Britain First, Fighting Back, what is real on the streets on London and the suburbs. Courtesy of BritainFirst.org.
In towns like Ulster, Dewbury, Rotherham and Luton it is Chritians versus Islam where Britain First is taking a stand to reclaim their country. England is full of ‘no-go’ zones where the corrupt government has relinquished sovereignty to a violent culture and ideology.
Jayda Fransen, Deputy Leader of Britain First podcast:
Obama to call for $10-per-barrel oil tax to fund clean transport
FNC: President Obama will propose a $10 fee for every barrel of oil to be paid by oil companies in order to fund clean energy transport system, the White House announced Thursday — although Republicans were quick to declare the plan “dead on arrival” in Congress.
The fee would be phased in over five years and would provide $20 billion per year for traffic reduction, investment in transit systems and other modes of transport such as high-speed rail, the White House said. It would also offer $10 billion to encourage investment in clean transport at the regional level.
Obama is expected to formalize the proposal Tuesday when he releases his final budget request to Congress. However, the proposal immediately faced resistance from Republicans.
“Once again, the president expects hardworking consumers to pay for his out of touch climate agenda,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement, arguing it would lead to higher energy prices and hurt poor Americans.
Ryan went on to describe Obama’s plan as “dead on arrival” in Congress.
“The good news is this plan is little more than an election-year distraction. As this lame-duck president knows, it’s dead on arrival in Congress, because House Republicans are committed to affordable American energy and a strong U.S. economy,” Ryan said.
The White House claims the added cost of gasoline would incentivize the private sector to reduce the reliance on oil and to increase investment in clean energy technology.
The plan also saw opposition from advocates for the oil industry, who warned it would only harm consumers.
“The White House thinks Americans are not paying enough for gasoline, so they have proposed a new tax that could raise the cost of gasoline by 25 cents a gallon, harm consumers that are enjoying low energy prices, destroy American jobs and reverse America’s emergence as a global energy leader,” API President and CEO Jack Gerard:
“On his way out of office, President Obama has now proposed making the United States less competitive.” Gerard said.
*****
In part from Bloomberg: With the proceeds targeted to transportation and climate initiatives, the proposal announced Thursday deepens Obama’s environmental credentials and signifies his ambitions to aggressively push action on climate change during his final year in office.
“By placing a fee on oil, the president’s plan creates a clear incentive for private-sector innovation to reduce our reliance on oil and at the same time invests in clean energy technologies that will power our future,” the White House said in a statement.
It is unclear who, exactly would pay the tax if it were to pass, and how it would be structured. White House officials repeatedly stressed that the fee would fall on oil companies, but said it wouldn’t be charged at the wellhead and they look forward to working with Congress on the details.
The fee, which drew swift objections from oil industry groups and Republicans, is part of a broader administration plan to shift the nation away from transportation systems reliant on internal combustion engines and fossil fuels. The proposal envisions investing $20 billion to reduce traffic and improve commuting, $10 billion for state and local transportation and climate programs and $2 billion for research on clean vehicles and aircraft.
Environmentalists applauded the move. “President Obama’s vision underscores the inevitable transition away from oil, and investments like this speed us along the way to a 100% clean energy future,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in an e-mail.
Inadequate infrastructure raises costs for businesses and consumers, including motorists stuck in traffic — a “hidden tax” and a harm to the environment, said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. More here.
DHS Reports Spending Only 1 Percent of its $1.4B Training Budget
Though Congress provides more than $1 billion in funds to train personnel at the Department of Homeland Security, DHS spends a small fraction of that on workforce training—at least according to its bookkeepers.
As an example of the iffy bookkeeping, auditors found that in fiscal 2014, Congress provided $1.4 billion for training, but the department reported spending only $1.9 million to the Office of Personnel Management. And as of August 2015, the DHS Office of the Chief Financial Officer could account for only $267 million in training expenditures in the prior year. Such lack of oversight on data quality, the Homeland Security inspector general found, meant the department reported only 1 percent of its training expenditures that year.
“DHS lacks reliable training cost information and data needed to make effective and efficient management decisions,” the IG concluded in a report released Wednesday. “It does not have an effective governance structure for its training oversight, including clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and delegated authorities” to oversee training programs, the watchdog wrote.
The difficulty the massive department would have in tracking training funds was predicted as far back as 2003, when the Government Accountability Office named human capital management as a high-risk area for the fledgling new department merging 22 agencies.
But DHS has failed to fully implement as many as 29 recommendations for improving training efficiencies made by several working groups, the new report said.
Among other problems, the IG found that the Transportation Security Administration did not report any training costs for January 2015, but after being questioned by IG staff, that agency reported $23 million in training expenditures.
DHS also lacks an oversight structure to monitor training after it transferred authority in 2012 to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and to departmental components. Such oversight is supposed to be supervised by the undersecretary for management, through the chief financial officer.
Inspector General John Roth recommended that DHS establish a better process for tracking training funds, set up an oversight structure and implement the remaining past efficiency recommendations.
Departmental managers agreed with the recommendations, with corrective actions underway for completion this year.
The actual Inspector General report is here.
Here is a previous interview with DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, where he gives clues that he is in way above his head.
Government Drags Us Back in Time – Because Cronies and Ideology Tell It To
Motley/RS: Government by ideological fantasy – at the expense of actual facts – is a terrible idea. So too is government of, by and for the donors. Far too often government regulators and bureaucrats ignore Reality – to tilt at ideological windmills. And WAY too often government becomes one giant stenographer for contributors – writing laws and regulations to accommodate their check-cutters’ every whim and wildest dream.
Thus does equal protection before the law – become special treatment for Friends of Government (FOG, if you will). Donors and dumb ideas are favored – at inordinate expense to the rest of us.
To wit: “green” “energy” (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, ethanol) is neither green nor energy. It’s far worse for the environment than traditional energy sources – that actually produce, you know, affordable energy. Governments here and all around the world have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this phony energy. It’s been a titanic failure – for decades.
Why has government continued to throw this copious coin out the window – to keep us locked into an uber-failed yesterday? Because their ideological fantasies trump Reality. Why else? Because donors get government money at dollars-on-the-pennies they donated. To wit: President Barack Obama and his Democrats threw $80 billion more at the fake “green energy” industry in the 2009 “Stimulus.” 80% of that money – went to Obama donors.
The more government gets involved – the less the private sector can advance. The more rapidly a sector is advancing – the bigger an impediment government is. Likely no sector is advancing more quickly than the Tech sector. Enter government.
The Obama Administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has already done egregious damage there. To appease their ridiculous fantasies – and huge donors. About a year ago the Commission’s three unelected Democrat bureaucrats decided to go all the way back in time to1934 landline telephone law – and unilaterally impose it on the Internet. Behold Internet Reclassification – so as to impose the ridiculous Network Neutrality.
The Obama Administration did it – because donors asked for it. Donors like Google. No one did more to get President Obama elected and reelected – than Google. Just about no company swapped staff with the Obama Administration at such prodigious numbers – than did Google.
And after Google greased the skids for Obama – Obama greased the skids for Google. Google spent nearly the entirety of the 2000s trying and failing to get Net Neutrality passed in Congress. Because it is government forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to give uber-bandwidth-hogs like Google – unlimited free bandwidth. We the People didn’t want it – Congress couldn’t pass it. So Obama just issued a fiat – and gave it to them.
But the problem with buying support – is that the “supporters” rarely stay bought. Google is now channeling West Wing President Josiah Bartlet – “What’s next?” And most unfortunately, President Obama’s government stenographers have many, many responses to that request.
Here’s one: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has penned a defense of the next backwards-looking power grab – huge new backdoor mandates via television set-top-boxes. Which they have attempted to obfuscate – as a deregulation of set-top-boxes.
Set-top-boxes are the devices we lease from cable companies – to watch their television packages. Which we are doing to a lesser and lesser degree – as the marketplace has already created myriad ways for us to “cut the cord.” Meaning give up cable television – and the set-top-boxes – altogether.
The future (and increasingly the present) of television – isn’t boxes. It’s apps (and alternate hardware like Apple TV and Amazon Firestick). Netflix, Amazon Prime, Roku, Hulu and a host of other companies deliver you (via their apps) unlimited streaming TV and movie content – using only an Internet connection. No cable TV subscription required. And unlike programmed TV, you can watch whenever you want, wherever you want. So more and more people are cutting their cords.
Meanwhile, the government is yet again stuck in the past. The FCC is dubiously invoking a twenty-year-old law (and seriously, how unbelievably different was how we watched TV twenty-years ago?) – to “open” to competitors the collapsing set-top-box market. This is a terrible idea for a number of reasons.
It is just stupid from an evolutionary standpoint. This is like the government issuing mandates to “open” the horse-buggy industry – as Model T Fords are rolling with ever increasing frequency into our driveways and hearts. If you’re “helping” prop up yesterday’s technology – you aren’t helping.
This mandate forces cable companies to spend a LOT of money totally reconfiguring their networks – to accommodate the new boxes. A new configuration for each new box, most likely – because each box will most likely connect uniquely to each network. And cable companies have a LOT of proprietary information and content to protect – so they will have to spend EVEN MORE time and money reconfiguring so as to ensure its protection. For which we will inexorably pay in higher fees – on TV, and the other services cable companies provide (like Internet). All to make room for more devices – of which people want less.
And you will be trading the box lease – for the box purchase. Which requires more coin upfront. And unlike with the lease, when the next upgraded model comes out – you won’t get it for free. You will pay all over again. And given the rapid technological advancement – how often will that purchase have to happen again, and again, and…?
Think how quick is the smart phone tech turnover (which is a MUCH more intensive product). Where you just purchased the “latest” Google Android – only to almost immediately watch Google roll out the next Android. Does Google give you that next version for free? Of course not. Google won’t give you their latest set-top-box either.
Wait – Google wants to get into the going-out-of-business set-top-box business? You bet they do. So the Obama Administration is prepping to issue yet another fiat – to make Google’s wishes come true. Again.
Crony-infested and ideologically-blinded is no way to go through life, Son. It is also absolutely no way to run a government.
Ted Cruz is right, but there is a caveat, a White House cartel inside the Washington cartel.
Pollock/DCNF: Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials secretly conducted real-time exercises during the 2011 and 2013 debt-limit crisis that demonstrated the federal government could function during a temporary shutdown by prioritizing spending, even as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew publicly claimed many times that such efforts were “unworkable,” according to a new report by the House Financial Services Committee obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.The staff report, to be released Tuesday, charges that Lew and other Obama administration officials deliberately misled Congress and the public during the federal budget and debt limit showdowns in both years. The committee will convene a public hearing on the report Feb. 2.
The report also states that the Obama administration crafted actual contingency plans to pay for Social Security and veterans benefits, as well as principal and interest on the national debt if the government was temporarily unable to borrow more money. The Committee concludes that over the last two years the Treasury Department has “obstructed” congressional efforts to get to the bottom of the administration’s real-time policy during the two showdowns.
The Constitution stipulates that only Congress can determine how much money the federal government can borrow. Presidents thus cannot unilaterally spend beyond congressional debt ceiling limits set. The committee — chaired by Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas — charged that during both confrontations, the Obama administration held the country’s creditworthiness “hostage” by claiming default was the only possibility if the debit ceiling was not raised.
“These internal documents show the Obama Administration took the nation’s creditworthiness and economy hostage in a cynical attempt to create a crisis so the president could get what he wanted during negotiations over the debt ceiling,” Hensarling said in a statement to be released with the report Tuesday.
The report also revealed that the Treasury Department did not publicly divulge its plans to prioritize payments “for the express purpose of creating market uncertainty in an effort to pressure Congress to acquiesce in the administration’s ‘no negotiation’ posture on the debt ceiling.”
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Sean Duffy, the financial services panel’s oversight subcommittee chairman, said the administration “manufactured a crisis to put politics ahead of economic stability.”
The massive, 322-page report chronicles frank, behind-the-scenes discussions among Federal Reserve Board and Federal Bank of New York officials as Congress debated whether to keep existing debt limits or allow Treasury to borrow more money. The House committee and the Treasury Department have been fighting a bitter, two-year battle over Federal Reserve documents.
The report states that “Treasury apparently directed the New York Fed not to answer valid congressional oversight inquiries because Treasury knew the answers would expose the dishonesty of the administration’s public statements.”
A Treasury Department spokesman told TheDCNF, “Treasury has been committed to working cooperatively with the Committee to provide it with the information it needs,” including providing it with the New York Fed documents. The report is based on 3,878 pages of internal documents the committee eventually acquired despite Treasury’s opposition. The panel finally obtained the documents by subpoena. The report contains 41 separate appendices.
The revelations will likely add new intensity to the long-running public debate on the proper level of federal spending as the 2016 election campaign accelerates with Monday’s Iowa presidential caucus and next week’s New Hampshire presidential primary. Obama administration officials repeatedly declared that a complete government shutdown with no partial or interim payments was the only alternative to congressional approval of an increased debt ceiling.
In testimony Oct. 13, 2013, before the Senate Finance Committee, for example, Lew said the government could not “pick and choose” the funding of individual government programs once the debt limit ceiling was reached.
“I do not believe there is a way to pick and choose on a broad basis. The system was not designed to be turned off selectively,” Lew said.
The Federal Reserve documents revealed in the report show the Obama administration was in fact prepared to pick and choose which payments to make “in order to protect the creditworthiness of the United States.”
An internal e-mail from an official in the New York Fed’s Financial Institution Supervision Group states that regardless of the congressional outcome, “Treasury is adamant they will make [Principal and Interest] payments. Not considering possibility of missing debt payments.” The P&I payments are made to Treasury bond holders.
“At the same time that Treasury was insisting to Congress and the American people that prioritization is unworkable, Treasury and New York Fed officials were working behind the scenes on a prioritization plan,” the report charges.
In private, Federal Reserve Board Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials vigorously denounced the administration’s secrecy over its contingency planning, one calling it “crazy, counter-productive, and add[ing] risk to an already risky situation.”
Federal Reserve Governor Jerome H. Powell, for example, complained that the administration tactics were part of political brinkmanship. “Treasury wants to maximize pressure on Congress by limiting communications on contingency planning,” he said in an email.
The report noted that both the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Bank of New York had “grave concerns with Treasury’s political decision not to inform the public of the administration’s debt ceiling contingency plans.”
The Federal Reserve Board staff “strongly encouraged Treasury to reveal its plan in advance” so that the private sector could prepare properly for a debt ceiling event but Treasury officials were “very reluctant to do so,” according to the report.
The Federal Reserve documents also depict officials at the Federal Bank of New York twice engaging in intense “tabletop exercises” about how government agencies could operate under a spending limit.
A March 16, 2011, table-top exercise included an hour-by-hour simulation of how 29 governmental agencies and market players would react when the federal government reached its debt limit.
At the time, the federal government would be within $25 million of its $14.3 trillion budget limit. The Secretary of the Treasury would invoke the Federal Reserve Debt Ceiling Crisis procedures, which provide that the “The President and the Secretary of the Treasury meet with the Fed Chairman at noon and agree that the Federal Reserve should pursue actions to honor and settle SSI, veterans benefits and P&I payments.” SSI refers to Social Security and disability payments.
A similar April 9, 2013, debt ceiling table-top exercise focused on a “scenario” in which “Treasury begins controlling the flow of payments” and in which ”SSI, veterans benefits and P&I payments [would] be prioritized over all other governmental obligations.” The debt ceiling was $16.3 trillion at the time of the second exercise.
The procedures also state that “based on direction from the President, Treasury will pay only selected type of payments and withhold other government payments.”
Both Moody’s and Goldman Sachs publicly suggested during the 2013 crisis that it was possible the government could assure markets by pledging to pay principal and interest, Social Social and veterans benefits.
When contacted by TheDCNF, the Treasury Department did not directly address the issue of prioritizing payments but forwarded an October 16, 2015 blog, which stated in part, “The New York Fed’s system would be technologically capable of continuing to make principal and interest payment,” but added, “this approach would be entirely experimental and create unacceptable risk to both domestic and global financial markets.”
Multiple think tanks, including the Mercatus Center, have released reports suggesting numerous alternatives to default if the debt limit ceiling is not increased.
The national debt limit has tripled under Obama and now stands at $18.9 trillion.
