Some questions for the administration and info on a few of the czars.
1. If these czars are the type of individuals Obama has chosen to associate with, are they representative of his views and policies?
2. Are the salaries of the czars Constitutional?
3. If Obama's views and policies align with these czars, should he be removed from office? Obama claims those around him shape his ideas and policies.
4. Why is Obama weakening the security measures that were successful in preventing horrendous terrorist attacks on American soil for eight years? Interrogation methods used were already investigated and approved by career prosecutors. Why did he decrease the budget for missile defense when the threat of nuclear-tipped enemy missiles is increasing?
5. Why does Obama employ radicals, revolutionaries and Marxists in special advisory positions? For example, Van Jones, a self-avowed Communist who founded a revolutionary movement, serves as czar over green jobs. Jeffrey Carl Jones, founder of The Weather Underground, a terrorist organization responsible for bombing government buildings, is another adviser to the president.
6. Ezekiel Emanuel, adviser on health care, believes in rationing care for the elderly and disabled. John Holdren, science adviser, advocates population control by means including forced abortion and sterilization. Obama's background included numerous associations with radicals and revolutionaries, but do we need those types in our government?
7. Why is Obama seeking to force universal health care on Americans when polls show that most Americans do not want a government-run health-care system? When other countries with similar systems have experienced a decline in the availability of health care? And when the program would increase our national debt by more than a trillion dollars?
8. Why is Obama seeking to form a civilian security force as strong as the military? Who is the enemy to be fought by that force? We already have the National Guard, local police, FBI, Secret Service, etc
9. What motivates him to redistribute the wealth of our country? He calls it "social justice." Does he want to punish those who worked hard and achieved success while giving their wealth to others? Taking from the successful decreases their ability to grow companies and provide employment opportunities.
10. Is it true that Illegal Aliens recieve Social Security Benefits? Why do they get a $2,000.00 monthly benefit while people that worked all their lives and are citizens get much lower sums?
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What is it with the czars? Just a sampling of some info on the czars.
It has taken President Barack Obama less than eight months to do what imperial Russia could not do in 400 years:
As of August 18, 2009:
- There are thirty-three czars in the Obama administration, based on media reports from reputable sources that have identified the official in question as a czar.
- In addition, President Obama has said that he will create the position of cyber czar, and there have been media reports that there could be a health insurance czar and a copyright czar. When and if those positions are filled, that would bring the total to 35.
- Since czar isn't an official job title, the number is somewhat in the eye of the beholder.
Few of these czars require any congressional approval, but Obama has given many of them power over cabinet-level officials who are subject to confirmation.
Taxpayers for Common Sense says all these appointments don't guarantee that the federal bureaucracy will work any better. If anything, the group notes, the appointments simply add another layer to that bureaucracy, something that rarely makes the government more responsive to taxpayers.
Robert Byrd used the words "unprecedented power grab" to describe Obama's "centralizing authority."
According to U.S. Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA), the czars are part of a separate government structure that "is outside of the Constitution and the authority of Congress."
Jonah Goldberg, author of
Liberal Fascism, writes,
Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency.
Obama is building a power structure that bypasses and surrounds our traditional branches of government. It is unelected and unaccountable except to Obama. When a real emergency happens, not the manufactured ones the administration is currently creating, I believe that some sort of Martial Law will be invoked and these Czars will be running things. And the useful idiots in Congress will nod their collective heads and go along with it.
A few of the particularly frightening czars:
1. Green Jobs Czar - Van Jones
The Obama administration has been aggressively accumulating as much government power as possible and taking over companies in the private sector. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a host of other cabinet secretaries are renowned leftists, but they are positively conservative compared to "Green Jobs" czar Van Jones.
Van Jones is a Yale Law School graduate and longtime civil rights lawyer,
is a self-proclaimed communist who worked as a black radical and has a long history as a left coast community organizer and anarchist. In 1992, Jones rioted after the Rodney King verdict and was arrested. Instead of changing his ways and becoming a law abiding citizen, Jones was "radicalized in jail." He says he loathes capitalism because it exploits nonwhite minorities worldwide.
He's a committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist who became a revolutionary after meeting "young radical people of color" in jail and views police officers as the arch enemies of black people.
Upon his release, Jones started a utopian organization that advocated communism and central planning.
President Obama is the first president in recent history to appoint a communist to a key government position with a criminal record. Jones had planned to move to Washington, DC, and had already landed a job and an apartment there. But in jail, he said, "I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'" Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. "I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary." In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist." In 1994, the young activists formed a socialist collective, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, which held study groups on the theories of Marx and Lenin and dreamed of a multiracial socialist utopia. They protested police brutality and got arrested for crashing through police barricades. In 1996, Jones decided to launch his own operation, which he named the Ella Baker Center after an unsung hero of the civil-rights movement.
A few years ago the civil rights attorney expanded his cause by joining the liberal global warming bandwagon, creating a "green" job project for low-income people in northern California. Jones eventually launched an organization (Green For All) dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty and now he's the president's official adviser on the subject.
Just a few months ago, Obama's green czar accused the nation of "environmental racism" for putting industrial incinerators and dumping grounds in poor neighborhoods. Powerful rich people would never have allowed them in their neighborhoods therefore the country would long have a clean and green economy, according to the nation's new guru on the subject.
2. Science Czar - John Holdren
Holdren has stated: "The Fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences, and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being."
He also wants to put sterilants into the water to control population.
Holdren is a globalist who has endorsed "surrender of sovereignty" to "a comprehensive Planetary Regime" that would control all the world's resources, direct global redistribution of wealth, oversee the "de-development" of the West, control a World Army and taxation regime, and enforce world population limits. He has castigated the United States as "the meanest of wealthy countries," written a justification of compulsory abortion for American women, advocated drastically lowering the U.S. standard of living, and left the door open to trying global warming "deniers" for crimes against humanity.
In his 1995 Nobel Prize acceptance speech Holdren stated "The post-Cold-War world needs a more powerful United Nations, probably with a standing volunteer force -- owing loyalty directly to the UN rather than to contingents from individual nations."
Holdren states the UN must mandate "A requirement for the early establishment of a substantial price on carbon emissions in all countries, whether by a carbon tax or a tradable permit approach."
Holdren gave a clear indication of his philosophical views in the 1977 book Ecoscience, which he co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich. [1] In its pages, the authors noted, "The neo-Malthusiasn view proposes...population limitation and redistribution of wealth." They concluded, "On these points, we find ourselves firmly in the neo-Malthusian camp" (p. 954).
Economist Thomas Malthus is one of the most literally anti-human theorists in human history. He viewed overpopulation as the fount of all woe, but one which could be staunched with enough blood. In "An Essay on the Principle of Population" Malthus wrote, "All the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons...if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use...and court the return of the plague."
Holdren and the Ehrlichs maintained "there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated." Hiding behind the passive voice, they note, "it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing constitutionif the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society." To underscore they mean business, they conclude, "If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" (pp. 837-83
. Moreover, if the United States government refuses to take proper measures, they authorize the United Nations to take compelling force.
Such a comprehensive Plenetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable...not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes...The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade...The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits...the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits. (p. 943.)
Part of the power wielded by this "Regime" would be in the form of a World Army. The trio wrote that the United States must destroy all its nuclear arsenal. But this would not render us defenseless against Communist aggression. "Security might be provided by an armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force...The first step necessarily involves partial surrender of sovereignty to an international organization" (p. 917).
The redistribution of blood and treasure were high priorities for Holdren, et. al. They advised the "de-development of overdeveloped countries...should be given top priority" (p. 926), and such nations -- e.g., the United States and the developed West -- should "divert their excess productivity into helping the poorer people of the world rather than exploiting them" (p. 931).
How much wealth redistribution would be sufficient? The authors favorably cited a proposal that "the rich nations devote 20 percent of their GNPs for ten or fifteen years to the task of population control and development of the poor countries." They comment, "We believe an effort of this magnitude is not only justified but essential." (p. 925). Reaffirming the goal in his 1995 Nobel speech, he stretched this to a program "sustained over several decades."
"A means for transferring some of the revenue produced by carbon taxes upon, or permits purchased by, countries and consumers with high incomes and high per capita emissions to countries and consumers with low incomes and low per capita emissions" (pp. 70-72).
In a 1995 article co-written with Paul Ehrlich, he lists among the factors preventing a "sustainable" world such "Underlying human frailties" as "Greed, selfishness, intolerance, and shortsightedness." These, he expounds, "collectively have been elevated by conservative political doctrine and practice (above all in the United States in 1980 92) to the status of a credo."
The function of such welfare is twofold: to enrich citizens of the Global South and to impoverish Americans for their own good. In a 2006 paper, Holdren noted that reducing "GDP per person" -- that is, cutting your personal wealth -- also reduces Greenhouse Gas emissions. True, it is "not a lever that most people would want to use to reduce emissions"; "People are not getting rich as fast as they think, however, if GDP growth is being achieved at the expense of the environmental underpinnings of well-being" (pp. 15-16).
Holdren addressed the economic costs of his massive restructuring of the economy some 32 years ago, acknowledging it "will entail considerable retraining and temporary unemployment in the workforce" (p. 853).
One is hardly encouraged to learn that last December, environmentalist Dr. James Hansen sent a four-page letter via Holdren to "Michelle and Barack." (Hansen wrote it as surgeons in Vienna placed a stent in his wife's chest following an unexpected heart attack.) His personal note to "John" states, "When gasoline hits $4-5/gallons again, most of that should be tax." Five months earlier, Holdren rated Hansen "one of the most distinguished climate scientists in the world."
"Civilians should realize that peace and freedom from tension are not viewed as an ideal situation by many members of the military-industrial-government complex. By and large, professional military officers, especially field grade and higher, hope for an end to international tensions about as fervently as farmers hope for drought" (p. 91
.
"The Christian concept of life in this world, as voiced by Saint Paul, that 'here we have no abiding city,' for example, conceivably could help explain why some people show rather little concern for the long-term future of the global environment or for the well-being of future generations" (p. 807).
3. Regulatory Czar - Cass R. Sunstein
In a Ny Times article entitled
Why We Must Ration Health Care Sunstein wrote:
Saving the life of a teenager is equivalent to saving the lives of fourteen 85-yearolds.
David Martosko, director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, told Fox News' Glenn Beck that Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law professor nominated by the president to become the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is a "raving animal rights nut" and devout disciple of Peter Singer.
Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University, is a leader in the animal rights movement. He has also argued that abortion should be permissible because unborn babies as old as 18 weeks cannot feel pain or satisfaction.
Singer once explained his belief that, "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living."
In 1993, Singer said infants lack "rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness."
"Infants lack these characteristics," he said. "Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings."
Some animals, according to Singer, are worth more than some humans. A smart border collie, he says, is worth more, inherently, than a retarded child. … Cass Sunstein has embraced the whole enchilada. … He believes that animals should have some of the same rights as humans, in fact, greater rights than some people - including the right to follow lawsuits."
Sunstein has also supported outlawing sport hunting, giving animals the legal right to file lawsuits and using government regulations to phase out meat consumption.
The center quotes Sunstein's 2007 speech at Harvard University, where he argued in favor of "eliminating current practices such as … meat eating" and proposed: "We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn't a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It's time now."
According to the group, Sunstein was editor of the 2004 book "Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions" that said "animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian-like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients' behalf."
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., who held up Sunstein's nomination worries that Sunstein's odd legal views may someday lead to a farmer having to defend himself in court against a lawsuit filed on behalf of his chickens or pigs.
4. Diversity Czar - Mark Lloyd
But Doctor of Jurisprudence Lloyd is far more than merely a communications attorney. He was a Senior Fellow at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), for whom he co-wrote a June 2007 report entitled
"The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio." The report rails against the fact that the American people overwhelmingly prefer to listen to conservative (and Christian) talk radio rather than the liberal alternative, and suggests ways the federal government can remedy this free-market created "problem."
- Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations.
- Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing.
- Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay an estimated $100-million and $250-million each and every year to support public broadcasting.
These last two get perilously close to the use of "localism" to silence conservative (and Christian) radio stations, about which we have been warning for quite some time. This financially onerous combination of fines and fees would essentially force many private broadcasters out of business.
Lloyd: "Local public broadcasters and regional and national communications operations should be required to encourage and broadcast diverse views and programs. These programs should include coverage of all local, state and federal government meetings, as well as daily news and public issues programming."
5. Energy and Environment Czar - Carol Browner
Browner is a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society (CSWS), which is a formal organ of the Socialist International. Socialist International, an umbrella group for many of the world's social democratic political parties such as Britain's Labor Party, says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of U.S. policies.
The group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, the organization's action arm on climate change, says the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Oddly enough, the group's web site was recently scrubbed to remove Browner's picture and biography, but her name is still listed next to the photo-biographies of her 14 colleagues on the commission. The Socialist International is no group of woolly-headed idealists. It is an influential assembly of officials from across the international community whose official Statement of Principles describes an agenda of gaining and exercising government power based on socialist concepts.
Browner's CSWS is similarly open about the economic costs it is willing to impose, across national borders to achieve its environmental utopia. On Sept. 5-6, 2008, the commission noted that the costs of its proposals would "rang[e] in the hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two decades," and it called for a "redesign of the international rules on intellectual property." That is international bureaucratese for compelling an inventor to surrender property rights in order to "share" technologies with less-developed countries.
At the Congress of the Socialist International held last June 30-July2, the CSWS officially resolved that "market solutions alone are insufficient and will not provide the financial support and resources necessary to achieve the required combination of deep emission reduction, adaptation to already changing climate conditions, energy security and equitable and environmentally sound economic development." Again, that's bureaucratese. It means that international taxes should be imposed to provide the "resources necessary" to impose what the CSWS repeatedly refers to as a 'regime" against "global warming." By appointing Browner to a White House post, Obama has at the least implicitly endorsed an utterly radical socialist agenda for his administration's environmental policy. The incoming chief executive thus strengthens critics who contend environmental policies aren't really about protecting endangered species or preserving virgin lands, but rather expanding government power and limiting individual freedom.