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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (43842)	6/18/2010 8:01:04 AM
From: jlallen	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

I give Fox News about as much validity as Perez Hilton What do you consider "legitimate"? The NYT? LOL!!! You're a nitwit.

To: RMF who wrote (43842)	6/18/2010 11:04:20 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Experts Disavow Salazar’s Drilling Moratorium By Stephen Power and Siobhan Hughes A group of technical experts who advised the Obama administration on how to bolster the safety of offshore drilling operations say they oppose the administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling. Halting the work risks “harming thousand of workers” who “were and are active responsibly and are providing a product the nation demands,” they said. The eight experts - all longtime petroleum engineers, some affiliated with major universities - are listed in a report published by the Interior Department last month as having “peer reviewed” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s recommendations on improving the safety of drilling on the outer continental shelf in the wake of the April 20 oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. In a statement releasedat a Senate hearing Wednesday, the experts say they never agreed to the administration’s six-month moratorium on exploratory drilling on the outer continental shelf, including operations that had already been granted government permits. The experts said the language about the moratorium did not appear in the draft they had reviewed. “This tragedy had very specific causes. A blanket moratorium will have the indirect effect of harming thousands of workers and further impact state and local economies suffering from the spill. We would in effect be punishing a large swath of people who were and are acting responsibly and are providing a product the nation demands,” the statement said. Signers included Kenneth Arnold, a member of the National Academy of Engineers; Robert Bea, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and Benton Baugh, president of Radoil Inc., a maker of oilfield and subsea products. At a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Salazar said he “appreciated” the advice from the experts but that “it was not their decision on the moratorium — it was my decision and the president’s decision.” A Salazar spokeswoman acknowledged the experts “were not asked to review or comment on the proposed moratorium and that they peer-reviewed the report on a technical basis.” She added the moratorium was based on “the need for a comprehensive review of safety in deepwater operations in light of the BP oil spill.” Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) seized on the engineers’ statement, calling it “further proof that [Obama] administration policy is guided by emotion and politics, not facts.” “Thousands of Louisianans are going to be out of work because the president wanted a get-tough headline,” he said.

To: RMF who wrote (43842)	6/18/2010 11:59:56 AM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

blogs.wsj.com

To: RMF who wrote (43842)	6/19/2010 2:23:27 PM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Obama Admin. Argues in Court That Individual Mandate Is a Tax By Philip Klein on 6.17.10 @ 2:04PM In order to protect the new national health care law from legal challenges, the Obama administration has been forced to argue that the individual mandate represents a tax -- even though Obama himself argued the exact opposite while campaigning to pass the legislation. Late last night, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the Florida-based lawsuit against the health care law, arguing that the court lacks jurisdiction and that the State of Florida and fellow plaintiffs haven't presented a claim for which the court can grant relief. To bolster its case, the DOJ cited the Anti-Injunction Act, which restricts courts from interfering with the government's ability to collect taxes. The Act, according to a DOJ memo supporting the motion to dismiss, says that "no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed." The memo goes on to say that it makes no difference whether the disputed payment it is called a "tax" or "penalty," because either way, it's "assessed and collected in the same manner" by the Internal Revenue Service. But this is a characterization that Democrats, and specifically Obama, angrily denounced during the health care debate. Most prominently, in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama argued that the mandate was "absolutely not a tax increase," and he dug into his view even after being confronted with a dictionary definition: OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what... STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but... OBAMA: ...what you're saying is... STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase. OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I'm taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we're going to have an individual mandate or not, but... STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it's a tax increase? OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion. At the time Obama made that statement, the Senate Finance Committee had just released its own health care bill, which clearly referred to the mandate penalty as an "excise tax." But in later versions, the word "tax" was stripped, because it had become too much of a political liability for Democrats. The final version that Obama signed did not describe the mandate as a tax, and used the Commerce Clause -- not federal taxing power -- as the Constitutional justification for the mandate. ""This is an about face from what is laid out in the law," said Karen Harned of the National Federation of Independent Business, which joined the Florida lawsuit against ObamaCare. "In the text of the healthcare law, the findings for passing an individual mandate specifically rely on the effects of individuals on the national economy and interstate commerce. Nowhere in the findings is the mandate referred to as a tax. The Justice Department is now calling it a tax to try and convince the court not to rule on whether or not Congress exceeded their authority under the Commerce Clause by legislating that all citizens must purchase private health insurance or face a penalty." Put another way, the administration is now arguing in federal court that Obama signed a massive middle-class tax increase, in violation of his campaign pledge. spectator.org