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Monday, October 29, 2007 Congress' Halloween Agenda: Safeguard Cross-Dressing 'Rights' By Ernest Istook "Doesn't Congress have anything better to do?" Conservatives are asked this when they pursue legislation to curb abortion or pornography. So what have liberals in Congress put on the agenda instead? Cross-dressing. They're fighting about this in Congress, although few media are reporting it. Self-selected "gender identity" would become the law of the land, supplanting what activists deride as "gender assigned at birth." Employers would be punished if they didn't accept cross-dressing. Even to the point that guys dressed as gals could use the ladies' room. And gals dressed as guys could use the men's room. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was planning a vote for the week of Halloween. How fitting. But now she and other supporters have gotten spooked. Labels: Cross Dressing Liberals, Ernest Istook Posted at 8:38 AM |States In Rebellionby Ernest Istook Once again, the states are rebelling against Washington. Fed up with dithering in D.C., states are proving enforcement works. Enforcement not only can prevent illegal immigration, but actually reverse it.
When denied jobs or public benefits, many illegals return to Mexico. Others move within the United States to areas with local amnesty policies. That migration may spark a new outcry from citizens in amnesty cities. Labels: Ernest Istook, Immigration Reform Posted at 8:39 AM |The Left Loves S-CHIP by Ernest Istook National Review Big government pays for many things. One side-effect is the enrichment of groups who get the money, enabling them to afford more lobbying on behalf of even bigger government. Now they’ve joined the most brazen voices of the liberal Left in the S-CHIP debate. S-CHIP — the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — is actually financed mostly with federal tax dollars, and the issue is whether to enlarge it, costing tens of billions of dollars. Government already pays for almost half of all health care in America. We’re close to a tipping point where most health care is funded by tax money and government essentially dictates everything to the already-over-regulated health industry. Read More Labels: Ernest Istook, SCHIP Posted at 8:50 AM |Heritage Foundation: Feds Sue Illinois for Flouting Immigration LawBy Ernest IstookHooray for Michael Chertoff! Hooray for his Department of Homeland Security! They’re taking the scofflaws to court. This time, it’s not just a meat-packing plant or a construction contractor, or some small business hiring illegal aliens. This time, it’s the whole blooming state of Illinois, which has one of the worst records of looking the other way when illegals take jobs. Taking the amnesty approach to a new low, Illinois passed a law banning employers from participating in the Basic Pilot Program (aka E-Verify), the successful federal system used to track down phony Social Security numbers and thus detect illegal workers. Other states, such as Arizona, are mandating that employers use this system. Going the other way is Illinois, the so-called “Land of Lincoln” that henceforth shall be called the "Land of Winkin" — winking at illegal workers, that is. Read more... Related: Labels: Ernest Istook Posted at 9:31 PM |Antiwar Profiteering?
Former 5th district Congressman and Heritage Foundation scholar Ernest Istook offers this editorial in the Washington Times today.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Some of the politicians who propose withdrawing our troops from Iraq have an ulterior motive. They want to stop spending money on the military so they can start spending it on social programs. If they succeed, an army of social workers may prove the only force in the world capable of beating America's military. Funding that "army" is a revival of the "peace dividend" doctrine that brought us a hollowed-out military during the Clinton administration. Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, has claimed first dibs on the money to create a new $6-billion-a-year program against urban poverty "funded by savings from ending the Iraq war." Fellow presidential candidate John Edwards certainly will want a chunk, considering that his central theme is a mega-billion-dollar expansion of the "War on Poverty." Congress is already on a spending spree. During the first six months of the new majority, the House and the Senate approved almost $200 billion in new spending, mostly to be financed with tax increases, with a little left over to lower the deficit. But raising taxes carries political risks, so tapping a "peace dividend" is an alternative justification for higher spending. It's a tempting target, because the five-year cost of our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is officially calculated at $758 billion. Read more... Labels: Congress, Ernest Istook Posted at 11:57 AM |Istook: "SCHIP: No Child Left Off Welfare"Tuesday, July 31, 2007President Conrad: A Liberal Solution to Nomination Gridlock. By Ernest Istook That’s the message from key senators who seem determined to oppose any Bush appointee who won’t promise to toe the liberal line. It’s tough enough to get Senate approval of judges who aren’t card-carrying members of the ACLU. Now, it seems, the Senate will balk at blessing the president’s pick for budget director unless the nominee promises upfront to rubber stamp whatever spending spree liberal congressional leaders care to indulge in. Read more... Labels: Congress, Ernest Istook Posted at 8:54 AM |FEC Cites Istook 2004 Campaign
From The McCarville Report Online:
Friday, May 25, 2007
Former Republican Congressman Ernest Istook improperly spent nearly $7,000 in campaign funds on personal items, including a trip to the 2004 Sugar Bowl, according to a Federal Election Commission audit of Istook's 2004 reelection campaign. The FEC audit, which was provided by Istook to The Oklahoman, uncovered numerous other financial violations, the newspaper reported. Read more... Labels: Ernest Istook Posted at 5:37 AM |Istook on Funding the TroopsMonday, April 30, 2007Istook-isms: "Lose Thousands of Dollars from Your Own Home In Your Spare Time!"
. . . and then thank Barney Frank
Thursday, April 19, 2007
You can lose thousands of dollars every week -- right from the privacy of your own home! Thanks to the modern miracle of Internet gambling, you don't have to plan ahead for a trip to a casino far-far away! Just imagine the gambling convenience: A new federal law was passed just last year that prevents this, limiting your abilty to lose large amounts of money quickly and easily. Thanks to Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Congressman who now chairs the House Financial Services Committee, that law may be undone. If he succeeds, credit card companies and banks will once again be required to process payments of online gambling debts. Last year a new law gave you the right to refuse to pay online gambling debts financed through a credit card (just as you can protest improper bills). That's akin to many state laws that make illegal gambling debts unenforceable (which is why bookies have their own "enforcers"). Read more... Labels: Ernest Istook Posted at 6:52 AM |Former Congressman Istook Starts Blog Ernest is now off the Congressional merry-go-round Former Congressman Ernest Istook is the newest entrant into the blogosphere with a blog aptly named "Istook-isms". From 1993 until 2007, Istook represented Oklahoma's 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, and served on the Appropriations Committee. He was a founder of the Republican Study Committee, the largest group of conservatives in the U.S. House. Ernest saw the "Republican Revolution" through its rise and its fall. (And he admits his own "mea culpa's" for the mistakes.) Now he is a Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, working to further conservative causes and thought. Labels: Ernest Istook Posted at 7:41 AM |By Default, Mugging TaxpayersBy Ernest IstookSpecial to washingtonpost.com's Think Tank Town There's about to be a mugging, and American taxpayers are the unsuspecting victims. Worse, the cop on the beat is looking the other way. The mugging will lift $3.3 trillion from purses and wallets because the 2003 tax cuts will begin expiring soon. That means the average American family will have to pay an extra $2,641 each year, according to Heritage Foundation analyst Brian Riedl. Congress could stop it by renewing the tax cuts -- but it's looking the other way instead. The budget resolution moving through Congress is the blueprint for what's coming. Higher spending -- by hundreds of billions -- is in the plan. Renewing tax cuts isn't. The 2003 tax cuts, which President Bush wanted to be permanent, were approved only as "temporary" tax relief. Permanent relief was blocked by the very group that now denies responsibility. The old higher-tax policies will make their comeback unless Congress acts to prevent it, something the new majority says it won't do. Eventually, a small fraction of the tax relief might be renewed, but that will still be a net loss to taxpayers and a damper on America's economy. Personal and business income tax rates will climb. Capital gains taxes will go up. The death tax will have new life. The marriage penalty will once more punish husbands and wives. Child tax credits won't continue. And the AMT (alternative minimum tax) will hit more and more middle-income workers. The sneaky thing is that instead of voting to raise taxes and going on the record -- something even liberal members of Congress are loathe to do -- Congress won't have to do a thing. No tough committee vote. No pesky taxpayer revolt to deal with. Fewer angry calls from constituents. No, the budget resolution itself doesn't raise taxes. What it actually does is fail to halt higher taxes. And the reason that lower taxes are expiring is because Democrats last year blocked the Republican majority from making the 2003 tax cuts permanent. The budget resolution accepts -- with approval -- the fact that tax rates will rise as the tax cuts expire, and then endorses those higher taxes while trying to deny blame. What will the average American family get after it starts paying this extra $2,641 each year? The revenue is being treated as a spending windfall -- enabling a $3.3 trillion spree of new and expanded government programs during the next 10 years. The goal of balancing the budget takes a back seat. Unfortunately, the issue is being obscured by typical party bickering over whether higher taxes are "in" the bill. And not enough attention is being paid to the higher spending that's proposed. Many conservatives have a credibility problem in attacking spending because of our behavior when Republicans held the majority. But the GOP is playing to its strength by talking about the need to keep taxes low, because that has spurred significant economic growth and more jobs. Washington is a busy place. Confrontations over Iraq, hearings about U.S. attorney firings and subpoenas, and a pork-filled emergency war spending bill that declares the 2008 political conventions are a $100-million "emergency." Crafty politicians, like magicians, always keep their audience distracted so they don't notice the sleight of hand, such as this back-door tax increase. Taxpayers should keep their eyes focused on their own pockets. They're about to get picked. Ernest Istook, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation (heritage.org). He was principal sponsor of the Balanced Budget Amendment. Labels: Congress, Ernest Istook Posted at 6:21 AM | |
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