over and over, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  And, in 2014 I say to conservatives, “It’s the primaries, stupid.”

We can all see a wave building that is likely to sweep a lot of Democrats out of office.

But if all that happens is more politicians in the mold of John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell are elected, conservatives will have wasted the opportunity of a lifetime, and we may have missed our last chance to return America to a limited-government, constitutional conservative republic.

In the primaries, conservatives must unite and support the most electable, principled, limited-government conservative running.  We must oppose all establishment, big-government Republicans whether they are incumbents or insurgents.

Incumbent, big-government Republicans that have principled, limited-government candidates opposing them include: Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, Thad Cochran, Pat Roberts, and Lindsey Graham.

Most states’ filing deadlines have not passed. So if a principled, limited-government conservative hasn’t filed for every race on the 2014 November ballot, we should be organizing an effort to find that candidate. Perhaps you’re the candidate you’ve been waiting for.

By the way, that very weekend, Republican leaders Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy were at the Ritz Carlton in Amelia Island meeting with the Main Street Partnership, who are meeting to strategize and raise money to, in the words of the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, “Crush them everywhere.”

Remember to chart the future, you must study the past.  And TAKEOVER is the only book that explains why conservatives have mostly been losing for the last 102 years, and then gives you a clear road map for future success.

In my opinion, we’re just a few short years from taking over the Republican Party and governing America.

SOURCE

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Close the Export-Import Bank, Fount of Corporate Welfare

Nothing brings out the well-tailored lobbyists in Washington quite like a threat to corporate welfare. With the Export-Import Bank’s legal authorization set to run out this year, the Chamber of Commerce recently led a Big Business march on Capitol Hill to protect what is known as Boeing’s Bank.

Over the last eight decades ExIm has provided over a half trillion dollars in credit, mostly to corporate titans.  Congress should close the Bank.

The agency was created in 1934 to underwrite trade with the Soviet Union.  The agency uses its ability to borrow at government rates to provide loans, loan guarantees, working capital guarantees, and loan insurance.

ExIm is not free, as claimed.  Recently made self-financing, the agency has returned $1.6 billion to the Treasury since 2008.

However, economists Jason Delisle and Christopher Papagianis warned that the Bank’s “profits are almost surely an accounting illusion” because “the government’s official accounting rules effectively force budget analysts to understate the cost of loan programs like those managed by the Ex-Im Bank.”  In particular, the price of market risk is not included.  Delisle and Papagianis figured ExIm’s real price to exceed $200 million annually.  

Economist John H. Boyd took another approach, explaining:  “For an economic profit—that is, a real benefit to taxpayers—Eximbank’s income must exceed its recorded expenses plus its owners’ opportunity cost, a payment to taxpayers for investing their funds in this agency rather than somewhere else.”  He figured the Bank’s real cost at between $521 million and $653 million in 1980. Given the recent explosion in Bank lending the corresponding expense today could be much higher.

The Bank claims to create jobs.  No doubt, Exim financing makes some deals work.  But others die because ExIm diverts credit from firms without agency backing.

Economists Heywood Fleisig and Catharine Hill figured that channeling resources to exports reduces “domestic investment, consumption, or government expenditure.”  Thus, they explained, while export subsidies will increase employment in export firms, they will do so “at the expense of employment elsewhere.”

JayEtta Hecker, Associate Director of the then-Government Accounting Office, testified before the Senate: “government export finance assistance programs may largely shift production among sectors within the economy rather than raise the overall level of employment in the economy.  Hence, the jobs figure that the Eximbank reports may not represent net job gains.”

ExIm also sells itself as necessary to promote trade.  Bank president Fred Hochberg told a recent gaggle of supporters:  “we want to be the wind in your sales,” pushing U.S. exports. But exports should not an end in themselves irrespective of cost.

The Bank supports only about two percent worth of exports, barely a blip in a $17 trillion economy.  Moreover, ExIm often subsidizes competitors of American companies.  For instance, two-thirds of the Bank’s loan guarantees last year backed Boeing sales to rivals of U.S. airlines.

The Bank contends that it corrects market failures. Thus, explained the agency in its 2012 annual report: “When the availability of credit from commercial lenders is restricted or the cost is prohibitive, Ex-Im Bank can provide the financing assistance that U.S. exporters need.”

However, international financial markets are sophisticated.  And the Bank is busiest in Asia, Europe, and North America, not Africa and Latin America, where the risks are greater.

Moreover, it’s impossible to know just how many of the deals currently financed by American taxpayers wouldn’t go through absent the subsidy.  Everyone involved in the transaction—borrower, banker, exporter, bureaucrat—has an incentive to claim ExIm played a vital role.

The agency claims to support all businesses, including small ones.  However, candidate Barack Obama got it right in 2008 when he described the Bank as “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”  The most heavily subsidized industries in 2012 were aircraft and avionics, followed by oil and gas, power generation, and agribusiness.

The most money always goes to Big Business.  Boeing alone typically accounts for more than 40 percent of the Bank’s credit activities. Corporate behemoths General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Dow Chemical, Bechtel, John Deere, and Caterpillar regularly join Boeing at the federal trough.  Veronique De Rugy of the Mercatus Center figured that the top ten recipients collect 75 percent of ExIm’s benefits.  Financial institutions and foreign governments also enjoy bountiful subsidies.

Finally, ExIm’s warns that if the U.S. government doesn't provide cheap credit, American companies will lose out to foreign firms subsidized by their governments.  In this way the Bank claims “to help level the playing field to support U.S. companies.”

However, less than half of ExIm credit typically is even directed in this way, let alone proven necessary.  Moreover, the fact that other governments are willing to hurt their peoples by channeling credit away from worthier firms in the marketplace in favor of politically well-connected exporters is no reason for America to do the same.

A better way to help promote trade would be to strengthen the economy generally.  Lower and rationalize business taxes.  Cut and streamline regulation.  Reduce tariffs, especially on widely used imports, such as steel.  Discourage frivolous litigation.  Stop subsidizing the defense of prosperous, populous trade competitors.

Anyone on Capitol Hill who believes in free markets and limited government should oppose the agency’s reauthorization.  Let exporters pay to generate their own profits.

SOURCE

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Conservatives Victorious; Boehner Finally Establishes Benghazi Select Committee

Thanks to conservative pressure and the revelations contained in documents obtained by Judicial Watch, House Speaker John Boehner issued the following announcement:

"House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is announcing today in Washington, D.C., that he intends for the House to vote to create a new select committee to investigate the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans. He released the following statement:

“Americans learned this week that the Obama Administration is so intent on obstructing the truth about Benghazi that it is even willing to defy subpoenas issued by the standing committees of the People's House.  These revelations compel the House to take every possible action to ensure the American people have the truth about the terrorist attack on our consulate that killed four of our countrymen.  In light of these new developments, the House will vote to establish a new select committee to investigate the attack, provide the necessary accountability, and ensure justice is finally served.

“The administration's withholding of documents – emails showing greater White House involvement in misleading the American people – is a flagrant violation of trust and undermines the basic principles of oversight upon which our system of government is built.  And it forces us to ask the question, what else about Benghazi is the Obama administration still hiding from the American people?

“The House committees that have been investigating this attack have done extraordinary work, using their subpoena power, holding dozens of hearings, and conducting hundreds of interviews.  Without this work we would not know much that we do today.  But it’s clear that questions remain, and the administration still does not respect the authority of Congress to provide proper oversight.  This dismissiveness and evasion requires us to elevate the investigation to a new level.  I intend for this select committee to have robust authority, and I will expect it to work quickly to get answers for the American people and the families of the victims.

“Four Americans died at the hands of terrorists nearly 20 months ago, and we are still missing answers, accountability, and justice.  It’s time that change.”

Top Republicans say that the infamous White House Benghazi talking point emails should have been released to Congress months ago. Boehner signaled those concerns prompted him to rethink the need for a select committee.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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