http://townhall.com/cartoons/2010/12/29/76893

Obama's Czars: The Hidden Government

They enjoy wide-ranging bureaucratic authority beyond the purview of Congress, earn six-figure salaries, and exhibit political views that reflect a distinct tilt to the left.

They're called President Obama's "czars," special advisers with sweeping powers, and Obama has gone far beyond his predecessors in naming nearly 40 of them to high-level positions.

From health reform czar, border czar, counterterrorism czar, urban czar, and global-warming czar to faith-based czar, domestic violence czar, stimulus accountability czar, Eurasian energy czar, Great Lakes czar, and safe-schools czar, they almost all have several things in common: They were never elected, they were never confirmed by the Senate, and the have immense power over our government and our lives.

When green jobs czar Van Jones resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, Newsmax opened a special investigation to find out who are Obama's czars and what their real agenda is.

Newsmax magazine's special report "Obama's Czars" takes an in-depth look at Obama's army of advisers, who seem to some critics part of an audacious end-run around congressional authority.

Do these appointed czars threaten our democracy? http://w3.newsmax.com/a/dec09/?s=al&promo_code=B623-1                                                              

cartoons@townhallmail.com

Big Nannies of the Year

It was a nefarious year for nettlesome nosy-bodies employed by the Nanny State. Here are the top power-grabbers of 2010 who just can't leave us alone:

-- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Two feet of snow paralyzed trains, buses, plows and emergency vehicles in the Big Apple this week. Perhaps if Bloomberg -- the nation's top self-appointed municipal food cop -- spent more of his time on core government duties instead of waging incessant war on taxpayers' salt, soda, trans-fat and sugar intakes, his battered bailiwick would have been better equipped to weather the storm.

-- Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. He proposed meddling mileage taxes, mused about a system to track drivers' routes, lobbied for high-speed rail boondoggles and promoted a "livability initiative" to limit suburban growth and force dwellers into public transportation. Then America's driving czar floated a plan earlier this fall to disable cell phones through some kind of centralized government mechanism. LaHood backed off that creepy crusade, but he is still intent on waging war against drivers who choose to use cell phones, entertainment systems and GPS devices on the road. Just last week, the unstoppable control freak proposed a new rule banning truck and bus drivers from any use of cell phones while driving -- including emergency calls on hands-free devices. His anti-car agenda is stuck in overdrive.

-- The city of Cleveland. The green police in this Midwestern metropolis made headlines in February with an intrusive plan to roll out electronic snooping trash cans -- "smart" rubbish bins bugged with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes to monitor residents' recycling habits. Violators can be fined $100. Federal stimulus money has gone to fund similar programs in Dayton, Ohio. The technology originated in Germany, was adopted by eco-authoritarians in England (where at least 500,000 trash cans are now embedded with snitch chips) and has spread across Europe. Welcome to the age of Bin Brother. To read more on these out of control idiots follow this link: http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2010/12/29/big_nannies_of_the_year

Obama Embraces 'Death Panel' Concept in Medicare Rule

During the stormy debate over his healthcare plan, President Barack Obama promised his program would not "pull the plug on grandma" and dropped plans for death panels and "end of life" counseling. But earlier this month the administration seemingly flouted the will of Congress by quietly issuing a new Medicare regulation that "may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment," The New York Times reported. http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/obama-death-panels-medicare/2010/12/26/id/381043?s=al&promo_code=B5BE-1
Bailey: Who are these people who come up with these regulations? I don't think you or I would give complete strangers the right to decide the time for us to die. If and when it happens it should be up to that person or their family's to make that decision. The government is already trying to tell you what to eat and what to feed your children, now they want to tell you when to die.

Saudi King Interested in Moving Ground Zero Mosque

A New York lawyer with ties to the Saudi royal family claims the desert kingdom’s King Abdullah might want to move the controversial ground zero mosque to an Islamic cultural center he would build on the site of a shuttered Manhattan hospital. According to attorney Dudley Gaffin, the king also would pay to reopen most of the hospital units that closed when St. Vincent’s Medical Center filed for bankruptcy in April, sources told the New York Post.

Gaffin is floating the possibility to gauge community reaction, the New York Post reported Sunday in a story it labeled as an exclusive.

"He's asking what it would take to put in a bid," the Post quoted a community leader who did not want to be identified as saying. "He says the king wants to do this as a PR move — to save the hospital and move the mosque away from the World Trade Center site. He wants to show that Muslims can do good works."

The 87-year-old king is recovering from back surgery at another Manhattan hospital.

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/ground-zero-mosque-Saudi/2010/12/20/id/380509?s=al&promo_code=B55E-1

Congressional Salaries on the Rise Even as Obama Freezes Federal Wages

WASHINGTON -- For a guy who insists that federal bureaucrats make too much money, incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor sure doesn't mind handing out handsome government raises of his own.

Cantor, the Virginia Republican who has led the GOP charge this year to freeze federal salaries, has boosted his congressional office's payroll by 81 percent since coming to Congress in 2001 -- about 8 percent per year through 2009. When he became minority whip last year, the office's personnel expenses went up by at least 16 percent.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/20/congressional-salaries-rise-obama-freezes-federal-wages/

Bailey: For the ones that still don't get it there is always 2012 coming up!

Facing Closure, U.S.'s Largest Sleeping Bag Maker Seeks Relief From Free Trade Loophole

The country's largest manufacturer of sleeping bags says new competition from Bangladesh could force it out of business if the U.S. does not level the playing field.

Exxel Outdoors Inc., which employs nearly 70 workers in its Alabama factory and makes about 2 million sleeping bags per year, has been pressing the Obama administration to lift an exemption that lets Bangladesh import sleeping bags into the country without paying a 9 percent tariff.

"You can't leave an American manufacturer at a competitive disadvantage with a foreign worker," Harry Kazazian, chief executive of the company, told FoxNews.com.

But that's apparently what the Obama administration has done, turning down the company's request in an initial ruling and forcing Exxel to submit another request.

The office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which is reviewing Exxel's request, told FoxNews.com that its review will conclude in the spring and that President Obama would have to sign off on any changes to the list of duty-free products – changes that would go into effect before July 1.
"We take Exxel's concerns seriously," the office said in a statement.
Exxel is also seeking help from Congress.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., has tried to slap a tariff on Bangladesh sleeping bags but he has been unable to sway his fellow lawmakers to change the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences, or GSP, which determines which products third-world countries can import duty free.
So Sessions has placed a hold on the annual GSP bill, making it all but certain that the program will lapse at the end of this month.
"I have supported free trade, probably more than my colleagues," he said on the Senate floor Friday. "But I have worked for two years to try to obtain a simple justice to close a loophole in the tariff laws that has impacted and will close a sleeping bag textile manufacturer in my state."

"They are an independent, hard-working people," he said. "And this bill as written will close that plant. And it should not happen. "

Sleeping bag imports have been on the duty-free list since Czechoslovakia successfully lobbied for it in the early 1990s. But the country, which split soon afterward into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, never followed through with its plan to get into the sleeping bag business, leaving the loophole dormant until Bangladesh took advantage in recent years, an Exxel official told FoxNews.com.

The company says it has been able to compete with China because the communist regime isn't exempt from the tariff on its sleeping bag imports. But the company says in 2009 it began losing major orders from large U.S. retailers because of new sleeping bag operations in Bangladesh flooding the market with their imports.

Exxel says if its factory is forced to move offshore or close down, the economic ripple effect would hurt the company's U.S. vendors, such as suppliers of sewing thread, sleeping bag fill, packaging, as well as suppliers of trucking services and other factory supplies.

Kazazian, said it is ironic to be in this situation after he moved his factory from Mexico to Alabama a few years ago, adding jobs to the economy.

"If the playing field should be tilted, it should be tilted in an American manufacturer's favor," he said, adding that he's not looking for a hand out.

"I want the law to be interpreted the way it should be and the playing field leveled," he said.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/18/facing-closure-uss-largest-sleeping-bag-maker-seeks-relief-free-trade-loophole/?test=latestnews

Bailey: This is why our country is in financial trouble now! Some dumb politician in our government wants to give a break to a overseas company that probably only pays their workers a dollar a day! How can an American company compete with that, especially when our own government seems to be putting Bangladesh's interest over our own!