2008 Election

Tickler’s Letter to Thomas Friedman

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I sent a note to Thomas Friedman today, about the protectionist position Obama is taking on jobs, just to win the votes of down-and-out lower middle class families. He’s a wily and sinister candidate, but certainly a thoroughly say-anything-to-get-a-vote politician.

Mr. Friedman,

I’ve been enjoying your book The World Is Flat for the many points of data and interviews you conducted with the various organizations. I haven’t appreciated your pot shots at George Bush and the republicans as much. As you must know, with so much knowledge of the world and things, that both parties share the blame for what’s wrong with America and why our lead is dwindling.

One thing you point out, and I wholeheartedly agree with, is that we cannot be protectionist when it comes to non-think jobs. However, the candidate you’re likely voting for, Obama, is campaigning on a protectionist platform and has made more comments about penalizing companies for off-shoring than anyone this election season. He’s appealing to the lower-middle class masses just to get elected and it’s dishonest and disingenuous.

I admit to avoiding the New York Times, and in keeping with that have not read your regular columns, but as one on the left who I know understands the challenges we have, it would be nice to have you do the right thing and come out in writing about Obama’s stance and it’s dangerous isolationist campaign-season air.

Tickler

I hope Friedman loves this country more than he can tolerate Obama blowing smoke about jobs that have long gone away, and will never come back.

We need to build up thinking jobs in this country. We need to build up managers and orchestrators and leaders in this country. Allentown and Detroit as they were are gone and we need to make the changes in the education system and structure of business in this country to build world business leaders of Americans or we’ll have to watch China and others as they pass us by.

Ayers-Style: Anti-Capitalist Education Reform

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A Manhattan Institute Fellow, Sol Stern, has written a piece about William Ayers and his “education reform” really means to the American education system…

I’ve studied Mr. Ayers’s work for years and read most of his books. His hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational “reform” efforts. Of course, Mr. Obama isn’t going to appoint him to run the education department. But the media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country’s politics and public schools…

Mr. Ayers was hired by the Chicago public schools to train teachers, and played a leading role in the $160 million Annenberg Challenge grant that distributed funds to a host of so-called school-reform projects, including some social-justice themed schools and schools organized by Acorn. Barack Obama became the first chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge organization in 1995…

In fact, as one of the leaders of a movement for bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms, Mr. Ayers is not a school reformer. He is a school destroyer.

He still hopes for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism, but this time around Mr. Ayers sows the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America’s future teachers. Thus, education students signing up for a course Mr. Ayers teaches at UIC, “On Urban Education,” can read these exhortations from the course description: “Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression — we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things. We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine.”

This kind of unrepentant terrorist needs to be ejected from the education system before he causes major damage.

In the world of the Ed schools, Mr. Ayers’s movement has established a sizeable beachhead — witness his election earlier this year as vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s largest organization of education professors and researchers.

If Barack Obama wins on Nov. 4, the “guy in the neighborhood” is not likely to get an invitation to the Lincoln bedroom. But with the Democrats controlling all three branches of government, there’s a real danger that Mr. Ayers’s social-justice movement in the schools will get even more room to maneuver and grow.

Horrifying.

“Just Bad Luck? All of Obama’s People Hate America…”

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Glenn Beck’s got a hilarious piece on the bad luck Obama’s had in being surrounded by those who hate, or at the very least aren’t proud of America.

Then Barack is like, “Hey, I want to be a state senator. Where should I have it? I mean, I could launch it from a park, you know, I could go to like a cool podium some place, maybe I can go to Pizza Hut. Where could I possibly — and somebody says, hey, I know, you can go do it at my house. And he’s like, really? Now, you would think to yourself, well, that’s lucky. And I’m sure that’s what Barack Obama was thinking, “I don’t know if I have a place to do it, I don’t know if I can get a park and a podium, I don’t know if I can get into Pizza Hut and we’ll have room for all the cameras. And this guy seems to have a big house. I mean, I don’t know him, we live in the same neighborhood but we don’t really talk.” Okay, so he launches at his house, and it’s this beautiful house. Turns out — ready for this one? Turns out the guy is a home grown terrorist.

Check it out…

Obama Votes Present on Fannie/Freddie

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Again, the WSJ is on the ball today…

If Sen. Obama were truly looking for a kind of deregulation that might be responsible for the current financial crisis, he need only look back to 1998, when the Clinton administration ruled that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could satisfy their affordable housing obligations by purchasing subprime mortgages. This ultimately made it possible for Fannie and Freddie to add a trillion dollars in junk loans to their balance sheets. This led to their own collapse, and to the development of a market in these mortgages that is the source of the financial crisis we are wrestling with today.

Finally, on the matter of deregulation and the financial crisis, Sen. Obama should consider his own complicity in the failure of Congress to adopt legislation that might have prevented the subprime meltdown.

In the summer of 2005, a bill emerged from the Senate Banking Committee that considerably tightened regulations on Fannie and Freddie, including controls over their capital and their ability to hold portfolios of mortgages or mortgage-backed securities. All the Republicans voted for the bill in committee; all the Democrats voted against it. To get the bill to a vote in the Senate, a few Democratic votes were necessary to limit debate. This was a time for the leadership Sen. Obama says he can offer, but neither he nor any other Democrat stepped forward.

Instead, by his own account, Mr. Obama wrote a letter to the Treasury Secretary, allegedly putting himself on record that subprime loans were dangerous and had to be dealt with. This is revealing; if true, it indicates Sen. Obama knew there was a problem with subprime lending — but was unwilling to confront his own party by pressing for legislation to control it. As a demonstration of character and leadership capacity, it bears a strong resemblance to something else in Sen. Obama’s past: voting present.

READ IT HERE

Why Do Our Taxes Go To ACORN?

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You might ask, as I did when I found out the Democrat shell company ACORN is federally funded, why this is the case. A Wall Street Journal piece today lays out some detail we didn’t know, and now we feel like being militant ourselves.

“But the organization’s real genius is getting American taxpayers to foot the bill. According to a 2006 report from the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), Acorn has been on the federal take since 1977. For instance, Acorn’s American Institute for Social Justice claimed $240,000 in tax money between fiscal years 2002 and 2003. Its American Environmental Justice Project received 100% of its revenue from government grants in the same years. EPI estimates the Acorn Housing Corporation alone received some $16 million in federal dollars from 1997-2007. Only recently, Democrats tried and failed to stuff an “affordable housing” provision into the $700 billion bank rescue package that would have let politicians give even more to Acorn.

All this money gives Acorn the ability to pursue its other great hobby: electing liberals. Acorn is spending $16 million this year to register new Democrats and is already boasting it has put 1.3 million new voters on the rolls. The big question is how many of these registrations are real.”

READ THE ARTICLE

Obama: ACORN Will Help Set Presidential Agenda

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I can’t believe Obama said this out loud. This guy is a nightmare on scrawny legs.

“…before I even get inaugurated, during the transition, we’re going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We’re going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations, so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.”

Because there are those who don’t know, and we shouldn’t assume, ACORN is a extreme leftist minority focused community organization that has been raided repeatedly by police over voter fraud. Even if ACORN weren’t involved in the voter fraud that seems pretty proven at this point, they’d still be disingenuous to the American people to only root out Democrats for registration and enticing (I say bribing) them with food, cigarettes, and rides to the polling location on the day.

The meat is about 1:40 into the clip.

Obama’s Socialist Tax, In His Own Words

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Obama’s mouth keeps on giving. Unfortunately, his mouth is writing check his butt can’t cash. The Tickler appeals to all readers, use your brain and show up to vote. We can’t let this guy get into office.

Plumber: “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it.”

Obama: “It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind ya, that they have a chance for success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” Obama the crooked imbecile on the stump (see the video here)

From the desk of the Tickler’s wife…

Here are some key takeaways from the WSJ piece on the true nature of Obama’s tax “cuts”:

Here’s the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be “refundable,” which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this “welfare,” or in George McGovern’s 1972 campaign a “Demogrant.” Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

The total annual expenditures on refundable “tax credits” would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as “tax credits,” the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.

Read the article here