January 30, 2013

TOWNHALL

Cruz to Banks Being Bullied by Emanuel Over Guns: Come to Texas

by Katie Pavlich 

January 29, 2013

Late last week, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel sent letters to the CEOs of Bank of America and TD Bank Group urging them to cut off business with gun manufacturers. Both banks operate out of Chicago. Now, freshman Senator Ted Cruz has sent a letter of his own to the same CEOs urging them to do more business in Texas, away from the bully tactics of Chicago.

To the CEOs of Bank of America and TD Bank Group, it has recently been reported that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel sent each of you letters urging that you threaten to cease transacting business with American firearm manufacturers Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co.

Both of your companies do considerable business in the City of Chicago, and you may be understandably concerned that there are risks to refusing to comply with the demands of a politicians who has earned the nickname, "The Godfather."

In Texas, we have a  more modest view of government.

We do not accept that notion that government officials should behave as bullies, trying to harass or pressure private companies into enlisting in a political lobbying campaign. And we subscribe to the notion, quaint in some quarters, that private companies don't work for elected officials; elected officials work for private citizens.

In light of the reception you have received in the Windy City, please know that Texas would certainly welcome more of your business and the jobs you create. Texans value jobs and value freedom and over 1000 people a day are moving to Texas (often from cities like Chicago), because Texas is where the jobs are.

If I can be of assistance in that regard, please do not hesitate to call.

Cruz cc'ed Emanuel on the letter and thanked Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co. for their commitment to the Second Amendment.

Read more: http://goo.gl/mBEFT

A Conservative Warrior with a true backbone!  Click ^^pic^^ to read Ted's letter

REDSTATE

Rick Snyder mousetraps Michigan Right To Work opponents

by Moe Lane

January 29, 2013

Hey, do you want to see what it looks like to have your planned judicial delaying tactics trip, fall, and face-plant before it even clears the door?

…Yeah, sorry about the metaphor, but sometimes the convoluted ones are really the only ones that fit. Case in point:

Opponents of the state’s new right-to-work law promised a challenge of the controversial bill that passed the lame-duck Legislature in December. 

But those challenges may become a moot point since Gov. Rick Snyder asked the Michigan Supreme Court on Monday to review the bill and determine whether it passes constitutional muster.

What was going to happen was that labor reform opponents were going to judicial shop until they found a tame judge ready and willing to pass a temporary injunction on the law until it… reached the Michigan Supreme Court. Governor Snyder, knowing this perfectly well, is simply going to move the process along – secure in the knowledge that Right-To-Work has passed muster in the courts time and again, and perhaps even more secure in the knowledge that the Michigan Supreme Court has a comfortable Republican majority, thanks to Democratic MI Supreme Court judge Diane Hathaway’s recent resignation in the face of charges of real estate fraud. Hence, the short-circuiting; the sooner this all gets resolved, the better.

Anyway, go read the Detroit Free Press article: it’s got some awesomely cranky Democrats being quoted in it. Apparently they don’t like it when Republicans are too busy to indulge the Left in its usual judicial Kabuki theater… but, honestly: jumping the queue to the Supreme Court is a perfectly-reasonable response to make to what is often a very childish, and always predictable, strategy by Democrats. If the Democrats don’t like that, then maybe they shouldn’t try to quick-draw an injunction every time they lose an important vote…

Read more: http://goo.gl/gnr5x

Right to Work States

DAILY CALLER

How politicians are planning the return of taxation without representation

by Christopher Bedford

January 30, 2013

It’s been nearly 250 years since the king passed his Stamp Act to pay for all that royal spending, and nearly 240 years since gramps found that generally Intolerable and sent the British running. But the issue is not dead. On the contrary, legislators are again actively attempting to pass what is effectively taxation without representation, and far from being a distant king in England, the villains today are both Democratic and Republican lawmakers from Washington to Tennessee.

That’s right: Taxation without representation is the situation we may find ourselves in soon if the states get the feds to pass their Internet tax law. And stop right there! Because before anyone says Internet taxes are boring, reread the first graph of this riot; and also recall that stamps and tea are way more boring than the Internet, but that didn’t stop grandpa from dressing up in war paint and bashing things up over them.

So in the vein of old Paul Revere, we’re here to spread the alarm and lay out exactly what it is they’re scheming.

How they usually steal money

Typically, politicians confiscate Americans’ money through an origin-based system — essentially, one based on physical presence. So, if we drive to Virginia to buy a book, we pay the sales tax in Virginia and no one asks us where we’re going to read that book. And if we live in a home in Maryland, we pay property taxes and the rest in Maryland. And if we own a business in Washington, D.C., we pay a whole slew of other taxes in Washington, D.C.

While there are plenty of overly complicated deviations from this basic rule, by and large, physical presence is the anchor. This is really, really important, because it keeps the tax man in check: Virginia doesn’t want to make it too expensive to buy a book in Virginia; Maryland doesn’t want to make it too expensive to live in Maryland (plus the homeowner can vote there); and D.C. doesn’t want to make it too difficult to operate a business in D.C.

These are the checks and balances that generally stop the greedy tax man from fleecing the people he relies on. Allowing for the precedent of the 50 states to tax beyond their borders is dangerous as hell, not only to our wallets but to the very way people operate in this country.

But so far, we’ve been talking about physically present, brick & mortar things. So what about the Internet?

How the schemers want to steal (more) money

What the schemers want to do is tax transactions that take place on the Internet. Basically, states want to tax Internet imports. So if we want to sell something on eBay to a buyer in Florida, Florida wants to tax us, even though we have no property, physical presence or political representation in Florida. And if we tell Florida to take a hike, we have to leave the comforts of home and fight that in court in Florida.

All of this, of course, is in the interest of “fairness.” See, legislators point out that Internet businesses should not be able to dodge the taxes that brick & mortar businesses pay every day. But since “fairness” is almost always a code word for an incredibly stupid government idea, the major proposal to fix this is a lot more taxes on a lot more people with a lot less accountability.

Now, the real problem with this is when a state can tax people who have no property, physical presence or political representation in them, that state then has zero incentive not to tax those people out of existence. In fact, making it harder for folks in our state to compete with folks in Florida could serve as an actual incentive for Florida to tax our business! That, friends, is a form of protectionism, and it’s something we’ve seen before.

We’ve seen it before because when states were allowed to engage in protectionist policies, they did. Little known fact: The U.S. Constitution is not the first constitution we had — it just worked a lot better than the first, known as the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles, Congress was powerless to regulate interstate commerce, leaving the states free to engage in trade wars with each other, which they did with great mirth while the Red Coats ran roughshod over the young country’s attempts to get its shit together. This, to say the least, was bad for American prosperity.

Fortunately, today, as the states fight to see who will get the plunder and who won’t, we have the modern Constitution, which gives Congress the power “To regulate commerce … among the several states.”

Read more: http://goo.gl/N1qjE

December 12, 2012

HUMAN EVENTS
The Winter of Conservative Discontent
by Pat Buchanan
December 11, 2012

As the white flag rises above Republican redoubts, offering a surrender on taxes, the mind goes back to what seemed a worse time for conservatives: December 1964.

Barry Goldwater had suffered a defeat not seen since Alf Landon. Republicans held less than one-third of the House and Senate and only 17 governorships. The Warren Court was remaking America.

In the arts, academic and entertainment communities, and national press corps, conservatives were rarely seen or heard. It was Liberalism’s Hour, with America awash in misty memories of Camelot and great expectations of the Great Society to come in 1965.

That year, however, saw escalation in Vietnam, campus protests, and civil disobedience against the war. That August, there exploded the worst race riot in memory in the Watts section of Los Angeles, with arson, looting, the beating of whites, and sniper attacks on cops and firemen.

A year after LBJ’s triumph, black militants and white radicals were savaging the Liberal Establishment from the left, while Gov. George Wallace had come north in 1964 to win a third of the vote in the major Democratic primaries with an assault from the populist right.

Below the surface, the Democratic Party was disintegrating on ethnic, cultural and political lines. Law and order and Vietnam were the issues. Richard Nixon would see the opening and seize the opportunity to dismantle FDR’s coalition and cobble together his New Majority.


Today, the GOP strength in the House, Senate and governorships is far greater than anything Republicans had in the 1960s. The difference is that, then, we could visualize a new majority of centrist Republicans, Goldwater conservatives, Northern Catholic ethnics and Southern Protestant Democrats.

And we could see the issues that might bring them into the tent: a new Supreme Court, law and order, peace with honor in Vietnam.

When the Liberal Establishment collapsed during the 1960s, unable to end the war in Vietnam or the war in the streets, national leadership passed to the party of Nixon and Ronald Reagan. From 1968 to 1988, the GOP won five of six presidential elections, two of them in 49-state landslides.

The crisis of the GOP today is demographic, cultural and political.

Demographically, people of color are nearing 40 percent of the U.S. population and 30 percent of the electorate. These folks — 85 to 90 percent of all immigrants, legal and illegal — are growing in number. And in 2012, people of color voted for Obama 4 to 1.


The GOP trump card — we are the party of Reagan, who led us to victory in the Cold War — ceased to work 20 years ago. Then, George H.W. Bush, a war hero who had presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of the Soviet Empire, the victor of Desert Storm, won 38 percent of the vote against a draft-evader named Bill Clinton.

Culturally, the causes of the 1960s’ revolutions — no-fault divorce, legalized drugs, “reproductive rights,” teenage access to birth control, gay rights and gay marriage — have either been embraced or become acceptable to most of America’s young.

As a result of the sexual revolution promoted by the counterculture of the 1960s, the dominant culture today, 40 percent of all births in the United States are now to single moms.

With no husband, these women look to government to help feed, house, educate, medicate and provide income support for themselves and their children. For sustenance and the survival of their families, they depend on that same Big Government that Republicans denounce at their rallies.

As to the GOP’s strongest appeal — we are the party that will cut taxes — half the country does not pay income taxes, and the GOP is about to surrender to Obama even on the tax front.

Republicans stand for bringing entitlements under control. But the primary beneficiaries of the big entitlements, Social Security and Medicare, are seniors, the party’s most reliable voting bloc.

On foreign policy, the most visible Republican spokesmen are Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Both were unhappy with the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. Both want to intervene in Syria and Iran.

What does America want? To come home and do our nation-building here in the United States.

The bedrock values of Reagan — work, family, faith — still hold an appeal for tens of millions. But the faith of our fathers is dying, the family is crumbling, and work is less desirable when the social welfare state offers a cushioned existence for life.

Conservatives need to rediscover what they wish to conserve and how, in a climate every bit as hostile as 1964 — then await the moment when the country turns again to an alternative.

As it will. For our economic course is unsustainable. And our regnant elite are more arrogant than the establishment of the 1960s, though less able to satisfy the clamors of their bawling constituencies for more and more from a country that is approaching an end of its tolerance and an inevitable crash.

Read more: http://goo.gl/Kn3sa

REDSTATE

Obama Uncensored & Unions Unleashed: Despite Violent Union Protests, Michigan Gets The Right-To-Work

December 11, 2012

Barely one week ago, the unthinkable was merely a rumor. However, yesterday, the unthinkable happened as Michigan became the 24th state in the nation to enact Right-to-Work legislation, giving workers the choice on whether to pay a union in their unionized workplaces or not. No longer will unions be able to have Michigan workers fired for refusing to pay union dues or fees.

To be sure, unions are not taking the assault on their financial coffers lying down.

As a result of Tuesday’s impending legislation, unions occupied Michigan’s state capitol on Tuesday, assaulting Steven Crowder who was standing near Americans for Prosperity’s pro-Right-to-Work tent before a union mob tore the tent down.

Here is footage shot from inside the tent as union protesters tore the tent down with people still inside:

While 82% of Michiganders are union free, as a sign of union displeasure, Teamsters boss Hoffa predicted that Michigan would now be torn apart in a “civil war” as union-bought Democrat Douglas Geiss predicted “there will be blood.”

Although unsuccessful, Barack Obama weighed into the Michigan fight on Monday–picking up the false union talking points as he bashed Right-to-Work laws to UAW workers at a Detroit plant.

“I’ve just got to say this,” Obama said at the Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in Michigan before a small crowd of workers. “What we shouldn’t be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions. We shouldn’t be doing that.

“You know, these so-called right-to-work laws, they don’t have to do with economics, they have everything to do with politics,” Obama added to applause and cheers from the crowd. “What they’re really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.”

To be clear: Right-to-Work legislation does not impede a union’s right to bargain for anything.

What Right-to-Work legislation does do, however, is strip unions of the ability to have workers fired through so-called “Union (income) Security” clauses if they refuse to pay union dues.

Prior to his re-election, Obama refused to weigh into state issues such as Michigan’s Right-to-Work fight.

• During the union siege on Wisconsin over Scott Walker’s collective bargaining reform, Obama was MIA.
• During Ohio’s attempt to reform its collective bargaining laws, Obama was similarly silent.
• Earlier this year, when Indiana became the nation’s 23rd Right-to-Work state, not a word was uttered by Obama.

Why?

Very simply, because Obama and his campaign needed to woo workers in Right-to-Work states like Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia in order to ensure his re-election.

Obama & Co. knew that Obama’s expressing opposition to Right-to-Work laws like that expressed on Monday would hinder his chances of winning Right-to-Work states on November 6th.

Now, with no elections to win in the future, Obama is unrestrained in showing just how far he may go working to appease his union bosses–and we should expect more of the same in the future.

As union bosses are now exploring their options to overturn Michigan’s new law, including by possible lawsuit, Michigan finally has a chance of shedding its well-deserved reputation of being a union-controlled bastion of job destruction.

Only time will tell if Michigan can overcome the union assaults that are sure to come.

Read more: http://goo.gl/Tk0Nx