Friday, December 3, 2010

The Rich Are Not Worred That Obama Will Not Come Through For Them.... AMNESTY SERVES THE RICH FIRST!

FORBES


Taxes
Richest 400 Earn More, Pay Lower Tax Rate
Janet Novack, 01.29.09, 5:00 PM ET

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The 400 highest-earning taxpayers in the U.S. reported a record $105 billion in total adjusted gross income in 2006, but they paid just $18 billion in tax, new Internal Revenue Service figures show. That works out to an average federal income tax bite of 17%--the lowest rate paid by the richest 400 during the 15-year period covered by the IRS statistics. The average federal tax bite on the top 400 was 30% in 1995 and 23% in 2002.
The new numbers are sure to add fuel to the debate over whether the Bush-era rate cuts for the wealthy, now set to expire Dec. 31, 2010, should be ended or extended.
The current top rate on long-term capital gains is 15%, and the top rate on ordinary income such as interest and salary is 35%. President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats favor moving those rates back to their Clinton-era levels of 20% and 39.6%, although the perilous state of the economy seems likely to delay any rate hike until 2010 or 2011.
The top 400 earners in 2006 reported an average adjusted gross income of $263 million, up 23% from $214 million in 2005. Even adjusted for inflation, the 2006 number set a new high. Calculated in 1990 dollars, it was $68 million, up from $25 million in 1996. In 2006, the minimum income needed to make the top 400 was $111 million, also a record in both nominal and inflation-adjusted dollars.
The IRS report demonstrates how valuable the low capital gains rate has been to the richest of the rich. In 2006, the top 400 realized $66 billion, or 63% of all their income, in net capital gains.
By contrast, Americans overall reported less than 10% of their adjusted gross income as coming from capital gains. The richest 400 reported 1.3% of all adjusted gross income but booked 8.5% of all net capital gains.
The result: the top 5% of earners--those with an adjusted gross income of $153,542 or more--now pay a higher effective tax rate than the top 400.
In 2006, the top 5% paid an average of 21% of their adjusted gross income to Uncle Sam in income taxes. The top 1%, with an income of $388,806 or more, paid an average of 23%.
Social Security and Medicare taxes, which are insignificant to the richest 400, further raised the rate on the merely well paid. Indeed, investor Warren Buffett, the second-richest American, has decried the fact that he pays a lower percentage of his income in federal tax than do the folks who work for him in Berkshire Hathaway's home office.
The IRS points out that its 400 highest earners aren't the same folks from year to year. They also aren't the same individuals who appear on the net-worth based Forbes 400, although there is likely considerable overlap. (Making the Forbes 2006 list took a net worth of $1 billion.) IRS officials have acknowledged, however, that they picked the 400 number because of the Forbes list.

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STEVE LOPEZ / POINTS WEST
Income Gap More Like a Chasm


Steve LopezPoints WestApril 12, 2006In the last week I've written about the quick recovery of an illegal immigrant who was shot in the chest while landscaping a yard in Inglewood, and a U.S.-born high-rise security guard who makes so little money she can only afford a phone booth-size room in downtown Los Angeles. Some readers saw an obvious connection:The illegal immigrant and thousands like him have depressed wages for legal blue-collar residents like her. There's certainly some truth in that. If you've got an illegal workforce willing to work for peanuts, and employers happy to exploit their desperation, wages at the bottom end are likely to stay low.But let's forget illegal immigration for a moment, because if you ask me, we've got other economic problems in Southern California, and here's a thumbnail sketch:Despite a relatively healthy economy on paper, middle-income jobs are as scarce as intelligent screenplays, and that has more to do with the death of manufacturing than the influx of illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, you've got to be Eli Broad to afford a house in this cuckoo real estate market, and thousands of kids can't get through high school, let alone move on to a college and university system that isn't what it used to be.What this means is that we've got $20-million houses offering spectacular views down the hill and into the Third World. If not for the fact that it takes forever to get anywhere on the bus, we'd have a revolution on our hands. So the question I've been asking public officials and civic leaders is what we can do about the income gap that runs like a fault line through the land, dividing the haves from the help.I want to stand up and clap when Jack Kyser of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. lays some of the blame on the big-box planning model. He says we do not need — repeat, IX-NAY— any more Targets and Kmarts, or any other Coliseum-size discount joints.Not only do those places devour what little land is still available, but the jobs they provide are lousy, and it's not as if consumers have nowhere else to turn for tube socks and toilet paper. City officials would be smarter, Kyser says, if they used scarce land to build jobs in expected growth industries like technology, international trade and engineering.Kent Wong of UCLA's Center for Labor Research agrees that we need to keep trying to replace the kinds of jobs that were lost in Southern California when aerospace and manufacturing went belly up. But he also knows that the service economy is here to stay, and that means we have to find ways to elevate the standard of living for bellhops, janitors, security guards, nannies, maids, construction workers and waiters."We have a situation like we did in the 1930s, when auto manufacturing, mining and steel work were poverty jobs," Wong said. Unionization moved those workers into the middle class, he says, and it can push service employees in the same direction.Los Angeles County has 55,000 security guards, said Bruce Stenslie of the Los Angeles Workforce Investment Board."If you could move them from $8.50 an hour to $10.50, $11, $12, with health benefits," as Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union is trying to do with security guards, "you'd have an enormous impact on the economy," he said.If you hear a sucking sound, it's mass hyperventilating by the fat and happy building and business owners who employ the security guards. But before you shed too many tears for the captains of industry, consider the billions of dollars in corporate welfare shelled out each year across the land, not to mention congressional largesse on offshore flimflam and other tax shelters and loopholes.Beyond that, a living wage translates into more people contributing and fewer people on the dole.Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office estimated Tuesday that if security guards were better trained — as they should be in the post-9/11 era — and were paid even as much as unionized janitors, it could pump $100 million a year into South Los Angeles, where many security officers live.So why can't the leaders of Greater Los Angeles work together on some of these ideas?Because it would break the long and proud tradition of self-interest and isolation.Dan Flaming of the Economic Roundtable said the public entities involved — transit, port, even economic development agencies — are incapable of "chewing gum and walking at the same time."..................................................................................................................................................................................

DYNAMIC OF THE MEXICAN INVASION..... DOWNWARD PRESSURE ON WAGESHe recommended, among other things, a crackdown on "predatory work conditions," putting city and county prosecutors to work collecting back wages from underground employers and enforcing labor laws.
......................................................................................................................................................................................And, as Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti said, we need to be thinking not just about today's labor force, but about the next generation of workers."We don't have a jobs gap," he said. "We have a skills gap."

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CEO pay in US continues its relentless climb in 2005

by Joe Kay 12 April 2006

Few things expose the real character of American society and politics more clearly than the extraordinary and ever-increasing level of inequality, the accumulation of vast, almost incomprehensible, sums of wealth in the hands of relatively small group of people. The United States is a country in which the entire corporate and political structure is dominated by one overarching drive: the personal enrichment of a narrow oligarchy.
A glimpse of this state of affairs can be found in several recent surveys of compensation for chief executive officers at major US corporations. These CEOs are a subset of the wealthiest layer of the American population, and they perform a critical function—they ensure that the corporations they manage are operated in the interests of the major investors that compose the American ruling elite. For this service they are handsomely rewarded.
The reports only measure CEO compensation, neglecting other sources of wealth accumulation such as individual investment portfolios. Nevertheless, the figures reveal that a truly staggering level of social resources is being channeled into the pockets of these individuals.
USA Today published its annual report on CEO pay April 10, based on data collected by eComp Data Services. The analysis included a chart of the compensation doled out to chief executives at 240 of the country’s largest companies, where total compensation included direct salary, bonuses, incentives, gains from exercised stock options, and the value of newly issued stock options. Not all top companies are included in the survey. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times published separate analyses of the figures.
The newspaper found that six of these CEOs took home over $100 million in 2005. At the top of the list was Richard Fairbank, the chairman and CEO of Capital One Financial, which recently announced plans for an acquisition of North Fork Bancorporation, part of a general consolidation in the banking sector. Fairbank exercised stock options that brought him nearly $250 million, giving him a total compensation of $280 million. “His personal haul,” USA Today noted, “exceeded the annual profits of more than 550 Fortune 1000 companies, including Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Reebok and Pier 1.”
Capital One’s acquisition of North Fork created a stir of controversy last month when it was revealed that the head of North Fork, John Kanas, will get a $135 million payout if the deal goes through, including $44 million to reimburse Kanas for personal income taxes. All told, top executives at North Fork will receive in the neighborhood of $350 million as a result of being bought up by Capital One.
The other executives at large companies breaking the $100 million mark were KB Home’s Bruch Karatz ($164 million), Cendant’s Harry Silverman ($133 million), Lehman Brothers’ R.S. Fuld Jr. ($119 million), Genentech’s Arthur Levinson ($109 million) and Occidental Petroleum’s Ray Irani ($106 million).
KB Home is a home building company and Cendant is a real estate services company. Both companies have benefited from the housing market bubble. Lehman Brothers is an investment bank, whose earnings like many of the top investment banks have been up as a consequence of intensified merger activity, including the Capital One deal and the rapid consolidation of the telecommunications sector—a process that has resulted in the wiping out of thousands of jobs. Irani’s earnings at Occidental reflect the extraordinarily high compensation handed out to executives at oil and energy companies.
Nine more chief executives among the companies surveyed received over $50 million last year, while 131 received over $10 million. All told, the 240 executives included in the USA Today summary of large companies took home a total of over $4.5 billion dollars.

The paper noted that “median 2005 pay among chief executives running most of the nation’s 100 largest companies soared 25 percent to $17.9 million, dwarfing the 3.1 percent average gain by typical American workers.”
A few of the top earners were not included among the largest companies. These included the CEO of Analog Devices, Jerald Fishman, “who cashed out $144.7 million from his deferred compensation plan and made another $4.3 million in salary, bonus and options gains,” the newspaper reported. Perhaps the executive with the highest income was Google’s head of global sales, Omid Korestani, who exercised stock options giving him a massive $288 million.
In general, stock options have become an increasingly lucrative means by which executives have enriched themselves. A stock option allows the recipient to buy a stock at some preset price at a future date of his choosing (after a set period has elapsed). If the actual value of the stock at the time is above the preset price, the stock can be bought at the lower price and sold at the higher to yield a quick profit. The aim of this form of compensation is quite simple: it creates a personal incentive for executives to boost the short-term value of their company’s stock.
A previous study from the Wall Street Journal, published March 15, found that executives at the 150 biggest companies in Silicon Valley (California’s technology center) took home $1.55 billion by exercising stock options in 2004, up 50 percent from 2003 and 177 percent from 2002. The 2005 figure is even higher, and represents a recovery after a sharp drop in stock option compensation following the stock market collapse in 2001.
In its study using slightly different figures, the New York Times found that mean CEO pay at 200 large companies increased 27 percent in 2005, to $11.3 million. The Times noted that CEO pay at big companies is more than 170 times average worker pay. In fact, this is a major underestimation. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicating an average salary of about $28,000 for a production worker, these CEOs earn on the order of 400 times the pay of ordinary Americans.
While pay for CEOs is rising by double-digit percentage points every year, wages for average workers are falling behind inflation, meaning that real wages are declining. The argument is often advanced that companies cannot afford to pay high wages or benefits to workers—who can be replaced with workers in lower wage countries—even as tens of millions of dollars are routinely doled out to top executives, whose skills are supposedly irreplaceable. Treasury Secretary John Snow recently explicitly defended the pay of CEOs on the basis that their salaries were the product of efficient market forces of supply and demand. “In an aggregate sense,” he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published March 20, “it reflects the marginal productivity of CEOs.”
What is really involved, however, is not differential compensation based on the value added to the company, but rather a massive transfer of wealth from the bulk of the population into the hands of the ruling elite. To keep investors happy, executives oversee job cuts and cost reductions, and if they are successful, stock prices soar and the executives themselves reap the rewards.
The extraordinary rise in CEO pay is part of a long-term trend in which management of major US companies has been increasingly subordinated to the immediate financial interests of Wall Street and the major investors. When profit rates in the United States began to decline in the 1970s, an attempt was made to counteract this tendency with CEOs tasked with pushing through job, wage and benefit costs in order to boost earnings. The trend continues today with individuals such as Delphi’s CEO Robert Miller, who was hired explicitly to implement massive cuts in labor costs to the detriment of tens of thousands of workers.
Of course, the link between stock price and CEO pay is not always exact, with some executives receiving large bonuses while their company’s stock flounders. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 18 that many companies backdate their stock option grants, so that the preset price for purchasing stock is lower than it would be otherwise, artificially increasing the payoff to executives. At the top of American corporations, there is a whole network of intersecting interests, in which members of company boards, who often are associated with other companies, and outside compensation consultants reward executives in exchange for particular benefits.

The focus on stock values and short-term earnings has created a situation in which the actions of executives often undermine the companies they oversee. A recent article, (“Value Destruction and Financial Reporting Decisions” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=871215) academics John Graham, Campbell Harvey and Shiva Rajgopal interviewed chief financial officers at major American companies and found that “the majority of firms are willing to sacrifice long-run economic value in order to deliver short-run earnings. Companies do this in response to intense pressure from the market to meet expectations, and to avoid the severe negative market reaction to not delivering.”
Tying executive pay to stock values has also created an incentive to manipulate accounting books to obscure financial difficulties. Companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and others that have collapsed into bankruptcy after accounting scandals in recent years are hardly unique. The executives at these companies made millions, and so long as the company stock price was soaring, the political and media establishment lauded them. Several now find themselves on the docket, but only after a lot of very wealthy people lost a lot of money.
The controlling interest of this very small layer of the population is the principal driving force behind government policies, both domestic and foreign. A recent analysis by the New York Times found that the Bush administration’s tax cuts on investment income will hand back an average of $500,000—more than most people will earn in 10 years—to individuals with incomes of $10 million or more.
An insight into the criminality and arrogance with which the US government carries out wars, assaults democratic rights and rips up the social gains of workers can only be gained through an understanding of the motivations and interests of America’s

Obama's HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP .... Our Open & Undefended Borders

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

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HISPANDERING BARACK OBAMA HAS INFESTED HIS ADMINISTRATION WITH LA RAZA PARTY MEMBERS! WHILE THIS CLOWN HAS DONE NOTHING FOR BLACK AMERICA, HE’S BENT OVER BACKWARDS DAILY FOR LA RAZA!

IT’S NOT THAT HE GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE POOR MEXICO EXPORTS TO TAKE OUR JOBS, FREE BIRTHING AND WELFARE, HE SIMPLY WANTS TO KEEP HIS CORPORATE PAYMASTERS HAPPY WITH DEPRESSED WAGES THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION CAUSES!



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OBAMA HAS AS MUCH CONTEMPT FOR OUR BORDERS, THE LAW, AND LEGALS AS THE TYPICAL MEXICAN!

OBAMA’S PLAN FOR STAGGERING UNEMPLOYMENT: more illegals!

“Obama recently told a group of Hispanic reporters at the White House that he was "less concerned with making criminals out of people who are simply looking for jobs" and that while he has extended 287g, it is being carried out under a "new set of priorities and rules."

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WHO ARE YOUR ENEMIES OBAMA? NOT YOUR WALL ST. BANKSTER DONORS! NOT THE BUSH SAUDIS WAR MACHINE, OR YOUR DONOR , BUSH WAR PROFITEER, DIANNE FEINSTEIN… Are only “legals” your enemy?

THE AMERICANS (LEGALS) IN ARIZONA, WHICH YOU HAVE ASSAULTED MAY HAVE A NOTION ON THAT TOPIC!

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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

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“PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”… does that mean assault the legals of Arizona that must fend off the Mexican invasion, occupation, growing criminal and welfare state, as well as Mex Drug cartels???

OBAMA TELLS ILLEGALS “PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”
Friends of ALIPAC,

Each day new reports come in from across the nation that our movement is surging and more incumbents, mostly Democrats, are about to fall on Election Day. Obama's approval ratings are falling to new lows as he makes highly inappropriate statements to Spanish language audiences asking illegal alien supporters to help him "punish our enemies."


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WHAT DOES THE DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY HAVE TO DO WITH HANDING ILLEGALS MORE WELFARE IN THE FORM OF REDUCED EDUCATIONAL FEES? SIMPLE! OBAMA HAS TURNED THIS AGENCY INTO THE DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP!!!

OBAMA AND PELOSI BOTH VOWED THE WALL WILL NEVER BE BUILT AS THE MEX TERRORISM SWARMING OUR BORDERS WORSENS DAILY!

OBAMA SQUANDERS BILLIONS OVER IN MUSLIM LAND SERVICING HIS SAUDIS PALS LIKE BUSH, AND THEN LEAVES OUR BORDER WIDE OPEN, AND NO LAW ENFORCED THAT MIGHT ANNOY THE STAGGERING NUMBER OF ILLEGALS NOW OPENLY VOTING!



Napolitano Drums for Dream Act
By JULIA PRESTON
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called on Congress on Thursday to pass a bill granting legal status to thousands of illegal immigrant students, saying it would help immigration authorities focus their resources on deporting dangerous criminals. In a telephone call organized by the White House, Ms. Napolitano told reporters that the students who would benefit “have no fault for being here in the United States” because they were brought here as children. “No one who poses a threat to public safety will be able to adjust their immigration status,” she said, under a revised version of the bill, known as the Dream Act, which was introduced Tuesday. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a Republican who is a leading opponent, said he would resist it “with every strength and every ability that I have.”

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR


Janet Napolitano halts funding for virtual border fence
The virtual border fence was supposed to revolutionize US-Mexico border security. But delays and glitches led Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to freeze its funding Wednesday.
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By Daniel B. Wood, Staff writer
posted March 17, 2010 at 5:07 pm EDT
Los Angeles —
In May 2006, President George W. Bush touted the SBInet project as “the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history.” The proposed "virtual border fence" along the US-Mexican border was to be a string of towers that would use cameras, radar, and ground sensors to see who was coming across in real time.
Now the project, which spent $2.4 billion between 2005 and 2009, has hit so many snags that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is freezing its funding.
“Not only do we have an obligation to secure our borders, we have a responsibility to do so in the most cost-effective way possible,” wrote DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in a press release Tuesday. “The system of sensors and cameras along the Southwest border known as SBInet has been plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines.”
In early trials, technical problems and other snafus led to media reports that DHS and the Boeing Co., which held contracts to build two sections of the high-tech fence, might mothball the project.
Problems included software glitches, camera images affected by wind and rain, and radar that had trouble distinguishing sagebrush from camping migrants or animals.
Boeing officials admitted that the effort had been more challenging than they anticipated. The project, which was supposed to be handed over to the US Border Patrol in June 2007 was not accepted until December. At a congressional hearing, Richard Stana, Homeland Security and Justice Director for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that the first phase of the project "did not fully meet the user needs."
A shift in funding
Now – reportedly two days before the release of a GAO report that was said to criticize the project – Ms. Napolitano says that DHS will shift the funding.
It will redeploy $50 million of Recovery Act funding originally allocated to "commercially available security technology along the Southwest border, including mobile surveillance, thermal imaging devices, ultra-light detection, backscatter units, mobile radios, camera, and laptops for pursuit vehicles, and remote video surveillance system enhancements,” Napolitano’s statement said.
Critics of the virtual border fence project have been quick to respond.
“It’s a good thing they have finally acknowledged the obvious, that SBInet is a failure, and they are going to evaluate it,” says T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a professional labor union representing more than 17,000 US Border Patrol agents and support staff.
Mr. Bonner thinks that DHS needs to examine the entire premise of using technology at the border.
THE REAL OBAMA HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP FOR “UNREGISTERED VOTERS”:
“WE ALREADY DETECT MORE TRAFFIC OF ILLEGALS THAN WE CAN APPREHEND…”
“We already detect more traffic of illegals than we can apprehend, so we feel the money is better spent putting more boots on the ground than in looking at more technology," he says. "With more personnel cutbacks planned for next year, doesn’t this underline the need to rethink those?”
“DHS could have been more vigilant in oversight," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security told NPR Wednesday, "but I can tell you there is no stomach or energy on this committee for this project continuing in its present form.”
Changes at the border
Other experts say that Napolitano’s actions are related to recent incidents at the border.
"Despite evidence of funding constraints at the DHS, Napolitano's actions signal a more deliberate effort by the agency to crack down on illegal immigration at the US-Mexican border in the wake of the shootings that took place in Ciudad Juarez on Saturday, leaving three individuals with ties to the US consulate dead,” says Catherine Wilson, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, who studies immigration.
On Wednesday, the State Department issued an advisory for US citizens traveling in Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey, and Matamoros, and has authorized the departure of family members of US government personnel in these areas, she notes.
The main question the public should be asking about a virtual border fence is whether the DHS is fully aware of the long-term performance of the security technologies involved, Dr. Wilson and others say.
“Will they, in fact, be more cost-effective than those technologies used in the past?" she asks. "Is this a good use of Recovery Act funding?"
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Napolitano has repeatedly LIED to Congress about our border security, even as she and OBAMA HAVE REMOVED BORDER GUARDS, STOPPED THE BUILDING OF THE WALL, AND CUT FUNDING FOR ANY LOCAL GOVERNMENT FIGHTING THE INVASION AND EVER EXPANDING MEXICAN WELFARE AND PRISON SYSTEM!

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Napolitano: Spillover Violence in Arizona is Mere “Perception”
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano played down the violence along the border, stating that “[Arizona] is a place where there is a perception that there is spillover violence.” (Webcast, April 27, 2010, emphasis added). Remarkably, Napolitano made the statement just seconds after she noted that the drug cartels “literally have fingertips that go into communities all over the nation” and that Phoenix has been the center of “battles” between drug cartel distributors. (Id.) Still, Secretary Napolitano seemed to dismiss the seriousness of the violence, insisting that “the plain fact of the matter is from a numbers perspective, the numbers at the border have never been better.” (Webcast, April 27, 2010).

During the hearing, Senators from both sides of the aisle expressed serious concern about increasing border violence. Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) said, “[W]e are experiencing historic levels of drug related violence that must be brought under control – families being murdered, law enforcement being murdered, officials being murdered, and brazen shoot outs.” (Webcast, April 27, 2010; See also Leahy’s Written Statement, April 27, 2010). Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) echoed his words: “The violence…is increasing and is a serious threat to law abiding people. In Arizona and other places along our southern border, the power of these drug cartels is very real. The power of the coyotes who bring people in illegally is very real, and it’s got to be confronted in a very serious way.” (Webcast, April 27, 2010). And when pressed by Senator Sessions about the need to help local law enforcement officials combat this violence, Napolitano -- who has been an outward critic of Arizona’s new immigration law -- responded, “[I]n my judgment, what we need to be doing is working with local law enforcement so that you have combined and leveraged federal resources with local. (Id.)

Napolitano’s comments before the Judiciary Committee came after a string of violence near the border involving U.S. citizens. Just 45 days earlier, drug cartels executed a gruesome murder of three people with ties to the U.S. Consulate in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez (FOX News, April 6, 2010); 36 days earlier her own department issued a safety alert to law enforcement officers in west Texas warning of retaliatory killings by Mexican “assassin teams” (See FAIR’s Legislative Update, April 12, 2010); and exactly one month prior, Arizona rancher Rob Krentz was murdered near the U.S.-Mexico border by a suspected illegal alien (See FAIR’s Legislative Update, April 5, 2010). Four days after the hearing, an Arizona sheriff’s deputy was ambushed and shot by illegal aliens with an AK-47 about 50 miles south of Phoenix. (The New York Times, May 1, 2010) The encounter led to a massive manhunt in which Arizona law enforcement deployed scores of officers and dispatched helicopters to search a 100 mile radius. (Id.)

Napolitano’s suggestion that the southwest border is more secure than ever was likely meant to lay the groundwork for a mass amnesty. In fact, her comments came in response to a question from Chairman Leahy in which he asked “Can we do both things? Secure our border, and have comprehensive immigration legislation?”(Webcast, April 27, 2010). Napolitano’s answer: “[C]omprehensive immigration reform should be in our sights.” (Id.).
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ACCORDING TO SENATOR LAMAR SMITH OF TEXAS, WHEN CHALLENGING SO- CALLED “HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIPS” LA RAZA JANET NAPOLITANO, AS TO WHY OUR BORDERS ARE WIDE OPEN TO NARCOMEX, OBAMA HAS CUT ENFORCEMENT BY MORE THAN 60% IN ALL AREAS.

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Obama soft on illegals enforcement

Arrests of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures released Wednesday. Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.

The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold.
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OBAMA HAS CONSISTENTLY BEEN ON JUDICIAL WATCH’S TEN MOST CORRUPT, ALONG WITH LA RAZA DEMS PELOSI, FEINSTEIN, AND HARRY REID.
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WHILE BARACK OBAMA GIVES HIMSELF A B+ (HIS BANKSTERS GAVE HIM THE GRADE) JUDICIAL WATCH’S GRADE IS A BIT MORE REALISTIC:
JUDICIAL WATCH.org
With trillion dollar bailouts, government-run healthcare, banks and car companies, ACORN corruption, attacks on conservative media, illegal alien amnesty, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors—this is the Obama legacy—and we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency!
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HOMELAND SECURITY?
Lou Dobbs Tonight
And there are some 800,000 gang members in this country: That’s more than the combined number of troops in our Army and Marine Corps. These gangs have become one of the principle ways to import and distribute drugs in the United States. Congressman David Reichert joins Lou to tell us why those gangs are growing larger and stronger, and why he’s introduced legislation to eliminate the top three international drug gangs.
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EVEN AS THE MEX DRUG CARTELS POUR OVER OUR BORDERS, OBAMA HAS TAKEN HUNDREDS MORE GUARD OFF SINCE SEPT 2009! AND THE OBAMA DECLARES “BORDER SECURITY” IS THE HALLMARK OF HIS PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP!
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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, September 28, 2009

And T.J. BONNER, president of the National Border Patrol Council, will weigh in on the federal government’s decision to pull nearly 400 agents from the U.S.-Mexican border. As always, Lou will take your calls to discuss the issues that matter most-and to get your thoughts on where America is headed.

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OBAMA, REID, PELOSI, FEINSTEIN, BOXER AND THE FINANCING WITH OUR TAX DOLLARS OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY OF LA RAZA FOR MEX SURPEMACY!
HARRY REID PUTS MONEY IN LA RAZA’S DIRTY HANDS!
25% OF THE POPULATION OF REID’S STATE ARE ILLEGALS.
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New Stealth Federal Funding Bill for La Raza
Which brings us to an extraordinary matter of some urgency. Several weeks before the White House and its Senate allies announced their big "breakthrough" legislation (S.1348), radicals in the House quietly introduced legislation to pump $5 million directly into La Raza next year — and $10 million per year for "each fiscal year thereafter."
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"This country belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!
H. R. 1999, entitled the Hope Fund Act of 2007, should truthfully be labeled the "Perpetual Funding of La Raza Radicals Act."
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“Through love of having children, we are going to take over.” AUGUSTIN CEBADA, BROWN BERETS, THE LA RAZA FASCIST PARTY

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The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is not only one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful militant organizations in the country, it is also notoriously racist and subversive. The group's name, "La Raza," means "The Race," by which they are referring to ethnic Mexicans, or more broadly to "hispanics" or "latinos." And it is quite clear from their decades of vitriolic rhetoric — both spoken and written — that the La Raza activists are trying to engender not only race consciousness amongst hispanic U.S. citizens and Mexican migrants, but also racial militancy and animosity toward "Gringo America."
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BECOME A BLOG FOLLOWER. FROM THE BLOG EMAIL, CUT, PASTE AND POST!
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Who Really Benefits From Obama's Staggering Duplicity, Corruption, and On Going Performances?

OBAMA, THE LIMP! HE PRETENDS HE DOESN’T WANT TO EXTEND THE BUSH TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY, ONE OF THE GREATEST COMPONENTS OF THIS NATION’S ECONOMY MELTDOWN, THEN HE GOES IN THE BACK ROOM TO PUSH HIS LA RAZA AGENDA FOR AMNESTY!
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FROM THE ARTICLE BELOW – Get on WSWS.org free NO-ADS E-NEWS!

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“What is coming is a windfall for the wealthy whose estimated value is $700 billion over 10 years, or $70 billion a year if the extension is for a shorter period of time.”
“Both parties represent that social layer in America that will benefit most from the tax cuts—the super-rich and the most privileged layers of the upper middle class—but the Democrats are compelled to hide their position behind a pretense of concern for working people and the unemployed.”
“More is involved here than the aggressiveness of the Republicans and the cowardice of the Democrats. The actual policy differences between the two parties are minimal. Both parties represent that social layer in America that will benefit most from the tax cuts—the super-rich and the most privileged layers of the upper middle class—but the Democrats are compelled to hide their position behind a pretense of concern for working people and the unemployed.”
“After weeks of avoiding the subject, leading up to the expiration of benefits Tuesday for some 800,000 workers, both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi staged cynical publicity stunts on Thursday morning to advertise their supposed concern for the unemployed.”

Obama, Congress negotiate tax cuts for the wealthy
By Patrick Martin
3 December 2010
The Obama administration has begun closed-door talks with congressional leaders of both parties on the extension of the Bush tax cuts, amid reports that a deal will likely be based on acceptance of the central Republican demand that tax cuts for the wealthy be continued without any income ceiling, either the $250,000 a year proposed by Obama or the $1 million suggested last month by Senate Democrats.
The Wall Street Journal described the talks as “the first step toward a deal this month that many strategists in both parties believe will temporarily extend current tax rates for all income levels.” The New York Times reported that “lawmakers said they could begin to see the contours of a potential outcome that would extend the Bush-era tax rates temporarily while giving Democrats some concessions on unemployment compensation….”
What is coming is a windfall for the wealthy whose estimated value is $700 billion over 10 years, or $70 billion a year if the extension is for a shorter period of time. This handout to the financial aristocracy may be packaged with a revival of extended unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, which the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership allowed to expire on November 30.
The social necessity for extended benefits was underscored by the release of Labor Department figures on new claims for unemployment benefits, which jumped 26,000 last week to a total of 456,000. New jobless claims have been averaging 450,000 a week throughout 2010, well above the level of 400,000 that US economists cite as indicating a stable, rather than contracting, labor market.
After weeks of avoiding the subject, leading up to the expiration of benefits Tuesday for some 800,000 workers, both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi staged cynical publicity stunts on Thursday morning to advertise their supposed concern for the unemployed.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report warning that if Congress does not act to restore the extended benefits, a total of 2 million workers will lose coverage by the end of December and a total of 7 million workers will be cut off by November 2011. The result will be a further slowdown in the US economy and the loss of another 800,000 jobs.
In the House of Representatives, the outgoing Democratic majority leadership forced a vote Thursday afternoon on a bill that would extend the Bush tax cuts for the 98 percent of families with incomes below the $250,000 mark. The bill narrowly survived a procedural vote in the morning, passing 213 to 203, with nearly 30 conservative Democrats voting against it. The bill itself was adopted later in the day by a larger margin, 234 to 188.
Pelosi tied the tax cut vote to the expiration of unemployment benefits, lambasting the Republicans for supporting $700 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy based on further federal borrowing, while adopting the opposite standard for the extended unemployment benefits. “When it comes to the unemployment insurance, and just the renewal we want to have would cost $18 billion,” she said, “they’re saying that has to be paid for. We have to pay for unemployment insurance, we don’t have to pay for tax cuts for the rich.”
Pelosi’s deputy, outgoing Majority Whip Steny Hoyer, chimed in: “I believe that passing unemployment insurance is a moral imperative, not a political deal.”
Neither Pelosi nor Hoyer bothered to explain why, given the top-heavy Democratic majority in the outgoing House, they were unable to pass a bill to continue extended unemployment benefits before the November 30 cutoff. The truth is that the Democrats deliberately allowed the program to expire so that its possible revival could be used to disguise their collusion with the Republicans on extending tax cuts for the wealthy.
The closed-door talks on the tax cut renewal were the only concrete decision taken at the much-publicized White House summit meeting Tuesday between Obama and his top aides and leading congressional Republicans and Democrats. The talks began the next day and continued into Thursday, with White House spokesmen saying they were making progress.
TIM GEITHNER, BUSH AND OBAMA’S ARCHITECT FOR BANKSTER BAILOUTS, NO-STRINGS WELFARE, AND NO REAL REGULATION!!!!
In naming Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Budget Director Jacob Lew to represent the administration in the talks—two figures identified, respectively, with the bailout of Wall Street and fiscal austerity—Obama sent a clear message of the kind of deal he was looking for.
Senate Democrats followed suit, naming Max Baucus, chairman of the finance committee and co-architect of the 2001 Bush tax cuts, as their representative. Congressman Chris Van Hollen, a key aide to Pelosi, represented House Democrats, while the Republicans were represented by Senator Jon Kyl, the minority whip, and Congressman Dave Camp, who will head the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in the incoming Congress.
The talks began with a blatant display of bad faith by the Republicans, as all 42 Republican senators signed a joint letter declaring they would block any legislation during the lame-duck session of Congress until the Senate took up bills to extend all the Bush tax cuts and fund government operations through the rest of the fiscal year.
The letter is remarkable both for its arrogance—42 out of 100 senators is a distinct minority, and could not dictate the agenda in an authentic democracy—and for its timing. It was made public shortly after the bipartisan summit at the White House, which ended with the usual rhetorical boilerplate about cooperation and civility.

THERE’S ONE THING OBAMA IS GOOD AT! CAPITULATION TO WALL ST. AND ALL WALL ST. INTERESTS! SINCE HE’S BEEN IN OFFICE HE HAS NOT ONCE STOOD UP FOR ANYTHING THAT DID NOT BENEFIT HIS BANKSTER DONORS OR ILLEGALS!!!

Senate Democrats complained that the Republican declaration amounted to an ultimatum, but the Obama administration immediately capitulated. The White House did not condemn the Republican maneuver and went ahead with the scheduled bipartisan talks. One top Democratic aide told Politico.com, “There is growing concern among congressional Democrats that the White House will cave early and without a fight on tax cuts for the middle class and job-creating proposals, and not get much in return.”
Republicans gloated, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissing the House vote on limiting the tax cut, saying, “It’s not going anywhere.” The bipartisan talks would agree on an across-the-board extension of the tax cuts, including the wealthy, he said. The only issue was “just how long that extension will be.” One of the most right-wing Republicans in the Senate, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, said he believed that Obama “has come around to the idea that taxes can’t be raised in a recession.”
POWER SHIFTED? DON’T YOU LOVE THE LITTLE PERFORMANCE OF OBAMA, AND HIS HAREM OF CORRUPTION, AS HE DANCES TO THE TUNES OF HIS WALL ST. PAYMASTERS?
The Los Angeles Times observed: “The Republican ultimatum also showed the extent to which power in Washington has shifted in the aftermath of the GOP rout in last month’s midterm elections. Even though newly elected Republicans do not take office until January, the GOP on Wednesday was confident in issuing its demands and united in its vow to employ a filibuster in the Senate to back them up. Meanwhile, Obama appeared unable to move them off their position or exact any sort of political price.”
EVEN AS THE DEMS WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE THEY DON’T WANT TO EXTEND BUSH’S TAX BENEFITS FOR THE RICH, THEY’RE WORKING ON YET ANOTHER AMNESTY DEVICE TO PUT EVEN MORE ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS, WELFARE, OR REDUCED FEES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. THE DUPLICITY OF THIS WHITE HOUSE AND CONGRESS IS STAGGERING!

More is involved here than the aggressiveness of the Republicans and the cowardice of the Democrats. The actual policy differences between the two parties are minimal. Both parties represent that social layer in America that will benefit most from the tax cuts—the super-rich and the most privileged layers of the upper middle class—but the Democrats are compelled to hide their position behind a pretense of concern for working people and the unemployed.
This pretended sympathy is essential for the Democratic Party to play its designated role for the American ruling class as a bulwark against any challenge to its class domination from below. This pretense is wearing thin, however, and will be further undermined by what the New York Times described, in a considerable understatement, as “the prospect of White House and Congressional Democrats conceding on extending the tax cuts for affluent Americans.”

ONE MONTH AGO, OBAMA AND HIS LA RAZA DEMS, PELOSI, REID, FEINSTEIN, AND BOXER WERE PUSHING FOR SOCIAL SECURITY FOR ILLEGALS, EVEN AS THEY WERE CUTTING IT FOR LEGALS AND GOING OUT TO BORROW THAT!

The social position of the Democrats is most clearly expressed in their response to the proposals from the bipartisan commission appointed by Obama to make recommendations on cutting the federal budget deficit. The final vote of the 18-member panel is set for Friday, but five of the six members selected by Obama have endorsed the report of the two chairmen, Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, which calls for sweeping cuts in entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, as well as tax increases for middle-income working people.
Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the lone Senate liberal on the panel, commented favorably on the panel report, although he may vote against it. He declared one of the most onerous of the cuts proposed by the chairmen, an increase in the age of eligibility for Social Security to 69 by 2075, to be “acceptable to me.” Raising the retirement age was “not radical,” he said. “These things are sensible and we’ve got to accept sensible alternatives to move forward, on the left and on the right.”
Another Senate Democrat on the commission, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, enthusiastically endorsed the chairmen’s report. He cited the danger of a mushrooming federal deficit under conditions of a global financial crisis. “Anyone watching the spreading debt crisis in Europe over the last few days, in Ireland, Portugal and Spain, understands the threat we face is real,” he said. “We can’t afford to wait until the crisis is upon us.”
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April 1, 2009
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism
By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ
THE Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.
Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.
Let’s take a moment to remember what caused this mess in the first place. Banks got themselves, and our economy, into trouble by overleveraging — that is, using relatively little capital of their own, they borrowed heavily to buy extremely risky real estate assets. In the process, they used overly complex instruments like collateralized debt obligations.
In theory, the administration’s plan is based on letting the market determine the prices of the banks’ “toxic assets” — including outstanding house loans and securities based on those loans. The reality, though, is that the market will not be pricing the toxic assets themselves, but options on those assets.
The two have little to do with each other. The government plan in effect involves insuring almost all losses. Since the private investors are spared most losses, then they primarily “value” their potential gains. This is exactly the same as being given an option.
Consider an asset that has a 50-50 chance of being worth either zero or $200 in a year’s time. The average “value” of the asset is $100. Ignoring interest, this is what the asset would sell for in a competitive market. It is what the asset is “worth.” Under the plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the government would provide about 92 percent of the money to buy the asset but would stand to receive only 50 percent of any gains, and would absorb almost all of the losses. Some partnership!
Assume that one of the public-private partnerships the Treasury has promised to create is willing to pay $150 for the asset. That’s 50 percent more than its true value, and the bank is more than happy to sell. So the private partner puts up $12, and the government supplies the rest — $12 in “equity” plus $126 in the form of a guaranteed loan.
If, in a year’s time, it turns out that the true value of the asset is zero, the private partner loses the $12, and the government loses $138. If the true value is $200, the government and the private partner split the $74 that’s left over after paying back the $126 loan. In that rosy scenario, the private partner more than triples his $12 investment. But the taxpayer, having risked $138, gains a mere $37.
Even in an imperfect market, one shouldn’t confuse the value of an asset with the value of the upside option on that asset.
But Americans are likely to lose even more than these calculations suggest, because of an effect called adverse selection. The banks get to choose the loans and securities that they want to sell. They will want to sell the worst assets, and especially the assets that they think the market overestimates (and thus is willing to pay too much for).
What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.
So what is the appeal of a proposal like this? Perhaps it’s the kind of Rube Goldberg device that Wall Street loves — clever, complex and nontransparent, allowing huge transfers of wealth to the financial markets. It has allowed the administration to avoid going back to Congress to ask for the money needed to fix our banks, and it provided a way to avoid nationalization.
But we are already suffering from a crisis of confidence. When the high costs of the administration’s plan become apparent, confidence will be eroded further. At that point the task of recreating a vibrant financial sector, and resuscitating the economy, will be even harder.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1997, was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2001.
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GET THIS BOOK!

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Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses

BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY


Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.
Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Praise for Obamanomics
“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author
“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama
“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul
“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History
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• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596986123
• ISBN-13: 978-1596986121