Does Mary Landrieu Actually Live In Louisiana?

By William Teach August 29, 2014 – 8:38 am

An interesting catch by the Washington Post, which is probably trying to put out the fire surrounding this issue several months ahead of the election

In Washington, Sen. Mary Landrieu lives in a stately, $2.5 million brick manse she and her husband built on Capitol Hill.

Here in Louisiana, however, the Democrat does not have a home of her own. She is registered to vote at a large bungalow in New Orleans that her parents have lived in for many decades, according to a Washington Post review of Landrieu’s federal financial disclosures and local property and voting records.

On a statement of candidacy Landrieu filed with the Federal Election Commission in January, she listed her Capitol Hill home as her address. But when qualifying for the ballot in Louisiana last week, she listed the family’s raised-basement home here on South Prieur Street.

The New Orleans house, which Landrieu claims as her primary residence, is a new flash point in one of the most closely contested Senate races in the country. Republicans are considering taking legal action to question Landrieu’s residency in the state, arguing that since winning her seat in 1996 she has become a creature of Washington.

Essentially, she primarily lives in Washington, D.C. She and her husband own two undeveloped parcels of land in Louisiana. According to the Landrieu campaign, she and her husband pay income tax in Louisiana. Perhaps she should pony up her actual tax forms. Also, let’s see her driver’s license. Is it La. or D.C.?

But, you know what? I’m not going to beat her up over this

In the Senate, Landrieu has advocated for the District on various issues and has talked publicly about life in Washington. In a 2012 appearance, she said Capitol Hill was “such a special neighborhood.”

“I really can appreciate the life that we live on the Hill,” Landrieu told neighbors gathered at Hill Center D.C. “Of course, I still have a residence in Louisiana, but we’ve raised our kids here.”

Entirely too many federally elected lawmakers mostly live in the D.C. area, spending entirely too much time there, rather than in their home states/Districts. They are entirely too beholden to their Parties and federal politics.

Landrieu is a symptom of the system.  Senators on both sides of the aisle have played this game.  This is a result of the 17th Amendment, which allows for direct citizen voting for US Senators, rather than the original manner, where the State legislatures would elect the Senators that would represent their State. Under the original method, this meant that Senators, regardless of Party, would do their best to represent their state 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Because if they didn’t, they would only be there for one term.

This further meant that citizens paid quite a bit more attention to their home state politics. Sadly, people now look at federal politics entirely too much. Most political bloggers, including myself, tend to focus on the Big Issues, rather than our local and state politics. I couldn’t name my North Carolina, Wake County, nor Raleigh elected officials for my district without looking them up.

If you want to reduce polarization by Party, repeal the 17th Amendment. It would mean the difference of a Senator being for their state, rather than from their state. The United States was never intended to be a pure democracy, but a representative republic. Senators represented their States and the pure needs of the states. They were essentially “ambassadors” to the federal government. Consider the name: State. What is a president called? Chief of State. That’s because nations were often referred to as states. You might have heard the terms “sovereign state” and “nation state”. The original US state were mostly larger, or as large, as most Old European nations.

(The Campaign To Restore Federalism) The “winner take all” mentality and the resulting bitterness that grips partisan Washington today is one direct result of the 17th Amendment. Interest groups understand that to impose one’s will on 300,000,000 Americans, one must influence one president, the selection of 5 supreme court justices, 51 (or 60) senators, and 218 representatives, a total of 275 individuals who live primarily in physical isolation, far away from those they govern. This makes the stakes extremely high. A tremendous amount of money is raised and spent on influencing 275 individuals in Washington. Repealing the 17th Amendment would devolve power away from the national government and drastically reduce the influence of interest groups. Under the original design, change at the national level required that the majorities of all the state legislatures – made up of thousands of representatives – be taken into account. The framers understood that moderate, temperate government is brought about by a multitude of competing interests. Repealing the 17th takes a major step toward restoring this balance.

I would highly recommend reading the entire article. Unfortunately, as Cato noted back in 2010, it is a pipe dream. Too much vested interest, too many people beholden to the Federal government.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Washington Post: Hey, A “Climate Change” Plan Conservatives Should Support

By William Teach August 28, 2014 – 1:32 pm

The Washington Post Editorial Board has continued their abdication of being a news organization to being an activist one all week (I missed yesterday’s editorial, but, it was just as dumb as the rest), and here comes more insanity (we’re still waiting for the one where the members of the EB proclaim they themselves will give up fossil fuels and go carbon neutral)

A climate for change: A solution conservatives could accept

A PROMINENT member of Congress has proposed a comprehensive national climate-change plan. It’s only 28 pages long, it’s market-based, and it would put money into the pockets of most Americans.

This is not the first time that Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), a House Democratic leader, has made the point that the best climate-change policy is not complicated. He introduced a similar plan in 2009. The underlying logic is older still: Since the beginning of the climate debate, mainstream economists, left and right, have argued that the best way to cut greenhouse gases is to use simple market economics, putting a price on emissions that reflects the environmental damage they cause.

As economists see it, the nation is giving a massive implicit subsidy to the users of fossil fuels, who fill the air with carbon dioxide, imposing real costs on society, without paying for the privilege. Make users pay for the carbon dioxide they emit and they will waste less energy, while investment will flow into low-carbon technologies. The nation would obtain emissions cuts at a minimum cost to the economy.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but does the Washington Post not use massive amounts of fossil fuels to gather the news and deliver their newspaper? Moving on, this seems to be a call to tax every single American who uses fossil fuels, which means virtually every single American. The plan calls for “rebates” to some Americans. So, the Government would forcibly take more money from citizens, then supposedly give some back (wink wink).

Conservatives who truly favor free markets over central planning should come to the table. If they cannot muster the intellectual courage, Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) has a smart second-best idea: Let states escape the EPA’s centralized regulation if they enact their own carbon taxes instead.

Of course, this misses several central points, the first being that we do not buy into the notion that “climate change” is mostly/solely caused by Mankind’s release of carbon dioxide. The real science, when applied using the scientific method, is against the Warmist’s “consensus”, hyperbole, and doom-saying.

Second, enacting a carbon tax at the federal or state levels is not a “market force/solution”. It is not a free market solution. It is still a top down government edict.

As far as intellectual courage, perhaps Warmists should look in their own cupboard, since their cult is dying a slow, painful death, whereby they are having to come up with dozens of excuses to explain away the almost 18 year Pause in warming. Van Hollen’s suggested legislation is a silly as it gets

(1) Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, with CO2 in the atmosphere reaching 400 parts per million in 2013 for the first time in human history.

(2) The warming of our planet has led to more frequent, dangerous and expensive extreme weather events, including heat waves, storms, fires, droughts, floods and tornadoes.

(3) More than 97 percent of climate scientists agree that our planet is warming, primarily because of the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

(4) The atmosphere is a common resource that belongs equally to all.

(5) Stabilizing the climate can and must be done in a way that supports vibrant economic growth and a thriving middle class.

Hysteria over “more extreme” weather events that has been debunked many, many times? Check. Consensus that has been debunked? Check. The ability to actually stabilize the climate? Insane.

Oh, and BTW, the payments from the so-called Healthy Climate Dividend would be given to not just US citizens, but anyone who is a “nonresident alien individual”, in otherwords, illegal aliens who were able to obtain government documents (section 9912). And, it would allow Warmists to sue much easier, which is important for them, because they lose the vast majority of court cases.

It should be also noted that virtually every carbon permitting system has failed, including in California. That’s a much longer story.

Read: Washington Post: Hey, A “Climate Change” Plan Conservatives Should Support »

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If All You See…

By William Teach August 28, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a lovely lake that will disappear from too much CO2, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jammie Wearing Fools, with a post noting Obama getting back to work after a grueling vacation.

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When It Comes To Burger King And Corporate Inversions, Something Important To Remember

By William Teach August 28, 2014 – 12:22 pm

The Burger King issue is already fading from memory. Virtually no major media outlets are carrying any stories on it this morning. But, we know that certain hardcore Leftist idiots will still attempt to foment division over it. Some are trying to implement boycotts. Megan McCardle had some important details the other day

Jacob Levy, an American professor living in Montreal, made a point on Twitter yesterday that I wish more journalists would take to heart: If you’re writing about inversions, and you don’t prominently mention global taxation in the first few paragraphs, then your article is not serious and anyone with even a smidgen of actual interest in the issue should stop reading.

Let me explain. Or actually, in the case of Burger King’s planned acquisition of Tim Hortons, let my colleague Matt Levine explain, because he is smarter and funnier and a better writer than I am, and has already nicely summed things up:

The purpose of an inversion has never been, and never could be, and never will be, “ooh, Canada has a 15 percent tax rate, and the U.S. has a 35 percent tax rate, so we can save 20 points of taxes on all our income by moving.” Instead the main purpose is always: “If we’re incorporated in the U.S., we’ll pay 35 percent taxes on our income in the U.S. and Canada and Mexico and Ireland and Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, but if we’re incorporated in Canada, we’ll pay 35 percent on our income in the U.S. but 15 percent in Canada and 30 percent in Mexico and 12.5 percent in Ireland and zero percent in Bermuda and zero percent in the Cayman Islands.”What is he talking about? The U.S., unlike most developed-world governments, insists on taxing the global income of its citizens and corporations that have U.S. headquarters. And because the U.S. has some of the highest tax rates in the world, especially on corporate income, this amounts to demanding that everyone who got their start here owes us taxes, forever, on anything they earn abroad.

Does anyone blame Honda and Toyota for keeping their corporate registration in Japan? They are the two top auto sellers in the USA. Yet, they only pay the 35% tax rate (and state taxes and such) on their operations here in the USA. No one in their right mind wants to pay more than they have to. John Kerry berths his yacht in a different state in order to avoid the high taxes and fees of Massachusetts. Can you blame him? You can certainly go after him regarding his hypocrisy, but, would the rest of us do the same if we could? You bet.

BK will continue to pay their taxes for operations in the USA. What they won’t be doing is paying 35% for their earned revenue in other countries to the US treasury, along with the taxes they pay in those countries. Companies do not exist to feed the federal treasury.

Of course, there are still some whiners who don’t get it, like at Rolling Stone, which refers to it as “the biggest tax scam ever” (despite being completely legal)

Over the next decade, corporate inversions could cost the U.S. Treasury nearly $20 billion – revenues that could other­wise pay for Head Start programs, to rebuild roads and bridges, or just bring down the deficit. The wave of inversions is threatening “to hollow out the U.S. corporate income tax base,” Lew warned in a July letter to the chief tax writers in the House and Senate. But inversions are just the tip of the iceberg. The crisis of corporate tax avoidance is far more pervasive – and destructive – than either Obama or Lew is letting on. At a moment when Congress appears impossibly divided, a strong, bipartisan consensus has, in fact, emerged in Washington: The world’s richest corporations will get away with fleecing hundreds of billions of tax dollars from the rest of us.

This again misses the point that companies do not exist to finance the government, however, this gives us a good look into the mind of a Progressive.

More than $2 trillion in U.S.-based multinational profits currently sit in offshore accounts, representing, by credible estimates, in excess of $500 billion in unpaid taxes. If that money were deposited in federal coffers tomorrow, it would wipe out the deficit for 2014. And every year that Congress dithers on a crackdown, America is forfeiting an approximate $90 billion in revenue.

If that was deposited, the government would simply spend the hell out of it. And, again, it gives a view into the mindset of Progressives: All Money Belongs To The Central Government. Or, truly, they mean that Everyone Else’s Money Belongs To The Central Government. Including if it was earned in a different country.

Read: When It Comes To Burger King And Corporate Inversions, Something Important To Remember »

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Dems Want Chicago To Be “Model City” For Amnestied Illegals

By William Teach August 28, 2014 – 6:55 am

No, really

(The Hill) Chicago Democrats are hoping to make the Windy City the model for enrolling illegal immigrants into whatever new benefits the Obama administration might adopt.

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) joined forces Wednesday with roughly 50 civic leaders to launch a comprehensive strategy for signing up those immigrants who might become newly eligible for any new benefits coming out of the administration.

“When an announcement comes, we will make sure Chicago is ready, that the community institutions in our neighborhoods are ready, and that we can efficiently inform our community about what is being announced and can help our neighbors sign up,” Gutierrez said in a statement after the meeting.

The Democrats are hoping to prevent the enrollment bottleneck that followed Obama’s 2012 launch of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which granted work permits to certain qualified illegal immigrants brought to the country as children. Thousands of applicants lined up on Chicago’s Navy Pier, surprising advocates and leading to some delays in processing.

Hey, why not, it’s the model right now for violence, murders, shootings, black on black killings, and citizens fearing for their lives, the very definition of “don’t do this”. It’s a city that is constantly roiled by worker walk-outs at fast food joints, so, he, nothing better than adding thousands of illegal aliens to the legal job que to help keep worker wages down, eh?

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Warmists Link Ferguson And “Climate Change”

By William Teach August 27, 2014 – 4:38 pm

Here’s yet another moment in bat guano insane from 350.org (they weren’t the first: Grist tried linking the two last week)

(Daily Caller) Frequently criticized for being insufficiently diverse, environmentalists are trying to draw parallels between the crisis erupting in Ferguson, Missouri and global warming.

“It was not hard for me to make the connection between the tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri, and the catalyst for my work to stop the climate crisis,” writes Deirdre Smith, strategic partnership coordinator for the environmental group 350.org.

Smith ties the “institutional neglect of vulnerable communities in crisis” into the environmental movement’s war against fossil fuels, which she claims hit minority communities the hardest.

“To me, the connection between militarized state violence, racism, and climate change was common-sense and intuitive,” she said. “If extreme weather is about droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, the way people get treated in the wake of disaster is about power.”

Read: Warmists Link Ferguson And “Climate Change” »

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If All You See…

By William Teach August 27, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is a lovely lake that will soon boil from too much CO2, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jihad Watch, with a post on Islamists demanding law enforcement retraining

Read: If All You See… »

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Washington Post: American Can’t Wait While World Warms Or Something

By William Teach August 27, 2014 – 12:04 pm

Monday we learned that the Washington Post Editorial Board has become a group of climate activists. Today, they say that America can’t wait

FOR MORE than a century, scientists have understood the basic physics of the greenhouse effect. For decades, they’ve realized humans can affect the climate by burning coal, oil and gas. But the country’s leaders remain divided on the need to curb greenhouse emissions, let alone how to do it.

Among mainstream scientists, this paralysis is mind-boggling.

There is now no doubt that the world is warming.

Not for the last 17 years and 10 months

In fact, many of the same “climate scientists” are now talking about the pause lasting another 10-15 years. One wonders, though, why the WPEB isn’t calling for the Washington Post to stop using fossil fuels to deliver their papers and power their office building.

The most reasonable climate skeptics accept these findings but point to two areas of continuing uncertainty. First, scientists are unsure precisely how much the Earth will heat up in response to a given increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — the climate’s sensitivity to carbon. The experts have offered a range of possibilities. Second, it is hard to predict exactly what a given increase in global temperature will do to human society.

In fact, there are three knew studies that show that CO2 sensitivity is very low. As far as temperature rise, human society did very well during the previous Holocene warm periods, many of which were much warmer, while doing worse during the cool periods.

Waiting to deal with carbon emissions until the effects are clearer or technology improves is not a wise strategy. The emissions humans put into the atmosphere now will affect the climate in the middle of the century and onward. Technological change, meanwhile, could make a future transition away from fossil fuels cheap — or it might not, leaving the world with a terrible choice between sharply reducing emissions at huge cost or suffering through the effects of unabated warming.

Lead the way, WP: tell us how each of you on the Editorial Board has given up usage of fossil fuels.

Read: Washington Post: American Can’t Wait While World Warms Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

What Should Obama Do About ISIS?

By William Teach August 27, 2014 – 9:02 am

Jeff asked, in regards to Charles Krauthammer saying Obama dithers too much

I know it’s fruitless to ask, but what would you have us do with ISIS/ISIL?

I could give the Lefty answer for when Bush was president “I’m not president”. We could talk about this being Obama’s problem, since Islamists are streaming to join ISIS, creating OCTs (Obama Created Terrorists). Remember the BCTs when Bush was president?

But, let’s look at this realistically. He has lots of options. He should drone strike the hell out of them. He’s never been shy about doing this to Islamists, and I wholeheartedly support this. He can use special ops units. He can use bombers. There are many things he can do.

Unfortunately, he has no plan. He reacts within the moment, much like the way social media works. There is no long term focus or agenda.

What do you think he should do?

Read: What Should Obama Do About ISIS? »

Posted in Barry Obama, War On Terrorism | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

Semi-retired President’s Painful Flat VA Speech

By William Teach August 27, 2014 – 7:52 am

Maybe Obama needs to add ASOTHUS (Applause Sign Of The USA) to go with TOTUS

(The Blaze) President Barack Obama at times faced an unenthusiastic crowd as he addressed American military veterans at American Legion’s National convention on Tuesday. As the Daily Mail puts it, Obama received “awkward silences where White House speechwriters expected ovations.”

“You know that we should never send America’s sons and daughters into harm’s way unless it is absolutely necessary and we have a plan and we are resourcing it and prepared to see it through,” Obama said.

After a brief moment of silence, weak applause followed.

A seemingly weaker response followed when Obama said America’s “longest war” in Afghanistan would soon come to a “responsible end.”

However, one of the most awkward moments came when the president had to wait several seconds for any response from the audience.

“As we go forward, we will continue to partner with Afghans so their country can never again be used to launch attacks against the United States,” he said.

Several seconds of awkward silence followed before scattered clapping is heard.

The Right Pundit has compiled a video containing several moments where applause lines received very tepid clapping or just plain silence:

Urf. O is more used to starry eyed adulation from audiences. He doesn’t fare quite as well when he steps out.

As the Right Pundit notes, “It looked like he didn’t really want to be there and if you listen to the reaction of the convention goers to his speech, they might not have wanted to be there either.”

I’m betting Kay Hagan didn’t want to be there after that performance, either.

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