In a National Review article, Stay Out of Syria, Andrew C. McCarthy gives sound reasoning on why Americans should not assist either side in the Syrian conflict. Listed below are key McCarthy themes.
The Syrian conflict has fomented just this trouble in jihadi paradise, and we haven’t had to pay a dime. Hamas is now the problem of its Sunni-supremacist patrons.
Egypt’s ongoing troubles illustrate what America might expect from helping choose a winner in Syria.
That an Islamist would win, despite the purportedly “substantial” fear of Islamists, was to be expected, in light of the parliamentary elections…. In fact, the non-Islamists were out-voted not only by the Brotherhood but by so-called “Salafist” Islamists who are even more extreme.
While Shiite Iran threatens America long-term, Sunni factions like the Muslim Brotherhood are already active within the U.S.
Ominously, though, the Muslim Brotherhood is not just within a hair’s breadth—it is inside the wire. Unlike Iran, our Sunni supremacist enemies have spent the last 60 years building a significant infrastructure inside our country.
Americans should be wary of stealth-jihad in light of the technique’s prevalence in Europe. NYPD Chief Ray Kelly has done well keeping New York City safe from those elements in the United States.
The prospect of mullahs with nukes alarms me…. But I am less alarmed by prospects and potentials than I am by what is already happening in Europe, where the Brotherhood’s stealth jihad is achieving the gradual conquest that Qaradawi predicted it would.
The best interests of Americans are served by not getting involved in the Syrian conflict.
Taxes matter. That’s why the Warren Buffett of the East, hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, is leaving Connecticut. Can you blame him? Why hang around Connecticut with its 9% corporate tax rate when you can do it for free in Florida with its 0% corporate tax rate? Linda McMahon is running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut.
McMahon, having built World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband Vince, knows a thing or two about businesses. They tend to go where they can be most competitive. According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, McMahon trails Democratic Rep. Christopher Murphy by only 3 percentage points in the race. Americans are not stupid. They know what it takes to make their state competitive. The victory of Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin is a sign that voters around the country have had enough of inept and corrupt politicians. That’s great news for McMahon. And it’s better news for Connecticut. Then there’s Rhode Island with its 9% corporate tax rate, which acts as a barrier to any sensible business.
From The Cato Institute - WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Cato Institute and its shareholders have reached an agreement in principle that would resolve pending lawsuits filed by Charles Koch and David Koch against Cato, its CEO, and several of its directors.
Under terms of the agreement, Cato will no longer be a stockholder corporation and John Allison (the former CEO of BB&T) will be replacing Ed Crane, who will be retiring as Cato’s CEO. That represents a compromise by which both sides will achieve key objectives. For a majority of Cato’s directors, the agreement confirms Cato’s independence and ensures that Cato is not viewed as controlled by the Kochs. For Charles Koch and David Koch, the agreement helps ensure that Cato will be a principled organization that is effective in advancing a free society.
Earlier this year, Charles Koch and David Koch filed two separate lawsuits seeking interpretation and enforcement of Cato’s shareholders’ agreement. Prior to October 2011, Cato was owned by four shareholders – Crane, Charles Koch, David Koch, and William Niskanen. After Niskanen’s death in October 2011, the Kochs maintained that the shareholders’ agreement left Cato with three remaining shareholders (the Kochs and Crane). Crane and Niskanen’s widow, Kathryn Washburn, challenged the shareholders’ agreement and maintained that Ms. Washburn was the rightful owner of Niskanen’s shares.
The parties will seek a stay of the court proceedings related to that dispute after formal settlement documents have been prepared and signed. Terms of the settlement include:
• The Cato Institute will be governed by members rather than shareholders. The members will be the directors of the Institute and will elect their own successors. Initially, the Board will include 12 long-term Cato directors, including David Koch. They will be joined by three other Koch designees and Allison, who has the option to nominate one or two additional directors. Charles Koch, Crane, and Washburn will not be on the Board.
• Crane, who co-founded the Institute with Charles Koch and served as its CEO for 35 years, will retire within six months. He will be succeeded by Allison, an expert on political philosophy and public policy and a revered libertarian, admired and respected by the Kochs and the Cato Board.
• Crane will work with Allison during the transition period and then serve as a consultant on fundraising and other matters.
On announcing the agreement in principle, Cato chairman Bob Levy said: “This is the end of an era at Cato. From the Institute’s inception, Ed Crane has played an indispensable role – co-founding, managing and shaping it into one of the nation’s leading research organizations.”
Crane extended his gratitude to Cato’s employees, directors, and donors for their ongoing support. He welcomed Allison, whom he described as “a great champion of liberty and an outstanding choice to build on Cato’s success as the foremost non-partisan, non-aligned, independent source of libertarian perspectives on public policy.”
Allison said he was “happy to assist in resolving the pending litigation and related issues,” and affirmed that his goal is “to sustain Cato’s efforts at moving the country toward a freer and more prosperous society.”
Charles Koch applauded the agreement. “I have every confidence that John’s leadership will enable Cato to reach new levels of effectiveness. The alarming increase in the size and scope of government is undermining freedom, opportunity and prosperity for all. Effective action is required to limit government to its proper role.”
Boy, was it hot. And when you are dressed in black riding gear with a full-face helmet, hot becomes even hotter still. We don’t compromise on safety. Debbie and I both wear full-face German-made Schuberth riding helmets. I have a Finnish-made Rukka armored riding suit, and Debbie’s is made by Rivet. We treat our long distance touring as the ultimate test in personal safety. And over two decades with 100,000 miles on North American roadways, we believe we have learned a few things.
There is nothing like a long road trip to take the pulse of the American economy. Anecdotal evidence is often a better way to gauge economic momentum than relying on stale, massaged numbers from the government. On our 2008 and 2009 road trips, disaster was evident in every town and small city along our route. Truly shocking are the words best used. The year 2010 still produced unpleasantries. By 2011, things had clearly picked up for the better, as fewer and fewer vacancies, for sale signs, and closed signs were visible. As we headed out this summer, I did not expect to see a lot of improvement. And it turns out that my early concern was justified.
Soggy is a good word for overall business in the six-state upper East coast region we rode through. All six states are non-right-to-work states, and the lack of a strong competitive position is obvious. Any manufacturer who opens for business in a non-right-to-work state is simply nuts. And these states tend to be high tax states as well, another stinker. Click to our Open for Business map for guidance on the right to work issue.
The biggest and grandest old line hotel we stayed at in Bar Harbor told me the season was off to a slow start. Our favorite Maine coast lobster shack told me that without the horde of Asian tourists, business would not be so hot. Most every business owner I spoke with was cautionary, saying that although business was better than in the dark days of 2008/2010, it was far from robust. With few exceptions (Fore Street in Portland), we were able to get into all our first choice restaurants. Fore Street, to its great credit, is one of the most unique restaurants in America and well worth a trip to Portland. Portland has a nifty nearby airport. The place to stay is The Portland Harbor Inn. Reserve a suite or you may not thank me for this recommendation. We have stayed often.
Portland is a great little walking city with much to do, including a number of first rate dining options. We’re big on Maine oysters, which can almost compete with the blue-chip standard, Island Creek oysters from Duxbury, Mass. When we first rode into Portland a number of years ago, we were pointed to J’s Oyster for oysters. Most travel guides will often send you in the same misguided direction. The oysters are pre-opened and the clientele pretty well fueled with ample high-octane lunchtime adult beverages. Not many return-to-work candidates in a room with the noise level of a European soccer match. No thanks for J’s.
I’ll have some of our Portland oyster options for you in my second Harley trip installment. I will also have info for you on the best wine shop I have come across in New England. If you are as interested in Burgundy, as I am, you are in for a treat. This trip out was our second long trip on our new Harley six-speed, ABS Heritage Classics, and, for our money, the best bike Harley has ever made. My last three Harleys have been Road Kings, which you sit ON. With the Heritage, you sit IN. The Heritages are easier to maneuver and ride better at highway speed. And you get that that classic Harley look.
We spent six days on the coast of Maine, and I have a number of special recommendations for you. In terms of a summer or fall vacation, the coast of Maine comes up big. And there are a handful of locations that would work real well as a six-month residence. Prices on the coast of Maine are far more reasonable than in, by example, Newport, R.I., where Debbie and I spend our non-Key West summer months. Lots more to tell you next week.
The Unmanned Little Bird Demonstrator is a modified MD 530F single-turbine helicopter designed for optionally manned flight. It won the AHS 2005 Grover E. Bell award for the best advancement in rotorcraft research that year. The platform is capable of dual pilot, single pilot or no pilot flight operations. It can be remotely operated or programmed for autonomous operations in any of these operational modes.
The ULB is designed to test new manned and unmanned technologies and capabilities. Boeing R&D utilizing the Unmanned Little Bird demonstrated a variety of missions (resupply; intelligence, reconnaissance & surveillance; weaponization) and helped to shape the VTOL UAV market through flight experimentation.
The aircraft has safely conducted more than 500 hours of UAV technology flight testing since its first flight in September 2004. It is supporting the definition and qualification of U.S. Army manned/unmanned aircraft operations. The growth unmanned variant based on the A/MH-6M aircraft is only being marketed internationally.
“A single vote by an unelected judge cripples 16% of the U.S. economy.”—Dick Young
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Obamacare is constitutional as written. The court upheld the individual mandate as constitutional under the power of Congress to tax. In 2009, the President disagreed that the individual mandate was a tax. Now he must reconcile that it is a tax with his pledge to not increase taxes on those with incomes below $250,000.
The lead plaintiff in the case, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, is disappointed in the ruling, which will curb job creation and create massive costs for small businesses.
States received one bit of good news in the ruling. The Court found that penalties in the legislation for states that refuse to comply with Obamacare’s Medicaid plans were unconstitutional. Those penalties would have taken existing Medicaid funds away from states, even though the states were implementing the rules attached to those older funds.
Senator Rand Paul released the following statement in response to the Court’s ruling.
“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional. While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.”
“Obamacare is wrong for Americans. It will destroy our health care system. This now means we fight every hour, every day until November to elect a new President and a new Senate to repeal Obamacare.”
Governor Rick Scott of Florida responded to the ruling with the following statement.
“Today’s decision by the Supreme Court of the United States is simply disappointing. The tax question was repeatedly refuted by members of Congress who helped pass this health care takeover. The Justices have declared that the central provision of ObamaCare is a judicially mandated tax. A new tax pure and simple. This is just another burden the federal government has put on American families and small businesses.
“With the national economy struggling to recover, now is not the time to implement a massive social program that injects nothing but uncertainty and doubt into our economic system. By doing so, they have put up yet another major roadblock to efforts to get people back to work and forced the government into the important relationship between patients and their doctors.
“I stand with Justice Kennedy that the entire act should have been held invalid.”
For further analysis of the Obamacare ruling, read the National Review editorial linked here and the piece by Roger Pilon, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, linked here and quoted below regarding Congress’s power to tax.
As James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, and virtually everyone else at the Founding made clear, the power to tax, the first of Congress’s 18 enumerated powers, like the power to borrow, Congress’s second enumerated power, was designed to enable Congress to obtain the funds needed to carry out its other enumerated powers or ends. It was not, as Madison made clear in Federalist 41, and often on the floor of Congress, an independent power to tax for any purpose at all. Search as you will through those 18 enumerated powers and you will find no power to enact ObamaCare or anything like it. And please don’t say that the taxing power serves the commerce power which in turn authorizes the individual mandate, because the Court nixed that second leap today.
Charles Krauthammer was able to find a silver lining in Robert’s interpretation of the law. He rightly focuses on the necessary actions Congress must now take to repeal the Act.
It’s the judiciary’s Nixon-to-China: Chief Justice John Roberts joins the liberal wing of the Supreme Court and upholds the constitutionality of Obamacare. How? By pulling off one of the great constitutional finesses of all time. He managed to uphold the central conservative argument against Obamacare, while at the same time finding a narrow definitional dodge to uphold the law — and thus prevented the Court from being seen as having overturned, presumably on political grounds, the signature legislation of this administration…Obamacare is now essentially upheld. There’s only one way it can be overturned. The same way it was passed — elect a new president and a new Congress. That’s undoubtedly what Roberts is saying: Your job, not mine. I won’t make it easy for you.
The consequences of the ruling must be measured for impact on the 2012 election cycle. Jay Cost at the Weekly Standardputs the politics of the ruling into context.
Politically, Obama will probably get a short-term boost from this, as the media will not be able to read between the lines and will declare him the winner. But the victory will be short-lived. The Democrats were at pains not to call this a tax because it is inherently regressive: the wealthy overwhelmingly have health insurance so have no fear of the mandate. But now that it is legally a tax, Republicans can and will declare that Obama has slapped the single biggest tax on the middle class in history, after promising not to do that.
Writing for a panel discussion at National Review, Mercatus Center senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy cuts through the mumbo jumbo to strike at the heart of the ruling’s effects.
In the end, however you look at it, this ruling leaves us with a bloated government, too much spending, too much debt, less freedom, and a system that doesn’t even take care of poor people that well.
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