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Congress, Media - Keeping them Honest, Politics

‘July 7, 2010

Some prominent conservatives are speaking out in favor of the kind of comprehensive immigration bill that many Republicans oppose — one that would include border security and then a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

As a leading evangelical conservative,

Richard Land’s credentials are impeccable. He heads the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, and from that influential perch he’s been urging his fellow conservatives to rethink their opposition to the immigration overhaul.

“I’ve had some of them appeal to me. They say, ‘Richard, you’re going to divide the conservative coalition.’ And I said, ‘Well, I may divide the old conservative coalition, but I’m not going to divide the new one.’ ”

Land adds, “If the new conservative coalition is going to be a governing coalition, it’s going to have to have a significant number of Hispanics in it, that’s dictated by demographics, and you don’t get large numbers of Hispanics to support you when you’re engaged in anti-Hispanic immigration rhetoric.”

Last week, when President Obama gave his speech on immigration, Land was in the audience. In fact, he had urged the president to make the speech. Obama called on both parties to rise above petty politics to fix the country’s broken immigration system.

Land says that will be very hard because, for both parties, there’s a short-term political advantage to doing nothing.’

For source and more click on:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128352487

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SEARCHING FOR RELIABLE SOURCES,
not hearsay, rumors, or falsehoods.

Faith, Life, Politics Barack Obama, Conservatism, Illegal immigration, Immigration, Politics, Republican Party (United States), Richard Land, Southern Baptist Convention

Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman to unveil climate bill

In their last and best shot at enacting a climate bill this year, Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) plan to unveil a draft Monday that will provide a streamlined system for capping greenhouse gas emissions from the utilities and transport sector but still aims to reduce the nation’s carbon dioxide output by 17 percent in 10 years.

The measure offers numerous concessions to businesses, including allowing manufacturing and energy-intensive industries four years before they would be subject to the carbon cap; provisions for offshore oil drilling; $10 billion for the coal industry to capture and store its carbon emissions; and enough loan guarantees and incentives to provide for the construction of 12 nuclear power plants.

“Because of the broad-based industry support that I expect the bill will garner, both at the rollout as well as beyond, I think this is the best path forward,” said Fred Krupp, who heads the Environmental Defense Fund.

In a telephone briefing Thursday for business supporters, Kerry said the Edison Electric Institute — whose members generate the bulk of the nation’s electricity — would endorse the measure, along with three of the nation’s five biggest oil and gas companies. He did not name the three oil companies, but a source familiar with the negotiations said Shell, BP and Conoco Phillips would support the bill.

Significant sections of the bill remained blank as of Friday evening, according to several sources, and that lack of specificity could deter some senators and many business interests from endorsing the measure at the outset.

“I’d like to support it, but I have to look at it,” said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), adding that she was concerned about what it would do to home heating oil and gas prices. “In this economy, we have to see how much we can do.”

One of the most complex areas has been the question of how to limit carbon emissions from transportation. Initially the senators had hoped to create a linked fee on fuels that would be tied to the price of carbon, but that idea came under attack last week as a gas tax.

“If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a duck,” said Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.). “I don’t care whether you call it a linked fee. It is a tax on energy.”

To avoid that pitfall, the bill’s authors are going to require oil and gas producers to buy special, non-tradable emissions allowances, at a price set by the Environmental Protection Agency. It would be pegged to the carbon market and must be retired at a certain date.

“We’re not going to raise gas prices,” Graham said.

To keep utility costs from rising too high, two-thirds of the revenue generated by auctioning off pollution allowances for utilities would be returned to consumers through local electricity distributors.

And in an effort to win over moderate Republicans, such as Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio), the bill will preempt both the states’ and the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, as long as emitters comply with the standards outlined in the measure. The agency will monitor and enforce compliance with the law.

The measure aims to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels in a decade and 80 percent by 2050.

For the entire article click on:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Global Warming, Politics Clean Air Act, ConocoPhillips, Environment, Environmental Protection Agency, Greenhouse gas, Joe Lieberman, United States Environmental Protection Agency

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Dwight D Eisenhower

Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency is probably better remembered less for what he did than for what he said while heading for the exit. In a nationally televised address on January 17, 1961, only four days before John F. Kennedy’s inaugural, Eisenhower warned of the dangers of “undue influence” exerted by the “military-industrial complex.” He cautioned that maintaining a large, permanent military establishment was “new in the American experience,” and suggested that an “engaged citizenry” offered the only effective defense against the “misplaced power” of the military-industrial lobby.

For much more click on:

AllBusiness.com/… and

http://www.h-net.org/… (the speech)

For Eisenhower videos click on:

google.com/search?q=eisenhower….

We don’t want an America that is closed to the world.

What we want is a world that is open to America.

George H. W. Bush

“Whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we’re going to show our macho?
We’re going into Baghdad. We’re going to be an occupying power — America in an Arab land — with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous. We don’t gain the size of our victory by how many innocent kids running away — even though they’re bad guys — that we can slaughter. … We’re American soldiers; we don’t do business that way.”

For much more click on: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush

“If We Don’t Learn Our History, We’re Doomed to Repeat It”

Why Americans Can’t Learn from History

Click on:
huffingtonpost.com/carol-smaldino/why….

Government, Politics, USA, War Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush, History, President, United States

I’m sure the teabaggers in DC today will be thanking Obama and the Democratic Congress for overcoming GOP obstructionism and lowering taxes to their lowest level in 60 years?

“The American people need to be reminded that 98 percent of Americans got a tax cut last year,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday.

Reid was referring to the impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the stimulus — essentially, the only Obama policy to really impact people’s 2009 tax returns. In fact, tax refunds reached an all-time high this year in part because of the stimulus, the president said in his weekly address on Saturday. Meanwhile, taxes are at their lowest levels in 60 years, according to William Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center and director of the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution.

“The relation between what is said in the tax debate and what is true about tax policy is often quite tenuous,” Gale told Hotsheet. “The rise of the Tea Party at at time when taxes are literally at their lowest in decades is really hard to understand.”

For more click on these links:

http://www.dailykos.com/

Americans paying less taxes this year despite Tax Day rhetoric …

Tax Rates At Their Lowest Point In 60 Years Is A Problem | FDL …
Apr 15, 2010 … We pay less tax than many Europeans countries with their …. rest of the budget for several decades, it is BS on that count as well. … The 400 richest people in America had an effective tax rate in 2007 of just 16.6%. …

Congress, Government, Politics Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Tax, Tea Party