And people wonder why we call the President a socialist

Obama dedicates Chavez national monument

Original Post: Bakersfield Californian

BY JAMES BURGER, COURTENAY EDELHART AND STEVEN MAYER, Californian staff writers

KEENE — President Barack Obama on Monday declared La Paz, the nickname of the United Farm Workers union headquarters and onetime home of Cesar Chavez, a national monument and said it will help tell the story of “who we are as Americans.”

He said the story is about hardworking people determined to make America “a little more just, a little more free.”

Before his speech, Obama laid a single red rose on the grave of Chavez.

The sun-splashed event at the longtime UFW compound was crowded with about 6,600 visitors, but many others were unexpectedly shut out.

Organizers said too many people had responded to an email invitation, so over the weekend they began disinviting hundreds, if not thousands, of those who thought they could attend. Facebook pages quickly filled up with the comments of unhappy people whose dream to see the president would be thwarted.

Obama’s brief speech, in large part, was a tribute to Chavez and his family, and by extension, to the indomitable spirit of the American people.The nation’s monuments, Obama said, tell a story of people, of determined, fearless, hopeful people who have always been willing to devote their lives to making this country a little more just and a little more free.

“And one of those people lies here, beneath the rose garden at the foot of a hill he used to climb to watch the sunrise,” he said.

Chavez, Obama said, embodied the hope and determination that has been evident in generations of immigrants who looked to America, not just as a place to set down roots, but as a land of unlimited possibilities, for themselves and their posterity.

The president stayed away from overt campaign language, never mentioning the upcoming election or his Republican opponent. His only nod to the election was an acknowledgement that the work Chavez began is not yet finished, that more work needs to be done.

Before Obama spoke, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa addressed the audience.

Villaraigosa said Chavez taught America “the promise of freedom is not always for the powerful but also the powerless. Not just for those who owned the fields but also the people who worked the fields.”

Solis said Chavez’s legacy is that “work is not just a source of income, it’s a source of dignity” and that Chavez “brought the plight of farmworkers to anyone who would listen and some who would not.”

Salazar said the Interior Department is working to make sure national monuments reflect all people of all backgrounds.

The crowd erupted into cheers as Cesar Chavez Foundation President Paul Chavez, Cesar's son, took the stage and talked about his father’s connection to Nuestra Señora Reina de La Paz.

"He found the place where he could plan and strategize," he said. "But it was more than that for my father. La Paz became a spiritual harbor for him."

Next to come to the stage was UFW President Arturo Rodriguez.

"Si se puede," he shouted, the UFW motto. He was echoed by the crowd.

Farmworkers and supporters from 25 states came to the event, Rodriguez said.

The monument is, he said, a tribute to Chavez but also to the thousands of people who still carry on the legacy he left behind.

"Each farmworker can change the world," Rodriguez said.

Then he introduced Obama.

"Si se puede," the president shouted. The crowd shouted back, "Si se puede."

The president spoke for about 10 minutes then headed back to Meadows Field for departure out of Bakersfield.

Before making his remarks, Obama stopped to visit Cesar Chavez’s grave.

The gravesite sits amid a lush garden surrounded by low, white adobe walls and arbors of dark wood beams covered in climbing vines. Planters of river rock and terra cotta pots contain a wide variety of flowers and plants. Walkways and steps lead up to the grave, which is flanked by two planters full of red roses.

The Chavez grave is marked by an unpainted wooden cross and low stone marker that sits alone in the midst of a plot of well-tended grass.

Obama was joined by Chavez’s widow, Helen Chavez; Huerta; Paul Chavez; and Rodriguez. The president talked quietly with Helen Chavez at the grave then listened as Paul Chavez, standing in a white shirt, explained the words engraved behind the grave:

“It is my deepest belief that only by giving of our lives do we find life.”

Obama left the gravesite with his arms around Huerta and Helen Chavez.

The president’s visit came a little less than a month before election day, timing not lost on many political pundits and everyday voters who pointed out Obama’s need to turn out the Latino electorate.

Most polls, including CNN’s national survey of likely Latino voters, show Obama is expected to receive close to 70 percent of the Latino vote Nov. 6. But Latino Americans, as a whole, are less likely to vote than whites and blacks, and Latinos are reporting less enthusiasm for the 2012 race than they reported four years ago.

MEMORIES Thousands began arriving at La Paz as early as 4:30 a.m. to watch Obama dedicate the monument.

Victor Garza brought his 10-year-old son, Arik. The longtime civil rights activist from Fresno has come to pray and meditate at the center but said this visit was special.

“I wanted to bring my son to meet President Obama because it’s something that he can remember and cherish for the rest of his life,” he said.

Cesar Chavez Elementary School in northeast Bakersfield brought 23 second- through fifth-graders to the event to sing the program’s closing song.

They wore khaki pants or skirts and navy blue school uniform shirts. The girls wore patriotic red, white and blue ribbons in their hair.

They were happy to be there even though the trip in was grueling.

“It was very long, exhausting and slow,” said fifth-grader Kylie Lopez, 9. “But it’s very exciting. I have only seen (Obama) on television and in pictures.”

Roberta Cumberland, 55, of Bakersfield, woke up at 6 a.m. to head out from Bakersfield with her daughter Cara Cumberland, 28.

"I've actually never been to anything political or anything like this before, so this is my first experience like this," Cara said.

Her mother said she wanted to come because she admires both Chavez and the president and considered the event a historic milestone.

"This is the first time a president I've actually supported has come to Kern County," Roberta said.

Cal State Bakersfield seniors Gracy Mendez, 25, and Maria Moreno, 21, said the speech was well worth rising at 4:45 a.m. to get to La Paz from southwest Bakersfield.

"I thought it was inspiring," Mendez said.

Moreno called the address "touching."

"I love the way he used the ‘Si se puede’ slogan from Cesar Chavez."

The Rev. John Schmoll of St. Augustine Church in Lamont wore a UFW cap. His pastor's collar peeked out from beneath a black T-shirt with "Who would Jesus deport?" in bold white letters.

He said the church office closed Monday so its small staff could come, and the speech was "well worth waiting for. You could live your whole life and never see a president, and it was a good speech to top it all off."

Red, White and Angry : Communist, Nazi parties endorse ‘Occupy’ protests

Original Post: Daily Caller

By David Martosko



Protestors participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests march towards Wall Street Friday, Oct. 14, 2011, in New York. At least ten people were arrested during the march, which began after protestors heard the news that the owners of Zuccotti Park had withdrawn their request to have the park cleaned by the New York Police Department. (AP Photo/Andrew Burton)

In a move that may redefine the term “strange bedfellows,” the American Nazi Party issued an official endorsement of the Occupy Wall Street protest movement on Sunday afternoon. The announcement put the organization, a self-described “National Socialist” political party, in company with the Socialist Party USA, which explained its own support for the left-wing protesters in a nationwide conference call last Tuesday night, crediting organized labor with the protests’ strength and sophistication to date.

The American Nazi Party is the most politically sophisticated U.S. remnant — but by no means the only one — of white supremacist Adolph Hitler’s murderous 20th century movement. The party calls Hitler’s Mein Kampf “an ideological blueprint for healthy Aryan survival.”

In its statement on Sunday, the Westland, Mich.-based Nazi party wrote that the Occupy Wall Street protests are “TAYLOR [sic] MADE for National Socialists, as well as WN [White Nationalists] who are serious about DOING SOMETHING.”

“I urgently URGE all of you,” the statement’s unnamed author added, “to TAKE PART and JOIN IN when these protests hit your neck of the woods. Produce some flyers EXPLAINING the ‘JEW BANKER’ influence — DON’T wear anything marking you as an ‘evil racist’ — and GET OUT THERE and SPREAD the WORD!”

While Nazis seem unenthusiastic about visibly linking their flagship organization to the vocal protests that have popped up in dozens of U.S. cities, the same can’t be said of the Communist Party USA.

John Bachtell, an Illinois-based community organizer and Communist Party USA board member, addressed the “Occupy Chicago” protest on Saturday.

“I bring greetings and solidarity from the Communist Party,” Bachtell said to hoots and applause. “We are here, marching side-by-side. We’ll sleep here. We’ll be with this movement ’til the very – ’til we make all the changes that we know we have to make.”

Bachtell also organized the Tuesday evening conference call, with an online call to action that framed the Communist Party’s involvement as one part of a larger movement uniting the “Occupy” protesters with a “Week of Action for Jobs” organized by the AFL-CIO, and with congressional Democrats’ push to pass President Obama’s American Jobs Act.

“While there is a wide range of political and ideological trends,” he wrote, “there is a consensus against corporate greed, getting money out of politics, taxing the rich and putting people before profits.

“A big challenge for the CPUSA and left, progressive movements is to link these demonstrations with the labor led all-people’s coalition and help deepen understanding that the path to progress must be through electoral and political action including defeating Republican Tea Party reaction in 2012.”

Communist Party USA Secretary/Treasurer Roberta Wood moderated the conference call, which she announced halfway through had attracted 88 callers.

“’We are [the] 99 percent.’ What a beautiful idea. It re-draws the fault lines of society,” said Wood, a former executive board member of United Steel Workers Local 65 who has also been labor editor of the People’s Weekly World.

“We as communists are also part of that 99 percent. Our deep involvement in our communities and workplaces and unions and neighborhood organizations [will] strengthen a new national conversation that will no doubt impact the future of our country.”

Southern California Communist Party leader Arturo Cambron also addressed the call, praising “the growing of the occupying community.”

“We’ve been getting a lot of support from an unusual amount of very, very broad forces,” Cambron added. “The movement has gone [on] to get the endorsement of a lot of trade unions, including the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, which is I think one of the most powerful, most progressive labor organizations in the country.”

John Wojcik, labor editor for the People’s World, told the conference call that after a recent Occupy Chicago march, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka “was speaking to law students at the Chicago-Kent Law School just a few blocks away. And they heard him urge support for Occupy Wall Street, and offered them use of union halls [and] other resources. And he was using their language. He said we have an economy, a political process, that isn’t serving ‘the 99 percent.’”

Communist Party USA leader Jim Lane, calling in from Dallas, added that “the Texas AFL-CIO published contact information, urged participation everywhere, and sent their whole staff to the Austin action.” With its embrace of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Nazis’ path has become remarkably similar to that of organized U.S. communists, with its primary distinguishing feature being the white supremacists’ near-universal blame of Jews for what they see as the worst features of capitalism.

“The pro-white movementites should be JOINING this Occupy movement and supporting it!” read a statement published Thursday on the American Nazi Party-affiliated “White Honor” website.

“Even Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP had to vote with open communists on some issues to achieve their goals. WE need to utilize and support every movement of dissent against this evil American empire, regardless of which end of the political spectrum it originates from.”

The NSDAP was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, rendered in English as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

On the same website, American Nazi Party chairman Rocky Suhayda wrote Thursday that it was “time to pull WN [White Nationalists’] heads out of their collective ass’s [sic], and JOIN IN the attack on Judeo-Capitalism.”

In a 2009 feature exploring why some white supremacists supported the newly inaugurated President Barack Obama, Esquire magazine noted that Suhayda’s claim to fame was “Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: ‘If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere.’”

While the Occupy Wall Street movement has become a radical kitchen sink of left-wing social gripes focusing most of its rage on bankers and capitalism, anti-Semitic insinuations are now more common than when protests first began September 17 in New York City.

Speaking to Reason TV on October 12, Occupy Los Angeles protester Patricia McAllister said that “the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government — they need to be run out of this country.”

McAllister introduced herself to the cameraman as an employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

As the “Occupy” protests gather steam, nearly all of their momentum is still provided by organizers on the far left end of America’s political spectrum. But the entry of real-life Nazis indicates an unprecedented broadening of a U.S. protest movement.

The American Nazi Party’s official Twitter account proclaimed on Saturday that “The Protests Are Going To Become Much More Frightening…. One can only hope.”

Obama’s Top Lawyer: If You Don’t Like The Individual Mandate, Earn Less Income

Original Post: Forbes

Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner has been following some of the oral arguments in the constitutional challenges of Obamacare’s individual mandate, which requires all citizens to buy health insurance. Over at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, Neal Kumar Katyal, the acting Solicitor General, was charged with defending the law. (Generally speaking, the job of the Solicitor General is to represent the federal government in Supreme Court cases.)

Katyal, when asked about the individual mandate, pointed out that the mandate “only kicks in after people have earned a minimum amount of income,” so what’s the big deal? “Someone doesn’t need to earn that much income.” More from Klein:

During the Sixth Circuit arguments, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, asked Kaytal if he could name one Supreme Court case which considered the same question as the one posed by the mandate, in which Congress used the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution as a tool to compel action.

Kaytal conceded that the Supreme Court had “never been confronted directly” with the question, but cited the Heart of Atlanta Motel case as a relevant example. In that landmark 1964 civil rights case, the Court ruled that Congress could use its Commerce Clause power to bar discrimination by private businesses such as hotels and restaurants.

“They’re in the business,” Sutton pushed back. “They’re told if you’re going to be in the business, this is what you have to do. In response to that law, they could have said, ‘We now exit the business.’ Individuals don’t have that option.”

Kaytal responded by noting that the there’s a provision in the health care law that allows people to avoid the mandate.

“If we’re going to play that game, I think that game can be played here as well, because after all, the minimum coverage provision only kicks in after people have earned a minimum amount of income,” Kaytal said. “So it’s a penalty on earning a certain amount of income and self insuring. It’s not just on self insuring on its own. So I guess one could say, just as the restaurant owner could depart the market in Heart of Atlanta Motel, someone doesn’t need to earn that much income. I think both are kind of fanciful and I think get at…”

Sutton interjected, “That wasn’t in a single speech given in Congress about this…the idea that the solution if you don’t like it is make a little less money.”

Katyal is more right than he knows. The mandate, combined with Obamacare’s exchange subsidies, will create profound disincentives for individuals to make more money; i.e., become more economically productive. This will crimp tax revenues and slow economic growth, leading to higher unemployment and larger budget deficits. All for a policy that will only exacerbate the free-rider problem.

More communist warship from Democrat Barbara Boxer

Sen. Boxer cheers naming of the USNS Cesar Chavez
Original Post: Dailycaller

While the idea of naming a U.S. Naval ship after labor leader Cesar Chavez has roiled some, California Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer is thrilled that the activist will be receiving the honor.

Boxer called Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus Tuesday to thank him for the decision.

“I applaud Secretary Mabus for continuing the Navy’s rich tradition of naming these supply ships after pioneers, explorers and visionaries by honoring César Chávez, who worked tirelessly to promote fair working conditions and equal rights for all Americans,” Boxer said in a statement. “This is a fitting tribute to Chávez, who served in the Navy, and follows the Navy’s recent decisions to name other supply ships after American visionaries from Medgar Evers to Amelia Earhart to Lewis and Clark.”

Republican California Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had a very different opinion. He said that it was indicative of the Navy’s politicization.

“This decision shows the direction the Navy is heading. Naming a ship after Cesar Chavez goes right along with other recent decisions by the Navy that appear to be more about making a political statement than upholding the Navy’s history and tradition,” he said.

According to Hunter, if the Navy is trying to honor the Hispanic community there are people far better suited for that distinction, including Marine Corps Sergeant Rafael Peralta, a Medal of Honor nominee, and World War II Medal of Honor winner John Finn.

Chavez was a labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (which later became the United Farm Workers). He was know for his agressive yet non-violent tactics to organize and demand workers’ rights.

The T-AKE 14 ship to be named is currently under construction at General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego. It is expected to be ready by late 2012.

Update 6:26 : Boxer Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and 13 other Democratic Senators sent a letter of support to Mabus Wednesday.

“Those who have criticized the Navy’s decision to name this ship after César Chávez show a disappointing lack of knowledge of the standards and traditions that are such an important part of United States Navy history,” the letter reads.