For GOP only

[southsider2k5]

Far from a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, it seems Hillary is getting shot at from the left wing...

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/641088,...110708A.article

 

Ambinder: Obama campaign "helping to place" Hsu story

 

November 8, 2007

BY LYNN SWEET Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Barack Obama’s presidential campaign “scored a significant hit” against chief rival Hillary Rodham Clinton “by helping to place” a story about tainted Democratic donor Norman Hsu, according to an article about Obama in the December issue of The Atlantic.

 

The story, titled “Teacher and Apprentice” by associate editor Marc Ambinder, describes how Obama campaign staffers were “frustrated” because the press was not covering Clinton “in the way they expected it would.”

 

The story, titled “Teacher and Apprentice” by associate editor Marc Ambinder, describes how Obama campaign staffers were “frustrated” because the press was not covering Clinton “in the way they expected it would.”

 

“…And at a campaign event in Iowa, one of Obama’s aides plopped down next to me and spoke even more bluntly. He wanted to know when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton’s postpresidential sex life,” Ambinder writes.

 

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“…And at a campaign event in Iowa, one of Obama’s aides plopped down next to me and spoke even more bluntly. He wanted to know when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton’s postpresidential sex life,” Ambinder writes.

 

Ambinder, who is covering the presidential campaign for the magazine, reveals in his piece that Clinton’s aides where blindsided by the quick rise of Obama once he jumped in the 2008 Democratic primary.

 

“They did not perceive any threat until it was almost too late.’’ And Obama’s team was surprised because “they expected to be a large anti-Hillary vote.”

 

Newspaper stories last summer revealed that Hsu — a major Clinton bundler — was an outlaw, on the lam from criminal charges and suspected of improperly funneling campaign cash through straw contributors. After the stories ran, Clinton returned about $850,000 in donations linked to Hsu.

 

Hsu also was a donor to Obama’s senate campaign and his HOPEFUND political action committee. If Obama’s operatives had a hand in “helping to place” the Hsu story, it would be counter to the claim that Obama was running a different and unconventional campaign.

 

Asked for comment on whether the campaign had a hand in “helping to place” the Hsu story, Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said "We had no knowledge of Norman Hsu’s past criminal activity, fugitive status or potential straw donor scheme until reading it in the newspaper."

 

Regarding the unidentified aide wondering about Bill Clinton, LaBolt said, "In no way, shape, or form would anyone who would say such a thing be representing our campaign."

 

Ambinder, told of the Obama campaign comment said, “I stand by my reporting and the article speaks for itself.”

 

Ambinder also writes that Clinton loyalist James Carville “continued to try to tamp down excitement over Obama by saying publicly that he expected Al Gore to get in the race” and that at one point Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle was on thin ice.

 

“ Worried advisers to Bill Clinton unsuccessfully tried to oust Solis Doyle, who had never run a campaign,” writes Ambinder.

[Rex Kickass]

Dirty tricks are coming from all sides. Dollars to Donuts says Hillary's behind the email rumors going around Iowa that Obama refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance at an Iowa campaign event recently.

[NorthSideSox72]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but I know how much the conservatives love to make fun of Chavez's rants, so...

 

Hugo Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar (the one previous to the current one, who supported Bush in the war on terror) a fascist, and a snake. His comments were so insulting that even the current far-left Spanish PM, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, scolded Chavez. And the best part? The King of Spain told Chavez to sit down and "shut up".

 

[mr_genius]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but I know how much the conservatives love to make fun of Chavez's rants, so...

 

Hugo Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar (the one previous to the current one, who supported Bush in the war on terror) a fascist, and a snake. His comments were so insulting that even the current far-left Spanish PM, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, scolded Chavez. And the best part? The King of Spain told Chavez to sit down and "shut up".

 

Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, but his microphone was off.

 

 

 

Oh, and the best quote, coming from a guy from Cuba supporting Chavez

 

Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage backed Chavez, saying that "a president's legitimacy stems not only from his election by voters ... he must also be legitimate in the exercise of power."

 

haha, socialist dictators preaching about legitimate exercise of power

Edited November 10, 2007 by mr_genius

[southsider2k5]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but I know how much the conservatives love to make fun of Chavez's rants, so...

 

Hugo Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar (the one previous to the current one, who supported Bush in the war on terror) a fascist, and a snake. His comments were so insulting that even the current far-left Spanish PM, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, scolded Chavez. And the best part? The King of Spain told Chavez to sit down and "shut up".

 

The sad thing is that this is just cover for Chavez installing himself as Dictator, which no one is now talking about...

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1194830478...=googlenews_wsj

 

In December 1957 Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez held a plebiscite on his presidency. By going through the exercise of a national vote, he thought he would legitimize his rule, which a military junta had handed him five years earlier.

 

In the event, his government said he won, but Venezuelans weren't convinced. Within a month, a popular uprising drove him from the presidential palace and out of the country.

 

Next month will mark the golden jubilee of Pérez Jiménez's fateful December "triumph," which provoked his demise and opened a space for democracy to emerge in 1958. Coincidentally the anniversary falls in the same month as a referendum -- called by President Hugo Chávez -- on 69 constitutional reforms that will, among other things, allow him to rule for life.

 

 

Americas columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady discusses the mounting opposition to Hugo Chavez within the ranks of his traditional supporters.

Like the last dictator, Mr. Chávez believes that if he can show that a majority of voters back his power grab, his government will have won the imprimatur of democracy. But now, as then, Venezuelans are putting up a fight.

 

Mr. Chávez has already consolidated his power by getting control of Venezuela's political institutions. But now he wants to close any remaining loopholes by writing his absolute rule into the 1999 constitution. The trouble is that, according to the document, a major rewrite of the text can be carried out only by an elected constitutional assembly. This process is designed to preserve some measure of democratic pluralism and by trying to skip it, the president has provoked a firestorm of criticism.

 

Mr. Chávez has been working to remove any counterbalances to his power for almost nine years now. Over that time he has met strong resistance from property owners, businesses, labor leaders, the Catholic Church and the media. But since the spring, when university students of varying backgrounds began to lead an opposition movement against his crackdown on civil liberties, many have wondered whether chavismo has begun to lose the support of the population more broadly.

 

In opposition to the Dec. 2 referendum, university students have redoubled their efforts in the streets and a number of the president's heretofore backers have joined the chorus -- all of which has led to increased speculation that Mr. Chávez's days are numbered.

 

It's easy to see what Mr. Chávez is after. Besides lifting presidential term limits, the referendum proposes to allow the media to be censored and civil liberties suspended under a state of emergency, to permit the government seizure of private property, to mandate a six-hour work day, to increase presidential power over state authorities and to end central bank autonomy.

 

Up to now the fiery orator has had a rather easy time of rolling over his opponents. To counter their claims that he is taking Venezuela down the Cuban path, he has simply sounded the battle cry of class warfare and pointed to the corruption of former governments. The opposition has been fragmented and easily thwarted by a demagogue who promises to spread the oil wealth more equally.

 

But this year something has gone terribly wrong with the formula, as evidenced by the dissent coming from previously supportive quarters. Mr. Chávez's decision to strip prominent media critic, RCTV, of its broadcasting license earlier this year may mark the tipping point. Assaults on private property and the jailing of opponents over the year hadn't produced much of a response from university students. But the clampdown on free speech set them off. They poured into the streets, amid tear gas and rubber bullets yet, notably, never called for Mr. Chávez to leave office. Instead they chanted for "liberty." While they lost their bid to save RCTV, they gained respect with the public as a credible voice against one-man rule.

 

Now the students are back in the streets putting up a fight against the referendum. In the past three weeks tens of thousands have marched to the Congress, the Electoral Council and most recently to the Supreme Court. They are a problem for the president, not the least because their leaders are from middle and low-middle income backgrounds and cannot be dismissed as "elites." Moreover, their defense of civil liberties seems to resonate with an increasing number of Venezuelans. They say that they are opponents, not of Mr. Chávez per se, but of the destruction of the country's institutions that guarantee freedoms.

 

Last week Mr. Chávez suffered another political setback, this time from his former minister of defense, Gen. Raúl Baduel, who said that if the president gets his amendments it will amount to a "coup" against the democracy. That's a serious charge from any member of the armed forces, but coming from Gen. Baduel it is devastating. He was a key player in restoring Mr. Chávez to power when others in the military had removed the president briefly in April 2002. His criticism raises questions about whether Mr. Chávez is losing support within the barracks.

 

Yet another high-profile defector from the Chávez camp is Hermann Escarrá, a constitutional-law scholar and one of the architects of the 1999 constitution, which Mr. Chávez has so often cited as sacred. Mr. Escarrá opposes the referendum, has joined the students in their protests and has vowed that he will not retreat. Most university rectors also back the students.

 

If public support for Mr. Chávez is waning, it may not be due entirely to his politics. Inflation could finish the year above 20% and milk and sugar are extremely hard to come by. Still, analysts believe that the opposition is too weak to derail him at this time and that the referendum will be carried out regardless of its popularity.

 

Nevertheless, just as Pérez Jiménez found, holding the vote can't reverse Mr. Chávez's political fortunes if he has fallen from grace. Surely he knows this and it is why he has been preparing for a showdown. His supporters are armed, as we saw on Wednesday when students returning to the university from a protest march were ambushed by gun-toting pro-Chávez goons. One student was shot. Tragically, if Venezuelans decide Mr. Chávez should go it is not likely to happen without more such violence.

[southsider2k5]

Al Gore and his enviornmental profiteering.

 

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22663

 

Gore’s Circle of Business

 

Al Gore is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). According to Gore, the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are going green. “Generation Investment Management, purchases -- but isn’t a provider of -- carbon dioxide offsets,” said spokesman Richard Campbell in a March 7 report by CNSNews.

 

GIM appears to have considerable influence over the major carbon-credit trading firms that currently exist: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain. CCX is the only firm in the U.S. that claims to trade carbon credits.

 

CCX owes its existence in part to the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based liberal foundation that provided $347,000 in grant support in 2000 for a preliminary study to test the viability of a market in carbon credits. On the CCX board of directors is the ubiquitous Maurice Strong, a Canadian industrialist and diplomat who, since the 1970s, has helped create an international policy agenda for the environmentalist movement. Strong has described himself as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.” His former job titles include “senior advisor” to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, “senior advisor” to World Bank President James Wolfensohn and board member of the United Nations Foundation, a creation of Ted Turner. The 78-year-old Strong is very close to Gore.

 

CCX has about 80 members that are self-confessed emitters of greenhouse gases. They have voluntarily committed themselves to reduce their emissions by the year 2010 to a level 6% below their emissions in 2000. CCX members include Ford Motor Company, Amtrak, DuPont, Dow Corning, American Electric Power, International Paper, Motorola, Waste Management and a smattering of other companies, along with the states of Illinois and New Mexico, seven cities and a number of universities. Presumably the members “purchase” carbon offsets on the CCX trading exchange. This means they make contributions to or investments in groups or firms that provide forms of “alternative,” “renewable” and “clean” energy.

 

CCX also has “participant members” that develop the carbon-offset projects. They have names like Carbon Farmers and Eco-Nomics Incorporated. Still, other participant member groups facilitate, finance and market carbon-offset projects to “sequester, destroy or displace” greenhouse gases. CCX aspires to be the New York Stock Exchange of carbon-emissions trading.

 

Along with Gore, the co-founder of GIM is Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson. Last September, Goldman Sachs bought 10% of CCX shares for $23 million. CCX owns half the ECX, so Goldman Sachs has a stake there as well.

 

GIM’s “founding partners” are studded with officials from Goldman Sachs. They include David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM); Mark Ferguson, former co-head of GSAM pan-European research; and Peter Harris, who headed GSAM international operations. Another founding partner is Peter Knight, who is the designated president of GIM. He was Sen. Al Gore’s chief of staff from 1977-1989 and the campaign manager of the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign.

 

Like CCX, the ECX has about 80 member companies, including Barclays, BP, Calyon, Endesa, Fortis, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Shell, and ECX has contracted with the European Union to further develop a futures market in carbon trading. What’s in it for the companies? They will benefit either by investing in carbon credits or by receiving subsidies for doing so.

 

Front and Center

 

Clearly, GIM is poised to cash in on carbon trading. The membership of CCX is currently voluntary. But if the day ever comes when federal government regulations require greenhouse-gas emitters -- and that’s almost everyone -- to participate in cap-and-trade, then those who have created a market for the exchange of carbon credits are in a position to control the outcomes. And that moves Al Gore front and center. As a politician, Gore is all for transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming, according to Forbes magazine. Little is known about his firm’s finances, where it gets funding and what projects it supports.

 

We do know that Goldman Sachs has commissioned the World Resources Institute (affiliated with CCX), Resources for the Future, and the Woods Hole Research Center to research policy options for U.S. regulation of greenhouse gases. In 2006, Goldman Sachs provided research grants in this area totaling $2.3 million. The firm also has committed $1 billion to carbon-assets projects, a fancy term for projects that generate energy from sources other than oil and gas. In October 2006, Morgan Stanley committed to invest $3 billion in carbon-assets projects. Citigroup entered the emissions-trading market in May, and Bank of America got in on the action in June.

 

Some environmentalist groups disparage Gore and his investment banker friends. They say the Gore group caters to others who share their financial interest in the carbon-exchange concept. The bulletin of the World Rainforest Movement says that members of a United Nations-sponsored group called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stand to gain by approving Gore’s carbon-trading enterprise. The IPCC has devised what it says is a scientific measure of the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming. In fact, the critics charge, the IPCC sanctions a mechanism that mainly promotes the sham concept of carbon exchange.

 

The global non-profit organization Winrock International is an example of one IPCC panel member that seeks out groups and individuals with an interest in carbon trading. Arkansas-based Winrock provides worldwide “carbon-advisory services.” Winrock has received government grants from the EPA, USAID and the Departments of Labor, State and Commerce, as well as from the Nature Conservancy (whose chairman used to be Henry Paulson). Winrock argues that cap-and-trade carbon trading is the best way to prevent a climate change crisis. But consider this: When a non-profit group takes money from oil companies and advocates drilling for oil as a solution to energy shortages, it is certain to be attacked as a tool of Big Oil. So far, the groups linked to Al Gore have avoided similar scrutiny.

 

Then there’s the World Resources Institute (WRI). It was the first nongovernmental group to join CCX as an associate member (a designation for virtuous groups whose greenhouse-gas emissions are negligible). Many of its donors are CCX members or otherwise support carbon exchanges, including the Shell Foundation, Whole Foods Market, the Nature Conservancy, American Forest and Paper Association, and the Pew Center for Climate Change, as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation.

 

Connect the Dots

 

In June 2006, the World Bank announced that it, too, had joined CCX, saying that it intended to offset its greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing emission credits through CCX. The bank says its credits would contribute to restoring 4,600 hectares of degraded pastureland in Costa Rica. Somehow, CCX has figured out that this is an amount equivalent to 22,000 metric tons of emission that the bank calculates are created by its activities.

 

A World Bank blog called the Private Sector Development Blog regularly features items touting Al Gore and the concept of carbon credits. Its articles typically announce corporate “green” initiatives in which carbon credits are said to cancel out “bad” CO2 emissions released by a company’s activities.

 

In fact, the World Bank now operates a Carbon Finance Unit that conducts research on how to develop and trade carbon credits. The bank works with Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain to set up carbon-credit funds in each country to purchase emission credits from firms for use in developing countries. In addition, it runs the Carbon Fund for Europe helping countries meet their Kyoto Protocol requirements. These funds are traded on the ECX (half of which is owned by CCX, itself a creature of Al Gore’s firm, Generation Investment Management). Can we connect the dots?

 

A website affiliated with An Inconvenient Truth invites concerned citizens to personally fight global warming by offsetting their “carbon footprint.” The ways to do that include changing over to fluorescent light bulbs and turning down your thermostat at home. But the website also urges Americans to offset their personal CO2 emissions by “buying” carbon offsets from a native-American-owned company called Native Energy. Native Energy promotes “renewable” wind energy by buying and selling carbon-emission credits and futures for wind turbine projects on Indian reservations.

 

What the website doesn’t mention is that that the founder of Native Energy, energy industry veteran Tom Boucher, also founded a marketing company called Green Mountain Energy, a CCX associate partner that describes itself as “the nation’s leading retail provider of cleaner energy and carbon-offset solutions. Green Mountain offers residential, business, institutional and governmental customers an easy way to purchase cleaner, affordable electricity products, as well as the opportunity to offset their carbon footprint.” In other words, Green Mountain sells advisory services to energy users, alerting them to opportunities to contribute to or invest in groups like Native Energy.

 

So it seems banks and investment houses are going green, eager to enter an emerging emissions market. Meanwhile, environmentalists are discovering new ways to get rich while believing they are saving polar bears and rainforests.

 

Gore’s Non-profit Agitators

 

In 2006 Al Gore established his own global-warming non-profit group, the Alliance for Climate Protection, a 501(3)© charitable organization. The group favors more stringent environmental policy regulations on the private sector and especially wants cap-and-trade legislation so that companies will be forced to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and buy carbon credits.

 

The alliance CEO is Cathy Zoi, a former environmental advisor to President Bill Clinton. Gore is chairman of the board, which also includes environmental activist Theodore Roosevelt IV, Clinton EPA Director Carol Browner, the President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Reagan-era EPA Director Lee Thomas. Gore has reportedly given the alliance $250,000 and has said he will donate his share of the profits from An Inconvenient Truth to the group.

 

Last September, the alliance cheered as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R.) signed into law the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. California has the world’s sixth-largest economy and is the world’s 12th-largest source of CO2 emissions. The mandate promises to cut emissions by 25% by 2020. Unlike other state and regional programs to cut carbon emissions and promote alternative energy, the California law is the first to embrace a cap-and-trade program. It has won the support of litigious environmental groups and business and financial groups that want to buy and sell pollution credits.

 

Force Everyone to Play

 

This year Congress is considering a slew of cap-and-trade bills to reduce carbon emissions. The bill getting the most attention is sponsored by Senators John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (ID.-Conn.). It would apply to the entire economy, would reduce emissions in stages (to 2004 levels by 2012, 1990 levels by 2020, and 60% below 1990 by 2050) and would set up a cap-and-trade market for emission credits.

 

The push is now on to force action from the Bush Administration. On May 14 of this year, President Bush signed an executive order directing federal agencies to craft regulations by the end of next year that will “cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions from motor vehicles.” His “20 in 10” plan to cut gas consumption by 20% in the next 10 years focuses on increasing the fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks and mandating increased use of alternative fuels.

 

But the President is unwilling to call for mandatory nationwide emissions rules and instead favors voluntary carbon-emission cuts in the private sector. This is deeply frustrating to all the brokers, wheeler-dealers and interest groups that want to jump on the cap-and-trade bandwagon. There are billions of dollars to be made in trading emissions credits. But first the federal government must force everyone to play the game.

 

As for Al Gore, the former Vice President brings emotional fervor to his carbon crusade. He travels the country displaying charts and graphs, quoting scientific experts and appealing to philosophers and religious leaders to save the planet from global warming. But he says nothing about his business partners who yearn to trade on the emerging carbon market. And the media pay no attention to the companies offering “carbon advisory services” that will profit from federal carbon emission controls.

 

Perhaps it’s about time they did.

[southsideirish71]

Iranian plane

[southsideirish71]

Illegal Lebanese Woman worked for CIA and FBI

Very very dumb

 

 

Thank god illegal immigrants are here just to find work. .

[Texsox]

Illegal Lebanese Woman worked for CIA and FBI

Very very dumb

 

 

Thank god illegal immigrants are here just to find work. .

This will be an interesting trick

Under the terms of a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Prouty would face a prison sentence of 6-12 months, be stripped of her U.S. citizenship and be ordered deported. Prouty hired an unemployed U.S. citizen to marry her in 1990, a year after she entered the country and overstayed her student visa.

 

However, prosecutors said she won’t be allowed to leave the U.S. because she used to work for the FBI and CIA and has access to sensitive information vital to homeland security.

 

[Texsox]

Illegal Lebanese Woman worked for CIA and FBI

Very very dumb

 

 

Thank god illegal immigrants are here just to find work. .

 

Thank God that natural born Americans have never been convicted of spying for foreign governments.

 

This will be an interesting trick

Under the terms of a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Prouty would face a prison sentence of 6-12 months, be stripped of her U.S. citizenship and be ordered deported. Prouty hired an unemployed U.S. citizen to marry her in 1990, a year after she entered the country and overstayed her student visa.

 

However, prosecutors said she won’t be allowed to leave the U.S. because she used to work for the FBI and CIA and has access to sensitive information vital to homeland security.

 

[southsider2k5]

Spitzer is running from the licenses for illegals now...

 

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11142007/news/...s_on_l_9236.htm

 

OUT-OF-GAS ELIOT PUTS THE BRAKES ON LICENSE PLAN

By KENNETH LOVETT - Post Correspondent

November 14, 2007 -- ALBANY - With his poll numbers collapsing, Gov. Spitzer pullled the plug today on his controversial plan to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses, his spokeswoman confirmed.

 

The embattled governor was expected to made the announcement after he met with the state's heavily Democratic congressional delegation, which had grown increasingly critical of the plan.

 

Spitzer aides said the decision was made because the firestorm over the issue was blocking the governor's overall agenda, and there were serious concerns that various lawsuits, as well as threatened legislative action, would block the plan anyway.

 

There was also anxiety about the negative impact the issue was having on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign.

 

The decision to wave the white flag was cemented as a Siena Research Institute poll released yesterday showed Spitzer with his lowest approval ratings ever - with just 25 percent of voters saying they would support his re-election if the vote were held today.

 

One source said Spitzer had failed because he "just tried to push [the plan] down everyone's throats."

 

To save face, the governor will say that the federal government has failed to adequately address immigration and that it would take a change in presidential administrations for a meaningful discussion on the issue to occur, one source briefed on Spitzer's announcement said.

 

"You don't need to see the most recent polls to understand that this is an issue that has touched a nerve in the public, and we'll try to address that in a thoughtful, modulated way and we'll see where we go," Spitzer said yesterday. "That is a conversation that will continue."

 

 

The freshman governor came under intense fire from Republicans and some Democrats after he first announced in late September that he wanted to give illegal immigrants access to the same driver's licenses as everyone else.

 

He claimed it would improve road safety and bolster national security by creating public records of people now living "in the shadows" - but voters and most elected officials were having none of it.

 

Lawsuits were filed to block the measure, and county clerks, who run local DMV offices, revolted.

 

As polls showed that more than 70 percent of New Yorkers opposed the proposal, Spitzer suddenly changed course several weeks ago, announcing a plan to offer New Yorkers three different driver's licenses, including two that would be federally recognized and a third that would be available to illegal immigrants.

 

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made it clear he opposed the idea of giving licenses to illegals.

 

The new plan - which was to be implemented by mid- to late next year - did nothing to appease critics, but managed to anger supporters of the governor's original plan, with yesterday's Siena poll showing that two-thirds of New Yorkers still oppose the latest version.

 

The issue has also become a hot potato for national Democrats, including Clinton, who fumbled with the issue during a recent presidential debate before giving qualified support for Spitzer's plan the next day.

 

She has since been criticized by Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the GOP front-runner.

 

Rep. Peter King (R-LI) last week said he is drafting legislation prohibiting all states from granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

 

Critics of Spitzer's plan immediately hailed the decision to leave it by the wayside.

 

"This announcement is a huge victory for New York and all Americans," said state Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco (R-Schenectady).

 

 

A disappointed immigration advocate said that "the toxic environment" overshadowed the merits of the governor's plan.

 

"It shows this issue is bigger than the governor can deal with and cries out for a national solution," said Norman Eng, of the New York Immigration Coalition.

 

[email protected]

 

[Texsox]

Seriously, I wonder how many illegals would have actually went and got one. There would be a risk for either course of action. Personally, I never liked the idea. Stuff like this diverts attention away from real solutions. We need a guest worker program, tied to job creation, and then stuff like drivers licenses are not even an issue.

[YASNY]

Seriously, I wonder how many illegals would have actually went and got one. There would be a risk for either course of action. Personally, I never liked the idea. Stuff like this diverts attention away from real solutions. We need a guest worker program, tied to job creation, and then stuff like drivers licenses are not even an issue.

 

First, we need to secure the borders.

[southsider2k5]

First, we need to secure the borders.

 

No illegals, no issues.

[NorthSideSox72]

No illegals, no issues.

If there is business demand, no matter hwo much you spend trying to secure the border, illegals will still come in. You need to both secure the borders AND do a lot more to stem demand for illegal labor. You can't do just one of the two and expect to make a significant dent.

 

[YASNY]

If there is business demand, no matter hwo much you spend trying to secure the border, illegals will still come in. You need to both secure the borders AND do a lot more to stem demand for illegal labor. You can't do just one of the two and expect to make a significant dent.

 

Note that I said FIRST, secure the borders.

[NorthSideSox72]

Note that I said FIRST, secure the borders.

I'd think you could do both at the same time. But, if you had to pick one or the other, I think you'll get much more bang for your buck by addressing the demand first.

 

Think about the math. You want to REALLY secure the border with Mexico? A wall as some have discussed, or heck even the virtual wall I have proposed, you are talking tens of billions of dollars (or for the wall, hundreds of billions). For a tiny fraction of that, you can enact tougher laws, and hire a few hundred people whose job it is to find, clean out, fine and collect from businesses who hire illegals. As demand plummets, people will stop being in such a hurry to come across.

 

[YASNY]

I'd think you could do both at the same time. But, if you had to pick one or the other, I think you'll get much more bang for your buck by addressing the demand first.

 

Think about the math. You want to REALLY secure the border with Mexico? A wall as some have discussed, or heck even the virtual wall I have proposed, you are talking tens of billions of dollars (or for the wall, hundreds of billions). For a tiny fraction of that, you can enact tougher laws, and hire a few hundred people whose job it is to find, clean out, fine and collect from businesses who hire illegals. As demand plummets, people will stop being in such a hurry to come across.

 

Enact tougher laws? You mean like the current immigration that get ignored by illegals and liberals now? Nope ... secure the borders first, keep Al Qaida out. Then worry about clearing out the illegals already here while we then implement a guest worker program and go after those that hire illegals.

[kapkomet]

First enforce the laws that exist. That would pretty much "strengthen our borders" by cutting off the demand for illegals alone.

[YASNY]

First enforce the laws that exist. That would pretty much "strengthen our borders" by cutting off the demand for illegals alone.

 

There's that word again.

[kapkomet]

There's that word again.

First...

[NorthSideSox72]

First enforce the laws that exist. That would pretty much "strengthen our borders" by cutting off the demand for illegals alone.

That would be good.

 

[Balta1701]

I'd think you could do both at the same time. But, if you had to pick one or the other, I think you'll get much more bang for your buck by addressing the demand first.

 

Think about the math. You want to REALLY secure the border with Mexico? A wall as some have discussed, or heck even the virtual wall I have proposed, you are talking tens of billions of dollars (or for the wall, hundreds of billions). For a tiny fraction of that, you can enact tougher laws, and hire a few hundred people whose job it is to find, clean out, fine and collect from businesses who hire illegals. As demand plummets, people will stop being in such a hurry to come across.

We've spent probably hundreds of billions of dollars to this point in the "War on drugs" overseas without really attacking the demand side here (except by throwing people in jail), and I'll leave it to others to estimate the effectiveness of those supply-side type measures.

[southsider2k5]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/fe...ml?id=110010855

 

Movin' On Up

A Treasury study refutes populist hokum about "income inequality."

 

Tuesday, November 13, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

 

If you've been listening to Mike Huckabee or John Edwards on the Presidential trail, you may have heard that the U.S. is becoming a nation of rising inequality and shrinking opportunity. We'd refer those campaigns to a new study of income mobility by the Treasury Department that exposes those claims as so much populist hokum.

 

OK, "hokum" is our word. The study, to be released today, is a careful, detailed piece of research by professional economists that avoids political judgments. But what it does do is show beyond doubt that the U.S. remains a dynamic society marked by rapid and mostly upward income mobility. Much as they always have, Americans on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder continue to climb into the middle and sometimes upper classes in remarkably short periods of time.

 

The Treasury study examined a huge sample of 96,700 income tax returns from 1996 and 2005 for Americans over the age of 25. The study tracks what happened to these tax filers over this 10-year period. One of the notable, and reassuring, findings is that nearly 58% of filers who were in the poorest income group in 1996 had moved into a higher income category by 2005. Nearly 25% jumped into the middle or upper-middle income groups, and 5.3% made it all the way to the highest quintile.

Of those in the second lowest income quintile, nearly 50% moved into the middle quintile or higher, and only 17% moved down. This is a stunning show of upward mobility, meaning that more than half of all lower-income Americans in 1996 had moved up the income scale in only 10 years.

 

Also encouraging is the fact that the after-inflation median income of all tax filers increased by an impressive 24% over the same period. Two of every three workers had a real income gain--which contradicts the Huckabee-Edwards-Lou Dobbs spin about stagnant incomes. This is even more impressive when you consider that "median" income and wage numbers are often skewed downward because the U.S. has had a huge influx of young workers and immigrants in the last 20 years. They start their work years with low wages, dragging down the averages.

 

Those who start at the bottom but hold full-time jobs nonetheless enjoyed steady income gains. The Treasury study found that those tax filers who were in the poorest income quintile in 1996 saw a near doubling of their incomes (90.5%) over the subsequent decade. Those in the highest quintile, on the other hand, saw only modest income gains (10%). The nearby table tells the story, which is that the poorer an individual or household was in 1996 the greater the percentage income gain after 10 years.

 

Only one income group experienced an absolute decline in real income--the richest 1% in 1996. Those households lost 25.8% of their income. Moreover, more than half (57.4%) of the richest 1% in 1996 had dropped to a lower income group by 2005. Some of these people might have been "rich" merely for one year, or perhaps for several, as they hit their peak earning years or had some capital gains windfall. Others may simply have not been able to keep up with new entrepreneurs and wealth creators.

 

The key point is that the study shows that income mobility in the U.S. works down as well as up--another sign that opportunity and merit continue to drive American success, not accidents of birth. The "rich" are not the same people over time.

 

The study is also valuable because it shows that income mobility remains little changed from what similar studies found in the 1970s and 1980s. Some journalists and academics have cited selective evidence to claim that income mobility has declined in recent years.

 

But the 58% of lowest-income earners who moved to a higher income quintile in this study is roughly comparable to the percentages that did so in several similar studies going back to the late 1960s. "The basic finding of this analysis," says the Treasury report, "is that relative income mobility is approximately the same in the last 10 years as it was in the previous decade."

 

All of this certainly helps to illuminate the current election-year debate about income "inequality" in the U.S. The political left and its media echoes are promoting the inequality story as a way to justify a huge tax increase. But inequality is only a problem if it reflects stagnant opportunity and a society stratified by more or less permanent income differences. That kind of society can breed class resentments and unrest. America isn't remotely such a society, thanks in large part to the incentives that exist for risk-taking and wealth creation.

The great irony is that, in the name of reducing inequality, some of our politicians want to raise taxes and other government obstacles to the kind of risk-taking and hard work that allow Americans to climb the income ladder so rapidly. As the Treasury data show, we shouldn't worry about inequality. We should worry about the people who use inequality as a political club to promote policies that reduce opportunity.

[NorthSideSox72]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/fe...ml?id=110010855

That is very encouraging, and its definitely one of the major reasons why this country is such a great place to be.

 

One "but" though: income mobility income equality

 

Mobility staying high is a good sign, but it doesn't cover all the bases. Income mobility can be high and there can still be a widening gap between given relative points on the income scale beyond the factor of inflation.