Fast and Furious Tax Returns

The White House has graciously offered to give Mitt Romney a pass on five years of tax returns; they will accept the the release of five previous years returns instead of ten and promise to drop the issue after that.  The Obama campaign's MO, ( Modus operandi, Method of Operation), is to "pry into the private records of his opponents" and pick through, distort and lie about what's in them.  Allen West's Face Book response is “Show us your sealed college records and Operation Fast and Furious White House memos, and we will all show you our tax returns.”

Forget everything else, let congress see the Fast and Furious documents.  No one died in relation to Romney's tax returns.

Obama leaks slammed by Navy Seals

Like I said, Obama's leaks designed to gain political capital have severely damaged national security, lost us valuable intelligence, damaged relations with allies, burned agents, and probably got our people killed.  The Navy Seals agree:

The left's response?  Media matters calls them gutless.The Nation calls it Swiftboating.  I call it patriotism and looking out for their brothers in arms who may still pay the ultimate price for Obama's loose lips. 

Obamacare alive and sick

There is now no check on the power of the federal government.  Obamacare can be repealed but the precedent is now set, the government can mandate anything as long as they make the penalty a tax.

 “The federal government, yes, can do most anything in this country.”

Turns out Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark (D-Calif.) was right when he made the statement above.  Roberts is either out of his mind or the Chicago gang was able to get to him somehow.  Hope you all like Broccoli.

Just Mexicans

"It warn't the grounding -- that didn't keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head."
"Good gracious! anybody hurt?"
"No's. Killed a nigger."
"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt."

 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

That passage written by Mark Twain highlighted the attitude of southern Whites towards Blacks in antebellum America.  One would think we've come a long way since then but the attitude of Democrats toward the Fast and Furious scandal seems to suggest otherwise.  Was anybody hurt by the Justice Department program where guns were sold to drug cartels and allowed to be taken into Mexico?  No, just some Mexicans.  Some 300 of them.  Oh, and a couple of cops.  No big deal, we can't understand why Republicans are so outraged by this, must be politics.  No, it must be racism, that's it, the Republicans are so outraged by the deaths of a couple hundred Mexicans facilitated by our top law enforcement agency because they are racists.  After all, it's just some Mexicans.

 These are not the documents you are looking for, move along...

Blame Bush

The problem of gun walking was a field-driven tactic that dated back to the previous administration, and it was this administration’s attorney general who ended it.

So said White House mouthpiece Jay Carney at a press hearing shortly after Obama invoked executive privilege in a last ditch effort to cover up lord knows what.  Carney should know better than to tell such a blatant lie so soon after Holder had to recant his testimony for pretty much saying the same thing.  Bush stopped Operation Wide Receiver as soon as some guns were lost.  There are many differences between Operation Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious.  The biggest difference is the fact that Wide Receiver tried very hard to keep track of the guns so they could actually get some intel from the operation and arrest the gunrunners.  The guns had tracking devices and the Mexican authorities were included in the operation.  Holder's guns did not and Mexico was kept entirely in the dark about Fast and Furious.  Wide Receiver  failed and guns made it into Mexico because while they were tracked by U.S. officials to the border and Mexican officials were notified as to where and when they would cross the Mexican police didn't manage to capture and arrest the gunrunners, (go figure).  The program was shut down October 6, 2007.

Given the failure of that operation, which was limited to about 650 guns run out of ATF's Phoenix office, one wonders why Holder's ATF would try it again.  One wonders why they would massively expand the operation to include several cities and thousands of guns.  One really has to wonder why no effort at all was made to keep track of the weapons and while it made sense to not include the Mexican police again why weren't American agents working  in Mexico involved?  You can only conclude that they wanted to flood Mexico with weapons that could be traced to the United States after they were used in violent drug crimes.  That way they could prove the meme that had previously proved to be a lie that 90% of guns used in crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

That should outrage everyone.  In order to push a political agenda, greater gun control, the United States was willing to arm violent criminals and sacrifice hundreds of Mexican citizens.  Doesn't that make us sponsors of terrorists?  But hey, they're just Mexicans.

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Slow and Lackadaisical

In just the fourth time in 30 years Congress will vote on whether to hold an executive branch member in contempt of Congress.  Attorney General Eric Holder has refused to turn over tens of thousands of pages of documents on operation Fast and Furious including materials created after the Justice Department wrote a letter to Congress saying no gunwalking had occurred.  Holder also claimed during congressional testimony that internal Justice Department emails that used the phrase “Fast and Furious” do not refer to operation Fast and Furious.  So you can understand why Republicans are dubious that Holder will get to the bottom of the White House national security leaks, or if he does they doubt he will share that knowledge with Congress.  It's been over a year and a half since Border Agent Brian Terry was gunned down by drug cartel members whose AK-47s were supplied by the Justice Department and the family still doesn't have any answers as to how and why this could happen.  The hundreds of Mexican citizens also killed with thousands of Justice Department supplied weapons have no answers.  No one has been fired, no one has been held accountable.

We really don't need to dig very deep to find out who leaked the information about the kill list and Stuxnet.  Obama finds it "very offensive" that anyone would suggest that the leaks come from his White House but the New York Times who wrote those stories actually say it was the White House that supplied the leaks.  From the kill list article:

In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.

The article quotes former White House chief-of-staff Bill Daley confirming the kill list and describing how names are added to it.  National security adviser Thomas Donilon and former national intelligence director Dennis Blair are quoted.  From the Stuxnet article describing a conversation in the White House Situation Room the Times quotes Obama:

'Should we shut this thing down?’ Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president's national security team who were in the room.

Obama is waging a war on whistle blowers while leaking national security secrets.  At the very same time he's telling federal courts that these programs are so secret that they can't even be confirmed much less disclosed or judicially reviewed.  Condemning water boarding while maintaining a kill list. Scuttlebutt says Leon Panetta actually told the White House to "Shut the fuck up" after disclosures about the raid that killed Osama.  The idea that Stonewall Holder will out the leakers much less prosecute them is as ludicrous as thinking Obama would put the nation's interests and peoples lives ahead of a few minutes of favorable press.

I am Aaron Walker

Michelle Malkin has the history of blogger Aaron Walker who was arrested for blogging in an ongoing fight with convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin.  Kimberlin got leftist judge Cornelius Vaughey to put out a warrant for Walker for blogging about the cyber-terrorist.  Kimberlin, aka the Speedway Bomber, used his time in prison to get a law degree that he uses as a weapon against conservative bloggers.  By any definition Kimberlin is a public figure but he was able to get Judge Vaughey to arrest Walker for blogging about Kimberlin and his fellow terrorists at Breitbart Unmasked.  One terror tactic used by the bunch is called SWATing where the group makes 911 phone calls that appear to come from the victim's home phone reporting a violent crime in progress.  Often times this will result in heavily armed SWAT teams responding to the victims home.  Patrick Frey who blogs at Petterico's Pontifications and RedState editor Erick Erickson have both been victims.  These sick attacks on free speech have been largely ignored by the MSM but may finally be coming to light.  I hadn't any idea about any of this until I saw a link to Michelle Malkin's post that darkwords posted at The Blogmocracy last night.

You can help the victims here.  Michelle has a list of other things you can do.



 

Obama crows, Intel goes.

Al-Qaeda second-in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi has been killed in Pakistan by a drone attack according to U.S. officials. The charismatic media savvy al-Libi has been highly effective in recruiting homegrown terrorists to the jihad cause.  While the official policy of the U.S. is to not publicly discuss details of drone attacks in Pakistan exceptions are always made when the news is good despite damage to Pakistani-American relations.  In fact no secret is too secret when it comes to crowing about Obama's achievements in the war on terror overseas contingency operations.

Probably the worst Obama administration leak in terms of damaging U.S. intelligence was when they wanted everyone to know they had discovered a new underwear bomb.  We had a would-be bomber on the inside that the administration burned.  Aside from blowing an extremely valuable operative's cover they disclosed methodology that would make putting in new operatives far more difficult.  It also sent a message to anyone who might think of helping the U.S., your life is not worth a minute of positive press for Obama.  That is a hard lesson that Dr. Shakil Afridi learned after being sentenced to 33 years in prison for helping Obama get Osama bin Laden.  Given the treasure trove of intel we got from that raid one wonders why we even admitted we had killed him but rather than reap the fruits of that intel we compromised most of it so Obama could run to the MSM and yell "I got him".  However narcissistic there was at least some logic in that but I can not conceive any reason why the administration  had to out SEAL Team Six.

Not all leaks are designed to further Obama's re-election.  Some are meant to damage our allies like when Obama leaked Israel's strike plan on Iran and confirmed that it was Israel who was helping kill Iranian nuclear scientists.  Some times it accomplishes both like when we recently learned that the U.S. did develop Stuxnet with help from Israel.  Sometimes info is made to discredit prior administrations like when Obama was going to release more Abu Ghraib photos.  Eventually he recanted under a deluge of criticism that opening up old wounds and putting our soldiers lives at risk wasn't worth a cheap shot at Bush.  Same thing when Holder published detailed memos describing the interrogation techniques used by the CIA.  (Hat tip Lizzy!).  Obama promised he wouldn't prosecute CIA agents involved just before going after the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez, someone who could keep secrets.

I'm glad that al-Libi and Osama are dead.  I'm glad that Obama is hypocritical enough to continue Bush's tactics in fighting Islamist terrorists such as renditions, indefinite detention, and keeping Gitmo open,  despite his criticisms of those tactics prior to becoming President.  In fact, he has gone further, incorporating things that make even me uncomfortable like assassinating American citizens.  Nevertheless I don't need to hear details every time these tactics are successful, lets keep the enemy guessing, not let them know they have been compromised, and not confirm what they might think  Especially when the only result is a photo op for The One.

 

Update:  The White House has denied any involvement in the leaks calling such allegations "grossly irresponsible."  We will see, the FBI has launched an investigation to look into the Stuxnet leaks.  This comes on the heals of a joint statement Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committees:

"These disclosures have seriously interfered with ongoing intelligence programs and have put at jeopardy our intelligence capability to act in the future. Each disclosure puts American lives at risk, makes it more difficult to recruit assets, strains the trust of our partners and threatens imminent and irreparable damage to our national security in the face of urgent and rapidly adapting threats worldwide."

Capitalists Pigs vs Socialist PIIGS

 

The problem with business today is that it's all about making money.  At least that seems to be the view of Obama and much of the left.  As we knew he would Obama has rehashed the attack on Bain Capitol that so enraged conservatives when Gingrich did it.

With Romney and Bain Capital the objective was to make money.

Really?

Those guys were all rich, they all had more money than they will ever spend, yet they didn't have the money to take care of the very people who made the money for them.

This is a stark contrast on two totally different views on what the function of business is.  Obama  recently said in his defense of this attack that maximizing profits is "not always going to be good for communities or businesses or workers,"  According to this view a company should exist to benefit the proletariat and if the bourgeoisie loose money in the process then that is to the common good, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.  Romney had the money and the workers needed their jobs and benefits.  Or in simpler terms, spread the wealth. 

I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message. 

We saw this attitude play out when Obama stepped in to the Chrysler bailout.  Bourgeoisie bond holders in the bailout, many of whom were average Americans with I.R.A.s or 401Ks, were forced to take 29 cents on the dollar, a 71% loss on their investments, but the proletariat United Auto Workers got equity in the company and Chrysler still has to pay the full amount owed to the UAW's Retiree Medical Benefit's Trust.  That's ironic since the biggest factor that put Chrysler into bankruptcy was the huge union pensions that they are encumbered with.  Those are encumbrances that could have been removed through bankruptcy.

Transition to this weekend when Greece will decide if they should abandoning the euro and reintroduce its own currency.  Greece is the most socialist of the PIIGS; Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, the group of countries that are dragging down the E.U. because of massive deficit spending.  The E.U. is racing towards a breakdown rivaling the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the last failed spread the wealth conglomerate.  Europe’s banks are facing a wave of losses if Greece abandons the euro.  Should Greece default, which will be decided by the voters in June, confidence in the rest of the PIIGS ability to repay their $1.19-trillion U.S. dollars of debt will plummet.  This is the model that Obama wants the United States to embrace at the same time that Europe is about to descend into chaos.  To add to that chaos France has just decided to become a member of the PIIGS with its election of a socialist as head of the Senate.  Jean-Pierre Bel has pledged to increase stimulus spending and raise taxes on the rich.  Sound familiar?

One doesn't have to travel to Europe to see the effects of socialism on economic conditions, there are plenty of examples here at home.  A look at states run by conservatives verses states run by liberals shows a stark contrasts between the economic health under each philosophy.  Generally the bluer a state is, the worse its financial and economic numbers are.  The number one blue state is California.  California is the worst state to do business in and therefore business activity is contracting resulting in lower revenues.  High taxes and intrusive government policies are also driving productive individuals away, California is the number one looser of people to other states, followed by New York, Illinois, and Michigan, all blue.  The one blue state that actually gained a congressional seat in the recent Census was Washington which has no income tax.  Standard and Poors credit ratings for the 50 states has California and Illinois as the only ones lower than AA and of the AAA rated states only 4 are blue, 1 purple, and 9 red.  You might think that the state with the best economic health is Texas, but North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, and Iowa all have their champions for the number one position.  All are red states.  Of the nine major cities with the most underfunded pensions 7 are blue and two are purple.  

Failure is supposed to be a risk of our capitalist system.  Bad companies need to fail, that’s how good companies are rewarded.  Bain would buy companies that were already failing and try and make them competitive again so one would expect a high rate of failure.  However of 77 companies that Bain was involved in only 17 filed for bankruptcy protection, only 5 of those were still controlled by Bain at the time of the filing.  Romney had been gone two years before GST Steel went under. (Although Jonathan Lavine, a top Obama bundler, was still a managing director.)  Bain used its own money in gambling on those companies, Obama on the other hand is using taxpayer money to bet on green energy companies, 80% of which went to Obama backers.  So how is Obama's record compared to Bain's?  Heritage Action for America has a rundown.

For those who only hear about these failing companies one by one, the following is a list of all the clean energy companies supported by President Obama’s stimulus that are now failing or have filed for bankruptcy. The liberal media hopes you’ve forgotten about all of them except Solyndra, but we haven’t.

• Evergreen Solar
• SpectraWatt
• Solyndra (received $535 million)
• Beacon Power (received $43 million)
• AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
• Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
• SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
• First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
•  Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
• Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
• Amonix (received 5.9 million)
• The National Renewable Energy Lab
• Fisker Automotive
• Abound Solar (received $400 million)
• Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
• Solar Trust of America
• A123 Systems (received $279 million)
• Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
• Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
• Schneider Electric (received $86 million)

That's not a complete list, there are ten updates in the article.  While these companies were going under their executives were  receiving huge cash bonuses.

What's Obama's record on firing people?  Remember how Obama's auto task force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships?  In an audit of the process special inspector general for TARP Neil M. Barofsky states:

“It is not at all clear that the greatly accelerated pace of the dealership closings during one of the most severe economic downturns in our nation’s history was either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery,”

Obama is the first president I can remember to ever attack capitalism in such a way, maybe the first in history.  It’s a tactic that plays well with his socialist base but I doubt many independents are comfortable with such a stance.  Even some staunch Democrats are uncomfortable with it. Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Steven Rattner, Obama's former "car czar," and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, have come out against the unfair attack.  (Booker got sent to the woodshed and had to make a humiliating mea culpa.)

Marxists/Socialists/Communists for Obama

Obama, gay marriage, and black voter turnout.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama can't loose the Black vote short of being exposed as a Klan member.  However one must ask how important were Black churches in mobilizing Black voters to get out and vote for Barry?  Many of Obama's most fervent leftest supporters are less than enthusiastic about Obama this go round.  The anti-war crowd are not happy about the war for oil in Libya.  The anti-torture crowd are not happy that Club Gitmo remains open and that renditions to countries that will torture, and we are talking about real torture, not what my son and I went through, continue.  The screw the rich crowd, occupy wall street crowd, and the anti-private equity firm crowd , are not happy that Obama hosted a $35,800-a-head fundraiser at the home of the president of the nation’s largest private equity firm and has taken $15.6 million from banks and other financial firms, more than twice what Romney has raised.

While those crowds may be less inclined to race to the ballot box to pull the lever for Obama Blacks have stayed solidly in Obama's corner.  However his decision to come out in support of gay marriage has alienated Blacks in a way that 16.7% Black unemployment never could.  Blacks will still vote overwhelmingly for Obama, he got 95% in 2008 compared to Kerry's 88% in 2004, but how many will turn out?  How important were Black preachers in getting out the Black vote in the last election?  Black voter turnout increased 4.9% in 2008.  Early Sunday voting was a part of that as preachers led their congregations to the polls after services.  Churches provided buses, helped with voter I.D., and were at the forefront in registering Black voters.  According to a study by  Philpot, Shaw, and McGowen efforts to get voters to the polls was a far greater factor than Obama's race in the increase in Black turnout.

According to Black Church News Obama will need a higher Black turnout this year in order to win five key states, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.  Most Black voters shrug off Obama's new stance on gay marriage thinking that he doesn't really believe what he's saying or taking the "we can agree to disagree" attitude on this issue.  Still he will loose some of that 95%.  Dr. Boyce Watkins asks: "Will churchgoing Black women choose their pastor or president?"  Some no doubt will choose Obama but not all.  The effect of Obama's owning up to his feeling regarding gay marriage on Black pastors is even greater however and their enthusiasm or lack thereof towards reelecting Obama will reverberate across the landscape.  

This is Obama's Waterloo.  He has jumped the shark.  I will predict today that barring a war with Iran Obama will loose big in November.

Update:  He won't be getting as many Jewish votes this year either:
  
The End of the Jewish Left

Update 2:  Larry Elder wonders: 

Will Gay Marriage Force Black Churches to Reconsider Democratic Party?

Update 3:  He won't get 54% of Catholic voters again either.

Catholic voters key to presidential win.

Obama's Dog Day Week

 

We had several ranch dogs in my life.  These were working dogs, used mainly as sheep dogs to help us herd and corral sheep.  They loved the work but even more they loved riding in the truck.  As soon as we would come out of the ranch house or the house in town the dogs would jump in the back of the truck, even though this would often mean having to endure 75 to 80 mile per hour wind speeds as we drove to the ranch turnoff.  The dogs actually seemed to like the wind, they would stand on the spare tire in the bed to look over the roof.  Granted it wasn't a twelve hour trip but I never thought I was being mean or cruel to the dogs by making them ride in the back just like I never felt my dad was being mean or cruel to me and the other hands by making us ride back there or by me making my sons do the same when I became boss.

It wasn't a very good week for Obama starting with the latest salvo in the "war on dogs" that Diane Sawyer fired during an interview on ABC Nightly News.  Among all the things discussed in the interview like jobs and the economy the MSM of course focused on what America is most concerned about: Seamus the dog.  If you haven't heard the story Romney used to put Seamus in a dog carrier strapped to the roof of the family station wagon and for some reason people think this was akin to Clark Griswald tying Aunt Edna's dog Dinky to the bumper of the car.  Like our dogs Seamus enjoyed being up there and the carrier had a wind barrier but for some reason this has become a campaign issue.  The reason of course is distraction; worry about the way Romney treated his dog instead of worrying about how you're going to fill up the family car.

The meme backfired however because the MSM is no longer the only game in town.  A reader of the Daily Caller tipped off Jim Treacher about Obama's past culinary delights that he highlighted in Dreams from My Father. 

“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)."

 Treacher then got on Twitter and the story exploded.  The left no longer controls the information highway and the ability to shape and control the American public through the fifth column is now a thing of the past.  Obama can joke all he wants about eating dog, as he did last night at the White House Correspondents' dinner, but the dog war is over.

Then on the heels of the anniversary of  Osama sleeping with the fishes Obama decides to launch an ad congratulating himself on the great courageous decision to kill Bin Laden.  Critics immediately pointed out the oddity of having Bill Clinton  narrate the ad. seeing that he himself decided not to get Osama when he was handed him on a silver platter.  Sudanese defense minister Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa offered to give bin Laden to the United States.  Because the left won't deal with terrorist as enemy combatants but rather as criminals Clinton felt that we didn't have a strong criminal case against Osama that would hold up in court.  It was also odd using Bill Clinton because Hillary Clinton had been criticized by Obama of using Bin Laden to "score political points" in 2008.  However no one would have said much of Obama cheer leading a decision that any president would have made, (Romney said even Jimmy Carter would have), had he not inferred that Romney wouldn't have had the guts to do the same.  Obama's campaigned quoted Romney saying "It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.".  Forget that "moving heaven and earth" to get Osama and green lighting a single mission to get Osama are incredibly different.  Forget that killing Osama didn't make the US a whole lot safer from terrorists.  Focus instead on what happened not long after the ad came out.  


A memo from then CIA head Leon Panetta has come out and made it's way all over the internet even as it's been mainly ignored by the MSM. 

Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault.

The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 am.

The gutsy call by Obama was tempered by a classic CYA move to enable Obama to lay the blame on Admiral McRaven had anything gone wrong.  The President made the right decision to get Osama.  He made the right decision to put the SEALs in harm’s way in order to get a wealth of intel rather than just killing Osama with a drone missile.  However his cheer leading after the attack no doubt made that intel worth less and his cheer leading now ignores the fact that had we not used enhanced interrogations that Obama denounced we would not have found him.  That fact has been brought home by a new book by the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez.

So Obama's efforts last week were mainly diluted because we no longer get our news filtered through the liberal press.  No longer do the Dan Rathers and the thirty second sound bites from the nightly news networks get to shape the narrative.  We live in a new era where the truth is easily available to anyone paying attention.

Eating Poor Without Eating Poorly

Ed Schultz at MSNBC has decided to label Sean Hannity The Most Out Of Touch Man In America.  The reason is Sean can't understand why there are Americans going to bed hungry in a land with so much opportunity and abundance.  A caller said it was impossible to have a healthy diet on food stamps.  Sean thinks you can eat a healthy diet with little money and with food stamps you can eat quite well.  That has the left in a frenzy.  Problem is he's right.

First off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, food stamps, was meant to supplement a diet not constitute the entire food budget.  Also according to a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association eating healthier is actually cheaper.  Under the food stamp president 44.7 million people, up 33% since he took office, were on food stamps last year.  If you are poor you are on food stamps or else you're mentally challenged or homeless.  If you have kids they qualify for free school lunches five days a week in the summer and during school they get breakfast too.  (My wife is a teacher and she says at her school the kids have to get a breakfast tray even if they ate breakfast at home, taxpayer money is going strait to the trash.)  If your kids go to bed hungry you are a negligent parent.

The Blogmacracy has a thread on the new assault on family farms and ranches by Obama's Department of Labor. Once the family farm is gone they can hammer agriculture like they do every other big business; drug companies, oil, coal, etc. Don’t forget meat production, especially cattle farts, causes global warming climate change. Food prices are already rising, it will only get worse. This will be extremely destabilizing globally, the Arab spring grew out of food riots.  As food prices rise so will the number of people dependent on food stamps and so will the amount given to families.  All Americans will need to learn how to eat cheap. 

Even if you are feeding a family of four entirely on food stamps it can easily be done.  Here some chefs have a menu that is heavy on meat, usually the priciest item on the menu, that will accomplish that goal.  Replace the meat with vegetable protein and you can save even more.  Hannity mentioned a rice and bean diet that a buddy of his ate that provided a good chunk of the nutrients he needed.  We used to live off beans on the ranch, we would cook a big pot and refrigerate or freeze what we didn't eat and have food for a week.  Americans have been living on squash, corn and beans for 10.000 years.  The beans are planted between the corn stalks and provide nitrogen, squash is planted between the rows to control weeds.  Vegetables are the easiest things in the world to grow and can provide almost every nutrient needed.  You don't need a whole lot of ground to plant either, one tomato plant in a pot can provide more than you can eat.  Even a small backyard garden can provide an abundance of food.  Get on the internet, if you don't have a computer most libraries do, and you can find tons of info on how to eat cheap.  And I haven't even mentioned Ramen Noodles.    

Angry Lib

There was an Angry Liberal, we'll call him Al, on Hannity today praising the auto bailouts, screaming about the "truth" that this was a great investment for America that saved millions, (yes he said millions), of jobs.  Sean was trying to explain how bankruptcies work but the guy would have none of it, he had his facts and wasn't about to hear anything else. 

Of course his facts were false beginning with the "fact" that the bailout money had been paid back.  No doubt Al was taken in by former GM chief executive Edward Whitacre's statement that "G.M. is able to repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse,”   G.M had taken $6.7 billion in loans to the U.S. and supposedly paid back $4.7 billion.  That's still short $2 billion by my math but let's overlook that detail for a moment.  The $4.7 billion that G.M. paid back was taken from a line of credit G.M. had with the Troubled Asset Relief Program, (T.A.R.P.), so in effect they borrowed money from taxpayers to pay the taxpayers.

I haven't forgotten what happened to Chrysler bond holders in the bailout either, many of whom were average Americans with I.R.A.s or 401Ks.  Bondholders were forced to take 29 cents on the dollar, a 71% loss on their bonds but the United Auto Workers got equity in the company and Chrysler still has to pay the full amount owed to the UAW's Retiree Medical Benefit's Trust.  That's ironic since what put these companies into bankruptcy in the first place was the huge union pensions that they are encumbered with.

What Sean didn't get a chance to tell Al was that bankruptcy courts exist to enable a company to restructure its debts and other obligations fairly.  When Obama stepped in and screwed bondholders while the UAW made out like the bandits they are he was doing what his administration does best, picking winners and loosers then saying that capitalism just doesn't work. 

BTW Al the CBO estimates that the total loss from the bailout will end up being $20 billion.  Only a liberal could consider that a good investment.  Had we done nothing other businesses would have come in and picked up these companies cheap, after they had ridden themselves of the unsustainable burdens imposed by union contracts agreed to by CEOs who knew they wouldn't be around when the bill came due.  FIAT wound up owning Chrysler anyway.