After their long attempts to ruin our healthcare system, here comes more terrible ideas from the dipshits in case health care alone doesn't do us in...
Senate blocks census citizenship question
AP News
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Senate Democrats Thursday blocked a GOP attempt to require next year's census forms to ask people whether they are U.S. citizens.
The proposal by Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter was aimed at excluding immigrants from the population totals that are used to figure the number of congressional representatives for each state. Critics said Vitter's plan would discourage immigrants from responding to the census and would be hugely expensive. They also said that it's long been settled law that the apportionment of congressional seats is determined by the number of people living in each state, regardless of whether they are citizens. A separate survey already collects the data.
Census data is also used to distribute billions of dollars in federal aid.
"The current plan is to reapportion House seats using that overall number, citizens and noncitizens," Vitter said. "I think that's wrong. I think that's contrary to the whole intent of the Constitution and the establishment of Congress as a democratic institution to represent citizens."
If Vitter were successful _ and if noncitizens were excluded from the census count for congressional apportionment _ states with fewer immigrants would fare significantly better in the upcoming allocation of House seats.
State such as California and Texas would fare worse than they would under the current way of allocating seats, which under the Constitution is based on the "whole number of persons" residing in a state.
Louisiana stands to lose one of its seven House seats in the upcoming round of reapportionment. Vitter says that if noncitizens were excluded, Louisiana and eight other states would keep or gain congressional seats that would go to California, Texas, Illinois and New York.
Vitter's amendment, however, would not have changed the way the congressional seats are allocated by counting citizens and noncitizens alike.
Census Director Robert Groves opposes the proposal and recently told lawmakers that it would greatly delay the decennial count. A separate survey already collects citizenship data.
Critics also said Vitter's plan would discourage immigrants from responding to the census and would be hugely expensive.
The GOP proposal would have blocked Census Bureau funds if it doesn't add the citizenship question to the more than 600 million forms. More than 400 million have already been printed.
"As we've said, the proposal is just not doable and we would have had to delay the census," Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner said Thursday. "The 2010 census remains on track and on schedule, and we're moving forward to ensure we have an accurate count in 2010."
Critics also said that it's long been settled law that the apportionment of congressional seats is determined by the number of people living in each state, whether or not they are citizens.
Vitter's home-state colleague, Democrat Mary Landrieu, recently said in a letter to Vitter that it would take a constitutional amendment to exclude immigrants from the count.
The Vitter plan fell after a 60-39 procedural vote made it ineligible for inclusion in a bill funding the census.
This is horrible! Why should illegal immigrants count on our census - they should be deported! Obviously the Dems know it means more support for them in their quest to bring down our country and its Constitution. They are traitors plain & simple!!!
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Why Rush on Global Warming?
Max Schulz
Thursday, November 05, 2009
The ABC News headline this week said it all: “U.S. Must Lead Way in Clean Energy Technology, Agency Heads Say; Administration Officials Push for the Swift Passing of Kerry-Boxer Climate Change Legislation.”
It’s that second part—about the need for swift passage of global warming legislation—that tells the whole story.
Of course President Obama wants quick passage. For months the public has focused on the bruising health care fight taking place in Washington. Along with congressional allies like John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi, Obama would like nothing better than to rush global warming regulation through congress before the public can turn proper attention to a proposal under which, as the President himself has put it, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
But that’s just part of what proponents of a costly cap-and-trade system would rather the public not hear. The president’s advisers would like to ram through their climate proposals before the public catches wind of the overwrought rhetoric bubbling up from the fevered swamps of global warming alarmism.
Consider the interview Lord Nicholas Stern gave to The Times of London decrying the carbon content of people’s food. “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases,” he said. “I am not sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the kind of changes that will be necessary” to stave off global warming.
Give up meat to save the planet? That seems to be what he is saying. The old saw used to be that meat is murder. Now it’s suicide. Lord Stern is no gadfly crank, either. He is the most distinguished authority on climate change in the United Kingdom, and authored a landmark 2006 study on global warming economics. More than anyone, Lord Stern advanced the controversial notion that we can constrain our economies today to ward off tomorrow’s climate catastrophe. Now he says we must become vegetarians too.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, claims failure to pass a new Kyoto-style agreement at December’s global warming summit will doom us. Literally. “If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice,” he said. Hear that? We have just weeks to save the planet.
Issuing imprudent and hyperbolic rhetoric about climate is not solely a British disease, of course. Consider the warning issued by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in the New York Times recently. He called global warming an “existential threat to humankind.” Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. But if the Secretary General wishes to sound alarms with Americans, he may be doing so unwittingly with another line from his op-ed: “A deal must include an equitable global governance structure.” In a country whose existence is rooted in its struggle for independence, many Americans will be put off by such a claim.
Unfortunately for those who would like to see climate change regulation enacted, there are numerous other statements from allies that would turn off a public paying greater attention to the issue. Noted climate scientist Ken Caldeira, for instance, recently declared, “I believe that we should be outlawing the production of devices that emit carbon dioxide.” Think about that next time you drive your car.
In his books and columns, the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman pines for the authority held by China’s communist autocrats. He wishes enlightened leaders could simply impose global warming solutions on the American economy rather than having to approve them democratically. Meanwhile a popular book by environmentalists Robert and Brenda Vale, entitled Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, argues that owning pets is even worse for the planet than an SUV.
While certainly tongue-in-cheek compared to Friedman’s paean to enlightened dictatorship or Lord Stern’s screed against meat, Time to Eat the Dog shares their same worry, i.e., that people in their daily lives are the planet’s gravest threat, and must be stopped.
Give them credit for candor. But don’t expect the larger public to sympathize with those beliefs. That’s why team Obama wants to ram cap-and-trade through quickly, obscured by the smokescreen of the healthcare debate. The president understands that an informed national discussion on global warming will expose the radical statements of global warming regulation’s most prominent proponents, which is not conducive to getting the bill he wants. That’s democracy for you.
Senate Democrats advance climate bill without GOP
AP News
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Senate Democrats sidestepped a Republican boycott Thursday, pushing a climate bill out of committee in an early step on a long and contentious road to passage.
Other committees still must weigh-in on the measure, but the partisan antics early on threatened to cast a pall over the bill _ one of President Barack Obama's top priorities _ as it makes its way to the Senate floor and as nations prepare to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark next month to hammer out a new international treaty to slow climate change.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, had delayed the crucial vote for days because of a Republican protest over whether the cost of the legislation had been fully examined. But the California Democrat moved quickly to pass the bill Thursday, which for the first time would set mandatory limits on heat-trapping gases, without any of the seven GOP senators on the panel present. The measure cleared the panel on a 11-1 vote.
Boxer said the Republican demand for more analysis was "duplicative and waste of taxpayer dollars."
"Advancing the bill is a necessary step on the road to garnering the 60 votes we need," said Boxer, who introduced the bill along with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. in late September. "We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have had the will to move this bill forward."
Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the committee, implored the panel to not proceed with what he called a "nuclear option" minutes before the vote. He left shortly after making his statement.
"We have not been able to find a time when a bill has been marked up without minority participation," Inhofe said. Later, in a statement, Inhofe said the move would signal "the death knell" for the Kerry-Boxer bill.
Of the 11 Democrats present at the vote, only one _ Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. _ voted against the legislation, saying that concerns he had with the bill were not fully addressed. The "yes" vote of Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., was added after the vote.
Baucus specifically cited the bill's call for a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. He said he would like to see that target lowered to 17 percent, with a trigger to raise it to 20 percent if other countries adopted similar measures.
"I am going work to get climate legislation that can get 60 votes through the U.S. Senate and signed into law," Baucus said.
To move the bill out of committee without Republicans present meant the Democrats could not amend the legislation, and many Democrats on the panel expressed disappointment that they did not have a chance to improve the bill.
"The failure of the Republicans to participate means we cannot offer amendments. This is a very good start, but as the chair has acknowledged it is a start and only a start," said Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa. "It is regrettable that we could not move forward in a more constructive way."
Specter said that the vote would send a signal to other countries in advance of a climate change conference next month to hammer out a new international treaty.
"It is not the best signal, but it is a signal that the Senate is ready to move forward," he said.
Now the legislation will be merged with legislation written by at least five other Senate panels. And in the hopes of broadening support, Kerry announced Wednesday he was working with Connecticut independent Joseph Lieberman, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham and the White House to secure votes.
The House narrowly passed its version of the bill in June.
Coming soon - more back alley deals to elliminate competition and to complete governmental (democrat) control - despite what the people want. When the Republicans take control back of our government, giving control back to the people where it belongs, there will be a huge mess to clean up. Hopefully a huge lesson will be learned that Democrats cannot be trusted in control of anything!
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