Time For Gun Nuts To Get In The Immigration Fight

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Immigrants and their supporters have declared war on gun rights and the gun nuts don't realize the world of shit they are in.

Piers Morgan, immigrant, is leading the fight against the rights that Americans enjoy with the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution his leading target.  Anyone who owns a gun, much less an effective gun, is in his mind nothing better than an accomplice to murder.

Watch and learn:



The problem does not stop with annoying communists from the UK.  Hispanic voters, who are not "naturally" conservative, are big supporters of gun control, despite their violent criminal tendencies.

The Daily Beast December 19, 2012 by Adam Winkler

Republicans Face Gun Control Test With Latino Voters 

Republicans must show they support a variety of issues important to the Latino community. 

Gun control is one of those issues. 

Polls show that Latino support for gun control is greater than that of any other major ethnic or racial group, including African-Americans. A Pew Center study in April of this year found that when whites were asked which is more important, protecting the right of Americans to own guns or controlling gun ownership, 57 percent sided with the right to bear arms. Latinos, by contrast, were much more favorable to gun control. Only 29 percent of Latinos said protecting the right to bear arms was more important. 

Other polls show that 69 percent of Latino voters believe the laws governing the sale of firearms should be stricter. Only 24 percent say they should remain the same. Unlike many gun-rights activists, only 5 percent of Latino voters say America’s gun laws should be less strict.

The NRA, as well as other groups, usually more effective, such as the Second Amendment Foundation, the Citizens Committee for the Right To Keep An Bear Arms, and Gun Owners of America, thought mistakenly that gun rights is a single issue unaffected by other public policy issues.
They are wrong.  There is no convincing immigrants that citizens have God given rights, including self-defense.  Immigrants mostly come from communist run societies, whether those societies are run by actual Communist Parties or from nations run by cultural crypto-Marxists that control most of the world's political parties with the exception it appears of the Likud and the BNP, and have brought their welfare-state socialism and tyrannical agenda with them.  They don't come here for freedom but for filthy lucre; either a welfare check as in the case of Hispanic immigrants or the millions paid to spout their crypto-Marxism, as in the case of Morgan.
Immigrants and their progeny are the single greatest threat to the rights Americans hold, after, of course, our own domestic 5th column of blacks.
Time for the gun people to get on the bandwagon and work to control the influx of those who support gun control.

Treason Lobby Lies

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The Obama media is laying the groundwork for the next Obama amnesty.  There was a puff piece regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Victims Unit's (ICE SVU) policy of auditing employers of illegal aliens.  Half the article was about how disruptive the audits are for the employers of illegal aliens.


The award for chutzpah goes to Comrade Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute, who decries ICE SVU's audits as "subjective," which is a strange allegation to make.

Yahoo News/Associated Press December 23, 2012 by Manuel Valdes

Audits Of Businesses For Illegal Immigrants Rising

The audits "don't make any sense before a legalization program," said Daniel Costa, an immigration policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "You're leaving the whole thing up to an employer's eyesight and subjective judgment, that's the failure of the law. There's no verification at all. Then you have is the government making a subjective judgment about subjective judgment."

One just does not understand the problem Costa has.  Unless of course one understands the real problem is that ICE SVU's audits are interfering with employment of illegal aliens and the purpose of employing illegal aliens, driving wages down.  But the problem is not the audits discovering illegal aliens.  Most would not consider the discovery of illegal activity to be a problem.   Except, of course, for those committing the crime.  There is the problem.  A business plan based on illegal alien employees.   It is a business plan well established in the United States, practiced by employers from Chipotle to Boeing.

But objecting to the audits as "subjective?"  Quite a strange argument.  Costa just could not bring himself to make the "racism" argument and had to find something to decry while lacking any more accurate argument.  In fact, despite the fact that audits do nothing to remove illegal aliens from the country, they do interfere ever so slightly with the standard business plan of hiring illegal alien labor.  And the audits are quite objective.  Companies are identified by either industry, ICE SVU concentrates on those employers in critical infrastructure, or by the tax and Social Security records of an employer that does not correspond to established tax and Social Security records.  ICE SVU then objectively analyzes the records of the employer in comparison to Social Security and immigration databases.  The result is an objective identification of those employees without employment authorization, e.g. those employees who are illegal aliens.  There is nothing subjective about the audit.  Auditors do not sit around balancing evidence as to an employees employment authorization.  The auditors have objective information about the information provided by the employer and the employee.  The usual result is a Social Security Number that is either not issued by the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration to the employee in question or the number itself has not be issued to anyone.  The audits are quite objective.  The employee either has a validly issued SSN or not.

The auditor then informs the employer, requesting action by both the employer and employee to provide further information that would solve the problem.  Obviously few do.  And there is Costa's objection.  He supports illegal immigration.  He wants illegals to remain and welcomes more illegal aliens.  
In fact, any legalization program should follow, not precede any audit or other work-site enforcement program.  Not auditing employers is acquiescing in the Chipotle and Boeing business plan and encouraging illegal immigration.  Costa is quite clearly a supporter of such business strategies.  But his strange argument that audits are "subjective," as if there is any dispute over whether any person identified as an illegal alien may not in fact be an illegal alien is absurd and unsupported by any facts.  
It is just an example of the argument by lie and innuendo practiced by the illegal immigration lobby, led by Costa.  It is the only argument they have.

Another Expansion Of The Administrative Amnesty

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced today that it will end the detention and arrest of most illegal aliens in the United States and effectively repealed an Act of Congress, to wit the Immigration and Nationality Act.  In an expansion of the amnesty, those with two or fewer misdemeanor convictions will be amnestied.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Civil Immigration Enforcement: Guidance on the Use of Detainers in the Federal, State, Local, and Tribal Criminal Justice Systems

Consistent with ICE's civil enforcement priorities and absent extraordinary circumstances, ICE agents and officers should issue a detainer in the federal, state, local, or tribal criminal justice systems against an individual only where (1) they have reason to believe the individual is an alien subject to removal from the United States and (2) one or more of the following conditions apply:

• the individual has a prior felony conviction or has been charged with a felony offense;
• the individual has three or more prior misdemeanor convictions;

Significantly missing from the list of other crimes that might qualify an illegal alien from arrest and detention is burglary.

 •  the individual has a prior misdemeanor conviction or has been charged with a misdemeanor offense if the misdemeanor conviction or pending charge involving:
o  violence, threats, or assault;
o  sexual abuse or exploitation;
o  driving under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance;
o  unlawful flight from the scene of an accident;
o  unlawful possession or use of a firearm or other deadly weapon;
o  the distribution or trafficking of a controlled substance; or
o  other significant threat to public safety;

Few realize that burglary is the entry level crime for opportunistic rapists and other violent crime.  Basically all those illegal aliens involved in criminal activity will be free from fear of deportation if caught early in their criminal career.  Basically your first two misdemeanors will be accompanied by an ICE Get Out Of Jail Free card.  Also absent from the list of applicable crimes is gang membership.  Think here of Edwin Ramos, the gangbanger who killed three in San Francisco.  Under this program this gangbanger would not be arrested or detained or deported.  He would be, as he was in real life, left by ICE on the streets to commit even greater crimes.  But rest assured, after he commits his first murder, he might be detained or deported.
While the memorandum is ostensibly directed at detention of the above classes of aliens, the message is loud and clear to ICE employees that arrests of said aliens is not in the officer or agents career interests.  Look forward to a spike in crime by eager illegal alien 

Guest blog: Major League Baseball's "bitter cup of coffee"

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By Doug Gladstone   Here's a hypothetical for you -- Let's say you've been working for Company A for seven years. Company A, which is led by Casey Dunivan, has a pension eligibility policy of 10 years. In other words, you work for Casey for 10 years, and you're guaranteed a lifetime retirement annuity that you can pass on to your loved one or designated beneficiary when you croak. What's

Guest Blog: Do Assad's Torture Chambers Justify NATO Intervention In Syria?

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The United Kingdom and France have been taking a tough line against the behaviour of President Assad of Syria. The Middle Eastern dictator is variously accused of a number of crimes against humanity. He has attracted particularly fierce condemnation for his treatment of protesters, who are reportedly publicly objecting to his regime’s continued rule over the country and Assad’s refusal to hold

Charlie Harper's words of advice: Obstructionism and political isolationism are much easier. But the only majority that that will result from Tea Party activists abandoning their party already in a minority negotiating position will be that of Democrats.

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Charlie Harper writes in the Dublin Courier Herald:

The Tea Party is at an interesting moment in time. Nonexistent just 4 years ago, the movement crashed onto the scene in time to change the 2010 elections and stop the Obama administration in its tracks. The various groups operating under the same moniker allied with Republicans to take control of the House, but also took on incumbent Senators with mixed results.

2012 was a more frustrating election year for those who identify with the movement. Despite having a large slate of GOP presidential candidates acceptable to the brand, the party eventually nominated Mitt Romney. Early successes in GOP Senate primaries ultimately resulted in the GOP losing Senate seats. Tea Party backed candidates for House leadership posts to serve in the next Congress were beaten back by more “establishment” candidates favored by leadership.

Meanwhile, the “grand bargains” to solve budget, tax, and deficit issues
 have been delayed into a situation that is largely the same after the election of 2010. Republicans control the House, the Democrats control the Senate, and President Obama has 4 more years at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It’s quite natural – and quite acceptable – that Tea party activists had an overall strategy to stall and obstruct from 2010 until the 2012 elections. After all, the “mandate” of the 2010 election was a rebuke of the previous two years. All House Republicans and the larger minority in the Senate could do was contain the situation in a status quo mode so that big picture policy issues – and the direction of the country – could be decided by voters in the November elections. The results of November – that of continued status quo – leave the parties in place, as is.

Republicans in leadership who have decried the “lack of certainty” because of Washington’s changing tax and regulatory environment have decided, more or less, that it is time to govern. It is time for some certainty. They have also acknowledged, quite directly, that holding only the House means that at least for the next two years Washington will not be governed exclusively on Republicans’ terms. Activists within the Tea Party movement, not surprisingly, are not taking this exercise in reality very well.

One of the great difficulties of being in the party that doesn’t hold the White House is that there is no titular spokesperson for the party. The closest Republicans have for that role is Speaker John Boehner, who has the unenviable role of trying to negotiate with the White House for an acceptable fiscal cliff solution while attempting to keep independent minded Tea party activists within the fold. It’s not going well.

While the President seems to be more interested the economics of forcing Republicans to vote for higher tax rates rather than the economics of trying to maximize revenue or minimize deficits, Tea Party activists are bristling at the mere suggestion that federal revenues may be increased, much less than the fact that tax rates may be going up. And, as is custom, there are calls to remove Boehner. This is where Tea Party activists must decide what is their future, and whether it is with the Republican Party.

While various threats to challenge the Speaker are likely to surface, Eric Cantor who generally represents the Tea Party wing of House Republicans within leadership appears fully on board with Boehner. Georgia’s Tom Price who challenged one of Boehner’s leadership preferences in caucus elections spent Monday putting down rumors that he is running for Speaker. There does not appear an appetite from within the caucus to undercut the Speaker while he attempts to negotiate, and in effect, govern.

In response, Tea Party activists are now circulating an article from RedState.com suggesting that 16 conservatives need to withhold their vote for Speaker when the House re-convenes in January. Their reasoning? “If no nominee for speaker receives 218, the House remains speakerless—as it did during parts of the Civil War.”

This approach is not constructive and would spell doom for the Republican Party and ultimately the Tea Party. The House is the one part of government which Republicans control. Should this tactic be advanced, it would demonstrate that Republicans can’t even manage to govern within the confines of what they can control.

The message it would send to an electorate that re-elected Barack Obama would be more striking than any caricature of the Tea Party currently promoted by the most partisan MSNBC commentator. It would prove that Republicans aren’t interested in governing, but only obstructing. This is not a risk worth taking.

It’s time the Tea Party takes a long look at itself and the state of their movement. They have proven that they can be effective agents for change. They have also proven that they can force decisions that cost Republicans seats – which makes the Democrats that they fight grow stronger.

The Tea Party needs to spend more time on developing a message of why smaller government is better, and how that would work for Americans who currently depend would be better off with less – and what that transition would look like.

That’s no small nor easy task. Obstructionism and political isolationism are much easier. But the only majority that that will result from Tea Party activists abandoning their party already in a minority negotiating position will be that of Democrats.

Susan Rice has so often been criticized as being an unusually undiplomatic diplomat, direct to the point of rudeness. But friends and former White House aides say that Ms. Rice’s style is a reflection of Mr. Obama’s own: impatient with niceties, uninterested in small talk or long dinners, focused solely on results.

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From The New York Times:

For President Obama, the decision to forgo the fight to make Susan E. Rice his secretary of state was a deeply painful one. It required publicly abandoning one of his most loyal aides, who had broken with the Democratic foreign policy establishment early to side with his improbable candidacy, and whose blunt-speaking style — which helped cost her the job — had always been, for Mr. Obama, a part of her appeal.

Typically, just hours before she called Mr. Obama to tell him she had decided to withdraw from contention as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s successor, she rebuked her Chinese counterpart in an informal meeting of the United Nations Security Council, telling him his views excusing a North Korean missile launching this week were “ridiculous.”
He shot back, according to witnesses, that she “better watch your language.”
It was the latest example of why Ms. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, has so often been criticized as being an unusually undiplomatic diplomat, direct to the point of rudeness. But friends and former White House aides say that Ms. Rice’s style is a reflection of Mr. Obama’s own: impatient with niceties, uninterested in small talk or long dinners, focused solely on results.

Former Secretary of Defense and former CIA director Robert Gates and topic of: Cliff Talks Avoid Military Health Plan - Tricare's Costs Have Grown Sharply, but Potential Savings Aren't on Table; Veterans Resist Calls to Carry Heavier Burden

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Reading the below article this morning that mentions Secretary Robert Gates made me wonder if I might hear this topic on the evening of February 2.

Last night a friend gave Sally and me tickets to hear Secretary Gates at the Florida Theater in Jacksonville, Florida, as part of something called the Florida Forum Series. This series seeks to bring some of the world's most widely known public figures to Jacksonville, with the series benefiting Wolfson Children's Hospital.

On February 2 former Secretary of Defense and former CIA director Dr. Robert M. Gates will be the featured lectuerer and guest. Considered “The Soldier’s Secretary” for his commitment to placing the men and women in uniform as his top priority, I couldn't help but wonder if I might hear his observation noted in the below article conveyed on February 2.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Washington's budget negotiators are considering cost-saving changes in the nation's entitlement programs, with one notable exception: military health care.

Like the rest of the U.S. health system, the military's program, known as Tricare, has a cost problem. For years, the Pentagon has sought to raise fees and revamp the system, with successive Defense secretaries warning that the program, if left unchecked, would eat into the rest of the military budget.

Pentagon overhaul efforts, however, have been rejected repeatedly by Congress, where there is broad, bipartisan opposition to raising health-care costs for America's military. And in the current round of budget talks, which are aimed at averting January's tax increases and spending cuts, no one has yet suggested helping to cut the deficit with the billions that could potentially be saved by making changes to Tricare.

"It's a third rail for both parties," said Todd Harrison, a defense specialist at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan think tank with close ties to the Pentagon.

Under the military health plans, 10 million people—active military, veterans and their families—pay a fraction of the fees most Americans pay for care. In 2011, retirees and families enrolled in the basic military health-care program paid an average of $880 in annual copayments and fees, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Most American families in employer-provider health plans paid an average of nearly $5,000.

For 15 years until this year, the enrollment fee for Tricare's health-maintenance-organization plan was fixed at $230 for individuals and $460 for families. That has helped drive up the program's budget from $19 billion in 2001 to $51 billion this year. Without changes, the Congressional Budget Office said, that number will hit $65 billion in five years and $77 billion by 2022.

Two years ago, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that "heath-care costs are eating the Defense Department alive."

This year, the administration pushed for changes including higher enrollment fees that could save $1.8 billion next fiscal year and nearly $13 billion by 2018. Congressional committees have moved to block the changes, though the administration succeeded in raising the annual family enrollment fee to $520.

Veterans groups have sent more than 110,000 messages to the nation's leaders, urging them to shield military retirees from shouldering more costs in talks for any "grand bargain" on the deficit, said Steve Strobridge, director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America.

He also said Mr. Gates's fears are overstated, noting the Pentagon's health-care budget ended the past two years with a small surplus. The system accounts for about 11% of the defense budget, Mr. Strobridge said. "There is a value to [veterans'] service and sacrifice…that we won't allow to be discounted by people who only want to account for what they pay in cash," he said.

This year, the association has supported small increases in copayments for drugs, but it opposed the larger fee increases sought by the administration.

Mr. Harrison, the defense budget analyst, said the Pentagon, like the nation as a whole, has to get a handle on rising health-care costs or risk seeing the military shrink instead.

"There aren't easy options here, but when you think about it in the larger context of the defense budget, you're going to have to make some tough decisions," he said.

Some veterans say military health-care benefits should be scrutinized, but they resist shouldering more costs to reduce the nation's budget woes.

Brandon Friedman, a U.S. Army officer who was awarded two Bronze Stars for his service in Afghanistan and Iraq, said many veterans could be persuaded they needed to pay a few pennies more to help their government out of its fiscal crisis. But he chafed at the notion that the government would ask veterans to sacrifice if it doesn't find other ways to deal with the nation's deficit.

"After a decade of war, you asked people to serve their country and repeatedly deploy and risk their lives, and then you say: Sorry, we're out of money?" he said. "I just don't think that's fair."

Guest blog: Major League Baseball's "bitter cup of coffee"

To contact us Click HERE
By Doug Gladstone   Here's a hypothetical for you -- Let's say you've been working for Company A for seven years. Company A, which is led by Casey Dunivan, has a pension eligibility policy of 10 years. In other words, you work for Casey for 10 years, and you're guaranteed a lifetime retirement annuity that you can pass on to your loved one or designated beneficiary when you croak. What's

Guest Blog: Do Assad's Torture Chambers Justify NATO Intervention In Syria?

To contact us Click HERE
The United Kingdom and France have been taking a tough line against the behaviour of President Assad of Syria. The Middle Eastern dictator is variously accused of a number of crimes against humanity. He has attracted particularly fierce condemnation for his treatment of protesters, who are reportedly publicly objecting to his regime’s continued rule over the country and Assad’s refusal to hold

Most Governors Refuse to Set Up Health Exchanges

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From The New York Times:

The Obama administration said Friday that more than half the states had rejected its pleas to set up their own health insurance exchanges, dealing a setback to President Obama’s hopes that Republicans would join a White House campaign to provide health insurance to all Americans.

Friday was the deadline for states to notify the federal government of their plans, and administration officials had been hoping that Mr. Obama’s re-election would overcome resistance to the new health care law.

Federal officials said they knew of 17 states that intended to run their own exchanges, as Congress intended.  The exchanges are online supermarkets where people can shop for private health insurance and obtain federal subsidies to help defray the cost. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 25 million people will eventually receive coverage through the exchanges.

Federal officials and federal contractors will set up and run the exchange in any state that is unable or unwilling to do so.  The concept of an exchange is simple: Competition will drive down prices. But operating an exchange is an immense technical challenge requiring sophisticated information technology to digest and display huge amounts of data on the costs and benefits of various insurance plans.  Administration officials said they were delighted this week when a Republican governor, C. L. Otter of Idaho, announced plans to establish a state-run exchange.
 However, Mr. Otter’s rationale provided little comfort to the administration. He said he did not want to surrender power to “federal bureaucrats.” He denounced “the mandates and overreaching federal authority of the Affordable Care Act.” He said the law “will do little or nothing to reduce costs while force-feeding us coverage and increasing the size and scope of government.” And he said his decision could be rescinded if the State Legislature disagreed with him.
 Pennsylvania seriously considered running its own exchange, but Gov. Tom Corbett said on Wednesday that he would not pursue the idea.
 “State authority to run a health insurance exchange is illusory,” Mr. Corbett said. “In reality, Pennsylvania would end up shouldering all of the costs by 2015, but have no authority to govern the program.”

Former Secretary of Defense and former CIA director Robert Gates and topic of: Cliff Talks Avoid Military Health Plan - Tricare's Costs Have Grown Sharply, but Potential Savings Aren't on Table; Veterans Resist Calls to Carry Heavier Burden

To contact us Click HERE
Reading the below article this morning that mentions Secretary Robert Gates made me wonder if I might hear this topic on the evening of February 2.

Last night a friend gave Sally and me tickets to hear Secretary Gates at the Florida Theater in Jacksonville, Florida, as part of something called the Florida Forum Series. This series seeks to bring some of the world's most widely known public figures to Jacksonville, with the series benefiting Wolfson Children's Hospital.

On February 2 former Secretary of Defense and former CIA director Dr. Robert M. Gates will be the featured lectuerer and guest. Considered “The Soldier’s Secretary” for his commitment to placing the men and women in uniform as his top priority, I couldn't help but wonder if I might hear his observation noted in the below article conveyed on February 2.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Washington's budget negotiators are considering cost-saving changes in the nation's entitlement programs, with one notable exception: military health care.

Like the rest of the U.S. health system, the military's program, known as Tricare, has a cost problem. For years, the Pentagon has sought to raise fees and revamp the system, with successive Defense secretaries warning that the program, if left unchecked, would eat into the rest of the military budget.

Pentagon overhaul efforts, however, have been rejected repeatedly by Congress, where there is broad, bipartisan opposition to raising health-care costs for America's military. And in the current round of budget talks, which are aimed at averting January's tax increases and spending cuts, no one has yet suggested helping to cut the deficit with the billions that could potentially be saved by making changes to Tricare.

"It's a third rail for both parties," said Todd Harrison, a defense specialist at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan think tank with close ties to the Pentagon.

Under the military health plans, 10 million people—active military, veterans and their families—pay a fraction of the fees most Americans pay for care. In 2011, retirees and families enrolled in the basic military health-care program paid an average of $880 in annual copayments and fees, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Most American families in employer-provider health plans paid an average of nearly $5,000.

For 15 years until this year, the enrollment fee for Tricare's health-maintenance-organization plan was fixed at $230 for individuals and $460 for families. That has helped drive up the program's budget from $19 billion in 2001 to $51 billion this year. Without changes, the Congressional Budget Office said, that number will hit $65 billion in five years and $77 billion by 2022.

Two years ago, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that "heath-care costs are eating the Defense Department alive."

This year, the administration pushed for changes including higher enrollment fees that could save $1.8 billion next fiscal year and nearly $13 billion by 2018. Congressional committees have moved to block the changes, though the administration succeeded in raising the annual family enrollment fee to $520.

Veterans groups have sent more than 110,000 messages to the nation's leaders, urging them to shield military retirees from shouldering more costs in talks for any "grand bargain" on the deficit, said Steve Strobridge, director of government relations for the Military Officers Association of America.

He also said Mr. Gates's fears are overstated, noting the Pentagon's health-care budget ended the past two years with a small surplus. The system accounts for about 11% of the defense budget, Mr. Strobridge said. "There is a value to [veterans'] service and sacrifice…that we won't allow to be discounted by people who only want to account for what they pay in cash," he said.

This year, the association has supported small increases in copayments for drugs, but it opposed the larger fee increases sought by the administration.

Mr. Harrison, the defense budget analyst, said the Pentagon, like the nation as a whole, has to get a handle on rising health-care costs or risk seeing the military shrink instead.

"There aren't easy options here, but when you think about it in the larger context of the defense budget, you're going to have to make some tough decisions," he said.

Some veterans say military health-care benefits should be scrutinized, but they resist shouldering more costs to reduce the nation's budget woes.

Brandon Friedman, a U.S. Army officer who was awarded two Bronze Stars for his service in Afghanistan and Iraq, said many veterans could be persuaded they needed to pay a few pennies more to help their government out of its fiscal crisis. But he chafed at the notion that the government would ask veterans to sacrifice if it doesn't find other ways to deal with the nation's deficit.

"After a decade of war, you asked people to serve their country and repeatedly deploy and risk their lives, and then you say: Sorry, we're out of money?" he said. "I just don't think that's fair."

Michigan Effort Shows G.O.P. Sway in State Contests - Starting next year, Republicans will have one-party control in almost half of the state capitals in the country.

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From The New York Times:

As Republican leaders in Washington grappled after the election with their failure to unseat President Obama, Dick DeVos, one of Michigan’s wealthiest men, began dialing up state lawmakers in Lansing.

Although Mr. Obama won Michigan handily, Republicans had kept control of the Legislature. A union-backed ballot measure to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the State Constitution was defeated, thanks to an aggressive campaign against it that was financed in part by $2 million of DeVos family money.
The time had come, Mr. DeVos told Republican lawmakers, for the bold stroke they were considering: a law banning requirements that workers pay union dues or fees, in the state where the modern American labor movement was born. If the lawmakers later found themselves facing recalls or tough re-election fights, Mr. DeVos told them, he would be there to help.
“That was when I started to say, you know what, this thing could happen,” Mr. DeVos said on Friday. “These people really are serious and committed.”
The lawmakers and Gov. Rick Snyder, who is also a Republican, rapidly approved the legislation and delivered a body blow to the labor movement.
Yet much of the groundwork for the quick victory was laid months and years before by a loose network of donors, strategists and conservative political groups that has sought to win Republican control of legislatures around the country and limit unions’ political power. Their bet: that money invested in local elections would yield concrete policy victories that could not be had in Washington.
Where the big-spending conservative groups active in this year’s presidential race had little to show for their millions of dollars, the state efforts were strikingly successful. While Mr. Obama was winning onetime red states like Virginia and swing states like Michigan and Ohio, Republicans made large gains in state offices in many of the same battlegrounds. Starting next year, Republicans will have one-party control in almost half of the state capitals in the country.

How Party of Budget Restraint Shifted to ‘No New Taxes,’ Ever - “Republicans used to be interested in not running continual rivers of red ink.”

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From The New York Times:

On a Saturday afternoon in October 1990, Senator Pete V. Domenici turned from a conversation on the Senate floor, caught the eye of a clerk by raising his right hand and voted in favor of a huge and contentious bill to reduce federal deficits. Then he put his hand back into his pocket and returned to the conversation.
      
It was the end of an era, although no one knew it then. It was the last time any Congressional Republican has voted for higher income taxes.        The conservative revolt against that 1990 legislation — and against President George Bush, who violated his own “Read my lips” vow not to increase taxes — was a seminal moment for Republicans. The party of balanced budgets became the party that opposed tax increases.        When conservatives sank Speaker John A. Boehner’s plan last week to acquiesce on tax increases for the most affluent Americans as part of a potential broader deal with the Obama administration to avert tax increases for everyone else, several said that 1990 accord was a reason. They regard Mr. Bush’s broken promise as a major reason he was not re-elected, and they say the budget agreement proved that such compromises do not restrain the growth of government.        But the 1990 legislation also highlights a basic challenge now facing the party, which the chaos within the House caucus helped bring into public view on Thursday night.        Republicans continue to embrace the no-new-taxes stand as a centerpiece of the party’s identity, even in the face of public opinion that strongly supports tax increases on high incomes. And some Republicans fear that the party’s commitment to prevent tax increases more and more is coming at the expense of those other, older kinds of fiscal responsibility.        “Republicans used to be interested in not running continual rivers of red ink,” said former Representative William Frenzel, a Minnesota Republican who as the ranking member of the House Budget Committee in 1990 helped to negotiate the deficit deal. “If that meant raising taxes a little bit, we always raised taxes a little bit. But nowadays taxes are like leprosy and they can’t be used for anything, and so Republicans have denied themselves any bargaining power.”        The resulting debate has created perhaps the greatest test of the tax stand in the last two decades. Republicans who are willing to accept tax increases as part of a broader deal are pitted against a conservative wing, restocked by the Tea Party wave of 2010, that insists that opposition to tax increases is particularly important at times like these, when the temptation is greatest to avoid spending cuts by asking Americans for just a little more. Many in the antitax camp come from deeply conservative districts and were re-elected by wide margins.        They were not even swayed by Grover Norquist, the activist and arbiter of antitax orthodoxy, who has pushed politicians for the last 25 years to promise that they will not vote to raise taxes, a pledge a vast majority of Congressional Republicans have signed. Mr. Norquist said Mr. Boehner’s proposal was not a tax increase, but he could not convince the generation of politicians he helped create. “We know that our big problem is too much spending,” Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, said on Fox News last week, explaining his opposition to Mr. Boehner’s plan. “We know that President Reagan fell into the trap and President George H.W. Bush fell in the trap of ‘Here, just raise taxes on somebody, and we’ll come along with the cuts later.’”        The Republican Party’s embrace of tax cuts is often traced to the 1970s, when conservative thinkers began to argue that cuts were not just politically advantageous but also fiscally responsible. The economist Arthur Laffer advanced the theory that cuts could even be self-financing, because they could generate enough economic activity to increase revenue.        Others said that cutting taxes would force the government to cut spending too, an idea colorfully described as “starving the beast.”        But the movement did not truly take hold until the early 1990s. Some Congressional scholars argue that opposition to tax increases offered a new kind of ideological glue after the cold war. Others cite changes in the political landscape, including the rise of advocacy groups like Mr. Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, and the purification of Congressional districts through gerrymandering, which led House members to fear primaries more than general elections. And the electoral success of the political strategy — many voters are swayed by promises of a lower tax bill — became its own justification.        In the early 1980s, majorities of Congressional Republicans voted for a pair of deficit deals orchestrated by President Ronald Reagan, even though tax increases accounted for more than 80 percent of the projected reductions. But by 1987, a majority of Republicans opposed a third deal, even though only 37 percent of the reductions came from tax increases.        The 1990 battle echoed the present situation. The economy was struggling. Deficits were growing. Congress had enacted automatic spending cuts that it was racing to avoid. Republicans did not want to raise taxes. Democrats did not want to cut spending. Mr. Bush, convinced that the government needed to balance its books, reluctantly agreed to break his no-new-taxes pledge. Once again, less than 40 percent of the money came from tax increases. Once again, a majority of Republicans voted no.        By 1993, not a single Republican would vote for a deficit package drafted by the Clinton administration and Congressional Democrats that laid the groundwork for the first balanced budget since the late 1960s.        Instead, in 2001 and 2003, Republicans passed tax cuts that more than reversed the increases during the Clinton administration.        “When I entered politics, the frame of reference was a balanced budget as the principal conservative precept,” said former Representative James Leach, an Iowa Republican who served from 1977 to 2007. “Today, it’s the level of taxes.”        In order to maintain that commitment, Republicans need to develop a similar consensus about how to reduce federal spending. The federal budget, particularly spending on health care programs, is projected to grow rapidly as the country ages and as medical costs continue to rise, leaving Washington in need of more revenue.        The party’s conservative wing wants to circumscribe those benefit programs, despite their popularity among voters. The goal of balancing the federal budget has all but vanished, replaced by the idea that deficits should be reduced to sustainable levels.        The 1990 deal still won the support of 47 Republicans in the House and 19 Republicans in the Senate. Only 4 of those 66 are still in Congress, and Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Representative Jerry Lewis of California both will be gone at the end of the current session, leaving just two: Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Representative Frank R. Wolf of Virginia.        Mr. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who played a significant role in negotiating the 1990 deal, which he regarded as necessary to reduce federal deficits, left the Senate in 2009. But he has continued to advocate a similar approach as a co-chairman of a commission organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center that called for a mix of revenue increases and spending cuts to stabilize the federal debt.        He said he was frustrated by the reflexive opposition of conservatives to any kind of tax increase, but he added that Democrats had also shown little willingness to negotiate necessary cuts in spending on federal entitlement programs.  Democratic line, too,” he said. “There isn’t any Democrat in here that is going to help with these cuts.”

Questions as ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Nears - Cutting taxes and raising spending are activities Washington always finds more satisfying

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From The Wall Street Journal:

The most logical way to get something done quickly would be for Sen. Reid to take a bill the House passed a while back, which extended current tax rates for everybody; adjust it to reflect Democrats’ wishes to extend current rates only for families making less than $250,000 a year and allowing rates to rise for others; jam in some other eleventh-hour fixes such as extending exemptions to the Alternative Minimum Tax and continuing expanded unemployment insurance benefits; pass it in the Senate, and then send it back to the House.

One uncertainty in this scenario is whether Mr. McConnell would stand aside and let such a bill hit the Senate floor without objections or tactics to stall it. The benefit of the plan for Republicans is that they wouldn’t have to do anything proactively to let it move forward except stand aside and allow it to proceed. And they wouldn’t actually have to vote to raise anybody’s tax rates. They’d vote only to keep rates at current rates for most people, and rates on wealthier Americans would simply rise automatically.

3. How many Republicans in the Senate would go along with such a half-measure, and could House Speaker John Boehner get a majority of his Republican caucus to vote for it?

The question is relevant because the only way a last-minute fix could pass both chambers is with some combination of Democratic and Republican votes. Democrats likely would have to provide the bulk of the votes in the Senate and a healthy chunk of them in the House.

That would produce an odd case of shotgun-marriage bipartisanship in Washington. On the other hand, it may be that what the two parties really agree on at this point is that they’d rather go over the cliff, prove their points, wait for Mr. Boehner to be re-elected House Speaker Jan. 3 and then try again.

By then, tax rates will have gone up and spending cuts will have kicked in. At that point, the two parties then could negotiate ways to cut taxes and increase spending from their post-cliff levels. And cutting taxes and raising spending are activities Washington always finds more satisfying anyway.