FEMA 2010 Federal Disaster Declarations

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Oil spill: worst environmental disaster in US history

Black blobs washing on sandy beaches, brown pelicans grounded with oil-covered feathers and fishermen looking for work have become common sights in national media since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded off the Louisiana coast 50 days ago, spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s right, 50 days and no mention of the Gulf oil spill.

Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida… soon the East Coast, the American economy, the current administration, where are these?? They all rank up there with the worst disasters in American history.

Simple, factual, and the glaring truth of the matter;

June, 8 2010, Obama Presidency – declared a NATIONAL DISASTER.

God, help us all…

CONYERS:

I love these members that get up and say, “Read the bill!” What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you’ve read the bill?

That’s in a luncheon speech at the National Press Club in Washington last Friday.

Just to be sure everyone gets the point here…

… at the National Press Club.

I didn’t see it in any of the Obama-Media.  Did you?  Did anyone hear about this over the weekend?  It was a shock to everybody, right?

“What good does it do to read the bill if you don’t have a couple lawyers to find out what it means after you read it?”

This guy is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.  So… Sometimes it’s just best to get out of their way and just let them go ahead and make fools of themselves.

They did not report it — and it was on, obviously, C-SPAN.

As reported by Yid with Lid, earlier this year Congress:

• This past February, the Congress voted on an almost $800 billion stimulus bill that they hadn’t read. This one bill single-handedly increased the national debt by 160%. The bill was over 800 pages, and the members of the House received the bill at 11 pm the night before they were to vote on it. The vote couldn’t be delayed because Nancy Pelosi was going on vacation to Italy.
• When the House Energy committee passed the “cap and tax” bill. The legislation was over 900 pages, once again the people voting for the bill hadn’t read it. In fact, committee chair and one of the bill’s sponsors, Congressman Waxman admitted that he didn’t even know what was in his own bill.

It’s bad enough, when they dumb down public schools to the point of illiteracy, but in an attempt to Socialize the country’s health system –  ignorance is the only hope of the Democrat lead government.

Simple truth: What the public doesn’t know can distroy the greatest economy on the planet.

If you turn your health care over to the state you’re giving up all control over your health care.  It’s a crapshoot.  You may as well have walked into a casino.

“Good luck,” takes on an ominous meaning.

All of these flip-flops have got to be referred to as the result of inexperience. He just doesn’t know what he’s doing. When he’s off a prepared speech, when he’s off the prompter, when he’s on his own, when he doesn’t have some campaign aide, then he’s off the beaten path and as such, he’s on his own and so this has to be chalked up to inexperience.

And how little experience does he have?

Cheri Jacobus, who is a brilliant woman, a Republican strategist, she lives in Washington, she’s worked on Capitol Hill, posted a little blurb:

“Just how much Senate experience does Barack Obama have in terms of actual work days? Not much. From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged–”

How many days experience, from the time he’s inaugurated in the Senate, sworn in, until he announced his presidential exploratory committee, how many actual days of work experience in the Senate for Barack Obama?

It’s 143.

“After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. 143 days -”

I keep leftovers in my refrigerator longer than that…

“In contrast, John McCain’s 26 years in Congress, 22 years of military service including 1,966 days in captivity as a POW in Hanoi now seem more impressive than ever.”

So there you go, 143 days.

So this is the key. All of these so-called flip-flops, all these changes in position, they are due to his inexperience. His inexperience and his incompetence lead him to make goofs, to lie, to flounder around. I think if people see Obama as dangerously incompetent and floundering, it might lessen his appeal.

Calling him a flip-flopper, you know, been there, done that with John Kerry. He owns that.

You look at Kerry and you see a sandal, a flip-flop.

So you can’t tag that to Obama. It’s gotta be incompetence, it’s got to be inexperience.

Do you know how many hearings there have been with the Big Oil execs and without, just exploratory hearings?

They’ve had 40 hearings on oil and energy, and has anything happened? Yes, the price has continued to go up.

Do you know how many hearings they have had on whether or not the United States tortures detainees? They’ve had over 60 in the House and Senate combined, over 60 House and Senate hearing, and there was another one Friday.

Our tax dollars at work, folks…

It was the Constitution civil rights and civil liberties subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Massachusetts representative Bill Delahunt was questioning David Addington. David Addington is chief of staff, former counsel to Vice President Cheney. Addington, a very private guy, does not show up in public. He was forced to show up at this hearing.

They asked him the typical stupid questions, and he just stuck it to these guys by not bending over forwards and grabbing the ankles like Republicans usually do or anybody else does when they face a congressional committee. This did not sit well with Bill Delahunt, who said this.

DELAHUNT: Oh, I can understand why he [the president] doesn’t talk about it.

ADDINGTON: But you gotta communicate with Al-Qaeda. If you do — I can’t talk to you. Al-Qaeda may watch C-SPAN.

DELAHUNT: Right. Well, I’m — I’m sure they are watching, and I’m glad they finally have a chance to — to see you, Mr. Addington, give —

ADDINGTON: I’m sure you’re pleased.

You need me to translate this for you? -.-

Delahunt said, “Oh, I can understand why the president doesn’t talk about it.” Addington, “you gotta communicate with Al-Qaeda. If you do, I can’t talk to you, Al-Qaeda may watch C-SPAN.” I can’t tell you what we’re doing about Al-Qaeda. Not here. Delahunt says, “Yeah, well, I’m sure Al-Qaeda is watching, and I’m glad they finally have a chance to see you, Mr. Addington.”

A number of people have inferred from this that Delahunt would not be disappointed if Al-Qaeda took Addington out now that they know who he is. Delahunt has said, “I didn’t say ‘they.’ I didn’t say finally they had a chance to see you, I said finally I’ve had a chance to see you.” Okay, let’s see if that’s what he said.

Let’s do this again —

DELAHUNT: Oh, I can understand why he [the president] doesn’t talk about it.

ADDINGTON: But you gotta communicate with Al-Qaeda. If you do — I can’t talk to you. Al-Qaeda may watch C-SPAN.

DELAHUNT: Right. Well, I’m — I’m sure they are watching, and I’m glad they finally have a chance to — to see you, Mr. Addington, give —

ADDINGTON: I’m sure you’re pleased.

Did he say, I?

No, he said THEY, twice.

And these, ladies and gentlemen, are your modern-day liberal Democrats in the Democrat Party.

Our domestic oil companies are huge within the context of the continental United States — well, including Alaska and Hawaii, but in terms of the world, they’re tiny. They’re among the smallest oil companies out there.

“US Senate Republicans have blocked a Democratic plan to tax the windfall profits of the largest oil companies. Democrats on Tuesday failed, 51-43, to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican delaying tactic on the energy package, and bring the bill up for consideration. Democrats said the huge profits enjoyed by the largest US oil companies should be reined in with motorists paying more than $4 a gallon (0.64 per liter for gasoline and oil prices soaring well beyond $100 a barrel.) But Republican critics said higher taxes on oil companies would increase — not lower — gasoline prices.”

Look, Jimmy Carter did this. Jimmy Carter, windfall profits tax on the big oil companies during that four years of malaise, and you know what happened…

Jimmy Carter did his windfall profits tax, and the oil companies said, “Okay, fine, we’ll stop producing as much in the United States. We’ll lower our production so we’re not paying taxes,” and that’s exactly what happened. They cut back production domestically. They went back and produced more in their offshore properties and tracts.

The Democrats know this.

This is not about revenue, it’s not about oil; it’s about punishment. It is about punishing risk takers. It is about class envy. It is about punishing people who then have success after taking a risk.

It’s like the minimum wage. They raised the minimum wage, it’s one of the few achievements that Nancy Pelosi had. And so we got the most recent unemployment report, 5.5%.

And of course, all hell broke loose on Wall Street, and everybody was panicking. Bbut very few people put together the fact that this new increase in the minimum wage rate combined with a flooded job market of both high school students and college graduates is what led to the 5.5% employment number.

Jerry Bowyer was posted a piece at Townhall.com called: “What the Media Didn’t Tell You About Friday’s Unemployment Spike.”

“It wasn’t Bush, it wasn’t greedy corporations, or free trade, or history’s most over-predicted recession. It was not the oil companies, income inequality, or the excesses of cowboy capitalism. None of these things caused the unemployment rate to jump a half a percentage point in one month. Ask yourself a few questions: Why did unemployment surge at a time when unemployment compensation claims are historically low? More to the point, how could unemployment spike this much without a coinciding spike in corporate layoffs?”

If unemployment went up this high, where in the hell were all the people that lost their jobs, is what he’s saying. There weren’t lost jobs and yet unemployment is up a half a point?

“The answer to all of these questions is the same: because very few people lost jobs last month. This huge jump in the size of the unemployed comes from new entrants to the economy — hundreds of thousands of them. In short, well over 600,000 people who were not job seekers in April became job seekers in May. And who starts looking for work at the end of spring? That’s right — students. Hundreds of thousands of students are looking for work right now, and they’re not finding it. Congress is to blame. Last year Congressional Democrats passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which started a phased hike of the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25.
…
Free market economists warned them that this would increase unemployment — that rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest.”

You know the percentage of people earning the minimum wage in this country on any given day is well over 50% teenagers. It’s not people who are providing for a family of four or a family of two.

“Rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest. But the class-warriors are running the people’s house now, and they would hear none of that, so they took to the floor, let loose the dogs of demagoguery, and saddled America’s pizza parlors, municipal swimming pools, house painting businesses and lawn mowing services with a huge cost increase. Now, we see the perfectly logical outcome of wage controls.”

Which is exactly what the minimum wage is. It’s a wage control, and it is an arbitrarily established number that has nothing to do with productivity, experience, qualification.

So it’s a wage control. And the logical outcome of such “rising unemployment among the most economically vulnerable.

Friday’s unemployment spike occurred overwhelmingly among teenagers, and secondarily among African Americans. Just like we said it would. A kid who is at entry level of job skills may be a good deal at 5 bucks an hour, but not at 7.

Our anointed leaders gets to glory in their generosity (with other people’s money) and just so long as very few people in the media know that a demand curve slopes downward (a good bet, there), no one calls them on it. This summer the left will make political lemonade out of a tough student job market. Heck, it may provide a small army of angry unemployed youth to man the campaign, hungry for hope and (loose) change, never once realizing that they’re working to entrench the leftie war on business, which left them jobless this summer in the first place.

The key to understanding this is very simple.

Hardly anybody lost a job in May when the unemployment rate went up half a point, five to five and a half percent. And those who couldn’t find work were the new job market entrants.

What’s all this got to do with price of oil, the windfall profits tax? Because none of this is aimed at actually helping anybody, and it’s typical liberalism, it ends up harming the very people it’s intended to help.

Look at Obama and his predicted, at least he says this is what he wants to do, tax increases. He wants to raise taxes to 39% on people who make $200,000 a year or more. To him that’s rich. Current rate’s 35%.

He wants to take it back to the glory days of the Clinton administration of 39%.

All right, fine and dandy. Well, what’s going to happen here?

Well, how many small business owners, the largest employers collectively in the country, they file their sub-S, Subchapter S corporations, but they file their returns on a personal return, or 1040. So their rate’s going to go from 35 to 39, guess what?

The very people that Obama says, look, I’m going to get even with the rich people for you. I’m going to raise their taxes. I’m going to make things fair. And these people are going to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you stick it to them. And who gets it stuck to ’em? The guy who loses his job who’s not making $200,000 because his employer has to fire him in order to pay the federal government’s new taxes authored by Obama.

When Congress directs small business, everybody, to raise the minimum wage on a graduated scale up to $7.15, well… small business owners are not going to sit there and say, oh, well, okay, because they don’t have, just like you probably don’t at home, they don’t have an unlimited supply of cash sitting around that they’re not doing anything with. They might have some cash flow, but it’s allocated or it’s there for insurance or what have you.

But if somebody comes along and says, “Look, the four guys you’re paying minimum wage you’ve gotta increase them by X,” one of them is going to lose a job because the business owner is going to do his best not to sit there and lose money, ’cause if he loses money for too long he’s out of business, and then everybody that works there is fired.

This is the incremental loss of basic liberties and freedoms.

All of these well-intentioned people who have convinced way too many Americans that their intentions are honorable and they love people and they’re filled with compassion and yet everything or most everything they try as a remedy to some social problem, not only doesn’t work, it exacerbates the problem.