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Dick Durbin Hunting for Muslim Votes

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By Paul R. Hollrah, Guest Blogger

The Democratic Party is the oldest of the two major U.S. political parties.  It was first organized in the early 1790s by anti-federalists, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, as the Democratic-Republican Party.  Unlike the Democratic Party of today, it was distinguishable by its support for states’ rights and strict adherence to constitutional principles.

The modern Democratic Party was born in February 1825 following the disputed presidential election of 1824. In that election, between John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts; Henry Clay of Kentucky; William H. Crawford of Georgia; and Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, Jackson won a plurality of both the national popular vote and the electoral vote.  However, since he had failed to win a clear majority of the electoral votes, the 12th Amendment dictated that the names of the top three candidates… Adams, Crawford, and Jackson… be sent to the House of Representatives, presided over by none other than Speaker Henry Clay, for the final selection.

Clay threw his support to Adams, who became the sixth president of the United States; Jackson resigned from the Senate and launched a campaign for the party’s 1828 nomination; and Clay relinquished the Speaker’s gavel to become Secretary of State in the Adams Administration.  The Jackson faction of the party, referring to the highly-suspicious Adams-Clay alliance as a “corrupt bargain,” split off from the party and established the Democratic Party.  It was out of that “corrupt bargain” that the DNA of the modern Democratic Party was formed.

In the years between 1825 and 1860, as abolitionist sentiment gained more and more support, the Democratic Party, north and south, became the party of slavery, championing such pro-slavery laws as the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Fugitive Slave Law.  Then, after opposing Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Democrats opposed ratification of the 13th Amendment, outlawing slavery; the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to the freed slaves; and the 15th Amendment, which gave voting rights to the freed slaves.

Following the Civil War, in states where they held essentially one-party control, Democrats enacted Black Codes and an endless variety of Jim Crow laws.  In 1866, as a means of ensuring the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws were fully enforced, Democrats created a paramilitary auxiliary, the Ku Klux Klan.

In the remaining years of the 19th century, Democrats established an unbroken record of opposition to civil rights legislation. They opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the First Reconstruction Act of 1867, the Enforcement Act of 1870, the Force Act of 1871, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.  Then, after regaining control of Congress and the White House in the 1890s, Democrats passed the Repeal Act of 1894, repealing much of the civil rights legislation enacted by Republicans in the decades since the Civil War.

Later, in the mid-20th century, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and the Equal Employment Act of 1972 became law only with strong Republican support.  All of those bills received strong opposition from Democrats in one-party states, mostly in the South.

During the 1930s, Democrats began to build a coalition of special interest groups.  With the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, giving workers the right to organize unions and to engage in collective bargaining with employers, Democrats saw an opportunity to capture a stable and reliable voting bloc.  If they could convince working men and women that they were the sole protectors of their unique government-created “right” to hold hostage the private property of the owners of business, they would be the beneficiaries of many millions of dollars during each campaign season and tens of millions of votes on Election Day.  Since that day, Democrats have been the dutiful servants of the labor bosses.  Whatever labor has wanted, labor got… no matter how ethically or economically ill-advised the demand.

 

Rosa Parks

Then came Brown v. Board of Education, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, Orville Faubus and the Little Rock Central High School, Bull Connor and Lester Maddox, and suddenly everything changed. African-Americans were suddenly knocking at the door, demanding access to the American Dream, and they had every right to do so.  But they had a decision to make.  Would they be consumed by the irresistible narcotic of the welfare state, or would they recognize that the only true economic progress in America is not class progress, but individual progress, and opt for the sure rewards of education, opportunity, and hard work?

We all know what happened.  African-Americans turned their backs on the Republican Party, the party that was born out of opposition to slavery, the party whose members had shed their blood and their treasure to free their forbears from the bonds of slavery. Instead, their leaders opted for the “free lunch” promised by Democrats and they filed, en masse, into the Democratic Party where, to this day, they faithfully and blindly pull the Democrat lever on Election Day.

In more recent times, Democrats can be seen courting not only the votes of Hispanic citizens, but the votes of illegal immigrants, as well. While illegal aliens stream across our porous borders by the millions, bringing tons of drugs along with them, Democrats refuse to enforce immigration laws and offer the illegals generous taxpayer-funded education, medical, and welfare benefits.

In 1962, Rachel Carson published her book, “Silent Spring,” which attacked the use of chemical pesticides.  Her book led to a ban on DDT and other pesticides and a grassroots environmental movement was born.  Yet, in spite of the fact that scientific studies show conclusively that DDT is not a carcinogen, the EPA lists DDT as a ‘probable human carcinogen’… but only if ingested in large quantities.  Nevertheless, it was yet another opportunity for Democrats to make political capital out of a bogus public issue based on questionable science and embraced by a large and dedicated following… many of them wealthy, well-educated, and blindly idealistic.

It is of no apparent concern to Democrats that, since DDT was banned by a Democratic Congress in 1972, more than 50,000,000 people have died of malaria.  The World Health Organization reported that, in the year 2000 alone, malaria infected more than 300 million people, killing some 2,000,000… mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.  Most fatalities today are children, who die at the rate of two per minute or 3,000 per day.  Yet, so long as Democrats have their campaign coffers filled by radical environmentalists they will continue to do their bidding… no questions asked.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano talks with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

In subsequent years, Democrats have embraced the agendas of numerous other special interests, all having just one thing in common: they all want something from government.  These include trial lawyers, radical feminists, abortion rights advocates, public school teachers, public employees, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people.  But now it appears that Democrats are looking to add yet another loyal voting bloc to their coalition.  They’ve sent Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), their second-ranking Senate leader, on a hunting expedition to capture the American Muslim vote… both radicals and moderates.

In the wake of hearings held by U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, into charges that homegrown Muslims are being radicalized by ideologues in mosques all across the country, Senate Democrats held an “anti-King hearing,” on Tuesday, March 29, chaired by none other than Dick Durbin, himself.  It was an apparent attempt to show that the guys who took down the World Trade Center, the guys who flew a plane into the Pentagon, the guy who slaughtered 13 and wounded 29 at Fort Hood, and dozens more, were just a bunch of misunderstood eccentrics.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, a photograph has circulated in the mainstream media showing a smiling Dick Durbin at an early March gathering of Muslim clerics at the Bridgeview Mosque Foundation in Chicago. As described by Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, of the eight men photographed with Durbin, six are allied with Hamas, the Palestinian terror group; five are unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial; and four of the eight have made statements calling for the killing of Jews.

Should they be successful, it will be interesting to visualize future Democratic conventions. Just picture the thugs of the AFL-CIO, ACORN, and SEIU conducting seminars for teachers and Code Pink pacifists on how to beat up little old ladies at Tea Party rallies. Picture the blacks and the Hispanics beating the tar out of each other because blacks are tired of hearing Mexicans say that blacks are too lazy and too spoiled to do stoop-labor.  But most interesting of all, picture what happens when a bunch of radical jihadists get a little high from sniffing the smoke in one of the Democrats’ smoke-filled rooms and wander into a ballroom where gays, lesbians and transvestites are enjoying a no-holds-barred meet-and-greet.  Where the jihadists come from, men are beheaded and women are stoned to death for that sort of thing, but in Democratic circles it will just be viewed as business as usual.

If Democrats are so determined to make themselves bullet-proof, politically, one wonders why they haven’t embraced the political agenda of NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Could it be that pedophiles just don’t bring enough money or enough votes to the table?  Happy hunting, Dick!  Better you than us.

Hollrah is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a contributing editor for Family Security Matters and a number of online publications.  He resides in northeast Oklahoma.

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Black, Brown, White: Leftists Come in All Colors

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By Paul R. Hollrah, Guest Blogger

Whether black, white, brown, red, pink, orange, green, or purple, leftists come in all colors… depending on their issue de jour. Watching the turmoil in Wisconsin in recent weeks, and seeing Democrats on the floor of the General Assembly… all decked out in their stylish orange t-shirts…  shouting childish epithets at their Republican colleagues, one is reminded of how easily and how quickly liberals, Democrats, socialists, fascists and communists adopt self-identifying uniforms.

What comes to mind are leftist movements of the past two centuries: Mussolini’s Blackshirts; Hitler’s Brownshirts; the white-hooded Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; the black-suited New Black Panthers; the pink-shirted dilettantes of Code Pink; the red-shirted thugs of Obama’s ACORN; the green-shirted radicals of the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); and the purple-shirted goons of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  Of these, only Hitler’s Brownshirts and Mussolini’s Blackshirts are not known to have been closely associated with the Democratic Party.

Unlike Tea Party activists, who are capable of dressing themselves and thinking for themselves, union members and other self-identified leftists, socialists and fascists are, by their very nature, like children who must have others dress them and do their thinking for them.

St. Louis Tea Party 11-29-09

Click above to read Tea Party-related stories.

Mussolini’s Blackshirts, the Fasci di Combattimenti, were established as a Fascist paramilitary force in 1919.  Far from being as brutal as Hitler’s Brownshirts, Mussolini’s Blackshirts favored tactics such as tying an opposition “non-conformist” to a tree, forcing a pint or two of castor oil down his throat, and forcing him to swallow a live toad or frog.  While not life-threatening, such punishments were enough to cause most Italians to give the Blackshirts a bit of latitude.

And while submissive adults were important to the Mussolini regime, it was the children, the fascists of the future, who were of greatest interest to Il Duce.  Like Democrats of today and like Nazis of yesteryear, a top priority of Italian fascists was control of the state’s public education system… not because of the quality of the education children might receive, but because of the opportunities it provided for filling impressionable young minds with leftist ideology.

While Italian children were taught to sing hymns of praise to Il Duce, American children are taught by unionized teachers to chant, “He said red, yellow, black, or white, all are equal in his sight.  Mmm, mmm, mmm!  Barack Hussein Obama!  Barack Hussein Obama!”

Adolph Hitler’s Brownshirts, the Sturmabteilung (SA), served as the paramilitary arm of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party.  It played a major role in Hitler’s rise to power during the 1920s and ’30s until being violently displaced by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1934.

The Hitler Youth, who wore the same brown shirts as their elders, were important to the future of the Third Reich because it was their job, not only to inform on their parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors, but to train and recruit future SA members.  And just as the Hitler Youth were taught Nazi slogans and Nazi doctrine by adult leaders, Youth for Obama children are taught to sing propaganda themes such as, “We’re gonna’ spread happiness.  We’re gonna’ spread freedom.  Obama’s gonna’ change it, Obama’s gonna’ lead ‘em, Obama’s gonna’ change it… and rearrange it.  We’re gonna’ change the world.”

The Ku Klux Klan, identifiable by their white robes and white conical hats and facemasks, was formed in 1865 as the paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party.  The primary role of the Klan was to intimidate the freed slaves, controlling every facet of their daily lives as if they had not been freed from the bonds of slavery.  Sworn testimony contained in the Congressional Record tells us that, after Republicans wrote and ratified the 15th Amendment, giving blacks the right to vote, Democrats often stood in the doorways of the polling places handing out Democratic ballots and reminding blacks that, if they failed to vote the Democrat ticket, there was a coffin waiting for them.

With that level of intimidation most blacks voted the Democrat ticket… but some did not.  Archives maintained by the Tuskegee Institute contain the names of some 4,730 men and women who refused to be intimidated.  Between 1882 and 1951, the white-clad night riders of the Klan lynched some 3,437 blacks and 1,293 whites, essentially all Republicans.  Now, in what can only be described as a mind-boggling reversal of roles, we find members of the New Black Panther Party, clad in black military style uniforms and brandishing police-style nightsticks, employing essentially the same tactics as the KKK… intimidating both black and white voters suspected of voting for Republican candidates.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), whose members and staff are recognizable by their red t-shirts, was born out of the welfare rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s.  According to ACORN propaganda, the group’s priorities have included better low-income housing, higher wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, better public schools, unionization of workers and other “social justice” issues.   Putting a bit of “lipstick on a pig,” ACORN claims to have pursued these goals through public demonstrations, negotiations, lobbying and voter participation.

The truth is, in spite of the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it taxpayer funds, have flowed through the hands of 30 ACORN state chapters and hundreds of local chapters, ACORN activists have little to show for their efforts. Low-income housing has been a national disgrace; few minorities have gained middle-class status via ACORN’s efforts; pressure exerted on banks to make mortgage loans to applicants with little or no ability to repay them, has brought our nation to the brink of financial collapse; the number of high school dropouts, especially in the black community, has steadily increased while education spending has grown exponentially; more than two out of every three black babies are born to unwed mothers; and, with ACORN’s assistance, the number of black babies aborted now borders on genocide.

The only thing ACORN has done successfully is to provide the Democratic Party with many thousands of dead or fictitious voters. Numerous officials have been indicted on fraud charges and on March 22, 2010, ACORN announced it was closing all of its remaining state chapters and disbanding due to falling revenue.  Although Democrats will be forced to find a new source of fraudulent voter registrations, they’re almost certain to experience a one-time windfall from the sale of thousands of red ACORN t-shirts.

Until the shameless siege of the Wisconsin state capitol, the purple-shirted goons of the SEIU could be counted on to turn out in force… shouting, screaming, pushing, shoving and brutalizing the opposition. But now, the violence-prone goons of the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the NEA and the AFT appear to have reclaimed their mantle as party “enforcers.”  And while decent people may view with alarm the lawless nature of those who occupied the Wisconsin capitol, threatening and terrorizing Republican members of the House and Senate, it is easy to lose track of just who those people are.

They are not just a bunch of radical Democrats and unionized public employees in someone else’s state capital.  No matter where we live, they are our family members, our neighbors; the teachers who teach our children; our fellow Wal-Mart shoppers; and, sadly, in far too many instances, they are the police officers and the firefighters in whose hands we place the safety of our families and our property.  They are, like the Wisconsin classroom teachers and other public employees, those who contribute their hard earned dollars to elect Democratic puppets in our city halls, our county courthouses, our state legislatures, and the Congress.

They are the people who refuse to condemn the author of the death threat made to Wisconsin legislators, the cowardly threat that tells Republican legislators, “Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed… We have all planned to assault you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head…” They are the leftist hoodlums who have been taught by their union overlords to chant at Republicans, “You have killed democracy,” when few of them are sufficiently educated to write a single declaratory sentence describing the difference between a democracy and a republic.

They are not the people who have, through their industry, built a great nation; they are the people who would find comfort in the smothering embrace of a European-style socialist state.  They are not builders of wealth, creators and leaders; they are the moochers, the parasites and the hangers-on of Ayn Rand’s epic work, “Atlas Shrugged.”

Now that conservatives and Republicans have been successful in attacking the power of public employee unions in Idaho, Ohio, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and elsewhere, the real battle begins.  Between now and the 2012 general election, it is up to Republicans to remind voters of why collective bargaining reform is so essential.  They must hang all of Wisconsin’s $100,000+ bus drivers, New York City’s 4,000 “rubber room” teachers and Harry Reid’s Northern Nevada Cowboy Poetry Festival tightly around the necks of Democrats.  And now that the rainbow coalition of color-coded radicals, representing less than fifteen percent of the U.S. workforce, has been foolish enough to show us their true colors, it’s up to the rest of us to make sure the voters do not forget who they are when they go to the polls in 2012.

 

Paul R. Hollrah

Hollrah is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a contributing editor for Family Security Matters and a number of online publications.  He resides in northeast Oklahoma.

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St. Louis Group Peddling Tea Party Racism Fable

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Remember Elston K. McCowan?  He was one of the men charged with assault and interfering with police on the night black conservative Kenneth Gladney was beaten by a crowd of SEIU thugs in St. Louis.  Now, he’s back as one of the organizers of a racially-charged, anti-Tea Party event.

The publicity materials for the event, Islamophobia: Tea Party as the New Klan?, appear on the Gateway Greens web site and falsely paint Tea Party members as racists:

Hostility toward Islamic and Middle Eastern people is growing like a social cancer. The Tea Party is spreading an ideology of intolerance that has contributed to a violent attack in St. Louis, countless victimizations of US Muslims, and murders in Tucson.

This is not new. Racism and fear of different cultures were part of America long before the country came into existence. Bigotry which festers below the surface erupts during times of economic collapse. But just as narrow-mindedness has long been a part of US culture, so has resistance. Come join us to look at the current wave of xenophobia and how your friends are organizing to combat it.

Sponsored by Gateway Green Alliance and Universal African Peoples Organization. For more information call 314-727-8554 or visit:

www.gateway-greens.org

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

When it comes to hate and racism, no one in the Tea Party Movement has faced charges of beating up people who do not share the same political views, and no one in the Tea Party Movement has engaged in the kind of vitriol Jim Hoft highlighted in a July  BigGovernment article that included the video (below).  The video shows McCowan standing next to a speaker at an NAACP event and laughing at his racist remarks aimed at Gladney.

When it comes to racism in St. Louis, the event scheduled for Feb. 2 is already emitting the same sort of race-bating stench as events sponsored by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  It has no basis in fact and banks on lies and misinformation to further the group’s organizational objectives.

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Saving America, Sharing the Pain

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Paul R. Hollrah

By Paul R. Hollrah, Guest Blogger

On Dec. 3, Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (a.k.a., “Debt Commission”) voted on the plan they had developed to save our country from utter fiscal ruin. The vote fell three short of the fourteen votes required by rule to send the plan to Congress for an up-or-down vote.

Voting in favor of the plan were the co-chairmen, former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles; along with Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.); Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.); former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alice Rivlin; Honeywell Corp. CEO David Cote; and Ann Fudge, former CEO of Young & Rubicam.

Voting against the proposal were Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.); Reps. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.); and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.

If Obama expected courage from his commission members, he might have skipped over members of the House of Representatives, all of whom run for reelection in 2012, and union leaders such as Andy Stern, who could never be trusted to put the national interest first. Without going into detail, the commissioners recommended what can best be described as a little pain for everyone. They suggested cuts in Social Security and Medicare, the elimination of tax breaks for mortgage interest and child care, and, surprisingly, a reduction in tax rates for individuals and corporations.

As expected, howls of protest could be heard immediately from the right and from the left, but in each case from those who apparently would rather see the entire nation go down the drain while they scramble for the last remaining seats in a sinking ship of state. So, for those who are serious about saving a bit of the American Dream for our children and grandchildren, what are some of the things that could and should be done almost immediately?

REPEAL OBAMACARE

The first item of business should be to repeal Obamacare, replacing it with meaningful reform that eliminates fraud, waste, and bureaucratic paper-shuffling, protects families from financial ruin in cases of catastrophic illness, eliminates free healthcare for illegal aliens, charges patients only for justifiable doctor and hospital services, and focuses on strengthening the doctor-patient relationship.

CANCEL UNSPENT STIMULUS FUNDS

Of the $787 billion authorized by Congress under Obama’s ill-fated economic stimulus plan, some $292 billion remains unspent. These funds have been allocated to various government departments and agencies but have not been spent and could be withdrawn by act of Congress.

ESTABLISH SOCIAL SECURITY MEANS TESTING

In order to save Social Security for current and future generations, we should begin by answering this question:  Can we morally justify sending monthly Social Security checks to Warren Buffet and George Soros while millions of ordinary Social Security recipients must choose each day between the cost of food, healthcare, utility bills, and prescription drugs?

Anyone who believes in the sustainability of the current system, or who wishes to argue that, since an individual has paid into the system for 40 or 50 years, he/she has a right to withdraw full benefits for a lifetime, regardless of personal wealth, should please stop reading now… we’ve heard that silly argument before, and it is of little or no value in the current debate, given what is at stake.

An individual taxpayer born in 1945, who entered the workforce in 1965, and who retired in 2010 at age 65 with an annual salary of $110,000, will have paid a total of $126,715.89 into the system.  With a monthly benefit of $2,135, that individual will receive that same amount in benefits in just four years and eleven months. If he/she lives to be 85 years of age, the total amount paid to that individual will be $512,400… four times their total contributions.

A graduated reduction in Social Security benefits, beginning with annual incomes of $50,000 and zeroing-out benefits for those with annual incomes of $150,000, or more, would provide long-term sustainability for the system while not causing any undue amount of pain for current and future beneficiaries, regardless of income level. We simply must find the courage to do it.

REDUCE SUPPLEMENTAL SECURITY INCOME (SSI) PAYMENTS

The SSI program guarantees a minimum level of income to financially needy individuals who are aged, blind, or disabled. However, the program has been substantially liberalized by extending benefits to many who are disabled by reason of addiction to drugs, alcohol and gambling.

The State of California will soon reduce SSI outlays for more than 1.1 million low-income seniors and people with disabilities to their Dec. 1, 2008, level.  For an individual recipient, this means the maximum grant will drop from $907 per month to $870 per month, a 4.1 percent reduction. The Congress should direct the Social Security Administration to follow California’s
lead. SSI benefits should be available only to U.S. citizens and only to those who are unable to work due to age, blindness, or physical incapacity. We cannot continue to raid the Social Security System by paying benefits to able-bodied citizens who are many years away from retirement age.

ELIMINATE MANDATORY RETIREMENT AGE

One of the greatest mistakes our nation has ever made was to set a mandatory retirement age at 65.  Telling our most knowledgeable, most experienced, and most skilled workers to go home and sit on their behinds until they die, when the vast majority of workers are capable of being productive until age 70 or 75, makes no economic sense and only serves to swell the ranks of government entitlement recipients. The age of retirement should be left to negotiation between the individual and his/her employer, not dictated by government or corporate policy.

REDUCE FEDERAL WORKFORCE

The Congress should take immediate steps to reduce the size of the non-military federal workforce by ten percent over 10 years. According to 2009 data provided by the Office of Personnel Management, the total federal workforce for calendar year 2009 stood at 4.43 million — 2.77 million executive branch, 66,000 legislative branch and 1.59 million uniformed military.  Excluding our uniformed military, the federal workforce numbers approximately 2.84 million people.

A 10 percent workforce reduction would require the elimination of 284,000 non-military jobs.

The elimination of the U.S. Department of Education (5,000 employees, 2010 budget of $56 billion) and the U.S. Department of Energy (16,000 employees and more than 93,000 contract employees, annual budget approximately $25 billion), both unnecessary and unproductive organizations, would provide a good starting point.

ROLL BACK FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SALARIES

Recent news reports indicate that:  a) salaries of federal workers are roughly double the salaries paid for similar work in the private sector, and b) the number of federal jobs paying in excess of $150,000 per year has doubled under Barack Obama. Using the “power of the purse,” the Congress should begin immediately to roll back federal salaries to private sector levels.

ROLL BACK MINIMUM WAGE TO 2006 LEVELS

Since gaining control of Congress in 2006, Democrats have pushed through three increases in the minimum wage, a 40 percent increase from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. Studies show that, for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, the overall number of jobs available decreases by as much as 2 percent.

The impact on entry-level jobs is even greater.  For each 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, the number of entry-level jobs for teenagers and unskilled workers is reduced by from 4 to 5 percent.

At the very least, the Congress should establish a two-tier minimum wage… a $5.15 per hour minimum wage for teens and unskilled entry-level workers and a $7.25 per hour minimum wage for those with marketable skills who find themselves temporarily unemployed.

ELIMINATE WASTE, FRAUD AND INEFFICIENCY

It is clear we cannot rely on Obama to eliminate waste, fraud, and inefficiency. He has identified only $140 million from his $3.6 trillion 2010 budget request as wasteful. He has also proposed a partial offset of the cost of ObamaCare by cutting $622 billion in Medicare and Medicaid “waste and inefficiencies” over the next 10 years. We’ll never know if that is a hard number or if it was
merely a “blue sky” number invented to help sell his healthcare program. Either way, it’s a good place to start. We only need to inject a bit of courage into those who represent us in Congress.

The dire predictions of where we are headed if we fail to take decisive action now should scare the pants off every thinking American. Let’s take our medicine now so that our children and grandchildren won’t find themselves having to swallow a far more bitter pill in years to come.

Hollrah is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a contributing editor for Family Security Matters and a number of online publications.  He resides in northeast Oklahoma.

Eric Balderas ‘Posterboy’ for Immigration Reform

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Paul R. Hollrah

By Paul R. Hollrah, Guest Blogger

Just imagine for a moment that you are Barack Obama… I know it’s distasteful, but do it anyway… and assume that your number one goal, politically, is to make it possible for your party to win U.S. elections in perpetuity, with little or no chance of a strong challenge from Republicans.  What would you do?

Putting that task in the hands of party hoodlums such as James Carville, Rahm Emanuel, and the leaders of the AFL-CIO, ACORN, and the SEIU could get you into a lot of trouble.  In fact, you might even picture yourself standing in the dock next to former governor Rod Blagojevich.  But if you were looking for a solution to the problem that you could pass right under the noses of the American people and it would pass the smell test, what would you do?

If you were Obama you might say, “We want to tie up the Hispanic vote, just like we’ve bought and paid for blacks, blue collar workers, gays and lesbians, and government workers, so find me a young Hispanic who is: a) clean-cut and attractive, b) a bit on the pitiful side… no ‘macho’ amigos, c) in the country illegally, and d) taking full advantage of the American Dream.  Then, when you find just the right person, I want you to initiate deportation proceedings.”

The Obama Administration has found just the right man… the new “poster boy” for immigration reform. His name is Eric Balderas, a 19-year-old Mexican citizen who has been in this country, illegally, since he was four years old and is now studying molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University.  According to the Huffington Post, Balderas was detained by immigration authorities on Monday, June 7, as he attempted to board a plane from San Antonio to Boston after visiting with his mother.

What alerted immigration authorities was the ID Balderas attempted to use as identification: an  American consulate card obtained in Mexico and his Harvard student ID.  As he explained, he had previously used his Mexican passport to board planes in the U.S., but recently lost it.  He said, “I made it through before so I thought this time wouldn’t be any different.”

According to the Huffington Post, Balderas does not remember living in Mexico.  He said, “All I can think about was my family.”

Then, as if on cue, Obama’s radical left friends began to circle the wagons around Balderas.  Christine Heenan, Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications at Harvard, said, “Eric Balderas has already demonstrated the discipline and the work ethic required for rigorous university work, and has, like so many of our undergraduates, expressed an interest in making a difference in the world.”

One wonders, if such people are so interested in “making a difference” in the world, why do they insist on bringing that passion to the United States where we’re all pretty comfortable and where we’re not looking for foreigners to make a lot of “difference” in our lives?  Why don’t they stay at home and try to make a “difference” in the hell-holes where they were born?

Maybe they come because they heard some idiot say, “My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world.  I hope you’ll join me as I try to change it.”  After hearing that bit of insanity they just couldn’t resist coming to see what it was all about.

Of course, making a “difference” can be a dangerous thing.  For example, look what happened when Obama’s grandfather decided to send his son to America to “make a difference.”  Well, he made a difference; he made Obama and now look at the mess we’re in.

The Huffington Post tells us that Balderas’s case has “sparked a buzz on social media sites and among student immigrant activists who see the Balderas situation as the ideal test case to push the proposed DREAM Act – a federal bill that would allow illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship via college enrollment or military service.  (Emphasis added)

“Mario Rodas, who was an undocumented student in Chelsea, a small city near Boston, until Sen. John Kerry and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy came to his aid, launched a Facebook page Friday highlighting the Balderas case.  ‘He’s an excellent student and an example of someone this country needs,’ said Rodas.”

Balderas has it all:

a) He doesn’t remember living in Mexico;

b) He was brought to the U.S. to escape a domestic violence situation;

c) He can only think of his family;

d) He has demonstrated discipline and the work ethic;

e) He is an excellent student;

f) Like Obama, he is attending Harvard on someone else’s dollar;

g) He has expressed an interest in making a difference in the world;

h) His case has sparked a buzz among liberal activists,

i) His case is an “ideal test case”; and, last but not least,

k) The country needs him.

Not surprisingly, Balderas confesses to having been active in student immigration groups in the Boston area that have staged sit-ins and protests aimed at getting Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) to support the DREAM Act.

It’s such a neat package.  Obama could not have found a more perfect “poster boy” for his radical immigration reform agenda if he had placed a call to Central Casting in Hollywood.  He knows that, if the deportation of a young man like Eric Balderas doesn’t melt away opposition to broad amnesty for illegal aliens, creating millions of new Democrat voters for the future, then nothing will.

Who said Obama is not transparent?

Jo Ann Emerson Banks Money from Radical Unions

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I’ve developed a keen interest in a certain seven-term incumbent Republican RINO Republican congresswoman during the past four weeks.  Elected to serve the people of Missouri’s 8th Congressional District, her name is Jo Ann Emerson and, during the past four election cycles, she has accepted campaign contributions from some very radical unions.

Click image to enlarge.

During her last-three re-election campaigns, according to records at OpenSecrets.org, she accepted a total of $12,500 from the Service Employees International Union.  Perhaps sensing the public’s growing contempt for the SEIU, a radical labor union famous for wearing purple shirts and walking in lockstep with President Barack Obama (see video below), campaign records show she actually returned $2,500 to SEIU.  Perhaps she decided to cut her ties with the group amidst intense scrutiny of the organization by conservatives and Republicans.

During the same three election cycles, she also accepted $3,500 from a group known as UNITE HERE.  Based on a glimpse of the group’s web site, it appears the group is comprised of the same kind of people and espouses the same kinds of ideas as their SEIU brethren.  Most recently, the group made news after its members — mostly hospitality and service industry workers — walked off the job at the Hyatt Regency Chicago as a protest against work rules.

This coziness with the unions, however, should not come as a surprise to anyone who’s read other posts about Emerson and learned about the close ties her second husband, Ronald Gladney, has to labor unions, including SEIU.

I’ve published it before and I’ll publish it again:  Congressman Emerson believes in bringing home the bacon — err, uh, pork — and putting it straight into her own husband’s skillet.

RINO Congresswoman Thrives in the Boot Heel

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Make no mistake about it: U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) will win in November.  Her well-oiled fund-raising machine and unmatched name recognition combine to make the job of unseating her virtually impossible.

What can one learn by studying the 8th Congressional District race in Southeast Missouri?  He can learn that a Republican In Name Only can survive — and thrive — in the Boot Heel of the Show-Me State.

Emerson’s political might and savvy might stem from the fact she was born in 1950 and raised in the Washington, D.C., area in a neighborhood where members of Congress lived next door.  The daughter of Ab Hermann, a former professional baseball player who served as director of the Republican National Committee, she went on to earn a degree in political science degree at Ohio Wesley University and hold positions with both the Republican Party and with trade organizations — including one as a lobbyist for the American Insurance Association.

In 1975, she established ties to the district when she became the second wife of future eight-term Congressman Bill Emerson.  Those ties grew stronger following her much-loved first husband’s death in 1996 when sympathetic voters elected her in his place.

Today, she stands on a 35-year record of contact with the people of the district which borders the Mississippi River and includes Cape Girardeau, the boyhood home of Rush Limbaugh.

Emerson’s challengers in 2010 include the following candidates:

  • Tommy Sowers is an ultra-liberal Democrat without competition in the August primary.  A former Army Special Forces officer and instructor at West Point, he appears to be running solely on the strength of his military uniform and hoping little attention is paid to his stands on issues and the people who support him.  He is, for instance, admittedly pro-choice and pro-ObamaCare, though you’ll find no specifics about either issue on his campaign web site.  Single, he moved back to Missouri from New York to run for the 8th CD seat.
  • Larry Bill is an Independent candidate and Air Force veteran who served as a pilot during the Cold War and the Gulf War. Bill is a conservative family man dissatisfied with the offerings coming from both the Democrat and Republican parties.  A staunch advocate of First and Second Amendment rights and bringing an end to illegal immigration, he thinks unnecessary federal spending must be brought under control and embraces ideas like the Fair Tax and term limits for members of Congress.
  • Bob Parker is the only Republican challenger to Emerson.  A cattle rancher and family man who advocates many of the same issues as Bill, Parker has been an outspoken critic of Emerson.  In addition to drawing attention to the incumbent’s votes in favor of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and the “Cash for Clunkers” effort, Parker faults her for voting to censure Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) for shouting “You lie!” during President Barack Obama’s joint address to Congress on health care reform and for voting in favor of a premature withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

What do conservatives like me, who align more closely to Bill and Parker on most issues, find wrong with Emerson’s record?  For starters, they’re troubled by her ties to earmarks.

According to Legistorm, Emerson’s legislative fingerprints can be found on more than $361,314,075 worth of earmarks she sponsored or co-sponsored during 14 years in office.  Among the largest pork projects she has sponsored was a $3 million earmark to fund a Congressional Hunger Program that bears her first husband’s name.  Based on my review of the program’s web site, it appears taxpayer dollars earmarked for the program pay for college kids to go out and see how the “other half” lives in impoverished parts of the country.

Despite the earmarks and other votes many conservatives would label as “misguided”, Emerson’s constituents seem content with re-electing her time and time again.  Citing her stands as a pro-life, pro-Israel and pro-defense congresswoman who usually gets things right, they appear to like the fact that she “brings home the bacon” in the form of costly projects, such as the $170 million Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge (above) and the $62 million Rush H. Limbaugh Federal Building (right).

Someone who would appear to benefit from the “bacon drippings” is Emerson’s second husband, Ronald C. Gladney, whom she married in 2000.  A Democrat and attorney who is a member of the St. Louis-based law firm, Bartley Goffstein LLC, Gladney represents 12 powerful labor unions, including the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers for whom he serves as general counsel.  One would think they had a hand in building the bridge and the federal building that hosts one part-time judge.

Gladney is also a big supporter of President Obama.  According to CampaignMoney.com records, he made matching $2,300 contributions to Obama for America in 2007 and 2008.  Since then, he’s contributed only $10 to Obama.

Will conservatives opt to vote for anyone but Emerson?  IF history is any indicator and IF they don’t want to risk putting an ultra-liberal Sowers in the seat, the answer will be, “No.”  And the Emerson juggernaut rolls on.

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s worth noting that there appears to be no familial relationship between Emerson’s husband and Kenneth Gladney, a St. Louis man who was beaten — allegedly by SEIU thugs — at an Aug. 6 health care town hall meeting hosted by Democrat U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan of Missouri’s 3rd CD.

SEE ALSO:

Why Does RINO Republican Avoid Tea Parties?

Should Jo Ann Emerson Run as Independent?