Immigration

America is a nation of immigrants. We are not a nation bound by ethnicity, but one bound by the pristine idea that all people are endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why our ancestors came to America and why so many today wait in line to come to our shores. Welcoming newcomers who share our ideals and work hard to secure a better life for themselves and their families is part of our heritage. A strong legal immigration system is an integral component of what makes America exceptional. 

But today, our immigration system is broken.

A porous border allows illegal immigrants to enter the United States, violent cartel members and terrorists possibly among them. Certain states and municipalities grant benefits to illegal immigrants that act as magnets that draw illegal immigrants across the border. At the same time that unskilled workers are able to come here illegally, we do not grant enough visas to high-skill job creators and innovators seeking to come here legally. The system requires us to send away the great majority of the over 300,000 foreign students who are earning advanced degrees at U.S. universities. And it is too difficult for businesses to secure visas for foreign workers to make up for labor shortages and gaps in skills.

Obama's Failure

President Obama has failed to solve our immigration problems. Indeed, he has failed even to address them. As a candidate for president, he promised to tackle immigration in his first year in office. He broke that promise, and has since only made our problems worse.
President Obama has done nothing to improve our visa system to bring in more high-skill job creators and innovators. Our system still turns away even those foreign students whom we educate here and to whom we grant advanced degrees.
President Obama has utterly failed to secure the border. And instead of taking a strong stand on illegal immigration, he has ordered immigration officials to enforce immigration laws “selectively,” leading to the dismissal of many deportation cases. At the same time, his Department of Justice has sued to stop states from assisting the federal government in enforcing immigration laws.

Mitt's Plan

Mitt Romney believes that legal immigration is a boon to America. He will strengthen our           immigration system so that it benefits the U.S. economy, ensures our security, bolsters the rule of law, and carries on America’s tradition as a nation of legal immigrants.

Attract the Best and Brightest

To ensure that America continues to lead the world in innovation and economic dynamism, a Romney administration would press for an immigration policy designed to maximize America’s economic potential. The United States needs to attract and retain job creators from wherever they come. Foreign-born residents with advanced degrees start companies, create jobs, and drive innovation at an especially high rate.
While lawful immigrants comprise about 8 percent of the population, immigrants start 16 percent of our top-performing, high-technology companies, hold the position of CEO or lead engineer in 25 percent of high-tech firms, and produce over 25 percent of all patent applications filed from the United States.

• Raise visa caps for highly skilled workers
• Grant permanent residency to eligible graduates with advanced degrees in math, science, and engineering

A Strong Stand Against Illegal Immigration

Mitt Romney will protect legal immigration and the 4.5 million who are waiting in line to enter the United States legally by taking a strong stand against illegal immigration. He believes that illegal immigration must end and has a proven track record of advancing that goal.

• Secure The Border

Mitt Romney will complete a high-tech fence and provide the necessary number of border patrol to finally secure our southern border.

• Turn Off The Magnets
  

Mitt Romney opposes all “magnets” that entice illegal immigrants to come to our country illegally and stay here. He will establish a tamper-proof employment verification system like E-Verify that will enable employers to hire only those legally permitted to work and deny jobs to those here illegally. This will turn off the jobs magnet that attracts so many unskilled workers to cross the border illegally or overstay their visas.
Mitt also opposes all other magnets. As governor, he vetoed in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants and opposed driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.

• Enforce The Law

Mitt Romney believes in the rule of law and will fully enforce federal immigration law. As governor, he authorized state police to assist the federal government in immigration enforcement.

• Oppose Amnesty

Mitt Romney opposes amnesty because he believes that it acts as a magnet encouraging illegal immigration. The last amnesty law passed in 1986 granted legal status to 2.7 million illegal immigrants. In the decades since, the illegal immigrant population has quadrupled. Mitt believes that an amnesty should not be permitted to happen again. Illegal immigrants who apply for legal status should not be given any advantage over those who are following the law and waiting their turn. Mitt absolutely opposes any policy that would allow illegal immigrants to “cut in line.

In Speech, Romney Takes Softer Tone on Immigration

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and TRIP GABRIEL

June 21, 2012, 12:28 pm

 

 

Charles Dharapak/Associated PressMitt Romney spoke to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference on Thursday in Orlando.

Mitt Romney on Thursday offered what he called a strategy for “bipartisan and long-term immigration reform” in an address to a convention of Latino elected officials in Florida.

In the speech, which also touched on the economy, Mr. Romney dropped the confrontational tone he took on immigration during the Republican primary. Instead, he promised to work in a series of areas to help immigrants and their families while discouraging people from coming to the country illegally.
“Immigration reform is not just a moral imperative, but an economic necessity as well,” Mr. Romney said. “We can find common ground here, and we must. We owe it to ourselves as Americans to ensure that our country remains a land of opportunity – both for those who were born here and for those who share our values, respect our laws, and want to come to our shores.”

But Mr. Romney, who has refused to say whether he would overturn a policy announced last week by President Obama that would stop the deportation of some illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children, again sidestepped that question.

“Some people have asked if I will let stand the president’s executive action,”  he said. “The answer is that I will put in place my own long-term solution that will replace and supersede the president’s temporary measure.”

Even as he started speaking, Mr. Romney’s campaign released an outline of his plan, which would include giving green cards to immigrants who earn advanced degrees at American universities; providing a path to legal status for illegal immigrants who serve in the military; and cutting red tape.
“As president, I will stand for a path to legal status for anyone who is willing to stand up and defend this great nation through military service,” Mr. Romney said.


The nearly twenty-minute speech was met with tepid applause and moments of pointed silence. He seemed to hit his stride near the middle of his remarks, when he talked about balancing the budget, giving parents a choice of where to send their children to school, and providing a path to legal status for immigrants who have served in the military. At the end, about half the room stood up to applaud.
Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, said that the fact that Mr. Romney addressed the conference was a meaningful gesture.

“It was a great speech, I was real impressed with it and I’m glad he came,” Mr. Bush said. “I think he was received respectfully and warmly.”

Democrats criticized Mr. Romney on immigration issues even before the speech was delivered.
In a memo to reporters, Bill Burton, a founder of Priorities USA Action, a “super PAC” backing Mr. Obama, wrote that Mr. Romney was attempting to hide his real views on the issue from voters.
“Mitt Romney’s speech in Florida today will be an attempt to cover up the divisive rhetoric and draconian policies he has espoused for years on immigration,” Mr. Burton wrote. “Today’s slick speech will not change the fact that Romney has repeatedly used divisive language to propose an extreme immigration policy.”

The issue of immigration is shaping up as a critical one in the presidential election. Mr. Romney trails President Obama by wide margins among Hispanic voters, a gap which could provide the difference in important swing states like Colorado, Nevada, Florida and Virginia, where Latino populations are growing.

Mr. Obama is scheduled to speak to the same group on Friday. But for now, the pressure is on Mr. Romney to increase his appeal among Hispanic voters.

Advisers inside and outside Mr. Romney’s campaign have urged him to shape a positive message to Hispanics on immigration and dispel the harsh image he created during the primaries.

“Ultimately what we’re talking about here is the tone is what has hurt Republicans in the past, not the policies,’’ said Alberto Martinez, an adviser and spokesman for the campaign on Hispanic issues.
But that effort is likely to run headfirst into some of Mr. Romney’s conservative supporters. Many in the Republican base believe that any solution that lets illegal immigrants remain in the country is unacceptable. During the primary race Mr. Romney courted these voters with talk of “self-deportation” and his approval of Arizona’s harsh immigration law.

In two previous addresses to Hispanic groups, Mr. Romney ignored immigration. On Wednesday the Romney campaign abruptly cut short a telephone press conference when all the questions were about immigration – and the campaign wanted to talk about the economy.

“The reason that immigration is important is not because it’s the priority issue but because it’s the issue that can turn Hispanics off,’’ said Ana Navarro, a Florida-based adviser to Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008. “If a candidate has the wrong tone and the wrong rhetoric on immigration, Hispanics won’t listen to any of his proposals on anything else.

Ahead of the Florida speech on Thursday, Mr. Romney’s campaign promised to forge “lasting solutions” to what he called the “nation’s broken immigration system.” He said he would work with both parties to pass immigration reform.

But the brief outline did not say how he would overcome the gridlock that has blocked comprehensive immigration reform in the Congress for more than a decade.

Senator McCain, Republican of Arizona, also promised to work with Democrats on illegal immigration reform. He abandoned that effort in 2007 in the face of intense opposition by conservatives.

Mr. Obama also pledged during the 2008 campaign to pursue comprehensive changes to the immigration system in the country. The president increased border enforcement, but faced similar opposition among Republicans in Congress to pursuit of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country.

Ashley Parker contributed reporting from Florida.

Bowles Says Romney Plan Would Require Ending Tax Breaks

By Richard Rubin - Jun 20, 2012 12:39 PM ET

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Mitt Romney during a campaign event in front of the Bavarian Inn Lodge on June 19, 2012 in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s plan to reduce tax rates would need to be financed by ending widely used benefits such as the mortgage interest deduction, said Erskine Bowles, who was co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction commission.

Play Video

June 19 (Bloomberg) -- Former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles tells Bloomberg's Judy Woodruff that the U.S. economy hitting the 'fiscal cliff' is not a question, but rather an inevitability. For the full interview, tune in to "Conversations with Judy Woodruff" on Friday June 22 at 9:30PM. (Source: Bloomberg)

Enlarge image

Erskine Bowles, who was co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction commission. said, “One area that Governor Romney is wrong is you can’t just affect the top 15 percent” of Americans. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Romney is “partly right and partly wrong” when he says he can cut tax rates by 20 percent and make up the money by curtailing tax breaks, Bowles said on Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff,” airing this weekend.
“One area that Governor Romney is wrong is you can’t just affect the top 15 percent” of Americans, said Bowles, whose bipartisan plan would cut spending and raise taxes. “It’s just not enough money there in getting rid of the tax expenditures that only affect the upper-income people. You’re going to have to affect people down through the brackets.”
Romney and Obama are clashing over tax policy, with the president maintaining that Romney would cut taxes for top earners and the former Massachusetts governor saying his plan would unleash economic growth.
Romney wants to reduce all individual income tax rates by 20 percent, reducing the top rate to 28 percent from 35 percent. He would lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent, eliminate the estate tax and end taxation of investment income for people making less than $200,000 a year.

Broaden Base

Romney, 65, said he embraces the concept of lowering tax rates and broadening the base that Bowles and commission co- chairman Alan Simpson used. There’s one big difference: Bowles and Simpson want to use some of the revenue from curtailing tax breaks to reduce the budget deficit. Romney would dedicate all of the money to pay for lower tax rates and assume that faster economic growth would make up some of the difference.
Romney said he would make sure the tax code is as progressive as it is today.
“One of the absolute requirements of any tax reform that I have in mind is that people who are at the high end, whether you call them the 1 percent or 2 percent or half a percent, that people at the high end will still pay the same share of the tax burden they’re paying now,” Romney said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on June 17. “I’m not looking for a tax cut for the very wealthiest.”

$5 Trillion

Romney’s plan would cost the government about $5 trillion in forgone revenue over the next decade on top of the cost of extending the income tax cuts now scheduled to expire Dec. 31. Romney hasn’t specified which tax breaks he would limit.
The Bowles-Simpson plan would cut the top tax rates on individuals and corporations to 28 percent. It would limit tax breaks for mortgages, charitable contributions and health insurance without eliminating them. Bowles is a Democrat who was White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. Simpson is a Republican former senator from Wyoming.
Unlike Romney, Bowles and Simpson include two features that would raise taxes for high-income or wealthy taxpayers. They would treat capital gains and dividends as ordinary income. They also would assume that the estate tax continues with a top rate of 45 percent.
Deficit reduction should take place over 15 years so that it doesn’t slow down the economy, Bowles said.
“What they tried to do in the U.K. was to do it really quickly, trying to get it, you know, to a balanced budget within five years,” he said. “We have it over a much longer period of time, so we don’t disrupt this very fragile economic recovery.”

Most Similar

In a memo released yesterday, the Obama campaign said its plan -- not Romney’s -- was the one that most closely resembled the Simpson-Bowles plan.
“Despite his praise for the Simpson-Bowles approach, Romney’s plans are fundamentally incompatible with it,” wrote James Kvaal, the campaign’s policy director.
Obama, 50, disagrees with the Simpson-Bowles plan’s cuts to defense and Social Security, the memo said.
Like Romney, Republicans in the U.S. House have proposed tax rate cuts without specifying what tax breaks they would cut.
An estimate released by the Democratic staff of the congressional Joint Economic Committee attempted to calculate the effect of reducing rates while eliminating tax breaks for health care, charitable contributions, state and local taxes and mortgage interest. It said individual middle-class families would pay more taxes under such a plan, while higher-income families would pay less, compared with allowing all the expiring tax cuts to lapse.

Investment Rates

The report “pulls up the skirts” on Republicans’ refusal to specify what tax breaks they would curtail, said Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who requested the analysis. Schumer said the report would prompt Republicans to look at changes to investment tax rates that would disproportionately affect high-income households.
“If Republicans will put capital gains on the table, it will open up all kinds of possibilities for doing tax reform in a way that’s not regressive,” he said on a conference call with reporters.
The estimate doesn’t reflect an actual Republican plan, show how much tax revenue the model plan would raise or the fact that some of the Republican changes to rates and breaks would affect corporations. Sage Eastman, a spokesman for House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican, said it “doesn’t even pass the laugh test.”

‘Partisan Attack’

“They made a host of bogus assumptions to levy a partisan attack on tax reform,” he said in an e-mailed statement today. “The American people want a flatter, simpler tax code that eliminates special interest loopholes in order to lower tax rates and make the code fairer.”
Bowles said he didn’t expect Republicans to stick to their no-tax-increase pledge, particularly because the end-of-year fiscal cliff could throw the economy into recession.
“I’m not worried about it a bit, because I think you will see, as we get closer and closer to this fiscal cliff, you will see more and more Republicans come out and say, you know, we have to have some revenue,” he said.
Two current Senate Republicans -- Mike Crapo of Idaho and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma -- were on the Bowles-Simpson panel and supported the proposal.
The plan, released in December 2010, was three votes short of the 14 votes needed on the debt commission to send it to Congress. Among the opponents were Camp and Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, the top two tax-writers in Congress.
Bowles also said he thought the Obama administration was prepared to make significant changes to entitlement programs, based on conversations he has had with administration officials.
To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Rubin in Washington at rrubin12@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider at jschneider50@bloomberg.net

GOP Senate Candidate Says Businesses Should Be Allowed To Deny Health Insurance To Cancer Patients

By Scott Keyes on Jun 18, 2012 at 3:40 pm

Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock

Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party favorite who ousted Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) in Indiana’s Republican Senate primary last month, told a local Indiana newspaper that, contra Obamacare’s protections, employers ought to be able to deny health insurance to people with cancer.

During a freewheeling interview with the News and Tribune, Mourdock said health care will be the “biggest issue” this election. The Indiana Republican, who opposes the Affordable Care Act, argued that businesses should be permitted to deny coverage to employees with cancer “if they want to keep their health care costs down.” “Does that employer have the right to do it?” Mourdock asked. “I would say yes they do”
From the interview:

Of particular interest to the candidate is a mandate that requires an employer to pay for certain services they may be morally opposed to — such as birth control — which Mourdock said he opposes.
Mourdock’s example was an employer who decided to cover everything but cancer.
“Does that employer have the right to do it? I would say yes they do if they want to keep their health care costs down but it also means it’s less likely you’re going to want to work here. If that employer wants to get the best employees coming in the door he’s going to offer the best insurance possible.”

Among Obamacare’s most popular provisions are protections for people who are sick or have pre-existing conditions to make sure they can’t be denied health insurance (beginning in 2014). In Mourdock’s America, businesses would continue to have the right to deny insurance for 1 in 7 Americans because of a pre-existing condition.

If Mourdock ultimately wins his election in November, don’t expect him to compromise on his opposition to businesses being required to insure cancer patients. The day after Mourdock won the Republican nomination, he announced on MSNBC that “bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.”

Showing Our Work for Jobs

Posted by Michael Ricci

June 13, 2012

 Jobs, actual job bills, I do not think so.  These are bills to cut taxes for the rich, take away regulations set up by EPA to protect air, water, land, to not pollute, our environment that we live in. To take away the Affordable Healthcare Act, which gives Americans a say so in their health care. To pass a budget that will cut non discretionary line items that includes medicare, medicaid, and social security. 

 This is a do nothing House: when it comes to real bills for jobs, they voted nay on Obama's jobs' bill, and all the little bills that tried to pass through. The senate has voted and passed a transportation bill, the one the house is mulling over. They have sloshed through and have taken their time, these republicans, wait, oh no, must not do anything that gives this President a foot up.  They want to defeat him and put a republican in his place, but he will just be a figure head.  He does only what his big donors tell him, he flip flops, and he is a lair.  
 

Remember how our math teachers were always saying, ‘show your work’?  In that spirit, Speaker Boehner – a former small business owner – released a new video today in which he appears alongside many of the 30+ bills the House has passed to remove government barriers to job creation in America.  The video is a prebuttal to President Obama’s speech later today in Cleveland, where, despite a recent spate of bad economic news, he is “not likely to unveil new ideas to boost the economy and create new jobs.”
Laid out on his desk, Speaker Boehner notes, are “practical, common-sense proposals to help small businesses create jobs and build a stronger economy for all Americans.”  Among them: bills to cut taxes for small businesses, rein in excessive regulations, and fully repeal to the health care law that’s making it harder for small businesses to hire new workers.  All part of Republicans’ Plan for America’s Job Creators, these proposals remain blocked by the Democratic-controlled Senate, which has shown no urgency to act on jobs bills or even pass a budget.
President Obama hasn’t prodded the Senate – or his own administration – to act, first saying the private sector is “doing fine” and now giving an economic speech that lacks economic proposals. That’s because his team “made clear they don't see many fresh options,” and the president appears to be, well, doing fine with that.  Today’s speech, a pivot to nothing after 40 months of unemployment above eight percent, is yet another indication of a shrunken presidency.
While Democrats try to get the president to ‘reframe’ his message, struggling Americans want him to change his policies.  That’s why the House continues to focus on jobs, with action in the coming weeks to address high energy prices and stop the tax hike scheduled to hit small business job creators on January 1.  “We’re going to keep adding to this pile,” Boehner says in the video, “and we’re going to keep calling on President Obama and Senate Democrats to give these jobs bills a vote.”  Because this isn’t just our work – it’s our work in progress.  To learn more, visit jobs.GOP.gov.

A domestic enemy of the U.S. Constitution

Good day all. I saw this headline in the Washington Times this morning and thought I would see what it was all about. The actual headline read Obama: A domestic enemy of the U.S. Constitution and is an opinion piece by Joseph Curl.


It starts out with the Oath of Office the President of the United States takes at the start of his term of office. That oath reads:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Mr. Curl added the following addendum to the oath:

Unless, you know, 224 years from now, whoever happens to president simply decides he really doesn’t want to do that.”
Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 of Barack Obama’s U.S. Constitution

Mr. Curl goes on to talk about the Oath, specifically the section that pertains to “Preserve, protect and defend” The Constitution. As we have seen, Obama considers the Constitution to be an advisory document that he can ignore when it gets in his way, which is most of the time. Mr. Curl goes a bit further:

In 1884, Congress, having no set oath of office, wrote its own: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same …”
Little did they know then that 128 years later, America would face just that: a domestic threat to the U.S. Constitution.

The founders may not have known, but 48% of the voters figured it out, starting with “Joe the Plumber.” Mr. Curl continues:

From the very beginning, the president and his administration made clear they had no intention of enforcing laws they didn’t like. Mr. Obama and his minions decided that they would simply stop enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act, no longer prosecute growers of “medical” marijuana, and let some states walk away from provisions in the No Child Left Behind law (which, by the way, was co-authored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and passed the Senate by a 91-8 vote).
Mr. Obama’s Justice Department has even more flagrantly flouted the laws of the land. Out of the blue, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, reinterpreted America’s gambling laws (and dumped the decision on Christmas Eve so as to avoid scrutiny). More recently, Mr. Holder has decided to thwart congressional oversight by refusing to release documents on the disastrous “Fast and Furious” gun-running scheme, and he is actively fighting Florida for trying to expunge dead people from its voter rolls.

As Mr. Curl has noticed, this is the most corrupt administration in living memory, if not in U.S. History. Yes, I am including Nixon in that list. No one was murdered in Watergate. Two federal agents and hundreds of Mexican and possible a number of American citizens have been murdered thanks to Holder’s Fast & Furious debacle. If this had been a Republican administration pulling this stuff, the President would be out of office and probably on trial.



The Republicans in the House would love to begin impeachment proceedings against Obama, even if it would leave us with “Brains” Biden for a few months, but the Democrats are so corrupt that they won’t allow it and would use the “Racism” card to attack the Republicans. This is just another indicator of how the Democrat Party has nothing more than a national criminal organization and not a political party. Even the Corleone family knew when to take care of “problems” and “take care of business.” They had rules they would follow and woe be to anyone who broke them.
For the Democrats, it’s all about absolute power and letting nothing stand in their way in getting it. Obama is just the final, and incompetent act in this drama.
Head on over to the Washington Times and read the whole thing.
As always…Remember in November!
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~

CURL: Obama’s a domestic enemy of the U.S. Constitution

By Joseph Curl

Sunday, June 17, 2012

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

“Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation — I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.*

“* Unless, you know, 224 years from now, whoever happens to president simply decides he really doesn’t want to do that.”

— Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 of Barack Obama’s U.S. Constitution

The Founders set the course in a simple, concise, 35-word affirmation — the president’s top job is to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution. The chief executive does, of course, have other responsibilities, but his guardianship of the document they had just written was deemed by the Founders to be of such great import that they made him swear it — aloud, in front of witnesses.

In 1884, Congress, having no set oath of office, wrote its own: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same …”

Little did they know then that 128 years later, America would face just that: a domestic threat to the U.S. Constitution.

From the very beginning, the president and his administration made clear they had no intention of enforcing laws they didn’t like. Mr. Obama and his minions decided that they would simply stop enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act, no longer prosecute growers of “medical” marijuana, and let some states walk away from provisions in the No Child Left Behind law (which, by the way, was co-authored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and passed the Senate by a 91-8 vote).

Mr. Obama’s Justice Department has even more flagrantly flouted the laws of the land. Out of the blue, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, reinterpreted America’s gambling laws (and dumped the decision on Christmas Eve so as to avoid scrutiny). More recently, Mr. Holder has decided to thwart congressional oversight by refusing to release documents on the disastrous “Fast and Furious” gun-running scheme, and he is actively fighting Florida for trying to expunge dead people from its voter rolls.

Now comes Mr. Obama’s decision to stop enforcing America’s immigration laws. The new policy states that illegal immigrants who were younger than 16 when they entered the country are eligible for a two-year exemption from deportation. Of course, the “deferred action process,” as Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano called it, will apply to illegals up to age 30. (Think when they legally get their driver’s licenses they will also be handed a voter registration card?)

The increasingly desperate Mr. Obama, once a constitutional professor, knows full well he is circumventing Congress. In March 2011 he told a group of young Hispanics: “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the president, am obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about that. That’s part of my job.

“Congress passes the law. The executive branch’s job is to enforce and implement those laws,” he said. “There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president.”

So why now? Politics. The Hispanic population in Florida, Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado may well decide the November election, and with working-class whites, religious blacks, disenchanted young people and Jews fleeing in droves, Mr. Obama is looking to shore up his support, even if that means violating his oath to protect the Constitution.

Continuing his nonstop campaign of division — black against white, rich against poor, straight against gay, religious against secular, race against race — the president is seeking to build whatever loose coalition of support he can. Forget bipartisanship; a coalition of the middle, Mr. Obama’s sole path to victory, he thinks, is to stir up so much discontent within different strata that he can win re-election.

Of course, the liberals who whined about President George W. Bush’s signing statements haven’t made a peep about Mr. Obama’s Napoleonic power grab.

“What’s ironic,” columnist Charles Krauthammer noted, “is for eight years, the Democrats have been screaming about the imperial presidency with the Bush administration — the nonsense about the unitary executive. This is out-and-out lawlessness.”

But that doesn’t matter when you are King Barack. The Founders were determined to make sure no American leader ever had the power King George III enjoyed. Which is why they also wrote this in the Constitution: “The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at jcurl@washingtontimes.com.

Opinion: Lawmakers haven’t run out of time to craft a bipartisan deficit deal

By Judd Gregg - 06/18/12 05:00 AM ET

If you are a liberal member of Congress, you are holding an arsenal of options when it comes to cutting the deficit.

By just following the law as it presently is written, trillions of dollars of deficit reduction will occur without any limiting action relative to any entitlements.

The combined effect of allowing the sequester to go forward and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire looks reasonable and rational if you sit on the left. 

The $1.2 trillion in sequestration cuts fall primarily on defense spending. Ending the Bush tax cuts raises between $2 trillion and $3 trillion more. 

To put it another way, a liberal member of Congress holds a lot of good cards and can afford to “stand pat.”  

The irony of the situation is that this approach totally avoids the causes of the massive explosion in the federal deficits and the intolerable debt being layered on our children. 

Medicare and Medicaid are allowed to continue without any attempt to make them work better and be more cost effective, as are agriculture subsidies and student loans. 

Tax reform is ignored, even though it might bring in more revenue and would certainly create a better atmosphere for competitiveness internationally and economic growth.

Rates are simply raised and the wealthy hire more accountants to avoid paying the higher rates. 

Still, the left can claim it is raising takes on the rich.

A few days ago Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, gave a speech which seemed to a be a gratuitous attack on the Simpson-Bowles Commission debt-reduction proposal.  

He said, to paraphrase, that Simpson-Bowles would undermine entitlements that benefit seniors and unnecessarily reduce tax rates, especially on corporations and the wealthy.

It appeared to be a speech that came out of nowhere.  It did not. 

It was finally a fair and honest assessment from the left of why President Obama abandoned the efforts of his own commission. It also explained why the House Democratic leadership — with the notable exception of Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) — opposed any effort to give Simpson-Bowles traction.

Most Americans found the lack of support for Simpson-Bowles from the president and his followers to be confusing and opaque. 

The feeling was especially acute among those who are concerned about the partisanship and failure of the federal government to step up and address the debt in a rational and orderly manner. 

Simpson-Bowles was, and is, the only bipartisan, substantive vehicle that actually reduces the deficit and the debt and makes viable our tax code and programs like Social Security.

It is refreshing, therefore, to have someone close to the administration and the Democratic party leadership be open about why they oppose the commission’s findings. 

This makes the choice for the American people, and those in Congress who wish to pursue constructive action on the debt, rather clear.

The position of the activist left is to abandon any sort of effective or bipartisan action on the drivers of the deficit — specifically entitlement spending and tax policy — in favor of across-the-board cuts that fall primarily on our soldiers and dramatically increase the burden of the already-dysfunctional and counterproductive tax code.

The other choice is to pursue a renewed effort based on a bipartisan and relatively-balanced approach, as set forth in Simpson-Bowles and expanded on by the various working groups in the Senate.

The American electorate is obviously out of sorts with the nonfunctioning, partisan atmosphere they see in Washington. It is difficult to believe voters are going to find the approach of chaotic cuts as the type of governing they want or expect. 

Nor are they likely to endorse it when those cuts are coupled with tax increases based off a tax law that no one understands, and that will aggravate an already sluggish economy. 

Another run at reaching a structured and thoughtful bipartisan plan is going to be far more attractive. It should not only reduce the debt, but also strengthen our competitiveness as a country along the lines of Simpson-Bowles.

This is a time when those who have been elected to govern have an opportunity to do just that.  

They can stay in their corners and allow disorder to rein or they can move the nation away from the impending debt debacle and create an atmosphere of optimism by actually acting on substantive initiatives together.

If they choose the latter, they might even get a thank you and a vote thrown in from a nation that is searching for bold leadership. 

Judd Gregg is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Foreign Operations. He also is an international adviser to Goldman Sachs.

Canada Seeks Alternatives to Transport Oil Reserves

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: June 13, 2012

LONDON, Ontario — As the United States continues to play political Ping-Pong with the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, Canadian officials and companies are desperately seeking alternatives to get the country’s nearly 200 billion barrels in oil reserves — almost equal to that of Saudi Arabia — to market from landlocked Alberta.

Michael McElroy for The New York Times

 

Environmental activists who oppose pipelines shut down a hearing in Ontario last month.

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Michael McElroy for The New York Times

Lawyers for Enbridge, a transporter of oil exports, listened to opponents of the company’s pipeline plan at the hearing.

Oil companies complain that they are losing revenues from pipeline bottlenecks. So Canada is plunging ahead with plans to build more pipelines of its own.

To hasten development of new export routes, the Conservative government is streamlining permit processes by accelerating scheduled hearings and limiting public comment. The government has also threatened to revoke the charitable status of environmental groups that are challenging the projects. And Public Safety Canada, the equivalent of the United States Department of Homeland Security, has classified environmentalists as a potential source of domestic terrorism, adding them to a list that includes white supremacists.

After President Obama refused to grant a permit for Keystone XL in January, Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, indicated that he would never again be “held hostage” to United States politics, saying that some Americans saw his country as “one giant national park.” He said Canada would redirect oil that had been destined for Gulf Coast refineries to other countries, particularly China.

While Joe Oliver, Canada’s minister of natural resources, said in an interview that the United States would remain Canada’s “most important customer,” billions of barrels of oil that would have been refined and used in the United States are now poised to head elsewhere. Expansion of Canada’s fast-growing oil-sands industry will be restricted by the lack of pipeline capacity before the decade’s end, he said, which “adds to the urgency of building them so that the resources will not be stranded.”

Three new pipeline network proposals — two that call for heading west and the other east — have been put forward. In May, Enbridge, a transporter of Canadian oil exports, announced a $3 billion plan called Eastern Access. It is seeking permission to build a new “Northern Gateway Pipelines” network, to bring 525,000 barrels a day to Canada’s Pacific Coast. Kinder Morgan, a Texas-based energy company, said it will nearly double the capacity of an existing pipeline network along a different route.

Together, the new westward pipelines would carry more oil than Keystone XL would. But even with aggressive government backing, creating new pipelines may prove as difficult in Canada as it has been in the United States, though for different reasons.

Indigenous groups must be consulted if new pipelines cross their land. To gain coastal access, pipeline companies must also navigate the politics of some of the most environmentally conscious Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Quebec, where public opinion tends to be against both pipelines and further fossil fuel development.

Vancouver’s City Council recently passed a motion requiring that pipeline companies take on 100 percent liability for the economic and environmental costs of a worst-case spill. Even though the federal government gives permissions for pipelines, such local maneuvering and lawsuits can cause severe delays.

“It’s poetic justice that Vancouver, the birthplace of Greenpeace, stands between the last big oil deposit on Earth and the expanding markets in Asia,” said Ben West of the Wilderness Committee, a consortium of environmental groups. “I’d anticipate it won’t get built for years.”

Mr. Obama said no to Keystone XL over issues of routing and insufficient environmental analysis, after a showdown with Congressional Republicans. No further action is expected before next year, although the pipeline builder, TransCanada, has reapplied for a permit.

But as pipeline companies cast about, the United States may again be drawn into the fray over routes in other parts of the country. The most likely eastern Canadian pipeline route would reverse existing pipelines through Ontario and Quebec, and then cross the border into Vermont, heading to a tanker port in Portland, Me. Such a project was proposed in 2008 but dropped during the recession.

A State Department spokesman said it had not fielded inquiries to revive the idea, but residents of the United States’s Northeast are organizing against it. Without a reliable way out, Canadian oil often trades for $30 a barrel less than other crudes, said Todd Nogier, an Enbridge spokesman. The company estimates its proposed new westbound pipeline will increase Canada’s gross domestic product by $270 billion over 30 years. Chinese companies have already invested in Canadian oil sands.

Environmentalists are not nearly as enthusiastic. One reason is that Canadian oil is extracted in a process that creates relatively high emissions of carbon dioxide. Also, oil from oil sands is exported as bitumen, a gritty paste that must be thinned with chemicals for transport.

The United States Pipeline Safety and Hazardous Materials Administration is studying whether diluted bitumen is more corrosive and prone to dangerous spills than conventional crude, thus requiring special regulation. The report is due next year. A 2010 spill of diluted bitumen from an Enbridge pipeline in Battle Creek, Mich., has cost over $720 million, and parts of the Kalamazoo River remain closed.

In Canada, environmental groups and opposition politicians say Mr. Harper’s government is trampling on civil liberties and due process in its rush to get bitumen to market. Public hearings on proposed pipelines were expedited from the fall to the spring, leaving groups little time to organize and mount challenges to inadequate environmental analysis of the impacts, said Gillian McEachern of Environmental Defense, a Canadian environment group.

Ms. McEachern said that the application process for public comment was made so complicated that many with opposing views were shut out.

Last month here in London, a coalition that included environmentalists and members of aboriginal tribes disrupted what was to have been an obscure public hearing. Enbridge’s Eastern Access expansion plan involves moving bitumen from Alberta east to Montreal by reversing the directional flow in older pipelines that now carry refined oil westward to Ontario. The hearing was solely about allowing a change of direction for a 100-mile pipeline segment.

“We sent a letter asking to speak and didn’t even get a reply,” said Wes Elliot, of the Six Nations indigenous group, one of several dozen ejected by the police for speaking without permission. The hearing was then closed to the public. On the curb outside, he said he worried about spills.

Under Canadian law, aboriginal groups must be consulted about pipeline projects that cross their lands. Enbridge has offered many tribes a 10 percent stake in its westward pipeline project; Graham White, an Enbridge spokesman, said about half have accepted.

Others in attendance said proposed bitumen pipelines would traverse vital agricultural aquifers — concerns that tripped up Keystone XL in the United States.

“They say they’re just tinkering with existing pipeline,” said Steven Guilbeault, co-founder of Equiterre, a Canadian environmental group. “We think they’re doing it bit by bit so they won’t attract attention like Keystone.”

Mr. White said there was currently no plan for a pipeline extending into the United States, but would not rule it out in the case of market demand.

Groups in Vermont and Maine are girding for a fight, concerned most about spills in Maine’s Casco Bay, a center of fishing and tourism. Glen Brand, head of the Sierra Club’s Maine chapter, said that a meeting on the issue in Bangor this spring attracted over 100 people. On both coasts of North America, residents object to a predicted manyfold increase in tanker traffic in harbors where people relocate to enjoy the pristine beauty. Simon Donner, a scientist at the University of British Columbia, sees the pipeline as symptomatic of the weakness of Canada’s climate policy, and said he thinks the Canadian government is underestimating the opposition. “People won’t roll over on this issue,” he said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 19, 2012

A picture caption on Thursday with an article about Canada’s quest for alternatives to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to carry the country’s billions of barrels in oil reserves to market from landlocked Alberta misstated, in some editions, the date of a hearing in Ontario that was shut down by environmental activists who oppose the pipeline. The hearing that several activists were shown attending was last month, not Wednesday.

NYT: Canada Redirecting Energy & Jobs to China After POTUS Rejected Keystone XL

Now, do not get me started on this one. 

Posted by Don Seymour

June 14, 2012

The New York Times published a lengthy reminder today that out-of-work Americans are missing out on thousands of new jobs thanks to President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL energy pipeline.
When President Obama “said no to Keystone XL,” the New York Times says Canada began “plunging ahead with plans to build more pipelines of its own,” “streamlining permit processes” and redirecting energy “that had been destined for Gulf Coast refineries to other countries, particularly China.”
This probably isn’t the story President Obama wanted just before another campaign speech where he didn't "unveil new ideas to boost the economy and create new jobs.” Not with 40 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent, an unpopular health care law that’s making it harder for small businesses to hire new workers, and growing disillusionment with the president’s failed policies.
But it’s not just President Obama -- Senate Democrats are stonewalling on Keystone jobs too.
Among the 30 House-passed jobs bills awaiting action by the Democratic-controlled Senate is legislation “forcing construction of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline project from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico,” says the Associated Press.
While that bill passed the House with a veto-proof majority, House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) says Senate Democrats are “‘unwilling to compromise at all’ on House language that would require the Obama administration to approve items including the Keystone XL oil pipeline.”
Continued opposition to Keystone XL from President Obama and Senate Democrats means “billions of barrels of oil that would have been refined and used in the United States are now poised to head elsewhere” overseas -- and with them goes thousands of new American jobs.
Learn more about the GOP plan for jobs at jobs.GOP.gov, and check out House-passed energy and jobs bills at Speaker.gov/energy.

Immigration cartoons

Randy Bish

Jun

19

2012

OBAMA’S IMMIGRATION POLICY

 

 

David Fitzsimmons

Jun

18

2012

Dream action

Obama Says Election Offers a Clear Choice on the Economy’s Long-Term Path

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama delivered a speech on the economy on Thursday in Cleveland.

By HELENE COOPER and MICHAEL BARBARO

Published: June 14, 2012

CLEVELAND — Framing his re-election bid as a stark choice between government action to lift the middle class and a return to Republican economic policies that he said had caused a deep recession, President Obama on Thursday called the presidential decision facing Americans a clear-cut one that will determine the long-term trajectory of the economy.

Obama in Cleveland                                                                     Romney in Cincinnati

   

“This November is your chance to render a verdict on the debate over how to grow the economy, how to create good jobs, how to pay down our deficit,” Mr. Obama told enthusiastic supporters at Cuyahoga Community College here. “Your vote will finally determine the path that we take as a nation — not just tomorrow, but for years to come.”

The address, by a president who sounded as if he realized he was in a fight for his political life, represented a determined effort to stem two weeks of political and economic sliding that began with a grim jobs report. It came on a day of political gamesmanship in this crucial swing state, as Mitt Romney, the president’s rival, scheduled a speech 250 miles away in Republican-friendly Cincinnati in an effort to overshadow Mr. Obama and pre-emptively attack him for failing to revive the economy.

Speaking shortly before Mr. Obama in remarks that, like the president’s, were carried on cable news programs, Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign felt compelled to deliver a major address on the economy “because he hasn’t delivered a recovery for the economy.”

“Now, I know that he will have all sorts of excuses, and he’ll have all sorts of ideas he’ll describe about how he’ll make things better,” Mr. Romney said. “But what he says and what he does are not always the exact same thing. And so if people want to know how his economic policies have worked and how they perform, why they can talk to their neighbor and ask if things are better.”

In his remarks, the president acknowledged that divergent views between him and Mr. Romney on how to revive the economy would define the election.

“There is one place I stand in complete agreement with Mr. Romney,” Mr. Obama said. “This election is about our economic future.”

The president offered no new policy prescriptions in his speech, which he instead used to try to regain the offensive by contrasting his agenda with his own detailed account of the Republican alternative. Mr. Obama said the nation was slowly “digging out of a hole that is nine million jobs deep,” and he blamed Republican policies over the previous decade for driving up the deficit and benefiting the rich at the expense of the middle class. He said a Republican victory in November would mean a return to the “theory that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down,” and he called the election “the make-or-break moment for America’s middle class.”

Point by point, the president listed the Bush-era economic and policy choices — embraced by Mr. Romney and Congressional Republicans — that he said had led to the recession of 2008 and 2009: tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that was added to the deficit. “I don’t believe that the government is the answer to all of our problems,” Mr. Obama said. But, he said, “what is holding us back is not a lack of big ideas, not a matter of finding the right technical solution.”

“What is holding us back is a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different views between what direction America should take,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Romney, whose staff hastily moved up his speech so he could beat the president to the podium, said that private enterprise, not government, was the key to expanding the economy, and that the Obama administration’s policies on financial regulation, health care and energy had stifled that growth and had held back the recovery.

“I think he’s made it harder for the American enterprise system to work,” Mr. Romney said. “And I want to change that. I want to make it once again, America once again the most attractive place in the world for job creators.”

In Cleveland, the crowd of about 1,500 at the community college was kept purposely low because this was a “speech, not a rally,” campaign aides said. (Mr. Obama was buttoned up in a suit, looking somber, and he struck a serious tone throughout the address.) But many in the crowd acted as if they were at a rally anyway, doing the wave, chanting the ubiquitous “fired up, ready to go” slogan from Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign and interrupting his speech with raucous cheers and expressions of agreement.

Mr. Obama’s remarks came as he is grappling with running for re-election as the national jobless rate remains above 8 percent, a daunting level for any incumbent president to overcome, particularly during a hyperpartisan campaign season in which every misstatement is amplified in a 24-hour news cycle. The president, who was hammered by Republicans last week for his statement that the private sector was doing fine, acknowledged the difficult environment.

“There will be no shortage of gaffes and controversies that keep both campaigns busy and give the press something to write about,” he said. “You may have heard I recently made my own unique contribution to that process. It wasn’t the first time; it won’t be the last.”

The Romney campaign sought to take advantage of Mr. Obama’s comment last week and released a campaign advertisement on Thursday titled “Doing Fine.” The ad features a series of sour statistics (“23.2 Million Americans Are in Need of Work”; “Millions of Homeowners Underwater on Mortgages”), and then follows up, repeatedly, with video and audio of Mr. Obama telling reporters during a news conference that “the private sector is doing fine.” It closes with ominous text: “How Can President Obama Fix Our Economy... if He Doesn’t Understand It’s Broken?”

The Obama campaign fired back, releasing a Web video with a highlight reel of Mr. Romney’s own off-key moments. “Corporations are people too, my friend”; “I like being able to fire people”; “I’m also unemployed”; “Some of my best friends are Nascar team owners” — all featured in a one-minute nonstop aria of political miscues.

The simultaneous visits to Ohio showed just how crucial the state’s 18 electoral votes are considered to be in the fall election. Polls show that the men are in a virtual dead heat in the state. For myriad reasons, Ohio tends to be a predictor of the presidential race, but the state is an outlier in some ways. The unemployment rate here, at 7.4 percent, is almost a point below the national rate.

After Cleveland, Mr. Obama headed to New York on another money run, this one a fund-raiser at the home of Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, co-hosted by the Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Helene Cooper reported from Cleveland, and Michael Barbaro from Cincinnati.