Want proof?

Here's proof from the Heritage Foundation. Democrats promised us that if their pork-filled spending bills were passed, that unemployment would be much lower than if we did nothing at all. But guess what? They passed the spending bills and unemployment is MUCH HIGHER now than if we had done nothing at all.

...

That means that we are now stuck with trillions of dollars in spending, massive budget deficits and a ballooning national debt. And not only did it not help unemployment, it actually HURT the unemployment rate.

[...]

Arnold Schwarzenegger has made a personal overture to the heads of America's largest banks to persuade them to accept the IOUs being issued by California in lieu of cash.

With a budget deficit of more than $24bn, California has started its new financial year deep in the red and has been forced to issue the IOUs because it has run out of money.

The state has been buffeted by the recession and the property collapse, while an over-reliance on income taxes and capital gains taxes paid by high-earners has put additional pressure on the state's coffers.

The state has asked its public employees to take three unpaid days of holiday each month to preserve funds. Meanwhile, Mr Schwarzenegger has spent the past few days locked in talks with the members of the state legislature.

[From what I've read, there are a number of factors in California's economic collapse. The recession that is hitting everyone is hitting California worse because of its high number of illegal immigrants who suck out resources without putting much of anything back in (in tax revenue). The housing collapse hit California particularly hard because it had a lot of illegal immigrants who couldn't pay their mortgages, and the price of real estate was inflated for everyone, so when the bubble burst it burst extra hard there. The high taxation rates of recent years have driven upper-income earners out of the state by the thousands, and the state's reliance on income tax has taken a pounding by losing those earners. And, in the name of greenery, the state has implemented ridiculous regulations and policies to protect the environment which have have severe ramifications for the economy. Roll these things all together, and it's no surprise at all that the state is bankrupt and unable to pay its employees.

Heritage offers a warning to the rest of the country about California's financial woes:]

Supposedly, trends start in California and then spread to the rest of the country, a notion that seems to be confirmed by the latest economic news. In May, California's unemployment rate hit 11.5 percent--the highest it has been since 1941. This morning we learn that unemployment for the entire country hit 9.5 percent in June--the highest rate in 26 years.

Will the country close the economic-death-spiral gap with California? Very possibly it will, if the federal government continues to follow California's example of crushing its economy with ever-increasing government spending, taxing, and regulating.

According to the Pacific Research Institute's U.S. Economic Freedom Index Report, only three states have lower economic freedom scores than does California. The PRI index is a broad measure of how state governments impact their economies through tax, spending, and regulatory policies.

The lesson from California should be that high taxes, high spending, and lots of regulations is not a model for economic growth, yet those are precisely the policies that President Obama and Congress are pursuing. Federal spending this year will be about 26 percent of gross domestic product, the highest level since World War II. And the long-term outlook is even worse if nothing is done to reform entitlements.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has passed a global warming bill that will do nothing to stop global warming, but will cost the economy an average of $393 billion per year. Even here, California appears ahead of the curve, as the EPA has just approved a waiver that will allow California to impose its own tougher limits on carbon emissions from cars.

[...]

You wouldn't know it from the national media, but there have been and will continue to be cap-and-tax protests at congressional offices across the country. Some small, some large, all attended by citizens sickened by the abrogated debate, lack of transparency, reliance on junk science, and job-killing effect of the massive legislation no one read. ...

"What provides the possibility for such freedom is eugenics. Wells has no use for the iron laws of Marxism, but he replaces them with the iron laws of Malthus and Darwin. "From the view of human comfort and happiness, the increase of population that occurs at each advance in human security is the greatest evil of life," he writes. "The extravagant swarm of new births" that created the masses was "the essential disaster of the 19th century." Man's propensity to reproduce will always outstrip his productive capacity, even in an age of machinery. Worse, the "base and servile types," who are little more than the "leaping, glittering confusion of shoaling mackerel on a sunlit afternoon," are the most fecund.

In Anticipations, Wells had already argued horrifyingly that the "nation that most resolutely picks over, educates, sterilizes, or poisons its People of the Abyss" would be ascendant. For the base and servile types, death would mean merely "the end of the bitterness of failure." It was "their portion to die out and disappear." The New Republicans would have "little pity and less benevolence" for the untermenschen, "born of unrestrained lusts . . . and multiplying through sheer incontinence and stupidity....In Germany, of course, the eugenics and central planning that Wells touted soon led in directions that the futurist didn't anticipate. Wells attempted to explain away Hitler as "the screaming little defective in Germany"--an explanation for which George Orwell had only contempt. But Orwell nonetheless recognized Wells's extraordinary impact. "I doubt whether anyone who was writing books between 1900 and 1920, at any rate in the English language, influenced the young so much," Orwell wrote. "The minds of all of us . . . would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed."

Orwell was right. It was Wells who made it respectable, even before World War I, for liberals in England and America to demean their own native democratic culture in the name of an imagined antidemocratic World State. And it was Wells, with his stature as the prophet of the future, who taught upper-middle-class liberals that they were entitled to govern in the name of social evolution."

[...]

Mr. Voight's words brought criticisms from the New York Times, activists and bloggers. But they particularly troubled Teresa Albano, editor of the People's Weekly World -- a Chicago-based publication sympathetic to the Communist Party.

"I don't want to equate what Jon Voight said as expressing a conservative opinion on politics. It went way beyond that. He made a threat against the president of the United States to a crowd at a GOP fundraiser and got a good response from the Senate minority leader and other powerful people. And that is scary," Ms. Albano, editor of the publication, said at the time.

An editorial also said his speech was a form of "home-grown terrorism."

[...]

It seems that along with the right to keep and bear arms, even freedom of religion offends OCAGV. [More]

Their concern is massive ad blitz on Christian and country-music stations across 10 states. The ads, funded by a left-leaning coalition, urge support for congressional legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions -- by framing the issue as an urgent matter of Biblical morality.

"As our seas rise, crops wither and rivers run dry, God's creation cries out for relief," begins one ad, narrated by an evangelical megachurch pastor. Another opens with a reference to the Gospel of John, slams energy interests for fighting the bill, and concludes: "Please join the faithful in speaking out against the powerful."

...

Emboldened by what they see as a kindred spirit in the White House, progressive and liberal Christians are stepping up their political activism in a big way.

A religious coalition called the American Values Network spent nearly $200,000 placing the global warming ads. Some political analysts credit the campaign with boosting support for the Waxman-Markey climate bill, which narrowly passed the House last week. ...

...

In response, Julian The Apostate launched government philanthropic programs in an attempt to render the Christian message impotent.

The astute Christian reader will already see where this is going. We must ask the question: "Do the numerous government programs aimed at 'helping' people actually serve to undermine the Christian faith?" Some might argue that that is too conspiratorial. Let us set aside the question of intent then and deal strictly with the question of effect.

[...]

The flier circulated this morning came out of a business division for conferences and events, and the newsroom was unaware of such communication. It went out before it was properly vetted, and this draft does not represent what the company's vision for these dinners are, which is meant to be an independent, policy-oriented event for newsmakers. ...

...

The news of the poll comes on a day when the president of a pro-abortion Hispanic group confirmed that Sotomayor set policy for the organization, which aggressively promoted abortion in Supreme Court legal briefs.

The organization, formerly known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, had her on the board from 1980 to 1992.

The New York Times notes that Sotomayor "was an involved and ardent supporter of their various legal efforts."

Those efforts included several Supreme Court briefs arguing for unlimited legal abortions for any reason throughout pregnancy and for taxpayer funding of abortions.

Cesar Perales, PRLDEF's president and general counsel, told AP that Sotomayor set policy for the group but wasn't involved in those legal briefs.

[...]

GOP party leaders have tried to quell the revolt, but are only digging themselves a deeper hole. Kirby told me he received a solicitation from the NRCC signed by John Boehner asking GOP activists for money to fight Democrats who voted for cap-and-tax.

Insert bitter laughter here.

At the same time the NRCC excoriates Democrats for the cap-and-tax vote, it continues to support, defend, and raise money for Republicans who voted the same way.

KTTH talk show host David Boze has audio of Reichert's rationalization here. The word "delusional" comes to mind: ...

HR 5037 (The Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act) has passed in the House by a vote of 408 - 3 on 9 May 2006, and was received in the Senate. Those who voted against the bill were Massachusetts's South Coast - New Bedford, Fall River, Traunton - Representive's Barney Frank, Ron Paul (Republican - Texas), and David Wu (RAT - Oregon).

* Voted YES on allowing human embryonic stem cell research. (May 2005)

* Voted NO on restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions. (Apr 2005)

* Voted YES on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime. (Feb 2004)

* Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortion except to save mother's life. (Oct 2003)

* Voted NO on forbidding human cloning for reproduction & medical research. (Feb 2003)

* Voted NO on funding for health providers who don't provide abortion info. (Sep 2002)

* Voted NO on banning Family Planning funding in US aid abroad. (May 2001)

* Voted YES on federal crime to harm fetus while committing other crimes. (Apr 2001)

* Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)

* Voted NO on barring transporting minors to get an abortion. (Jun 1999)

* Rated 30% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)

* Emergency contraception for rape victims at all hospitals. (Sep 2006)

* Rated 10% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-choice stance. (Dec 2006)

Congresswoman Bono has earned a notorious reputation for being a political patsy for the rabid homosexual group Log Cabin Republicans. Perhaps Republican Bono's decision to join leftist Democrats in congress today to pass the dictatorial Cap & Spend tax increase will give GOP voters a greater understanding of what happens to Republican officials who get involved with the contaminating influence of the homosexual Log Cabin Republicans.

Mary Bono, who married Florida Congressman Connie Mack after the death of Sonny, is reported by numerous sources to have extensive ties to cult Church of Scientology. She is also an aggressive proponent of promoting the interests of the homosexual movement and the abortion industry. ...

A Superior Court judge in Sacramento County has rejected arguments that pending budget cuts to eliminate adult Medi-Cal dental benefits offered by low-income community and rural clinics violated federal law.

Judge Timothy Frawley, in a ruling made public Wednesday, said the Legislature was within its rights when it voted in February to save the state money by cutting adult Denti-Cal benefits, along with other benefits including podiatry and optometry, effective July 1.

...

On June 24, he participated in ABC's White House-based, primetime town hall forum on the subject. Responding to criticism of the event from the Republican National Committee, ABC News President David Westin defended Johnson. Writing in a June 23 press release, he complained, "...I entirely reject your attack on my colleague, Dr. Timothy Johnson...His knowledge about health care reform is surpassed only by his commitment to the truth and to fairness."

[...]

The powerful Massachusetts Democrat last week quietly introduced legislation that aims to use $1 billion in dividends paid by the recipients of government aid to provide rental housing opportunities for low-income and homeless families. The money would go into a national housing trust fund established last summer in connection with legislation that allowed for Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) to be placed under government conservatorship.

The fund currently is empty, however President Barack Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget calls for it to receive $ 1 billion - a sum the Frank legislation would provide.

"This would be the seed money to get the trust fund up and running," said Danna Fischer, legislative director for the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Fischer said the trust aims to garner $150 billion in total funding over the next decade.

Frank said it is feasible to use income from the Troubled Asset Relief Fund, known as TARP, to finance the trust for at least "a couple of years."

Frank's legislation also proposes funneling $1.5 billion in TARP dividend payments to state and local government efforts to redevelop abandoned and foreclosed properties. ...

Well, I looked up the placeholder in Waxman's late-night, 300-page manager's amendment.

Here it is. First, in the table of contents:

[...]

Andrews announced that "in a close 5 to 4 decision, the court's swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, sided with conservatives," before he set up a soundbite from a representative of the NAACP: "Civil rights leaders also predicted an era of confusion over when minorities are protected and when they are not." The NAACP's John Payton declared: "I think it hurts the cause of having a discrimination-free workplace."

Neither ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg nor NBC's Pete Williams applied a conservative or liberal label.

The Andrews story on the Monday, June 29 CBS Evening News, joined in progress:

[...]

"Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week's meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor's, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: "it was the position you've taken on global warming that brought opposition".

So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of "scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice". But also check out Anthony Watt's 'Watts Up With That' website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year's recovery from its September 2007 low, this year's ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time. The bears are doing fine.

[Source]

[... continue to Nevada Teaparties]

* Riverkeeper, Inc. vs. EPA, 475 F.3d 83 (2007) - reversed 6-3. Sotomayor, writing for a three-judge panel, ruled that the EPA may not engage in a cost-benefit analysis in implementing a rule that the "best technology available" must be used to limit the environmental impact of power plants on nearby aquatic life. The case involved power plants that draw water from lakes and rivers for cooling purposes, killing various fish and aquatic organisms in the process. Sotomayor ruled that the "best technology" regulation did not allow the EPA to weigh the cost of implementing the technology against the overall environmental benefit when issuing its rules. The Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor's ruling in a 6-3 decision, saying that Sotomayor's interpretation of the "best technology" rule was too narrow.

* Dabit vs. Merrill Lynch, 395 F.3d 25 (2005) - reversed 8-0 In a 2005 ruling. Sotomayor overturned a lower court decision and allowed investors to bring certain types of fraud lawsuits against investment firms in state court rather than in federal court. The lower court had agreed with the defendant Merrill Lynch's argument that the suits were invalid because the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 required that such suits be brought only in federal court. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned Sotomayor's ruling, saying that the federal interest in overseeing securities market cases prevails and that doing otherwise could give rise to "wasteful, duplicative litigation."

* Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp., 299 F.3d 374 (2000) - reversed 5-4. Sotomayor, writing for the court in 2000, supported the right of an individual to sue a private corporation working on behalf of the federal government for alleged violations of that individual's constitutional rights. Reversing a lower court decision, Sotomayor found that an existing law, known as "Bivens," which allows suits against individuals working for the federal government for constitutional rights violations, could be applied to the case of a former prisoner seeking to sue the private company operating the federal halfway house facility in which he resided. The Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor's ruling, saying that the Bivens law could not be expanded to cover private entities working on behalf of the federal government.

* Tasini vs. New York Times, et al, 972 F. Supp. 804 (1997) - reversed 7-2. As a district court judge in 1997, Sotomayor heard a case brought by a group of freelance journalists who asserted that various news organizations, including the New York Times, violated copyright laws by reproducing the freelancers' work on electronic databases and archives such as "Lexis/Nexis" without first obtaining their permission. Sotomayor ruled against the freelancers and said that publishers were within their rights as outlined by the 1976 Copyright Act. The appellate court reversed Sotomayor's decision, siding with the freelancers, and the Supreme Court upheld the appellate decision (therefore rejecting Sotomayor's original ruling).

* Knight vs. Commissioner, 467 F.3d 149 (2006) - upheld but unanimously rejected the reasoning she adopted In 2006, Sotomayor upheld a lower tax court ruling that certain types of fees paid by a trust are only partly tax deductible. The Supreme Court upheld Sotomayor's decision but unanimously rejected the reasoning she adopted, saying that her approach "flies in the face of the statutory language."

* Empire Healthchoice Assurance, Inc. vs. McVeigh, 396 F.3d 136 (2005) affirmed on a 5-4 vote. Sotomayor ruled against a health insurance company that sued the estate of a deceased federal employee who received $157,000 in insurance benefits as the result of an injury. The wife of the federal employee had won $3.2 million in a separate lawsuit from those whom she claimed caused her husband's injuries. The health insurance company sued for reimbursement of the benefits paid to the federal employee, saying that a provision in the federal insurance plan requires paid benefits to be reimbursed when the beneficiary is compensated for an injury by a third party.

Media coverage of the ongoing receipts dive has been minimal at best. A Google News search on "federal receipts" (typed in quotes) returns on seven items, two of them originating from yours truly.

Here is where things stand as of the last Friday of June in both 2009 and 2008, per Uncle Sam's related Daily Treasury Statements:

[...]

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:1-6

Jesus also warned us about false prophets,like Muhammad, who would come after Him:

"At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Matthew 24:10-14

The League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club have directed support toward the New Jersey Republicans who voted for the new regulations. Rep. LoBiondo received $1,020 from the League of Conservation Voters (PAC) in the 2008 election cycle and $2,010 from the Sierra Club (PAC) in the 2006 election cycle. ...

[...]

Hat Tip to There's My Two Cents for Video

"The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."

I pressed Axelrod on whether Obama will draw a line in the sand and veto any bill that funds health care reform with tax hikes for people making under $250,000 a year -- despite a pledge Barack Obama made during the 2008 presidential campaign not to raise taxes on the poor and middle-class.

"One of the problems we've had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don't get anything done. That's not the way the president approaches us. He is very cognizant of protecting people -- middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy. And he will continue to represent them in these talks," Axelrod said.

[Axelrod does very well in speaking out of both sides of his mouth. And I love how a campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 suddenly becomes someone else's "line in the sand" and not the president's solemn word.]

... June 29 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it wants a case involving federal election law and an attack "documentary" on Hillary Clinton reheard next September.

... The justices said new argument should address two key Supreme Court precedents upholding federal election law and whether the high court should "overrule either or both."

... At stake in the case is a provision of a 2002 federal campaign law that bans "election communications" funded by corporations or unions close to an election.

Lower courts blocked Citizens United from showing the film during the primaries because they held it looked like a campaign ad, a ruling that to my mind put the McCain-Feingold "campaign finance reform Act" in direct collision with the First Amendment and justified the fears of those who believed the Court should not have deemed the law's restrictions on campaign financing to be constitutional..

If Sotomayer is confirmed before the rehearing, will it affect the determination on whether the Court's earlier opinions on that law are entitled to stand or must be revised to conform to the constitution?