Essential Liberties

Stories are running rampant lately throughout social media and blog spheres about the Enemy Expatriation Act (HR 3166/S1698) (detailed bill text here), initiated in Congress back in October, 2011 by Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Congressmen Charlie Dent (R-PA), Scott Brown (R-MA), and Jason Altmire (D-PA).  The summary text of this bill states, “To add engaging in or supporting hostilities against the United States to the list of acts for which United States nationals would lose their nationality.”

Basically, this bill adds this new clause to the Immigration and Nationality Act (US Code, Title 8 “Aliens and Nationality”, Chapter 12, Sub Chapter III, Part III “Loss of Nationality”, sections 1481/1483 – link here).

So, what is a “United States national“?    (read on to find out if you are one…)

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Where Diane Lacy, President of NH SEA / SEIU can’t even get simple facts right – and tips hand on the upcoming NH election cycle.

SEIU
SEIU

On WMUR “Closeup” this morning, replacement host James Pindell interviewed Diane Lacy, President of the NH State Employee Association and NH Rep. Will Infantine (R-Manchester) during his first segment).  Well, during the interview, Ms. Lacy shows that either she has no grasp of real facts or is just what many people believe: that the SEIU is just another name for “Progressive Democrats” in that they just make up facts and say them as truth. And keep repeating them, just like NH Progressive Press Sec. Harrell Kirstein and Uber-Progressive Chair Ray “Buckles” Buckley  And are in the tank for Obama, as the national SEIU spent over $70 million, by their own admission, trying to get Obama elected. Lacy concentrated on three things:

  • Unions = Middle Class
  • Republican supported budget hurts union workers (with an assisted jab question from James Pindell)
  • Speaker Bill O’Brien is a Free Stater
  • In fact, NH is overrun by Free Staters (and she has no clue who or how many)!
  • She is making the wedge appeal to the RINOs for support with “hey, THOSE Republicans are not like you – support us!”
  • But she’ll replace those RINOS with union members who will be running for election.
  • And kinda mumbled something that without automatic union due deductions from union member paychecks, e-commerce in NH is dead.

Like this first statement by Diane Lacy:

“Middle Class is under attack here in NH and the way to get to the Middle Class is by taking away their rights.”

This is getting to be old, but let’s walk through this, shall we?

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Part II – Where Diane Lacy, President of NH SEA / SEIU can’t even get simple facts right – and tips hand on the upcoming NH election cycle.

Unions - Proud Owners Of The Democrat Party
Unions - Proud Owners Of The Democrat Party

 

A bit of advice for Diane Lacy:

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

Too bad it is after the fact.  When I fisked Diane Lacy’s, Prez of SEIU local 1984, appearance on WMUR’s “Closeup” yesterday, I forgot to comment on this doozy:

There are local businesses that stand that stand to be deeply damaged by these bills if they are passed.   I mean some of the bills on dues deductions.  That will impact e-commerce here in NH.  That will impact bankers, insurance companies, lawyers, a number of services, vendors, manufacturers.  And these legislators have no clue as to what they are going to do to businesses on this so we will have the conversation.

THIS is a wallapalooza of a claim concerning e-commerce – and wrong!  And it a lame attempt to prevent a defanging of one of the Unions most potent weapons, their financial oxygen: automatic union dues deduction.

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Data Point – Once again, “who pays the taxes”? Where’s the Press on this?

Wall Street Journal - Who pays Federal taxes - income and other
Wall Street Journal - Who pays Federal taxes?

From the Wall Street Journal:

“This all-too-conveniently confuses the incidence of a tax with the burden of a tax. The marginal tax rate on every additional dollar of capital gains and dividend income from corporate profits can reach as high as 44.75% at the federal level (assuming a company pays the 35% top corporate rate), not 15%.

The Congressional Budget Office recently examined the distribution of federal taxes on various income groups. The report was ballyhooed by liberals as proof of rising income inequality, but that argument is for another day. What everyone has ignored is what CBO found about the relative taxes paid by different groups. And, lo, the rich pay more, which is probably why the press didn’t report it.”

Indeed” “why the press didn’t report it.”  All we have heard from the Left is the inequality, a la Warren Buffet, is the inequality of who pays what for taxes.  What they seldom report to the public, and what Warren Buffet absolutely doesn’t mention, is exactly the important info laid out above: double taxation.  The money that Buffet receives has already been taxed once at the corporate rate (35% before legal deductions) and as an owner of the corporation (as that’s what shareholders are – owners) he gets taxed a second time on that income – referred to as dividends.

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With Obama canceling the Keystone pipeline, I guess Obama’s economy is running out of gas…

Obamanomics Running Out Of GasYup!  Running the car out of the ditch but into that renewable tree is going to do LOVELY things for Obama’s economy.  Our economy runs on oil, and only God knows why Obama thinks that the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada is not in “the nation’s interest”.  His, maybe.  Environmentalists, maybe.  And Warren Buffet’s?  Certainly seems to be (from Instapundit):

MORE OF THIS ADMINISTRATION’S LOUSY ENERGY POLICY: North Dakota Stuck Using More-Costly Railroads to Move Oil. “Right now, about 25% of North Dakota’s oil travels by rail. According to the CBS News report that ‘will increase exponentially with increased oil production and the shortage of pipelines.’”

UPDATE: Reader Jack Lillywhite emails:

 And who has a big stake in Burlington Northern? A guy in Omaha named Buffett.

And by having TransCanada tie its Keystone XI to the border crossing approval you can’t get a segmented line from Montana to Port Arthur, TX that the Bakken field could tie into. That is the concept. A collector system named the BakkenLink runs down to Montana from ND and ties into Keystone XI (known as MarketLink). A twofer you might say.

So, in a way it is a Win-Win for Obama – He wins his Green base and his Crony Capitalism base. Pretty clever, eh?

They win, we lose. As usual.

Crony Capitalism.

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I DID talk to Annmarie Timmins at the Concord Monitor about RINOs, Julie Brown, and the Internet

A loyal reader alerted me to this in the Concord Monitor this morning – Annmarie Timmins runs a column similar to Distao’s (Union Leader) – concerning the RINO of the Week / Year series that Rick runs (heh!).  She had called me about the bumper stickers and more specifically, about the license plate.  What she wrote (I have added pertinent links):

“Republican vs. “Republican“

Rep. David Kidder of New London is letting bygones be bygones.

Despite recently losing GraniteGrok.com’s coveted 2011 RINO (Republican In Name Only) of the Year award to Rep. Julie Brown of Rochester, the two were chatting happily at a legislative hearing last week.

Kidder, a Realtor serving his fourth term, was in the running along with 15 other representatives who don’t always vote along party lines.

“It was, well, disappointing,” Kidder said Thursday. But Kidder knew he had no chance once the conservatives in his party got a look at the bumper stickers on Brown’s car.

“Tea Parties are for Little Girls and Their Imaginary Friends,” says one. The other pictures a dog with the words, “I want free health care too.” GraniteGrok.com posted a snapshot of Brown’s bumper, legislative license plate included, on its website.

You bet I did!

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Order Your Susan Emerson Commemorative Boo Hoo Towels Today!

The RINO from Rindge, House GOP 69 percenter Susan Emerson, has sponsored a bill to stop bullying in the State legislature.  No.  I am not. Kidding.

The Union Leader reports that HB 1533..

“….would allow the Attorney General’s Office to investigate allegations of bullying in the Legislature, rather than current rules that allow such allegations to be investigated by an ethics committee.”

The paper claims the bill has 97 Sponsors, while the bill as submitted has just a handful of support; moderates pretending to be Republicans, pining no doubt for the days when more people voted for their spineless ilk and they actually had some kind of voice in State government?   (Too harsh?)

This bill does not fix that problem, no bill could.  What it does do is create an atmosphere built on tension and self imposed censorship, where healthy debate and disagreement becomes almost impossible without fear of being branded a bully backed up by the threat of a $2500.00 fine (per incident) and the stigma of criminal proceedings.

Mom!  He’s Bullying me!

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Where Stands Jeanne Shaheen on the Keystone Pipeline?

PIPLINEThere are at least ten Democrats, six of them US Senators, who support the Keystone XL pipeline (List on the jump).   Private investment, jobs, commerce, property taxes, and did we say jobs?

How about millions of barrels per day of that black stuff we still have to buy coming from Canada, a chance to get less from countries like Venezuela?

US Refineries will convert that into fuels like Gasoline of which we are a net exporter.  No interest in meeting global demand with US manufacturing?

What about Heating oil prices ?  These are always a big concern in New Hampshire.

Where stands Jeanne Shaheen?  I still don’t know.

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David Brooks – strong American values are leading to “incredibly backward-looking campaign”

David Brooks is “the conservative columnist” for the New York Time (“NYT”); the adjective “Conservative” would never be used as a modifier to his name here in NH – and am most assuredly positive that my sentiment would be replicated  with many others in other states.  But even as he opines as a New Yorker, he is Beltway Republican through and through.  In this column, he talks about how reporting on Prez campaigns has changed: used to hobnobbing with the candidates themselves, he now studies the people (you know, the ones that actually vote and to whom elections are not just an intellectual curiousity) that show up to the events to hear the candidates.  Given that the “Johnny on the spot” report was from South Carolina, he also spent a fair amount of time critiquing the candidate.

But this is emblematic of what is wrong with the Republican Establishment:

I was also struck, as in New Hampshire and Iowa, by the mood of this year’s rallies. Republican audiences this year want a restoration. America once had strong values, they believe, but we have gone astray. We’ve got to go back and rediscover what we had. Heads nod enthusiastically every time a candidate touches this theme.

I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.

Oh, so right he is – that “icky stuff”, the stuff that speaks of the heart,Values, is just so retro! Er, no, he’s dead nuts on wrong.

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Data Point – Yeah, those Republicans have certainly slowed down spending, eh?

“What cannot go on, won’t” It shows that the Republican takeover in the House has not had a net downward trend – we still are spending too much as the deficit spending continues.  It also shows that Republicans have worked (effectively) alongside Democrats in never really slowing the rise of spending previous to 2010 either. … Read more

Dunbarton Gets a New Police Chief

“I decided that if the police couldn’t catch the gangsters, I’d create a fellow who could.” —Chester Gould The Town of Dunbarton welcomed the arrival of Daniel Sklut as its’ new Police Chief.  I wish him well, best of luck and success in his service to Dunbarton residents. Being a police chief in New Hampshire … Read more

Glen Reynolds (“Instapundit”) interviews Mark Levin on his new book: Ameritopia

“Author and radio host Mark Levin joins Glenn Reynolds to discuss the utopian dystopia. Levin wants to know why students are learning about utopian beliefs and not about great philosophers like John Locke? Do utopian visions depend invariably on a totalitarian government? Could Obama’s rainbow to paradise really deliver a tyrannical state? Find out.”   … Read more

Notable Quote – US Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)

“I believe in compromise when both parties have similar goals in mind, but today, the goals of the Democratic and Republican parties are at polar opposites. On one hand, you have a party pushing for more dependence and collectivist, big-government policies, and on the other hand, you have a party that wants more freedom and … Read more

Brief thought on the opening of the CNN Prez Debate tonite

I haven’t looked for it yet, but I can guarantee that there will be clips aplenty of how Newt Gingrich unloaded on the prepared, “barely tabloid level” question that CNN host John King tried to bait him with the story / interview of his ex-wife and the subject of open marriage.  You just KNEW that … Read more

Phyllis Woods? Yeah, for sure. Too bad it isn’t going to happen…

I thought that Phyllis Woods might run for re-election as Republican Committeewoman from NH.  I guess not; she just announced that she will not be:

I’m writing today to let you know that I will not seek another term as National Committeewoman. I will, of course, continue to be active in this role for the remainder of my term which ends on September 1st.  Although I originally intended to only serve these five years, at the urging of others I carefully considered another run. While I have enjoyed serving as your representative on the Republican National Committee, in the end I decided to give someone else an opportunity to serve in this position.

It has been a pleasure to get to know volunteers, committee members, and grassroots activists throughout the state.  We have so many dedicated party members who work tirelessly to elect and support our Republican candidates and I have been proud to bring that message back to the RNC.

We continue to enjoy the special honor of holding the first in the nation primary; a process that allows our voters the exclusive benefit of meeting and vetting our candidates on a personal level as they engage in the retail politics that has served our candidates and our country so well. I will continue my work to preserve our primary as a member of the RNC Rules Committee until the end of my term.

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Not Just Running Against Obama

John Nolte at Big Journalism makes a great point here.  One of the characteristics we must demand from the GOP candidate is an ability to take on the Liberal media.  The liberal media is the 10th man on the ball field.  A big, hulking, unavoidable, powerhouse of left-wing narrative fueling adrenaline that cannot be avoided.  No matter how hard we try, some people still watch, listen, and believe what those morons have to say about Republicans, and issues, and ignore what they will not say about Democrats.  If the nominee is not prepared or capable of going toe-to-toe with the palace guards  they had better get capable or regardless of how good they would be if elected they’ll get McCained and we’ll get four more years of Obama.

While I am still holding out hope that someone else might enter the race, until such time there is only one candidate willing and able to fight that war.  It’s this guy.

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Data Point – Public vs Private pension contribution ratios

And the Public Sector union still haven’t a clue why taxpayers (the Private Sector) is upset at the lack of “equity” for retirement plans?  All one has to do is look at the absolute difference in the ratios.  They always yammer about “fairness”, except it seems, when the fairness tilts way to their side… (H/T: … Read more

Phyllis Woods? Yeah, for sure.

From Distaso: WILL PHYLLIS RUN? Long-time Republican National Committeewoman Phyllis Woods told the state Republican Party executive committee on Monday night that she’ll decide within the next several days whether to run for a second full-term in the post. Keene businesswoman and former Cheshire County Republican Chair Juliana Bergeron announced during the weekend that she … Read more

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