Cover Your Eyes for the Final Obamafication of America

John Ransom / Townhall Financial Editor

Oh, the irony.

There it was just above Democrat Illinois Gov. Quinn’s editorial pleading to make the state’s temporary income tax hike a permanent income tax hike, as if we could see that one coming.

You might remember that Illinois kind of went the “other” way a few years ago, hiking taxes on personal income 66 percent as a way of trying to get out of the de facto bankruptcy that politicians like Illinois Senator Barack Obama (Present!) had given the state.

Politicians and unions had combined in plan to grift taxpayers in a union pension scheme that was always going to blow up, whatever the economy did.

And so instead of cutting taxes to stimulate the economy, and get increased revenue for the state the honest way, the politicians-- the machine from which Obama was born—said “Screw ‘em: Let’s just make the taxpayers pay it and finally put the shovel to the economy.”

The tax hike was only going to be temporary they said.

It’s regrettable: “But what about the children, sniff, sniff?” They would starve if the state didn’t get more revenue.

I was a resident of Illinois for more than 15 years.

The tax hike dodge is an old one practiced by both Downstate Republicans and Cook County Democrats since well before I was born.

But this time it’s finally catching up with both parties.

Because above the fold, just above Gov. Quinn’s taxatorial pleading to make the income tax hikes permanent, was a compendium of statistics complied by the Chicago Tribune that stands as an indictment not just to tax hikes, but to Illinois, Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, Jesse Jacksons-- senior and junior-- anyone named Daley, practically any Illinois governor not indicted in my life time—we’ll call them unindicted co-conspirators-- and our current president of the United States (Present!) Barack “The-H-stands-for-Tax-Hike” Obama.

The list of statistics is a long recitation of how poorly Illinois has fared even in the worst economic recovery of the modern era.

Officially, therefore Illinois has become King of the Crap, Lord of the Flies, whatever.

In categories like business climate, unemployment, overall economic performance, and household income, the Tribune tells a doleful tale that is the logical extreme of Keynesian economics at it’s worst.

To keep the government running the state has had to completely gut the private sector.

In unemployment Illinois has gone from 9^th in the nation to 49^th-ish (or 56^th-ish depending on how many states you recognize): “The latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data — for January, seasonally adjusted — rank unemployment rates from a high of 9.2 percent in Rhode Island to a low of 2.6 percent in North Dakota,” says the Tribune. “At 8.7 percent, Illinois ties with Nevada for second-worst. Illinois now has 376,099 fewer nonfarm jobs than in January 2008 — a drop of 5.9 percent.”

And here’s a question for Illinoisans: How do you spend $14,000 per year, per student on K-12 education and not graduate the most prepared, highest scoring students in the history of the planet?

And it’s not fair saying that other states spend more.

For a class of 25 students, that’s $350,000 per year.

There are private prep schools that can graduate college ready students yearly for less.

Not surprisingly Illinois leads the nation in local governmental units with 6,963.

That’s a lot of union contracts.

Which of course is the real issue, isn’t it?

Illinois is run like an ATM for politicians and their pals while the taxpayers and citizens gets screwed.

But what once was just Illinois’ problem is now a problem for the whole country.

Because as a county under Barack “The-H-stands-for-Tax-Hike” Obama (Present!) we’re taking on the tone and coloration of the Land of Lincoln—and not the good parts.

Oh, the irony.

We voted for Hope and Change.

And we got Illinois.

It happens every time.

The Problem Is Liberalism, Not Racism

Star Parker / Townhall Columnist

 

When Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif, went off on Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis, for his remarks that “We have got a tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work,” the wrong part what she had to say got all the attention.

The big buzz that Congressional Black Caucus member Lee generated was her accusation that Ryan’s remarks were a “thinly veiled racial attack.”

But the part of her remarks I found most interesting was “…Mr. Ryan should step up and produce some legitimate proposals on how to tackle poverty and racial discrimination in America.”

Paul Ryan has been one of the most creative and courageous policy thinkers in Washington in recent years.

Ryan sat down with me for an interview shortly before he ran for Vice President in 2012 (the interview is on my organization’s website www.urbancure.org). His thoughtfulness and compassion came through loud and clear and he zeroed in on the core of a problem I have been talking and writing about for more than 20 years – government programs that not only do not solve problems but make problems worse.

I stepped into this whole business of public policy from my own experience with welfare. I saw that the welfare program, which operated in this country from the 1960’s until it was reformed in 1996, that required women to not work, not save, and not get married in order to qualify for their welfare checks was a most efficient mechanism to destroy family and perpetuate poverty.

So it should come as no surprise that single parent black households tripled as a percentage of all black households from the 1960’s to today.

Where Barbara Lee is right is that this is not about race. What it is about is liberalism.

The racial aspect comes into play in that black political leaders, like Congresswoman Lee, overwhelmingly embrace liberalism, progressivism, welfare statism – whatever you want to call it – that has failed and caused untold damage in the very communities they claim to want to help. And they refuse to ever learn. Their answer to every problem, despite prior experience, is more government, more taxpayer’s dollars.

When real reformers like Paul Ryan come along, they get branded racist.

In a column I wrote a couple years ago, I pointed out that the 41 member Congressional Black Caucus were uniformly Democrats, had a 100% reelection rates, and the average poverty rate in these Congressional Black Caucus districts was 20.3% and the average child poverty rate 28.8% - both well above national averages.

Economist Walter Williams has pointed out that, in America’s top 10 poorest cities with populations more than 250,000, “…for decades, all of them have been run by Democratic and presumably liberal administrations. Some of them – such as Detroit (now the largest municipal bankruptcy in the nation’s history), Buffalo, Newark, and Philadelphia, haven’t elected a Republican mayor for more than half a century. What’s more is that, in some cases for decades, the mayors of six of these high-poverty cities have been black Americans.”

Again, the point is not that the mayors of these cities are black. It is that they are liberals. And black politicians, like Congresswoman Barbara Lee, overwhelmingly are liberals, and they remain liberals, despite a long and consistent track record of failure.

When welfare was reformed, liberals like Barbara Lee fought it.

It is pure self-absorption for any interest group to think it is all about them. America is in real trouble today and we’re all in this together.

Ms. Lee talks about “code words.” Her code word is “racist”, which means someone, like Paul Ryan, who wants to make Americans of all backgrounds better off by giving them more freedom, more choice, more responsibility, and less government.

Kerry suggests defining Israel as “national homeland for Jews”

Robert Spencer  / Jihad Watch

 

Why exactly a “national homeland for Jews” would be acceptable to “Palestinian” Islamic supremacists in a way that “Jewish state” isn’t remains unclear, but the “Palestinians,” as maximalist and unilateral as ever, have already rejected the proposal, so we will probably never glimpse the arcane reasoning processes of the formidable Kerry.

“Report: Kerry suggests defining Israel as ‘national homeland for Jews,’” by Roi Kais for Ynet News, March 29 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

US Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to overcome the controversy surrounding the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state by changing the definition to “the national homeland of the Jews”, the London-based Arabic Al-Hayat newspaper reported Saturday morning.

The report, that quoted western diplomatic sources, noted that in exchange for Kerry’s initiative, the Palestinians would have to agree that the Palestinian capital would be established only in parts of East Jerusalem; it was further reported that the Palestinians have rejected the proposal.

A Palestinian source told the newspaper that the American side has expressed willingness to change the principle related to the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and make it a requisite in a permanent agreement, however the Palestinians declined.

According to the report, the Palestinian side tends to pull the framework agreement out of the deliberations of fear it will be the new basis for negotiations that weaken the rights of the Palestinians. On the other hand, the newspaper claimed, the Israeli side has non-publicly expressed great enthusiasm to keep the agreement in place.

Meanwhile, western diplomatic sources said that if the formulating of the agreement will flounder, Kerry’s plan is to extend negotiations until the end of the year.

It was further added that Kerry and his aide Martin Indyk updated Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed them that his government will collapse if the fourth round of Palestinian security prisoners release will be executed, since it includes 14 Arab-Israeli prisoners.

The two, according to the report, demanded that Abbas agrees to extend talks in order to convince Israel to free the prisoners, yet Abbas rejected the effort claiming he is unwilling to discuss any matter related to the negotiations before the prisoners are released.

“While Kerry works to achieve a framework agreement, Martin Indyk examines the grounds to continue negotiations in case the framework agreement fails,” Al-Hayat reported.

68,000 illegal aliens with criminal records caught and released

Obama policy weak on enforcement

By Stephen Dinan / The Washington Times

Bottom ofImmigration agents tried to deport only about a fourth of the cases they encountered in 2013, said a report being released Monday from the Center for Immigration Studies that shows just how much President Obama’s policies have cut down on potential enforcement.

 

Jessica Vaughan, the report’s author, called it a form of “catch and release.” She said agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement received more than 720,000 hits on immigrants who could be eligible for deportation but filed charges against fewer than 195,000 of them.

Of those let go, 68,000 had criminal convictions on their records. All told, more than 870,000 immigrants have been ordered removed from the U.S. but are defying the government and refusing to leave.

“These numbers confirm that interior enforcement has been anything but tough — that in fact, ICE is releasing more illegal aliens and more criminal aliens than they’re trying to remove,” said Ms. Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates a crackdown on immigration.

The numbers are being released as Mr. Obama comes under pressure to cut deportations even more.

In meetings with immigrant rights activists this month, Mr. Obama promised to devise more “humane” policies that would carve even more illegal immigrants out of deportation rules.

Democrats, looking to shift the pressure, announced a petition drive last week to try to force House Republicans to bring a broad bill legalizing most illegal immigrants to the chamber floor for a vote.

“The only opposition seems to be among House Republicans,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat.

Still, immigrant rights groups are targeting Democrats. One group has announced plans to demonstrate outside of Democratic Party offices across the country to demand that Mr. Obama halt deportations on a broader scale.

Two years ago, the president announced a policy granting tentative legal status to more than 500,000 young adult illegal immigrants. The Homeland Security Department also has issued several policy memos pushing most other illegal immigrants down the list of deportation priorities.

All of that has led to an overall drop in deportations by about 10 percent in 2013 to just under 370,000. Deportations are on pace for another 10 percent drop this year, to about 325,000.

Homeland Security officials say they are budgeted to deport about 400,000 immigrants a year.

Immigrant rights activists call that the deportation quota and say Mr. Obama has had to go beyond serious criminals and rank-and-file immigrants to boost his numbers.

However, Ms. Vaughan’s study suggests that ICE doesn’t even go after all of the criminals it encounters. In 2013, ICE agents reported coming across 193,000 immigrants with criminal records — more serious than traffic offenses — yet they tried to deport only 125,000.

She said that in Arizona, ICE agents are even releasing illegal immigrants convicted of identity theft.

“The preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that immigration enforcement in America has collapsed,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who has fought legalization efforts in Congress. “Even those with criminal convictions are being released. DHS is a department in crisis.”

An illegal immigrant’s chances of facing arrest and deportation proceedings often seem to depend on where they are caught.

Agents in the Los Angeles office released 81 percent of the immigrants they encountered. Down the road in San Diego, agents released only 5 percent, according to the report.

Ms. Vaughan said the ICE encounters weren’t random. In each case, there had been either a database hit or a specific lead that showed the immigrant may qualify for deportation — though in many cases, the investigation may have found they were not eligible for removal.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden may have tipped the administration’s hand on expanding the categories of those exempt from deportation. Speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce last week, he praised illegal immigrants as exemplary.

“I believe they’re already American citizens,” Mr. Biden said.

Some activists argue that breaking immigration laws and ignoring previous deportations shouldn’t be enough to get kicked out. They received backing last week when John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE, penned an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times arguing that those folks aren’t public safety threats and should be allowed to stay.

“To be sure, those who repeatedly cross our borders illegally or abscond from the immigration court bear culpability. However, making this population a priority detracts from ICE’s ability to track down and arrest the increasing number of much more serious public safety threats the agency identifies,” he wrote.

Op-ed: 

Selling out the Constitution...selling out America
By: Diane Sori

After a visit to Amsterdam to attend a G7 meeting to discuss how to punish Vladimir Putin for his 'supposed' nationalistic annexing of Crimea, and after attending a two-day Nuclear Security Summit in the Hague, Barack HUSSEIN Obama then visited Brussels (a city whose population is a shocking 40% muslim...guess he felt right at home there) where he cost the city $10.4 million for the additional 350 security people needed to keep him safe. And he brought with him an entourage of 900 people and three cargo planes carrying 45 vehicles...and God only knows how much that cost we taxpayers...all to stand before the EU and NATO summits to say that "Our Constitution is outdated and international law is supreme."

And knowing how much Obama loves his pen and phone, if he had his way he would render null and void the entire Constitution by Executive Order and do so in the blink of an eye.

You know it, I know it, and Obama knows we know it, yet he simply doesn't care that we do.

Now just imagine the press coverage if a Republican president had dared to utter those words...for as little media coverage as Obama's words have gotten from the liberal press since said almost one week ago, those words said by a Republican... any Republican...would be covered non-stop 24/7 ad-nauseum.

And while we all know that this most miserable of presidents has NO love for the Constitution... America's very foundation and law of our land...just know that if this man ever dared to try to negate the greatest document of freedom and human rights ever written, I truly hope he's prepared for what would happen, for as history has proven time and again NO country has ever changed its core law or governing system without civil war.

But then again civil war might just be Barack HUSSEIN Obama's ultimate goal.

"Our Constitution is outdated and international law is supreme." Words of a traitor said in Brussels that bears repeating once again for it must be known that the man who took an oath to "...preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” wants to sellout our Constitution...wants to sellout America...to UN globalists as he strives for 'We the People' to be governed by international law. But if Obama had bothered to pay attention to his lessons when he was in law school he would have learned that law is NOT law...whether domestic or international...unless the populace agrees to be governed by it. And Obama knows that 'We the People' can only be pushed so far when it comes to his trampling on our Constitution...as he can use the race card against us for only so long.

So as Obama bloviates about international law it must be remembered that international law is NOT binding U.S. law NO matter how he wants it to be. Obama forgets that international agreements or what he calls 'international laws' are made under Article II Section 2 of the Constitution ("He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur..."), and if they have treaty status are subject to ratification under Article I (legislative powers), and will only be declared law of the land under the Supremacy Clause (the provision in Article Six, Clause 2 that establishes the Constitution, federal statutes, and U.S. treaties as "the supreme law of the land").

In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled that treaties are NOT law without an implementing act of Congress...that treaties do NOT override the Constitution...that treaties cannot amend the Constitution...and that any treaty can be nullified by a statute passed by Congress ("...or by a sovereign State or States if Congress refuses to do so..."), when the State deems performance of a treaty is self-destructive. And we all know that any and everything Obama does is indeed self-destructive to our country as he is the enemy within who wants to sell out America to our enemies both foreign and domestic.

And even the currently held Democratic controlled Senate knows better than to sell us out to international law...to UN control...at the expense of our Constitution.

How smart were our Founders to have vision to foresee this becoming an issue at sometime in the future...how smart were they to protect us from a man like Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

Also in Brussels, Obama spouted off about what he called the universal “ideals that unite us all..." Obviously NOT understanding or just choosing to ignore the fact that one country's ideals might in NO way be another county's ideals, the concept of individual rights as related to each county's sovereignty is lost on this man who believes in and pushes for the New World Order of a one world government...a one world government controlled by his progressive elitist cohorts sprinkled in with a smattering of his muslim brethren.

And in an effort to extol the virtues of European-style big government as he pandered to those he needs to come to his aid against Vladimir Putin, Obama had the audacity to claim that our Founding Fathers small-government based Constitution got their ideas from European monarchies...which we know is pure unadulterated nonsense as colonial-era European-style big government was the very thing our Founders wanted NO part of for the newly emerging American nation.

And so Barack HUSSEIN Obama once again tried to sellout America as he flashed his infamous smirk of a smile as he played for the cameras in Brussels. So the man who in fear of the 'Russian Bear' took all military deterrents off the table by claiming military deterrence doesn't work, spoke from the other side of his mouth by urging 'We the People' to sheepishly surrender to international law at the expense of our Constitution.

The gall of this man knows NO bounds as the world looks on and laughs at the weakling who would be king.