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How Did the Club for Growth Rate the 2010 Illinois Freshmen Tea Party House Republicans?
Did we vote for smooth talkers or straight talkers? You decide.
(Club for Growth) – In the 2010 election, 87 freshmen House Republicans came to Washington pledging fealty to the Tea Party movement and the ideals of limited government and economic freedom. The mainstream media likes to say that the freshman class is the most uncompromising group of fiscal conservatives in history…but just how Tea Party are they? Did all 87 freshmen always vote to cut spending and limit the size of government, or did some of them vote like the big-spending R.I.N.Os of the past?
This study was compiled from the Club for Growth’s Congressional Scorecard, which evaluates lawmakers based upon their commitment to limited government and pro-growth policies. What we found was that while some freshmen have lived up to the promises they made to the tea party movement, dozens of them are big-spenders and are no different from many of the veteran Republicans they serve with.
While the rhetoric of the freshmen may be loud, the Club for Growth strives to hold lawmakers accountable by examining how they actually voted once they got to Congress. In many cases, the rhetoric of the so-called “Tea Party” freshmen simply didn’t match their records.
Posted by Dottie MacQueen
Why Our Locally Elected Officials Should Abandon the Idea That Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development Are Harmless and Have “no teeth”
by Dottie MacQueen
During the past week, I have written two articles, here and here, explaining why our locally elected officials should not promote and especially should not use tax dollars to promote Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development is a term developed by the United Nations to indoctrinate school children and adults into thinking that the earth is being destroyed by humans who supposedly are causing detrimental climate change because of their supposed wasteful consumption.
Sustainable Development is not based on any scientific facts. It is however, all about an agenda of globalists who truly think they know what is best for the masses, such as population control, destruction of fossil fuel plants, control of our private property, redistribution of wealth and elimination of national sovereignty, just to name a few of the ways globalists want to inflict their utopian dream on us.
If our elected officials pay any attention to what is presently happening inside the United States, they would understand that the globalists are getting their way little by little and it is all happening at the local level. For example, the San Joaquin Valley, once a breadbasket for our country, has been turned into thousands of acres of wasteland causing thousands of agricultural job losses due to the fact that the water supply was shut-off in order to save an insignificant fish called the Delta Smelt. As asinine as this story may sound, the Delta Smelt won out over human beings because it was impossible to sustain the smelt while providing water to the San Joaquin Valley, a breadbasket to our nation. The job losses in this valley in turn also caused a huge loss in taxes to the local taxing bodies. You can’t tax the sale of food if there is no food to sell. You can’t tax income if there is no income being made but if you control the food supply, you control people, the utopian’s dream.
There are thousands of other examples to show how the federal government has been allowed to kill jobs and destroy industries at the local level all in the name of Sustainable Development but there is not enough time to list all of them here.
Tom DeWeese is president and founder of the American Policy Center. The APC, which is located in suburban Washington, D.C., is a privately funded, nonprofit, 501 c (4), tax-exempt grassroots action and education foundation dedicated to the promotion of free enterprise and limited government regulations over commerce and individuals. Mr. DeWeese wrote the following article about why it is dangerous for local and county councils to promote Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development.
Mr. De Weese writes:
The battle over Agenda 21 is raging across the nation. City and County Councils have become war zones as citizens question the origins of development plans and planners deny any international connections to the UN’s Agenda 21. What is the truth? Since I helped start this war, I believe it is up to me to help with the answers.
The standard points made by those who deny any Agenda 21 connection is that:
- Local planning is a local idea.
- Agenda 21 is a non-binding resolution not a treaty, carries no legal authority from which any nation is bound to act. It has no teeth.
- The UN has no enforcement capability.
- There are no “Blue-Helmeted” UN troops at City Hall.
- Planners are simply honest professionals trying to do their job, and all these protests are wasting their valuable time.
- The main concern of Agenda 21 is that man is fouling the environment and using up resources for future generations and we just need a sensible plan to preserve and protect the earth. What is so bad about that?
- There is no hidden agenda.
- “I’ve read Agenda 21 and I can find no threatening language that says it is a global plot. What are you so afraid of?”
- And of course, the most often heard response – “Agenda 21, what’s that?”
And after they have proudly stated these well thought out points, they arrogantly throw down the gauntlet and challenge us to “answer these facts.”
Well, first I have a few questions of my own that I would love to have answered.
Will one of these “innocent” promoters of the “Agenda 21 is meaningless” party line, please answer the following:
- If it all means nothing, why does the UN spend millions of dollars to hold massive international meetings in which hundreds of leaders, potentates and high priests attend, along with thousands of non-governmental organizations of every description, plus the international news media, which reports every action in breathless anticipation of its impact on the world?
- It if all means nothing, why do those same NGO representatives (which are all officially sanctioned by the UN in order to participate) spend months (sometimes years) debating, discussing, compiling, and drafting policy documents?
- If it all means nothing, why do leaders representing nearly every nation in the world attend and, with great fanfare, sign these policy documents?
Time after time we witness these massive international meetings, we read the documents that result from them, and when we question their meaning or possible impact on our nation, we are met with a dismissive shrug and a comment of “oh, probably not much…”
Really? Then why? Why the waste of money, time, and human energy? Could it be that the only purpose is to simply give diplomats, bureaucrats, and NGOs a feeling of purpose in their meaningless lives, or perhaps a chance to branch out of their lonely apartments? Or could it really be that these meetings and the documents they produce are exactly as we say they are – a blueprint for policy, rules, regulations, perhaps even global governance that will affect the lives, fortunes, property and futures of every person on earth? Which is it? You can’t have it both ways.
Why the fear of Agenda 21?
Those who simply read or quickly scan Agenda 21 are puzzled by our opposition to what they see as a harmless, non-controversial document which they read as voluntary suggestions for preserving natural resources and protecting the environment. Why the fear? What exactly bothers us so much?
The problem is, we who oppose Agenda 21 have read and studied much more than this one document and we’ve connected the dots. Many of us have attended those international meetings, rubbed elbows with the authors and leaders of the advocated policies, and overheard their insider (not for public distribution) comments about their real purpose.
Here are a few examples of those comments made by major leaders of this movement as to the true purpose of the policies coming out of these UN meetings:
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”Christine Stewart (former Canadian Minister of the Environment)
“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.” Report from the UN Commission on Global Governance.
“Regionalism must precede globalism. We foresee a seamless system of governance from local communities, individual states, regional unions and up through to the United Nations itself.” Report from the UN Commission on Global Governance.
All three of these quotes (and we have many) indicate using lies and rhetoric to achieve their goals, and that those goals include the elimination of national sovereignty and the creation of a “seamless system” for global governance. Again, do these quotes have meaning and purpose – do they reveal the true thoughts of the promoters of these policies, or were they just joking?
For the past three decades through the United Nations infrastructure, there have been a series of meetings, each producing another document or lynchpin to lay the groundwork for a centralized global economy, judicial system, military, and communications system, leading to what can only be described as a global government. From our study of these events, we have come to the conclusion that Agenda 21 represents the culmination of all of those efforts, indeed representing the step by step blueprint for the full imposition of those goals. Here’s just a sample of these meetings and the documents they produced:
- In 1980, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt chaired the Commission on International Development. The document, or report coming out of this effort, entitled “North-South: A program for Survival,” stated “World development is not merely an economic process, [it] involves a profound transformation of the entire economic and social structure…not only the idea of economic betterment, but also of greater human dignity, security, justice and equality…The Commission realizes that mankind has to develop a concept of a ‘single community’ to develop global order.”
- That same year Sean MacBride, a recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize, headed up a commission on international communications which issued a report entitled “Many Voices, One World: Towards a New, More Just and More Efficient World Information and Communication Order.” The Commission, which included the head of the Soviet news Agency, TASS, believed that a “New World Information Order” was prerequisite to a new world economic order. The report was a blueprint for controlling the media, even to the point of suggesting that international journalists be licensed.
- In 1982, Olof Palme, the man who single-handedly returned Socialism to Sweden, served as chairman of the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues. His report, entitled “Common Security: A Blueprint for Survival,” said: “All States have the duty to promote the achievement of general and complete disarmament under effective international control…” The report went on to call for money that is saved from disarmament to be used to pay for social programs. The Commission also proposed a strategic shift from “collective security” such as the alliances like NATO, to one of “common security” through the United Nations.
- Finally, in 1987, came the granddaddy commission of them all, The Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development. Headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, Vice President of the World Socialist Party, the commission introduced the concept of “Sustainable Development.” For the first time the environment was tied to the tried and true Socialist goals of international redistribution of wealth. Said the report, “Poverty is a major cause and effect of global environmental problems. It is therefore futile to attempt to deal with environmental problems without a broader perspective that encompasses the factors underlying world poverty and international inequality.”
These four commissions laid the groundwork for an agenda of global control; A controlled media would dictate the flow of information and ideas and prevent dissent; control of international development manages and redistributes wealth; full disarmament would put the power structure into the hands of those with armaments; and tying environmentalism to poverty and economic development would bring the entire agenda to the level of an international emergency.
One world, one media, one authority for development, one source of wealth, one international army. The construction of a “just society” with political and social equality rather than a free society with the individual as the sole possessor of rights. The next step was to pull it altogether into a simple blueprint for implementation.
During the 1990s, the UN sponsored a series of summits and conferences dealing with such issues as human rights, the rights of the child, forced abortion and sterilization as solutions for population control, and plans for global taxation through the UN.
Throughout each of these summits, hundreds of Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worked behind the scenes to write policy documents pertaining to each of these issues, detailing goals and a process to achieve them. These NGO’s are specifically sanctioned by the United Nations in order to participate in the process. The UN views them as “civil society, the non governmental representatives of the people. In short, in the eyes of the UN, the NGOs are the “people.”
Who are they? They include activist groups with private political agendas including the Environmental Defense Fund, National Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, Zero Population Growth, Planned Parenthood, the Sierra Club, the National Education Association, an d hundreds more. These groups all have specific political agendas which they desire to become law of the land. Through work in these international summits and conferences, their political wish lists become official government policy.
(emphasis-editor’s)
Will the FHA Require A Bailout? – 12,000,000 Underwater Mortgages 3,000,000 Are FHA Insured Loans. 1 Million Underwater Mortgages Originated in Last Two Years.
(Dr Housing Bubble) – FHA insured loans have been a big booster for the current market. Historically FHA insured loans made up roughly 8 to 12 percent of all mortgage originations but in 2009 they hit 30 percent. For first time home buyers it was a stunning 50 percent showing that most people can only purchase a home today with a very small down payment. Yet small down payments create instant negative equity positions if the market moves sideways or pops lower (aka our current market). For example, the 3.5 percent standard FHA down payment is wiped away by the 5 to 6 percent selling costs. What is interesting with this is that the FHA insured loan market is fully backed by the government (i.e., you) so any losses will be completely shouldered by the public. The move to increase premiums recently was no fluke. One piece of data that stood out to me was of the number of homes in negative equity, how large the FHA numbers grew.
FHA insured loans 1 out of 4 underwater mortgages
A very troubling point showing a morphing of the current market is the number of underwater mortgages backed by FHA insured loans. As stated before, many of these loans were originated after the bubble popped in 2006 and 1 million originated only in the last two years:
Source: Federal Reserve, 2012 report to Congress
This data is coming straight from a Federal Reserve report given to Congress this year. The issues arise from the overall weak economy and the fact that employment growth has been weak across the nation. Take a look at this example:
“(Business Financial Post) Opalka was refinancing another FHA-backed loan he had obtained in 2008, for $196,000, then at an interest rate of over 6%.
Under the refinancing, he borrowed $192,278 at an interest rate of 4.5%. Opalka, looking at the paperwork, is still surprised at the down payment he had to make in 2010, for a property valued at the time for little more than the loan was worth and in which he had almost no equity.
His down payment was just $3,000 – or about 1.5% of the total loan.
Less than two years later, local real estate estimates now value Opalka’s home at no more than $110,000.”
In this case, this borrower only had to go in with $3,000 to refinance his loan (1.5%). The home took on a new $192,278 loan but now two years later is valued at $80,000 less. Just one of the 3,000,000 FHA insured loans underwater. Do you think this borrower is in good shape? How motivated will they be to saddle up and keep making payments on a home that is underwater by $80,000? No wonder why default rates on FHA insured loans are soaring:
An expert that closely follows this market is Edward Pinto and he has a monthly “FHA Watch”:
Some key lending standards are provided:
“1. Step back from markets that can be served by the private sector by taking steps to return to a traditional 10 percent home purchase market share.
2. Stop knowingly lending to people who cannot afford to repay their loans. 9
3. Help homeowners establish meaningful equity in their homes.
4. Concentrate on homebuyers who truly need help purchasing their first home.”
There is so much nonsense with FHA insured loans. First, most are using these as low down payment entry points. The median down payment is 4 percent contrary to the deception that was being preached years ago that most people were coming in with large money. Next, by rolling in the large insurance premiums you are basically financing the debt into the loan making it more expensive to supposedly “lower income” buyers who need more help. Any doubt why 3,000,000 FHA insured loans now are underwater? This has a little taste of the Alt-A and option ARM variety.
Finally, the average FHA borrower accumulates 7 percent in equity in their home during their first four years of owning the home. In other words they barely break even when they sell and this is assuming the market doesn’t shift even slightly lower which it has over the last few years. Ironically the FHA would be in full bailout mode right now if it weren’t for them squeezing the vice on new borrowers going in with bigger premiums.
The deception is strong in this market. I love the news that one of the GSEs turned a profit although the bailout costs are still in the hundreds of billions! Give me $200 billion and I’ll turn you a $2.7 billion profit tomorrow. With this kind of math, no wonder why we are going to face another bailout with FHA insured loans.
Posted by Dottie MacQueen
LATEST UPDATE: Project to Help Win Florida, A Key Swing State
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” – Thomas Jefferson
PRESS RELEASE: For Immediate Release (UPDATED)
May 18, 2012
Only a handful of states will determine the November outcome in the Presidential race. It’s vital that conservatives win as many of the 13-14 swing states as possible. These are as follows, with their respective electoral vote totals:
NV-6, CO-9, NM-5, FL-29, NC-15, VA-13, PA-20, OH-18, MI-16, WI-10, IA-6, MO-10, MN-10, IN-11
Our group, www.RestoreAmericanLiberty.com, INC., an Illinois-based Corporation, is implementing a special project to help win the state of Florida for the Republican nominee on November 6, 2012.
The film, AGENDA – Grinding America Down (a FREE event), is being used to help raise funds for this project. We are showing this film during May and early June – SEE SCHEDULE. The film highlights how the Left has worked for decades to destroy America from within. It exposes the tangled network of Socialist and Communist individuals and groups directly responsible for Obama’s rise and election. After the film, I will speak to explain that only 13-14 states will determine the outcome of the Presidential race, key among these is Florida with 29 electoral votes on the path to 270. To win Florida, we must take two key counties, Pinellas County and Hillsborough County.
Our group plans to distribute a political palm card in bulk quantity to Florida Tea Party groups, who have already signed on to distribute them via various methods. This card exposes Obama’s Marxist connections. The palm card can be downloaded from www.RestoreAmericanLiberty.com/2012.pdf.
For Illinois citizens, this is a unique opportunity to have an impact in the Presidential race; their votes for the Republican nominee will not help move the needle one bit, given that this is a blue state. Around the country, Tea Party and 9-12 Groups are uniting in order to put resources on the ground where the fight is: in the swing states.
Please forward to all conservative resources and groups to help contribute to victory in November for conservatives.
Jim Komaniecki
President
www.RestoreAmericanLiberty.com, INC.
(630) 302-9570
jkomaniecki@gmail.comDefending Freedom, Judeo-Christian Values
and Conservative PrinciplesPosted by Dottie MacQueen
President
www.RestoreAmericanLiberty.com, INC.
(630) 302-9570
jkomaniecki@gmail.comDefending Freedom, Judeo-Christian Values
and Conservative PrinciplesPosted by Dottie MacQueen
Federal Gov’t Runs Amok – Fines School $15,000 for Selling Soda Causing Arts Program to Shut Down
Common sense is dead but draconian regulations are alive and well in our federal government. It is so obvious that the federal government has no desire to govern the American public because the only actions it takes anymore is taxing and fining the very people it rules governs and destroying anything good that tries to survive in our society.
A Utah high school has been fined $15,000 by the federal government for inadvertently leaving a soda vending machine running during its lunch period.
Davis High School in Kaysville, Utah, uses the money it makes from sales of soda and snacks in vending machines to help fund arts programs. Knowing that federal law prohibits the sale of soda and certain other sugary foods to students during the lunch period, the school had always shut down its machines at that time.
Unfortunately, school officials overlooked the soda machine in the school bookstore. When the feds caught the school in the dastardly act of making carbonated beverages available to students at midday, they forced the school to pay back its entire federal school lunch subsidy of $15,000.
It will take all of this year’s revenue from the vending machines — and then some — to pay that fine. That money will, therefore, no longer be available for music, school plays, and other programs. But the folks inside the Beltway will be able to pat themselves on the back for having “done something” to prevent childhood obesity.
The only problem is that the students are unlikely to do without their sweets just because they can’t get them at school. As Davis High principal Dee Burton told Salt Lake City’s KUTV, “The misconception is if we don’t let kids buy candy and pop, we drive them to the cafeteria. It doesn’t drive them to the cafeteria; it drives them off campus” to the corner gas station or nearby grocery store, where they can get what they want at lower prices and at no benefit to the school.
Posted by Dottie MacQueen
Republican Conservative Rapper Hi-Caliber Tells Occupiers to Get Their Facts Straight and Grow-up
Posted by Dottie MacQueen
Federal Government Spent Nearly $70 Billion on ‘climate change activities’ Since 2008
“Inhofe, who believes climate change is an unproven scientific theory at best and a hoax at worst…”
President Barack Obama speaks after touring Sempra’s Copper Mountain Solar 1 facility, Wednesday, March 21, 2012, in Boulder City, Nev. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
(The Daily Caller) – The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on “climate change activities.”
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe presented the new CRS report on the Senate Floor Thursday to make the point that the Obama administration has been focused on “green” defense projects to the detriment of the military.
The report revealed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to combat climate change. The Department of Defense also spent $4 billion of its budget, the report adds, on climate change and energy efficiency activities in that same time period.
Inhofe, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the expenditures are foolish at a time when the military is facing “devastating cuts.”
“[E]veryone agrees that energy efficiency in the military is a worthy goal,” he said. “In fact, I have been a strong supporter of some of DoD’s alternative energy solutions that are affordable and make sense, including their initiatives on non-algal bio-fuels and natural gas. But forcing our military to take money away from core programs in order to invest in unproven technologies as part of a failed cap-and-trade agenda is not only wrong, it’s reckless.”
Inhofe, who believes climate change is an unproven scientific theory at best and a hoax at worst, expressed concern about recent statements by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressing the department’s focus on making and keeping the military “green.”
Panetta’s comments came just two weeks prior to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s markup of the current Defense Authorization bill. During that markup, Inhofe said he plans to “put the spotlight on President Obama forcing his costly green agenda on DoD while [Obama] is gutting the defense budget.” He added his intention to introduce amendments to stop the administration’s green military plans.
Posted by Dottie MacQueen
