http://cnsnews.com/news/article/spending-bills-passed-gop-house-increased-debt-1t-10-months
January 11, 2012
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House Speaker John Boehner meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on Jan. 23, 2011. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
(CNSNews.com) - Federal spending bills approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives have increased the national debt by more than $1 trillion dollars in just 10 months.
Republicans won a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the November 2010 elections and took control of the House on Jan. 5, 2011, when the chamber convened and elected Rep. John Boehner (R.-Calif.) as speaker.
But the Republican-controlled House did not gain a veto power over federal spending until March 4, 2011. That was the expiration date of the continuing resolution (CR) that the lame-duck Democrat-controlled Congress approved in December 2010. After March 4, federal spending has been approved by legislation that needed to be approved in the Republican-controlled House.
On March 1, 2011, the Republican-controlled House passed its first CR to fund the government after March 4. Since then, it has approved a series of CRs to keep the government funded. The Republican House approved its latest CR on December 16. It will keep the government funded until the end of fiscal 2012 on Sept. 30.
Eighty-six House Republicans went against their party leaders and voted against the Dec. 16 CR, which actually garnered more votes from House Democrats (149) than House Republicans (147).
When the Republican-controlled House approved its first CR on March 4, 2011, the national debt was 14,182,627,184,881.03, according to the U.S. Treasury. As of the close of business on Jan. 9, 2012, the national debt was 15,236,506,139,986.86.
That means the debt increased by $1.05 trillion over the past ten months.
That equals approximately $8,964 for each of the 117,572,000 American households estimated by the Census Bureau.
At the current rate, the Republican-controlled House is agreeing to allow the U.S. Treasury to borrow approximately an additional $896 per month American household per month.
Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution says: "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." Article 1, Section 7 says that every bill "shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate … before it become a Law
By: Stephen Trimble Washington DC
4 Jan 2012
Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works division has revealed a conceptual next-generation fighter design that offers the first hints of an ambitious, long-term technology strategy for the new class of tactical aircraft that will emerge after 2030.
The concept - published in a 2012 calendar distributed to journalists - indicates the company will continue to seek new breakthroughs in performance despite the risk-averse culture of today's weapons buyers in the US military.
Featuring an F-22-like nose, an unusually contoured wing and nearly flat canted tails, the concept suggests a new level of speed and agility.
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| ©LOCKHEED MARTIN |
Lockheed also seemed to take a thinly-veiled shot at a next generation fighter concept released in September by Boeing, which showed a manned and optionally manned, tailless fighter with a conventional wing.
"Simply removing the pilot from an aircraft or introducing incremental improvements in signature and range does not constitute a generational leap in capability," Lockheed said in response to Flightglobal's questions.
"These improvements are already being looked att for our fifth generation fighters," the company added.
Instead, possible technologies for a next-generation fighter should include "greatly increased speed", more range and new features like self-healing structures and multi-spectral stealth, the company said.
Such capabilities must be supported by new breakthroughs in propulsion, materials, power generation and weapons, Lockheed said, adding some of these are "yet to be fully imagined".
Lockheed acknowledged that breakthrough performance will not come cheap.
"This will require another significant investment in research and development from a standpoint of time and money," the company said.
So far, USAF leaders have not been committal about plans for a sixth-generation fighter to replace the F-22 after 2030. The air force is instead focused on buying 1,763 F-35As to replace the F-16 and A-10 fleets. New development funding is largely devoted to fielding a next generation bomber by the end of the decade.
Meanwhile, the USAF has initiated the first steps towards working on a next generation fighter. In November 2010, the Air Combat Command asked companies to submit ideas for the technologies and performance for a new fighter that would appear in 20 years. The Air Force Research Laboratory also is funding research on basic technologies that could feed into a sixth generation fighter programme.
SOURCE: Lockheed reveals bold technology plans with 6th-gen fighter concept
Currently, many illegal immigrants must leave the country before they
can ask the federal government to waive a three- to 10-year ban on
legally coming back to the U.S. The length of the ban depends on how
long they have lived in the U.S. without permission.
Today, the Obama administration proposed changing the rule to let
children and spouses ask the government to decide on the waiver
request before they head to their home country to seek a visa to
return here legally.
The illegal immigrants would still have to go abroad to finish the
visa process, but getting a provisional waiver approved in advance
would reduce the time they are out of the country from months to days
or weeks, said Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services.
The purpose is "to minimize the extent to which bureaucratic delays
separate Americans from their families for long periods of time,"
Mayorkas told reporters.
It currently takes about six months for the government to issue a
waiver, Mayorkas said.
The waiver shift is the latest move by President Barack Obama to make
changes to immigration policy without congressional action.
Congressional Republicans repeatedly have criticized the
administration for policy changes they describe as providing "backdoor
amnesty" to illegal immigrants.
The proposal also comes as Obama gears up for a re-election contest in
which the support of Hispanic voters could prove a determining factor
in a number of states. The administration hopes to change the rule
later this year after taking public comments.
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, today accused the president of putting the
interests of illegal immigrants ahead of those of Americans.
"It seems President Obama plays by his own rules to push unpopular
policies on the American people," the House Judiciary Committee chair
said in a statement.
Immigrants who do not have criminal records and who have only violated
immigration laws can win a waiver if they can prove their absence
would cause an extreme hardship for their American spouse or parent.
The government received about 23,000 hardship applications in 2011 and
more than 70 percent were approved.
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judge to deport him
• Arrests of illegal immigrants along U.S. border down for 6th
straight year
About 75 percent of the applications were filed by Mexicans, according
to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Immigrant advocates have long complained about the current system,
which can split up families for months or years. And since there's no
guarantee a person will win a waiver to return, many immigrant
families refuse to take the risk of going abroad to apply for one.
Laura Barajas, a 42-year-old stay-at-home mom in Orange County,
Calif., is due to travel to Ciudad Juarez in two weeks to try to get
her papers. She and her U.S. citizen husband are trying to stay
positive, but she is afraid to leave him and their two young children
behind.
"I don't want to be separated for a long time from my children," said
Barajas, who came to the U.S. illegally to find work, then met her
future husband and stayed. "I'm not going to risk taking them to a
place that I don't even know after 18 years."
Pro-immigration activists and lawyers embraced the change, saying it
would keep families together and encourage more people now in the
United States illegally to emerge from the shadows and apply for
visas. Some said it could even save lives.
Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., recalled the case of Tania Nava Palacios,
who went to Ciudad Juarez — a hotbed for drug-fueled violence — with
her American husband and son in pursuit of a waiver. Drug cartel
members killed her husband last year, his office said in a statement.
Kelly Alfaro, of Washington state, said her husband, Guillermo, waited
in Mexico for eight months last year after he had his visa interview
in Ciudad Juarez.
"I was terrified for his safety because I know how dangerous it is
there and I had no way of knowing how long he would have to stay in
Mexico," she said.
Democratic lawmakers welcomed the Obama administration's move to
change the immigration system by rulemaking after efforts at a
legislative overhaul failed.
"Has it taken a while? Yes. Is it happening? Yes," said Rep. Luis
Gutierrez, D-Ill., who has encouraged such changes. "Am I looking
forward to telling people to vote for him? Absolutely."
Immigration has become a difficult issue for Obama ahead of the
November election. As a presidential candidate, he pledged to change
what many consider to be a broken immigration system.
To that end, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced
plans last year to review some 300,000 pending deportation cases in an
effort to target criminal illegal immigrants, repeat immigration law
violators and those who pose a national security or public safety
threat.
Napolitano said the DHS would delay indefinitely the cases of many
illegal immigrants who have no criminal record and those who have been
arrested for only minor traffic violations or other misdemeanors. A
pilot program is under way to begin reviewing the case.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton also issued a
memo in June outlining how immigration authorities could use
discretion in deciding which illegal immigrants to arrest and put into
deportation proceedings.
Congressional Republicans have decried the policy changes, arguing
that the Obama administration is circumventing Congress.
Several attempts at an immigration law overhaul have failed in recent
years, including the so-called DREAM Act, which would have allowed for
some young illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to earn
legal status if they went to college or joined the military.
--
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| I was eating lunch on the 20th of February with my 8-year-old Granddaughter and I asked her, "What day is tomorrow?"; She said "It's President's Day!" She is a smart kid. I asked "What does President's Day mean?" I was waiting for something about Washington or Lincoln .... etc. She replied, "President's Day is when President Obama steps out of the White House, and if he sees his shadow we have one more year of unemployment." You know, it hurts when hot coffee spurts out your nose. __._,_.___ | ||
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| Do Not Buy Prepaid Debit Cards Posted: 09 Jan 2012 09:29 PM PST This will be quick and easy. Do . not . buy . prepaid . debit . cards. Every prepaid debit card comes with exorbitant fees. There are fees just for buying the card known as issuance fees (although Walmart's card waives the $3 issuance fee if you apply online); there are monthly fees even if you do not use the card (although some companies will waive the fee if you add money to the card during the month); there are first-time use fees (called account opening fees); there are fees if you use the card; there are fees if don't use the card; there are fees if you check your balance; there are fees if you call for phone help; there are fees for making an ATM withdrawal; there are fees for attempting to use more than your available balance; there are fees when making a purchase and asking for cash back. Some companies even charge monthly fees after you have no money left and will collect those fees if you reload the same card later.
Checking her card's website, we see that there is a $3.00 Card Purchase Fee, a $3.00 monthly fee, a $2.00 ATM fee in addition to any fees charged by the ATM owner, a $1.00 ATM Balance Inquiry Fee, a $2.00 Cash Withdrawal Fee, and other additional fees. You get one free call to a live customer service agent per month - additional calls during the month will cost you two bucks. Although Ms Orman's card is a little better than most prepaid debit cards, I suggest you take the same money and find a bank that offers free checking. Unless you have absolutely horrid credit, they'll give you a debit card with no usage fees, no monthly fees, and you can check your balance or make withdrawals at your bank's ATM without balance inquiry fees or withdrawal fees. Disclaimer: I have been in the prepaid phonecard card business for more than 17 years and have sold prepaid debit cards for more than a decade. Now you may ask why I sell cards and yet advise my readers not to buy them. If I were a manufacturer of donuts I would give the same advice: do not buy donuts because they are not good for your health. At one time I sold cigarettes from my vending machines (see my article here) and if I were still in that business I would exhort my readers not to smoke (see my articles on smoking). Just because I make money in a business does not mean I cannot give good advice to my readers.
Notes(1):
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Jan 10, 2012/ 15 Teves, 5772
Leftism Makes You Meaner
By Dennis Prager
Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality — often within our own family — of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues.
That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner.
Two examples in just the past week offer compelling evidence.
Prominent left-wing commentators used the way in which Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of one of their children to attack — make that mock — the former Pennsylvania senator.
In a lifetime of observing and participating in political debate, I have seen a lot of meanness. But one just assumes that some things — not many, just some — are off limits to political pundits and activists.
Among these few things, one has to believe, is the death of a child.
But I was wrong.
In 1996, Karen Santorum gave birth to a premature baby boy who died two hours later. After spending the night in the hospital with their baby son between them, the grieving parents brought the lifeless infant home for a brief period because, Santorum explained, it was important to them for their other children to "know they had a brother." The Santorums didn't want Gabriel Michael Santorum to be an abstraction to his siblings.
First, Alan Colmes on Fox News: "Once (voters) get a load of some of the crazy things he's said and done, like taking his 2-hour-old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real ..."
Colmes was then interrupted by Rich Lowry: "You are mocking him. They lost a child, Alan. That's very serious and it's not something you should be mocking on national TV."
Colmes' response: "I'm not mocking the losing of the child. But what I'm saying is I think it shows a certain unusual attitude toward taking a 2-hour-baby home who died to play with his other children."
In addition to engaging in a cheap and mean shot, Colmes simply made up the notion that the Santorums had brought the baby home for their other children "to play with."
The next day, Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer-Prize winning left-wing columnist for The Washington Post, said on MSNBC, Santorum is "not a little weird. He's really weird. Some of his positions he's taken are just so weird that I think some Republicans are going to be off-put. Not everybody is going to be down, for example, with the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child whose body they took home to kind of sleep with and introduce to the rest of the family. It's a very weird story."
Four times Robinson calls Santorum "weird," using the story about the death of the child as evidence. He was wrong on an important detail — the child was not "stillborn." And, like Colmes, he made up a mocking detail — that they took the child home "to kind of sleep with."
The meanness of these comments is self-evident, as Alan Colmes realized and later apologized to Santorum. Robinson, on the other hand, never apologized — as RealClearPolitics, which has no political agenda, correctly reported — even though repeatedly challenged to do so on MSNBC.
I raise these issues for only one reason: to provide further evidence of my belief that leftism makes more than a few of its adherents meaner people.
I have had many interactions with Alan Colmes, and while we always differ, I never found him to be mean-spirited. I still don't think he is mean-spirited, and though I am not the directly offended party, like Santorum, I accept his apology, because I believe he meant it.
So why did he say what he said?
Because leftism fills many of its adherents with contempt and hatred. It takes a person of great character and self-control to continually imbibe and mouth the mantras of the left — that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, islamophobic, racist and bigoted — and not become a meaner human being. If I believed just about everyone with left-wing views was despicable, I would be meaner, too.
In a previous column, I wrote about Thomas Friedman making one of the classic anti-Semitic libels when he wrote that the reason the Senate and the House gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing ovations was because "that ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."
How does a Jew write an anti-Semitic libel? Because he's on the left.
That was the reason Rep. Andre Carson said that members of Congress who support the Tea Party want to see blacks "hanging on a tree." Because he's on the left.
Leftists' meanness toward those with whom they differ has no echo on the normative right. Those on the left need to do some soul-searching. Because as long as they continue to believe that people on the right are not merely wrong but vile, they will get increasingly mean. The problem for the left, however, is that the moment it stops painting the right as vile, it has to argue the issues.
| Having trouble viewing this email? Read it on our website. Sovereign ManNotes from the Field Date: January 11, 2012 Reporting From: Santiago, Chile Last week, the US government's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an agency of the US Treasury Department, published its 2011 annual report. There are a few numbers that are pretty startling. We've discussed before that FinCEN is the executive agency tasked with ensuring that every US banker is an unpaid government spy through Suspicious Activity Reports. A Suspicious Activity Report, or SAR, includes details of any transaction that may be deemed 'suspicious'. Naturally, there's no clear guidance on what is/is not considered suspicious. Banks, brokerages, money service businesses, precious metals dealers... even casinos are required by law to fill them out. If you withdraw an unusual amount of cash from your bank account, that could be deemed suspicious. If you set up a new payee in your billpay service, that could be deemed suspicious. Anything and everything is fair game. Banks and other businesses who do not fill out SARs face hefty penalties, including imprisonment. If they disclose to a customer that s/he is the subject of a SAR, they have hefty penalties, including imprisonment. When push comes to shove and they have to choose between a nasty penalty, or submitting a SAR about your unusual cash withdrawal, which option do you think they'll pick? Unsurprisingly, nearly 1.5 million 'suspicious activity reports' were filed across the US banking system in 2011, well over twice the number reported in 2004. On top of this, there were an additional -14.8 million- 'currency transaction reports' filed in 2011, a 6% jump over last year. It's an unfortunate trend which highlights not only the end of financial privacy, but also the massive amount of data being collected by the government to keep tabs on its citizens. According to this year's report, a full 36 distinct federal law enforcement agencies requested information from FinCEN (and even more who haven't). Three dozen. And that doesn't include state or local law enforcement. That there are this many federal law enforcement agencies to begin with is mind-boggling... let alone the thought that some knucklehead at the Fish and Wildlife Service has access to bank records. This is one reason why international diversification is so important-- the likelihood of such collection and monitoring is greatly reduced when you bank overseas. Moreover, should one of these dozens of agencies or courts decide that your 'suspicious activity' warrants locking you out of your accounts, they have zero jurisdiction overseas. This is a common tactic in the US; financial activity is one of the many, many areas with a 'guilty until proven innocent' burden of proof. You don't even need to be doing anything wrong (which is the case most of the time this happens) for one of these agencies to freeze your account 'pending investigation' with a simple phone call. Good luck getting it unfrozen. They don't have that kind of pull overseas. That's why we've been writing for years to more than 100,000 subscribers that the most important thing you can do for your financial security is to have a foreign bank account, no matter where you're from. Planting a 'banking flag' outside of your home country is a very prudent, simple insurance policy. More and more people are starting to wake up to this reality. FinCEN also tracks the Report of Foreign Bank Account and Financial Accounts, commonly known as the FBAR. This form is required to be submitted by any US taxpayer with foreign financial accounts whose aggregate total exceeded $10,000 at any point during the year. For example, if you have a bank account in Uruguay with $9,000, and a small brokerage account in Panama with $2,000, you would have to submit the form by June 30th of each year to the Treasury Department. In 2011, 618,134 US taxpayers filed an FBAR (which would have covered the calendar year 2010). This is more than a 100% increase over the filings just two years ago... a huge jump. I suspect the 2012 figures will show similar growth. As a percentage of the population, though, the number is embryonic. It still leaves 308,127,404 Americans who have no backup plan, no insurance policy for their hard-earned savings. In other words, 99.8% of the population holds all of their money in an insolvent, corrupted, government-controlled, unsecured (though cleverly disguised) banking system. Are you one of the 0.2% who is paying attention? If not, what's holding you back? I'd like to know. Until tomorrow, Simon Black Senior Editor, SovereignMan.com VIEW A PREVIEW OF THIS MONTH'S SOVEREIGN MAN: CONFIDENTIAL The world is changing daily. 'Solutions' to government debt problems now delay the inevitable for minutes rather than weeks and months. Simon spends this month getting a grasp on how some of the most experienced experts predict the outcome. He doesn't forget to interview someone who has lived through crisis. Each provides their action plan to survive and thrive. Simon wanted to give you a preview so you can read the details for yourself.  Neither this email communication nor content posted to the website SovereignMan.com is intended to provide personal financial advice. Before undertaking any action described in this letter, financial or otherwise, you should discuss your options with a qualified advisor-- accountant, financial planner, attorney, priest, IRS auditor, Tim Geithner... Also, nothing published in this letter constitutes encouragement to avoid or evade tax obligations in your home country. Furthermore, you should understand that SovereignMan.com may in some instances receive financial compensation for products and/or services which are mentioned in the letter, and in other cases, SovereignMan.com receives no compensation. The needs of the community come first, and the presence or lack of financial compensation in no way affects the recommendations made in this letter. Blacksmith Pte. Ltd. publisher of Sovereign Man No.4 Kiarong Complex Gadong 2nd Floor Block D BSB, Brunei-Muara BE1318 Brunei Darussalam If you no longer wish to receive our daily emails, click the link below: Unsubscribe |
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