An ‘Urgent’ White House Budget Deal Will Be a Trojan Horse

The White House and the Democrats may be at it again!  Senate Republican leaders are worried the White House will shovel a last-minute budget deal into the Congress shortly before the August 2, 2011 debt ceiling deadline. The GOP fears an “urgent” proposal on the eve of this date will give the Congress little time to review what’s in it, and the exigent nature of the deal will hamstring them into rushing it through to a vote.
They are right to worry. In all likelihood, the White House (and its willing accomplices among Democratic lawmakers) will pork-up a deal with “investments” (spending increases) and tax hikes. Both are anathema to the GOP right now, and the desperadoes of the left will see this as the only way to continue 60 years of progressive policies. Any deal from the White House is bound to be a Trojan Horse.
Then there’s the emergency nature of the offer the GOP fears, for good reason. Rahm Emanuel’s haunting advice comes to mind: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” If there were to be a corollary to his maxim, it would be: “If you don’t have a serious crisis, then create the perception of one.” That seems to be what’s been happening with the looming debt ceiling deadline.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner, the White House, and many Democratic lawmakers have been repeating the party’s talking points that failing to increase the debt ceiling will be tantamount to Armageddon. I don’t know about you, but I put more faith in the Mayan Calendar’s doomsday prophecy than I do anything coming from Geitner and the rest of the progressive crowd. I think their real fear is that the curtain will be pulled back and they will be exposed as frauds if the debt ceiling is not raised and nothing bad happens.

All the pressure to pass a deal in a hurry reminds me of Popeye’s portly buddy Wimpy. He had a voracious appetite, but no means to buy his own meals. He’d always ask Popeye to spring for lunch, telling him: “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Of course, Tuesday never came. It’s the same with the Democrats and their insatiable appetite to spend taxpayer money. They will promise the world in a budget deal, but never live up to their end of the bargain.
Finally, I am concerned about the tone of the GOP’s “concern” over a potential urgent budget deal. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said, “I’m really worried about it–and we’re not going to rubber-stamp something sent down from the White House.” John Cornyn, Republican Senator from Texas, said a last-minute budget proposal from the White House would be “just irresponsible.” All true, but not nearly as tough as we need our lawmakers to be.
The GOP must demand a timely budget input, or simply leave the White House in the dust and vote on their own proposal. They must rally all GOP lawmakers and find a few defectors from the other side to defeat an unacceptable offer should one come, even if it means risking the “end of the world!” After all, the last White House budget went down in unanimous flames in the Senate: 0-97 votes. No one from Obama’s party voted for it. Strength is on the GOP’s side. Don’t cave.

The FCC is Again Being ‘DC Disingenuous’ About the Internet

People who inhabit our nation’s capital get treated entirely differently than those of us in the Real World.

The DC Denizens enjoy a much higher lifestyle – while being held to a much lower standard.

For instance, when we Suckers cheat on our taxes, we go to jail.
When a DC Denizen does, he or she goes on to become Treasury Secretary.  Or Labor Secretary.  Or continues to write tax laws.
And do all of these things in nicer digs, in nicer cars and for much more coin than most of us Suckers have or get.
These, Ladies and Gentlemen, are the people who serve.  Us, ostensibly.
And perhaps never do the DC Denizens do it to us more – and pay for it less – then when they lie to us.  They do it so effortlessly, so often and with such abandon.

For instance, just last week President Barack Obama said he released his birth certificate because “during that entire week the dominant news story…was about my birth certificate. And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here.”
Umm, no.  It was actually a very distant fourth.  But the President was looking for a justification for waiting four plus years to release the document – and when he couldn’t find a reasonable real one, he simply made one up.
These are the DC Denizens – they lie all the time, and we know it.
But because they are the DC Denizens, what they do isn’t called “lying” – they are said to be being “disingenuous.”
Behold Orwellian DC Speak.  Where the desired end justifies ANY spoken means, no matter how far removed from the truth it is.
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Which brings us to the looming annual broadband deployment report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (called the 706 Report).
In which they are going to again give U.S. broadband deployment a failing grade – just as they did last year.
Which is completely “DC Disingenuous.”  In other words, the FCC is lying through its bureaucratic teeth.
The FCC is doing this because of the desired ends – the complete eradication of all private sector broadband – so as to replace it with government monopoly broadband.
Accordingly (to them), any spoken means are thusly justified.
Think I may be overstating?
Ever since the November elections – in which the American people in historic fashion exhibited a passionate desire for smaller, more accountable government – the FCC has been on a big government Internet regulatory rampage.  Again and again going WAY outside its legal limits to ram through huge new Web power grabs.
The Obama-era Commission has all along wanted to impose the terrible idea that is Network Neutrality, but didn’t (and still doesn’t) have any legal authority over broadband – as Julius Genachowski, the FCC’s Chairman, readily admits.
But why let the law stop them?  In fact, they didn’t – voting themselves wired Internet Overlords on December 21 so as to then impose Net Neutrality.
Not having placed a sufficient stranglehold on the wireless Internet, the FCC went back and did so with their just-as-illegal April 7 data roaming power grab.
These incessant government assaults on the broadband industry are intended, again, to effect an ideological outcome – the end of all private broadband providers, and the birth of the government broadband monopoly.
But don’t take my word for it – take Robert McChesney’s.  He’s the godfather of the Media “Reform” Movement – the Media Marxists who have been pushing this anti-free market agenda from the very beginning.

“At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”

Any questions?
McChesney co-founded the lead Media Marxist outfit – the very ridiculous Free Press.  Whom the FCC very ridiculously cited fifty-three times in their illegal December Internet power grab order.
In many, many ways, the Media Marxists are driving the FCC train.
Which again brings us to the impending FCC broadband report.
For the FCC to allegedly “justify” their ever-increasing, illegal encroachments on private sector broadband, they have to say that private sector broadband is failing.  Which is a flat-out lie.
Let us do what the FCC did not – consider some facts.  Facts that in fact come from – the FCC.
Last year, the FCC’s National Broadband Plan reported:

290 million Americans—95% of the U.S. population—live in housing units with access to terrestrial, fixed broadband infrastructure capable of supporting actual download speeds of at least 4 Mbps.

Last year, remember, the FCC gave this impressive private sector effort – an F.
When I was in school, 95% got you a slightly higher grade than that.
I got Fs, and did so with numbers FAR lower than this.
So let us move to this year.  Where we find that the FCC’s most recent broadband report says that 98% of U.S. Census tracts have at least one broadband provider, and 85% of U.S. Census tracts have access to at least two (including wireless).
The FCC gives this an F?
Yes, because again the Commission wishes to “get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”
So they must pretend that what is undoubtedly the most successful portion of the private sector – possibly ever – is failing.  To “warrant” their more illegal actions to come.
Their desired ends justify ANY – even these most absurd – means.
Please keep all of this in mind when the FCC issues this year’s broadband Internet report.
And the Media Marxists – on cue – go nuts(er), demanding even more government action to rectify yet another completely and obviously non-existent “problem.”

Did Mexican Government Call It An ‘Active War’, Or An ‘Act Of War’?

In my previous column I wrote that Congressman Darrell Issa said the Mexican government has called Projects ‘Gun Runner’ and ‘Fast and Furious’ an “act of war”.  After being flooded with numerous media inquiries the Congressman’s office contacted me and said the actual words he used were  “an active war” -not “an act of war”- and he was referring to the Mexican war on drugs not, not Projects Gun Runner and Fast And Furious.
After listening to the audio from our interview several times I must say I find it indistinguishable.  You can listen to the You Tube below and decide for yourself.

The Washington Post is reporting that the words ‘act of war’ were used in a previous interview conducted with California talk show host Rick Roberts a few weeks ago.  Either way over 2500 weapons were inexcusably allowed to walk, two Border Agents are dead, the DOJ is stonewalling Issa’s subpoena requests, and the Congressman should be applauded for his efforts to find out who made the decision behind Projects ‘Gun Runner’ and ‘Fast and Furious’.

In another development CBSnews.com is reporting that “virtually all the top ATF managers in Phoenix involved in the controversial “Fast and Furious” operation have been reassigned and replaced”, an “unprecedented” move according to one insider.
Could it be Issa was correct when he compared this to Iran-Contra and said, “When a government agency makes a mistake they stall, delay and cover up“?  Stay tuned. There is more to come and I don’t believe we have heard the last on this from our neighbors south of the border.

Free Press’s Contrived Outrage at the FCC

We have recently heard very much about the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)-induced flood of released documents.

They show that the anti-free market group Free Press worked quite closely with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) uber-Democrat Commissioner Michael Copps in advance of the December 21 FCC Internet power grab, executed so that the Commission could then impose the ridiculous Network Neutrality.
This knowledge certainly helps explain why the technologically inept Free Press was cited fifty-three times in the FCC’s absurd write-up of their absurd December Internet folly.
Which makes Free Press’s outrage at said order – for allegedly not going far enough – more than a mite bizarre.
It makes one wonder if this outrage is also perhaps in part a perpetually predetermined inevitability.
Sure, Free Press wants the whole Huge Government hog on all things, and they’re disappointed when they don’t get it.  But they are, like all Leftists, patient incrementalists.
They’ll push for as much as they can get, “begrudgingly” take it – and come back soon thereafter for even more.
The federal government didn’t get to spending 25% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) overnight.  It took little additional incremental nibbles for decades – until one day we woke up to find a federal Leviathan consuming one-fourth of all we produce.

Free Press continually acts completely insane – at which they are REALLY convincing – and continually asks for completely insane, Huge Government policy outcomes.
The FCC then does an obnoxiously large percentage – but not all – of what Free Press wants.  Free Press goes on cue ballistic – and the Commission looks by comparison “reasonable.”
But as we’ve seen with the December Net Neutrality and the April wireless Internet “data roaming” power grabs, this FCC is anything but “reasonable.”
Free Press’s behavior is not dissimilar to that of the East German judge in the Soviet Union-era Olympics.
Back then, a panel of judges would otherwise score a U.S. gymnast or other athlete with 9.8s and 9.9s – and the East German judge would file a 6.8, just to screw with us.
Free Press is the Media Marxist equivalent of the East German judge – the outlier, the score you throw out.
But an important point must now be made.
Substantively, there is almost NO difference between Free Press and their Media Marxist cohorts – Public Knowledge and the Media Access Project.
These groups were just as underwhelmed and thusly outraged by, for instance, the December Internet power grab as was Free Press – providing further cover for an outrageously overreaching FCC.
But Public Knowledge and Media Access Project try to distance themselves from Free Press via stylistic differences – they calmly and “rationally” push for the exact same irrational policy prescriptions as Free Press.
Demanding the exact same Huge Government free market assaults – but not including Free Press in their tiny Media Marxist gaggles.
So we will continue to see the staid tones of Public Knowledge and Media Access Project – and Free Press’s rending of garments and scratching of lampposts.
But the differences in appearance belie an identical Huge Government intent.
And these Media Marxists – regardless of style – all provide the perfect, identical cover for an ever more encroaching FCC.