Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
If School Kids Sang the Truth About Obama
Posted by James Hudnall in Obama, Politics on October 8th, 2009
We recently found out that a bunch of kids in New Jersey and yesterday on CNN were told to sing songs praising President Barack Hussein Obama. This particular song caused a lot of outcry, probably because it swiped bits from “Jesus Loves Me” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” while trying to mold them into little Obamaites.
Well, in the spirit of fairness we should provide a counter-song the kids can sing to cleanse their minds of indoctrination and give them a more accurate assessment of our 44th president:
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
He has an ego so darn large we cannot fit it on a barge
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
He said he has accomplishments but we have not seen any yet
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
He said he was a capitalist but is loved by many communists
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
He said he saved the economy, a claim as bogus as Astrology
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
Chicago Olympics he tried to sell, but Copenhagen didn’t like the smell
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
He said he’d be transparent but his records are hidden behind lots of cement
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
He promised he was one of us, but then he threw us under a bus
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
He has so many nutty czars they’re as useful as clunker cars
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
He promised Hope and Change, but all we got was a falling stock exchange
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
Fidel, Hugo and Muammar praised him much, perhaps like them he’s a bit touched
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
His campaign motto was “Yes We Can!” but now we know that was just spam
Mmm mmm mmm Barack Hussein Obama
He said he was going to save our hide, instead he took us for a ride
By the way, the chant reminds me of a “Star Trek” episode where a bunch of kids are being used by some space divorce lawyer in a feathery muumuu.
Montana: Stimulus Funds Go to Study Volcanoes in the Andes, Periodontal Disease, Shakespeare
Posted by Michael Noyes in News, Politics on October 8th, 2009
Federal stimulus spending may evoke images of hard hats and road construction, but around $14 million has been allocated for projects at Montana State University that range from researching volcanic action in the Andes mountains and treatment of periodontal disease to funding to assist with productions of Shakespeare.
A total of $14.38 million in federal stimulus funds has been allocated for about 35 different projects to date at Montana State University, according to university officials. The grants are funded by the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed by Congress in February to spur economic growth and create jobs.
Critics of the funding say it misses the mark of the goals set by Congress and amounts to wasteful spending. Supporters say the research does have an economic impact and will produce numerous long-term positive benefits.
The spending was criticized by National Taxpayers Union Vice President for Politics and Communication Pete Sepp. He said many taxpayers think of stimulus spending as long-term job creation in the private sector and not “expeditions to the Andes or, more up close, expeditions into people’s gums.”
Around $400,000 has been allocated for a study of the “relationship between pluton growth & volcanism at two active intrusions in the central Andes,” with another $391,875 for research into “combinatorial therapy for treatment of periodontal disease.”
Todd Feeley, associate professor of geology at MSU, said the grant to study volcanic activity will provide employment for one graduate student for two years to assist him in looking at lava flows from previous volcanic activity in the Andes and related work. He said that experience should help the student gain experience and hopefully assist them in finding permanent employment after their studies.
Feeley said increased research funding also makes science a more appealing field. “More young people are going to want to go into science…if they see there’s more opportunity,” he said.
Stimulus funding listed by the university also includes $25,000 to pay partial salaries for two full-time employees for Shakespeare in the Park.
“Shakespeare in the Park brings a cultural opportunity to rural communities throughout Montana that otherwise would not have those opportunities,” said MSU News Service Director Tracy Ellig.
Sepp said families who are struggling with the cost to send their children to college may not see the benefit of spending stimulus funds on such projects, particularly when the cost may fall to future generations.
“They’re the ones who are paying for those projects, in the end,” Sepp said of college students.
Ellig said most of the projects could be characterized as basic research and could have “enormous implications for protecting America’s health.”
“The value of basic research can be difficult to quantify,” Ellig said. “However, it can have enormous, unanticipated payoffs in the future.”
As examples, Ellig pointed to a $447,000 study of viruses (Structural Studies of Crenaracheal Viruses) that he said could have application in combating airborne bio-terrorism at some future point. Ellig also said research is an important part of the work done at MSU.
In fiscal year 2009, MSU budgeted $98.4 million for research with most of the funding from federal grants, according to Ellig. That is up more than $2 million from research funding in fiscal year 2008. Ellig said it is too early to tell whether the stimulus funds will produce an overall boost to research funding in fiscal year 2010.
Sepp said the examples at MSU should be evidence enough to derail any thoughts of a second stimulus.
“(Those) who believe that ‘Stimulus Two’ is going to be any better than ‘Stimulus One’ need only take a look at examples like these,” Sepp said.
Polanski, NAMBLA and Checking Our Moral Compass
Whoopi Goldberg said on The View it wasn’t “rape-rape.” No, it was non-consensual anal intercourse of a child. Are we so perverted we will excuse such conduct because the perpetrator is an “artist?”
With all the unpleasantness that’s been in the news lately (ACORN, Polanski, Jaycee Lee Dugard, etc.), I was reminded of a book titled “The Last Undercover” by my friend, fellow Marine, and Big Hollywood contributor, Bob Hamer. Bob spent twenty-six years in the FBI, all as a special agent working the streets, many of those years in an undercover capacity. He was the undercover agent in twenty administratively approved operations. Some of those assignments lasted a day or two others more than three years. He played such diverse roles as a drug dealer, contract killer, international arms merchant, degenerate gambler, and white collar criminal. By his own admission his most difficult role was playing a pedophile for three years as he infiltrated the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]
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First, let me say that “The Last Undercover” is absolutely riveting. Seeing inside an organization like NAMBLA, one that preys on children, through Bob’s eyes is enough to keep you up at night. However, as things have transpired over the last few weeks, I couldn’t help but wonder about the people on the periphery of such groups and individuals. For instance, I remembered the travel agent in Bob’s book that was more than happy to set up the NAMBLA members’ trip to have sex with children. Sure, he didn’t have sex with kids but, if he could make a few bucks off of others doing it, he was pretty okay with the idea. How about the lovely folks at ACORN? Setting up a brothel for underage prostitutes? Okay, let’s figure out the tax ramifications for such a venture. Then, of course, we have the folks that are defending the talented Mr. Polanski.
So, what is it with these people? Why the indifference to the idea of adults having sex with children? In what universe is this behavior acceptable?
I decided to talk to my buddy, Bob, to get his take on it.
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J.R. Head: Bob, you spent a lot of time and energy taking down the folks at NAMBLA. As a father, hell, as a human being, I’d like to thank you for that. Right now, though, I’m trying to look at the bigger picture. What are your thoughts about these folks on the periphery of such activity, the facilitators and enablers of sex with children?
Bob Hamer: Wow! No softball questions from you right out of the chute.
JRH: Not today.
BH: Well, I have never met a capitalist pacifist who owned gun store. I believe fundamentally, the pacifist does not want to encourage what he perceives as a potential for violence, even if it might be profitable to own a gun store. I’m a gun owner so don’t jump on me for that illustration but those I met while working undercover who helped facilitate sex with children saw nothing wrong with what they believed to be “consensual” sex with a child. In fact, most believed an “enlightened” society would see the benefits of encouraging sex between consenting individuals of any age. No one satisfactorily identified to me what those benefits were but “boy-lovers” as NAMBLA members refer to themselves often cite the ancient Greeks as an enlightened society. The travel agent had no objection to putting together overseas trips even though he claimed not to be sexually attracted to boys.
JRH: So, it was about the money?
BH: Certainly there was a profit motive for him but he saw nothing wrong with men having sex with boys and told me so. Had he found the actions abhorrent I would hope he would never facilitate such conduct.
A Chicago psychologist we arrested who had a PhD told me of seeing a five-year-old operating out of a boy-bar in Thailand. The psychologist said he did not have sex with that particular boy because the child “didn’t do anything for me, but I can’t be…a hypocrite and say, you know, ‘don’t do that…’” The psychologist told me his age of preference was “ten to twelve” and saw nothing wrong with his conduct. In fact, he bragged about his conquests.
JRH: So, in his mind, having sex with kids is okay but God forbid he gets called a hypocrite. Those are some messed up priorities, man. Give me some info on NAMBLA. What’s their story?
BH: NAMBLA was formed in 1978. Ostensibly its purpose was to abolish age-of-consent laws. As my three-year infiltration demonstrated, the organization made no effort whatsoever to change the law. Its sole purpose was to allow like-minded men, sexually attracted to boys, to legally congregate under the protection of the 1st Amendment. Even their definition of “consensual” differed from mine and I hope all of our readers. They essentially defined “consensual” as “not bringing physical harm.” I sat through a discussion where men believed it permissible to have oral sex with an eighteen-month-old boy as long as the boy wasn’t physically harmed.
JRH: You’re kidding me. How the hell do they justify that?
BH: They justified the action because a child, while exploring his own body, might like the gentle touch of fondling himself. Since the men believed they were in essence bringing pleasure to the child, their actions were permissible, even proper. When that is your worldview, when you support men who believe those actions to be proper, it is easy to justify a lot of actions the rest of society deems illegal, even evil.
Most NAMBLA members with whom I interacted believe the boy-lover philosophy will be mainstreamed within their lifetimes. I would have never thought that even remotely possible until recently.
JRH: That’s the vibe I’ve been getting lately, too. While reading “The Last Undercover,” I was filled with feelings of revulsion and anger about what these predators do. I was especially disturbed to hear how they “profile” their potential prey and engage in the “grooming” of the target and the target’s family. On the other hand, an understanding that the vast majority of people in the country would feel the same way about it comforted me. However, the Polanski situation has kind of made me reevaluate my worldview. Is the moral outrage over having sex with children eroding before our very eyes?
BH: After investigating organized crime, drugs, terrorism, and child exploitation for two and a half decades, little shocks me but I am appalled at the Roman Polanski apologists. Since when does being a “brilliant, fantastic genius” excuse anyone from heinous criminal conduct? He admitted guilt. He drugged, raped, and sodomized a thirteen-year-old girl. Are we to excuse him only because his talent brought him riches and therefore he was wealthy enough to flee punishment? Does Hollywood creativity allow one an alternative moral universe?
Whoopi Goldberg said on The View it wasn’t “rape-rape.” No, it was non-consensual anal intercourse of a child. Are we so perverted we will excuse such conduct because the perpetrator is an “artist?” How can any parent or a person with a conscience condone such behavior? Imagine the outrage of these same apologists had this been a TV evangelist or a priest.
I admire the victim who has forgiven Polanski but criminal charges are brought by the state. A criminal indictment does not read “victim vs. defendant.” It is the state or the federal government versus the accused. Society is harmed by criminal conduct. Apparently Polanski’s harm was greater than I first thought and not just to the child victim. It has infected a certain segment of society which condones the behavior and believes he should go unpunished. Read the charges! Read his admissions! He deserves to be punished.
Polanski’s status as a Holocaust survivor has been cited as a reason excusing his criminal actions. As horrible as that experience must have been I can’t help but remember another survivor, Tibor Rubin. He wanted to pay back America for liberating him from the Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945. Rubin joined the Army, fought in Korea, and was awarded the Medal of Honor.
JRH: I’ve met Mr. Rubin. He struck me as an extremely humble and unassuming man. He has an incredible story and I encourage my readers to look him up on the web. That being said, Polanski is just one part of this. The folks at ACORN who turned a blind eye to what they believed to be a brothel for child prostitutes also bothered me. Now, I’m hearing about this Jennings fellow. Do you have any insight into that?
BH: Kevin Jennings is President Obama’s Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education. His history and beliefs are well documented in the numerous books he has authored and edited. There is some dispute as to the legality of his conduct while working as a teacher but by Jennings’ own admission the only counseling he gave a male high school student, who admitted having sex with a man he met in a public restroom, was to use a condom. Jennings also has high praise for Harry Hay. If NAMBLA had a Hall of Fame, Hay would be a member. Hay fought for NAMBLA’s inclusion in the International Lesbian and Gay Association and once carried a sign proclaiming “NAMBLA Walks With Me.” Although Hay died before I was invited to attend any of NAMBLA’s secret, underground meetings, Hay was a featured speaker at several NAMBLA conferences and at forums on man/boy love. When members of the Administration admit to admiring a NAMBLA icon it gives me cause for concern and is at the very least a reason for further inquiry.
JRH: I agree. Do you feel like this is part of an inevitable coarsening of society in regards to the sexualization of children?
BH: What struck me about NAMBLA was how many men I encountered were high functioning members of our society…doctors, lawyers, ministers, teachers. Yet these men looked upon boys as sexual objects and had no desire to change their behavior. In the case of Polanski, “artists” are apologists for child rape. As to ACORN, let me say I have the highest regard for the work of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. The ACORN tapes reinforce the idea that a segment of this society is unable to discern evil. How can you label oral sex on infants or rape of a thirteen-year-old girl or promoting childhood prostitution as anything but evil? We as a society must remain vigilant and maintain our moral compass. I fear too many have lost theirs or never had one.
JRH: I fear you may be right. Thank you, Bob, for your service, your courage and for taking some time to talk with me, today.
Burt’s Eye View: Catching Up With the News
Posted by Burt Prelutsky in Obama, Politics, Van Jones on October 8th, 2009
I wasn’t surprised that Rep. Joe Wilson felt compelled to apologize to President Obama for calling him a liar. I also wasn’t surprised to hear that within 24 hours, thousands of liberals had sent in over $200,000 in contributions to Wilson’s opponent in next year’s election even though they knew nothing about him except that he was running against Wilson. I was heartened to hear that once the word got out, Wilson received a million bucks. But, frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the other 434 members of the House had censured, expelled or ridden Rep. Wilson out of Washington, D.C., on a rail. I mean, where the heck does this guy get off speaking the truth in the hallowed halls of Congress?
Speaking of Congress, although the research isn’t yet complete, the early indicators are that, rumors to the contrary, you can not get swine flu from exposure to Henry Waxman.
Scientists at London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine confirmed that 50 years of research found that, aside from price, there was no nutritional difference between conventionally-grown foodstuffs and the ugly, under-sized items you find in the organic section at the supermarket.
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy made his name explaining how you could tell if you were a redneck. I trust you understand that fame and fortune such as he achieved aren’t my motivation. But merely as a public service, I thought I’d point out how to recognize if you’re a racist. For instance, if you think that Jesse Jackson is an extortionist; that Al Sharpton is a con man; that Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright and Van Jones are three of a kind; and that the Black Congressional Caucus, ACORN, the SEIU, the Black Panthers, Eric Holder and Barack Hussein Obama, present a clear and present danger to our Republic, you are what passes for a racist in 2009.
Frankly, I keep waiting for Obama to doff the mufti and start appearing in some nicely tailored uniform for, clearly, the cult of personality has been introduced successfully for the first time ever in our nation’s history. If you disagree, what would you call that red, white and blue Obama symbol that has pretty much supplanted the presidential seal in the past year? And outside of such places as the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Mussolini’s Italy, Nazi Germany and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, have you ever seen so many posters and pictures of a national leader?
Perhaps because I don’t watch very much TV, I’ve only recently become aware of a TV commercial which could easily have been written and produced by the White House, possibly under the auspices of the NEA. In the commercial, a black deliveryman for Miller High Life shows up in a private box at the race track and confiscates all the beer from the rich white people and then hands the bottles over to the regular folks at the track, all the time muttering that the people who actually paid for the stuff don’t deserve it because they’re “hoity-toity.”
I realize it’s only a commercial, but if we have redistribution of wealth and health care, can redistribution of brewskis be far behind on that great-come-and-get-it-day?
Like everyone else, I noticed that in his address to Congress, Obama, who had been insisting all along that there were about 45 million people in America without health insurance, was suddenly, without explanation, referring to 30 million. It seems to me that if he can miraculously make 15 million people just disappear, all he has to do is give two more speeches to completely eliminate the problem.
Finally, I recently saw ObamaCare summed up rather succinctly by a picture of an elderly American set adrift on an ice floe. Of course, knowing David Axelrod, Rahm and Ezekiel Emmanuel, John Holdren, Cass Sunstein and the AARP, as I have come to know them, I’m sure they’ll find a swell way to sell it to us. My guess is that they’ll simply call their final solution to the problem of all those pesky old folks wanting medical attention Obama’s Magical Ocean Cruises.
Big, Green, Global Government
Posted by Christopher C. Horner in Politics on October 8th, 2009
One learns a new language upon first wading into the world of ,what’s favorably called by the Al Gores and Jacques Chiracs of the world, “global governance”. That term, used in all seriousness and intended as a compliment, means the web of international agreements (typically in the name of the environment), committing the prosperous world to agree to do things it would never enact via its own democratic processes. New words such as “subsidiarity” and “additionality” are forged and tossed around like Mardi Gras beads at earnest negotiating sessions and in deathless texts. It’s Esperanto for the bossy jet-setters racked with guilt over your lifestyle.
Another of my favorites is “capacity building”, which means wealth transfers to prepare a poor society to receive a larger wealth transfer in the future. You see, certain among those societies our green superiors are trying to hector into behaving in a certain way – which is all of them – are not yet able to deal with the financial windfall due them from the Kyoto Protocols of the world. These international agreements frankly are more about redistribution than anything else. For example, Kyoto is in no way about actually reducing “greenhouse gas emissions”, but instead it creates a Ponzi-like scheme of paying other countries to sell you pieces of paper saying that you reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
And a good thing, too, because those few countries who are covered by Kyoto have all – like the rest of the world – increased their actual emissions since agreeing to this “historic emissions reduction pact.” Still, as we approach the December deadline for agreeing to a successor, Kyoto will be nonetheless be hailed for its accomplishment. Maybe by this they mean the recent cooling.
So it was with great interest that I perused a document sent my way, drafted by a very important-sounding entity called The Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests. Sadly, upon scrutiny, the group is much like the self-styled National Commission on Energy Policy, a band of activists attaching an august-sounding moniker to an advocacy campaign. Something has to be done about this proliferation. I hereby declare myself chairman of the International Commission on Self-Appointed Commissions and vow to put an end to the scourge.
Turns out, “The Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests, co-chaired by John Podesta and Senator Lincoln Chaffee [sic], is a bipartisan group of leaders from business, government, advocacy, conservation, global development, science and national security developing recommendations on the best means to address tropical forest conservation as a part of broader U.S. climate change policies. …The Commission is supported in part by grants from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to Climate Advisers, the Glover Park Group, and Meridian Institute.”
As I noted in “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism”, then-Sen. Chafee enlivened a Senate hearing by insisting that carbon dioxide is a problem because look at all of those people asphyxiating themselves in their garages each year. The witness to whom he directed this misunderstanding of Chem 101, Prof. Richard Lindzen of MIT, patiently explained that this just reveals that the issue is more about education than anything else (prompting Sen. Harry Reid to condemn Lindzen for somehow “belittling” Sen. Chafee). So, here’s to hoping the education has progressed. Possibly a good start is to spell their co-chairman’s name right.
The Commission did get Mr. Podesta’s name right, and again that’s probably a good thing. We have proven that our peripatetic activist of all that’s center-left, if sometimes more latter than former, Mr. Podesta can never be too readily separated from George Soros and their project of mutual interest that Mr. Podesta heads, the Center for American Progress (tell Mr. V. Jones hi for me when you pass him in the hall!). Podesta gave a great speech earlier this year in Essen Germany, titled “The Great Transformation: Climate Change as Cultural Change”. I write about it in my next book.
Glover Park is what we euphemistically call in Washington a public affairs firm, meaning lobbyists and PR. Specifically for whom Glover Park lobbies and provides public relations is a mixed bag, though one entity stands out: Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. You may recall Mr. Gore boasting on “60 Minutes” of having hauled in $300 million to re-brand “global warming” as the “climate crisis”. Where the man who insists that one’s contributors dictate one’s opinions and actions bagged such loot, well, he’s been less than forthcoming about.
Anyway, what made this group interesting to me is its new report boasting that the Waxman-Markey legislation cramming down “cap-and-trade” and other global warming schemes on us, “if enacted into law, would reduce U.S. emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 (including U.S. contributions to international reductions).”
Waxman-Markey makes no such boasts, but only vows a 17% reduction by then, so I looked further. It turns out that the meaning of that parenthetical is buried in the 1,300 pages, a scheme to “channel an estimated $11-$18 billion in new funding for tropical forests annually by 2050 – a more than one hundred-fold increase in U.S. funding levels.”
Of course, that’s a lot of money to send to governments of poor countries who, let’s face the sad truth, are typically poor because of corrupt governance scaring away real, private investment. They likely wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of money right away. So the solution is to add a few billion more on top to help them deal with the windfall. Seriously. “Reaching these high levels of funding requires substantial private investment in offsets, which is unlikely to occur at this scale without greater additional short-term financing for capacity building and market-readiness activities. These funding flows would greatly exceed any existing efforts by developed nations…”
There’s a lot in the report, much of it we should be thankful to Their Commissionness for bringing to our attention. Like how they plan to spend the billions taken from Americans forced to purchase “energy use allowances”:
“The regulation and distribution of this funding would be under the authority of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator, in consultation with other government agencies including the Secretary of State and the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Importantly, the EPA Administrator would be required to manage these funds in such a manner as to purchase at least 720 million tons of verified emissions reductions from tropical forest conservation each year from 2020-2025, and a total of at least 6.0 billion tons from 2012-2025. The objective of this specific requirement is to ensure that the set-aside mechanism finances international emission reductions equivalent to reducing U.S. emissions an additional 10 percent below 2005 levels in 2020. These reductions would be above and beyond the reductions achieved through the cap-and-trade program.”
So, now that the Senate is pondering taking up a companion bill, let’s consider things. It does sound as if – assuming these “reductions” we are claiming result from sending (more) enormous bags of money overseas are actual reductions, and a cut somewhere in the teens, as Waxman-Markey openly brags of, is meaningful – we should start with just sending the bags of money overseas, and skip the part about sending jobs there, too, which is what cap-and-trade is proven to do (thanks, Europe!).
Don’t bury the plan in 1,300 pages. Try to pass it. Freestanding. This is as unprecedented as its cheerleaders make it out to be. Let’s talk about it. As our green friends are fond of saying, “who can be against the public ‘right to know’?”
Politicizing the Arts Community: What Did the White House Do Wrong?
Posted by Hans von Spakovsky and Elliot S. Berke in Politics on October 8th, 2009
The allegations raised in “White House Creates ACORN for the Arts” and prior stories about the NEA enlisting artists who receive government grants to support President Obama’s political goals certainly raise a number of issues. Foremost among them is whether such actions violate White House policy and potentially federal law. The White House Counsel was concerned enough about the conference call that it was compelled to issue new guidelines for public outreach meetings, noting that some of the comments on the call may have been “misunderstood as seeking to inappropriately politicize activities of the NEA.” But beyond violating these White House guidelines, which could result in further forced resignations but little else, what is really at issue with the alleged conduct?
By seeking to enlist the private sector in lobbying for the President’s agenda, the alleged conduct may have violated the Anti-Lobbying Act (18 U.S.C. §1913), which as Ben Shapiro pointed out in a previous piece, explicitly provides:
No part of the money appropriated by any enactment of Congress shall, in the absence of express authorization by Congress, be used directly or indirectly to pay for any personal service, advertisement, telegram, telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device, intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress, a jurisdiction, or an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation, whether before or after the introduction of any bill, measure or resolution proposing such legislation, law, ratification, policy or appropriation.
The Anti-Lobbying Act, according to government handbooks, prevents government employees from engaging in “substantial ‘grass roots’ lobbying campaigns … expressly urging individuals to contact government officials in support of or opposition to legislation …. Provid[ing] administrative support for lobbing activities of private organizations”
Will the Census Count Illegal Immigrants?
Posted by Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) in ACORN, Politics on October 8th, 2009
Last week, I told you about a ridiculous FEMA firefighter grant that was awarded to ACORN in Louisiana. Because of this website’s coverage of the issue and your action, the story grew, and FEMA finally made a statement saying that they would permanently withhold that grant from ACORN. Thank you for raising awareness of this clear waste of first responder funding that could go to countless needy volunteer firefighter organizations or other first responders.
This week, I wanted to make you aware of a growing concern about the U.S. Census and illegal aliens and how the two could drastically affect congressional apportionment and possibly your own state’s congressional representation.
In the past, some states have included illegal aliens in the collection of census data, and this has often resulted in the allocation of additional congressional seats to those states – at the expense of other states that lose seats because of the skewed data.
Illegal aliens shouldn’t be included for the purposes of determining representation in Congress. I don’t believe that this is what our founding fathers had in mind when they laid out our current system of representation.
Illegal immigration is a very real and significant concern for our country. We shouldn’t let these states be rewarded for skirting our federal laws.
That’s why this week, I introduced an amendment to the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations bill that would require questions in the census regarding citizenship and immigration status. The amendment is, of course, designed to help us identify illegal aliens, primarily to prevent states from counting them for the purposes of determining population levels and other data associated with the census.
The data collected during the census is used by Congress to determine multiple issues of importance beyond apportionment, including government program spending levels. Essentially, my amendment would prevent funding from being used to collect census data that does not include a question regarding United States citizenship and immigration status.
It’s a very simple and direct amendment that can help us bring about a very positive change. It obviously won’t help us identify all illegal aliens, but it’s a step in the right direction.