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The Real List of the Best Children's Books
Tweet Share on Facebook July 7, 2009 Comment (3)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Earlier today, my bloleague John Aloysius Farrell—picking up where the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof left off—posted here on Thomas Jefferson Street about the 10 greatest children's books of all time. My oldest child of four having just turned 20 years of age, I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable on the subject of children's literature. And, as Mr. Farrell invited others to weigh in on the discussion, I shall.
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Numbers Adding Up Against Obama's "Cap and Trade" Bill in the Senate
Tweet Share on Facebook July 7, 2009 Comment (75)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It was hard for the Democrats to get the 219 votes they needed to pass the "cap and trade" climate change bill in the U.S. House two weeks ago. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, may have rolled the dice but, veteran Capitol Hillers say, it was only the intervention of President Barack Obama and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that managed to close the deal.
They did it by pitching the vote as a referendum, at least internally, on Obama's presidency rather than on the underlying issue. No president likes to lose, least of all on a signature issue like the need to combat climate change, so the White House ratcheted up the stakes and, one presumes, took down names.
Of course the Democrats had help from eight Republicans, who are now on the receiving end of criticism of their own. It's gotten so thick, reports one senior Republican aide, the defecting GOPers are looking to members of the leadership to bail them out. Those requests have, thus far, fallen on deaf ears, the attitude being that those eight Republican "Aye" votes allowed eight potentially vulnerable Democrats to skate on what was, for them, a tough vote.
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Democrats Admit That Their Cap and Trade Bill Is a Job Killer
Tweet Share on Facebook July 6, 2009 Comment (128)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In her remarks bringing the debate over the climate bill to a close, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California urged her colleagues to vote in favor of the cap and trade bill, saying the measure was about four things: "jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs."
She was right—the House-passed version of cap and trade is all about jobs: jobs lost, jobs never created, jobs sent overseas, and, unbelievably, jobs people will be paid for doing long after they cease to exist.
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Boehner, Republicans Sick the Dogs on the Obama Stimulus Package
Tweet Share on Facebook July 2, 2009 Comment (10)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Republicans are going to the dogs.
With unemployment now at a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio released a new video today (embedded below) poking fun at the Obama administration's claim that the stimulus package the president and congressional Democrats rushed into law earlier this year is creating jobs.
In the video, a job-sniffing bloodhound named "Ellie Mae" is shown on the trail of the stimulus, searching the country for the millions of jobs the Obama administration said its trillion-dollar spending bill would create.
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VAT's Next? Obama's Expensive Agenda Means Tax Increases All Around
Tweet Share on Facebook July 1, 2009 Comment (19)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Democrats are not even pretending to be against tax increases anymore.
Writing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, former Clinton Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman explains that, to pay for what Obama wants to do to healthcare in America, "we'll have to raise taxes."
Never mind the rhetoric. Never mind the reluctance. The reality is that Obama's agenda for America is so expensive that tax increases are on the table for everyone who pays taxes. And what Altman suggests is in the offing is particularly pernicious.
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Poll Shows Liberal Democrats in Trouble, But Republicans Still Need a Makeover
Tweet Share on Facebook July 1, 2009 Comment (9)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Being back in power has not been "all good" for the Democrats. "A statistically significant increase" has occurred in the number of Americans who think the Democrats are "too liberal" according to the latest Gallup poll.
Gallup said the increase, from 39 percent to 46 percent, puts the number at its highest level since November 1994, when the Contract with America produced an historic GOP landslide that gave the Republicans control of Congress for the first time since the Eisenhower administration.
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Obama Calls Healthcare Critics Names Rather Than Debating Them
Tweet Share on Facebook June 30, 2009 Comment (9)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Give Dr. Larry Hunter, the former chief economist for the United States Chamber of Commerce and founder of the Social Security Institute, considerable points for creativity.
Hunter is one of hundreds of Obama opponents who have taken to the Internet to make the case for opposing the Obama agenda. His latest project is an online petition where citizens can request to "opt out" of any future government-run, politicized healthcare system.
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Obama Considers Middle Class Tax Hikes for Healthcare, "Cap and Trade"
Tweet Share on Facebook June 29, 2009 Comment (16)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As his opponents predicted during the 2008 election, President Barack Obama's plans for America will be paid for by higher taxes on the American middle class.
Candidate Obama promised those in the middle class that they wouldn't see an increase in the taxes they pay to the federal government. "I pledge to you that under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not income tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of tax," the Manchester, N.H., Union Leader reported him saying in September 2008. Well, as Mona Lisa Vito said in My Cousin Vinny , "that plan's moot."
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America Suffers No 'Crisis in Philanthropy'
Tweet Share on Facebook June 26, 2009 Comment (3)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The cap and trade national energy tax bill is not the only solution to a manufactured problem drawing attention in the nation's capital. The Washington Examiner ' s generally excellent David Freddoso explains Friday that efforts are under way to make policymakers believe America is suffering from a "crisis in philanthropy."
Freddoso writes that the National Council for Responsible Philanthropy and its directors "have been both subtly and overtly threatening new federal regulations that would force foundations to give half their money to a narrow set of causes, and with few strings attached."
America's foundations give only 33.2 percent of their grant money to nonprofits serving those "most in need," a factoid the group has come up with that is being used to pressure Congress to act. But, Freddoso says, that figure measures the contributions made in the interests of serving "most vulnerable populations," as the liberal NCRP defines them. This includes the poor, racial minorities and girls and AIDS patients but not, he points out, people with cancer, drug addicts, or boys.
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Gore Bails on Pelosi and House Dems on Cap and Trade Energy Tax
Tweet Share on Facebook June 25, 2009 Comment (14)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Politico is reporting that former Vice President Al Gore "cancelled plans to fly to Washington for a news conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday" and would, instead, work the phones from Tennessee to lobby undecided members that they should vote for the cap and trade climate bill.
Could it be the Democrats are learning? Could it be they figured out the image of the former vice president, expending energy and emitting carbon by flying in from his large carbon footprint abode in the Volunteer State to the nation's capitol to explain why America needs a cap and trade law to reduce carbon emissions would step on their message?
