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GORDON BROWN’S carefully laid plans for a G20 deal on worldwide tax cuts have been scuppered by an eve-of-summit ambush by European leaders.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, last night led the assault on the prime minister’s ‘global new deal’ for a $2 trillion-plus fiscal stimulus to end the recession.

‘I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money,’ she said.

The Spanish finance minister, Pedro Solbes, also dismissed new cash being pledged at Thursday’s London summit.

‘In these conditions I and the rest of my colleagues from the eurozone believe there is no room for new fiscal stimulus plans,’ he said.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has insisted that ‘radical reform’ of capitalism is more important than tax cutting.

The attacks on Brown’s ambitions for the G20 to inject more money into the world economy come at the end of a week where the prime minister has travelled to three continents to build support for his proposals.

The likely deadlock at this week’s meeting will kill any remaining hope that Alistair Darling’s April 22 budget will offer significant tax cuts.

The assault by European Union leaders also represents a defeat for President Barack Obama, who is desperate for other big economies to copy his $800 billion stimulus plan.

‘There will be a very long communiqué, but there won’t be much in it,’ said a Washington economist.

Adding to the disarray, a draft of the agreement Brown hopes to secure was leaked to a German news magazine, prompting suggestions of ‘dirty tricks’ by Berlin.

The draft stated that Britain wanted a ‘$2 trillion’ global fiscal stimulus. However, the figure appeared only in brackets, indicating agreement on the package had yet to be reached.

The stimulus would boost world growth by 2% and employment by 19m, the draft said. The rest of the document was mainly general pledges.

‘We believe that an open world economy, based on the principles of the market, effective regulation and strong global institutions, can ensure sustainable globalisation with rising well-being for all,’ it said.

A No 10 source expressed ‘disappointment’ at the leak and insisted the $2 trillion figure was not new money but an expression of the total tax and spending packages already pledged by G20 members.

Privately, government officials admit that no further fiscal stimulus will be announced this week, although there will be a $250 billion package for the International Monetary Fund to help rescue struggling poor nations.

Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, said he sympathised with the concerns of demonstrators planning to disrupt the London summit. ‘There is understandable frustration and some anger. The global economic systems has stalled and what we have got to do is get it started.’

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, yesterday warned Brown against further tax cuts in the budget. ‘When it comes to your plans for a second fiscal stimulus, I say this Gordon Brown: enough is enough,’ he said in a speech. ‘We will not let you play roulette with the public finances yet again.’

UK officials have not given up on the idea there could be agreement on a fresh boost for the world economy later in the year. ‘It is likely that there will be another heads of government meeting probably in Asia in the autumn,’ said an official.

‘This will be the forum where the next round of stimulus will be discussed.’

Brown still hopes to establish the IMF as an informal referee for international tax cuts. The plan is that the Washington-based body could advise on the timing of any future cuts.

Merkel’s criticism drew an angry response from Labour MPs. Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister, said: ‘Who does Mrs Merkel think is going to buy Mercedes and BMWs if she . . . says putting demand into the economy is a bad thing?’ Another Labour MP said: ‘One has to ask who had something to gain from the leak of the communiqué. This feels like a dirty trick.’

There are growing fears that protests at the summit venue, the ExCeL centre in London’s Docklands could be marred by violence. Scotland Yard will be deploying specialist officers trained to use 50,000-volt Taser stun guns.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/G20/article5993184.ece

Now that Brown has been put in place, one would think that that is the end of it.  Of course, it would be too much to hope that Obama would take a page out of their book and consider it a lesson learned.  So then, I ask, what is Obama really up to in Europe.  It would not surprise me if Obama unveiled an agenda leading the United States that much closer to socialism.

‘Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taleban, threatened yesterday to launch an attack on Washington that would ‘amaze everyone in the world’ as he claimed responsibility for the raid on a police academy in Lahore and boasted of a new regional militant alliance.

Mr Mehsud, for whom the United States offered a $5 million reward last week, said that Monday’s raid, which killed seven police officers, was retaliation for US drone attacks on Pakistan’s northern tribal areas, now the main hub of Taleban and al-Qaeda activity.

The 35-year-old leader of Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan (Movement of Taleban Pakistan), made the claims after taking the highly unusual step of telephoning Western news organisations from an undisclosed location.

‘We wholeheartedly take responsibility for this attack and will carry out more such attacks in future,’ he said.

‘Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world … The maximum they can do is martyr me. But we will exact our revenge on them from inside America.’

Mr Mehsud’s threat illustrates his growing confidence in the Pakistani Taleban’s strength and reach. He recently agreed to shelve differences with fellow commanders and join forces with the Afghan Taleban.

The alliance appears to be a deliberate response to President Obama’s ‘Afpak’ strategy, unveiled on Friday, to send 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, pour $7.5 billion into Pakistan, and to treat the two countries as a single military theatre.

Mr Mehsud’s power also appears to have been enhanced after the Pakistani Government reached a controversial peace deal with the Taleban in the northwestern Swat Valley, which borders the tribal areas. He has been blamed for several attacks in Pakistan, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007, but most have been in the north west, and Monday’s was thought to be his first on the eastern province of Punjab.

The US Rewards for Justice website describes him as a ‘key al-Qaeda facilitator’ who has conducted cross-border attacks against American forces in Afghanistan and poses a clear threat to American people and interests in the region.

The militant leader boasted that he had recently set up a ‘Council of Mujahidin’ uniting different groups ‘to step up attacks on US and Nato forces in Afghanistan’. That tallies with other reports that the Afghan and Pakistani Taleban have joined forces, and are also working with outlawed Pakistani militant groups with links to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

The Pakistani Taleban is led by Mr Mehsud and two rival commanders – Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulavi Nazir – who are all based in the tribal regions of North and South Waziristan and have long feuded with each other.

Mullah Omar, the Afghan Taleban leader, is reported to have sent a six-member team to Waziristan in late December and early January to forge a new alliance with the three men against the planned increase of American forces in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani Taleban leaders agreed, and in February they formed the Council of Mujahidin and issued a printed statement vowing to resolve their differences and focus on fighting US-led forces in Afghanistan.

However, they also appear to have enlisted elements of Pakistani militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), blamed for the attack on Mumbai last year, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, blamed for last month’s attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore.

They, along with elements of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), another banned militant group, give the alliance a presence in Punjab, which may explain the two recent attacks there, security officials and analysts say.

‘Many former fighters of LeT and JeM, and from southern Punjab, have been fighting with the Pakistani Taleban,’ one Pakistani security official told The Times.

Most experts agree that the militant alliance is fragile, especially since Mullah Omar wants to focus on Afghanistan, while Mr Mehsud and others have ambitions in Pakistan, but it still represents a major challenge to Mr Obama’s new strategy.

Michael Semple, an Irish expert on the region who was the former deputy head of the European Union mission in Kabul, predicts that some militants can be split from the group’s core if governance and security are improved.

‘It can be done, and we do have a few demonstrated examples that prove that it is possible,’ he said. ‘But a lot of things are going to have to be done right if it is going to deliver enough people to be able to make a difference to the conflict.’  

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6011879.ece

Clearly the ravings of a mad man who lives to die.  If and when such an attack comes it will be courtesy of Barack Obama and more than likely lead by terrorists who formerly resided at Guantanamo Bay.

“Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner’s credibility problems aren’t going away.

Elizabeth Warren, chief of congressional oversight panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), testified today that she still had not received any explanation of what TWI’s Mike Lillis called ‘Treasury’s $80 billion mistake’ back on Feb. 6. In a statement submitted to the Senate Finance Committee today, she said ‘the appropriateness of the overpayment remains, at best, unresolved.’

The rest of Warren’s testimony about TARP was hardly more reassuring. As for the question, ‘What is Treasury’s strategy?’ she said, ‘Congress and the American public have no clear answer to that question.’ Treasury has also failed to ask basic questions about the Term-Backed Asset Loan Facility (TALF), its plan to partner with private investors in buying the bank’s so-called toxic assets, she said. ‘Until we receive detailed and accurate information, the panel cannot perform its oversight function,’ she said.

No surprise that Geithner did not allow Neel Kashkari, head of Treasury’s Office of Financial Stability to testify. His absence left ranking minority member Sen. Charles Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) feeling “disappointed and frustrated.”(PDF). He’s not the only one.”

http://washingtonindependent.com/36589/tarps-78-billion-overpayment-still-unexplained

Well, it would seem that Geithner has no intention of allowing the Congressional oversight panel to do its job, therefore, Elizabeth Warren must push the envelope holding Geithner’s feet to the fire.  This matter must be pursued.  We deserve answers and accountability.  Obama is always talking about responsibility.  Well, it is the responsibility of his minions to put their personal agenda aside and do that which is beneficial to the people.

Excerpts from Grassley’s statement:

As soon as Treasury received the funds, it decided to bail out big banks instead of buying up toxic assets, as they told us. Millions continued to lose jobs and homes, which makes me wonder about the program’s effectiveness. But you can’t measure effectiveness when you don’t know what the goals and objectives of a program are, or how the program is being run.

I am disappointed and frustrated that the Administration refused the Committee’s request for Mr. Kashkari to testify here today. It would have been nice to hear how he is gauging the success of the program.

With so much happening so fast and so much taxpayer money at stake, the need for quality oversight and transparency has never been greater.

Unfortunately, despite saying all the right things about open government, the new administration has not had made any major changes aimed at making TARP more transparent. Moreover, I have heard about potential problems with access to information from all three of these oversight bodies.

The Congressional Oversight Panel has also had problems getting answers to some of its questions from the Treasury Department. According to the Panel’s most recent monthly report, Secretary Geithner has failed to respond to key questions that have been pending since even before his time at the Treasury Department. Elizabeth Warren, the panel’s Chair and one of our witnesses here today, wrote to him again on March 5, 2009, urging him to respond to her inquiries.

 Barack Obama ran his campaign on the future of American children.  He promised them a better education and indoctrination.  He has since rescinded his promise of a better education.  Washington, D.C. has a school voucher program which promises hope of a better life for children in these programs.  Barack Obama in office less than 60 days has swooped down in an effort to dash those hopes and dreams of these 1700 D.C. school children.

While many of these children are poor, they are not the President’s children and, therefore, not worthy of a decent education in the eyes of Obama.

Obama’s Hope Only Works For 1,700 D.C. School Kids

Two days after signing into law the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, he [Obama], through spokesman Robert Gibbs, said he would make sure part of it is overturned.  Why sign a flawed bill into law is a question for another day, but what he said, what it means and whom it affects is one worth exploring. 

Through stealth maneuvers, Democrats added, then rejected, a Republican attempt to remove a provision of the bill that would effectively kill the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides up to $7,500 to about 1,700 poor families.

The scholarships allow these families to send their children to the same high quality private schools many Members of Congress, as well as Barack and Michelle Obama, send their children.

There was no direct vote to kill the program. That would have been too obvious, but the bill Obama signed contained a provision that requires Congress to reauthorize the program, and the D.C. City Council to do the same.

With both controlled by Democrats, and Democrat education policy controlled by teachers unions, a vote to reauthorize it is about as likely as the sun rising in the west. This is effectively setting the program on a path to die after the next school year.

Why must this program end?  Why must these children suffer?  Because their success would run risk of exposing one of the biggest lies going in this country – that a supposed lack of money is the only thing holding back the quality of public education. 

Education is not underfunded by any sane unit of measure.  We can argue all day about how the money is spent, but not that enough is being spent.  In 2006, the last year for which there is data, the per-pupil spending in this country was $9,266.  Shouldn’t children get a pretty good education for that amount of money, especially considering much of the rest of the world does better for significantly less?

If money were the yardstick by which to measure success, the D.C. public schools would be cranking out a string of geniuses unrivaled in human history.  It is not.

The Department of Education says the District spends more than $14,000 per student each year on education, more per student than just about anywhere else, yet produces some of the lowest test results and highest dropout rates in the country.

But, while Rome burns, the teachers unions fiddle.  They fight any attempt to improve quality or accountability for teachers that doesn’t involve spending ever more money for them and stopping school choice for parents.

Worse than congressional and union callousness was the president’s willingness to allow it to happen.  Obama – who attended an elite private school in Hawaii on a similar scholarship – signed the bill into law apparently with no sense of irony or hypocrisy.

Now the White House says he won’t allow the program to expire because “it wouldn’t make sense to disrupt the education of those that are in that system.”  That translates to “we won’t deny these kids a chance because it would be disastrous for us politically, but no more kids can get this chance. We’ll just wait for it to fade away.”

Remember, too, that the bill Obama signed also denies children the exact same opportunity he’s affording his own daughters. But hypocrisy is nothing new to the old guard on education policy.

I hope Obama is better than his word on this, that education is an area where he will stand up to his party for the greater good, allowing this program to continue and expand.

Let’s hold his feet to the fire to ensure these 1,700 students and more get the same chance in life he did.  Anything less would mean the end of hope for too many.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Obamas-hope-only-works-for-1700-DC-school-kids-42163897.html

Obama owes it to these children NOT to let this program DIE.  Anything less would show him up as hypocritical, elitist trick that he is.

 Two weeks ago, while Americans were in a frenzy about the AIG bonuses, the Obama administration yet again took advantage of a “good crisis.”  After failing to pass a bill  that would have imposed a 90 percent retroactive tax on the AIG bonuses, on the down low, the Obama administration courtesy of Barney Frank quietly managed to pass a legislation that is sure to vibrate through the private job sector.

This new legislation, i.e., the Obama administration’s latest attack on the United States Constitution is called the “Pay for Performance Act of 2009.”   It would empower  government to regulate the salaries of all employees, not just the top executives and CEOs of entities that received government funds.

“It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

Here we go with that damn Timothy Geithner again.  No doubt this is an attack against businesses in the private sector. 

The purpose of the legislation is to “prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards,” according to the bill’s language. That includes regular pay, bonuses — everything — paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is ‘unreasonable’ or ‘excessive.’ And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate ‘the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates.’

The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.)

The legislation is expected to come before the full House for a vote this week, and, just like the AIG bill, its scope and retroactivity trouble a number of Republicans. ‘It’s just a bad reaction to what has been going on with AIG,’ Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey, a committee member, told me. Garrett is particularly concerned with the new powers that would be given to the Treasury Secretary, who just last week proposed giving the government extensive new regulatory authority. ‘This is a growing concern, that the powers of the Treasury in this area, along with what Geithner was looking for last week, are mind boggling,’ Garrett said.

WASH. EXAMINER

Government has no business invading the operations of private corporations.  Once their hands are in the pot, their hands are in the pot to stay.  Where will it end?

If I want to live in a Communist society, I’ll relocate.  It has no business on these shores.

Thanks for the hat tip Atlas Shrugs and Savant Noir of Designated Conservative.

WINKNEWS reports:

CAPE CORAL, Fla. – A tea party to protest government spending and taxing is canceled. Canceled by the government.
Why? They feel too many people could show-up.
Lynn Rosko planned to hold a tax payer tea party at Jaycee Park in Cape Coral on April 1st. The idea was announced at a Cape Coral City Council meeting, then an e-mail blast by the Republican Party and it was mentioned in the local media.
With all of that attention, the City of Cape Coral felt there could be more than 500 people attending the tea party.
Therefore Rosko needed to get a permit and insurance for the event. Rosko says she’s not willing to get insurance and accept liability for something that a stranger could do. Rosko told WINK News, “I have rescinded any organizing or supervision or what ever you want to call it over this tea party on April 1st.”
WINK News spoke to the director of parks for Cape Coral. He says that even now if Rosko is willing to get insurance for the event he’ll likely re-authorize it.
For now Rosko’s event is canceled, she’s encouraging people to attend the April 15th Tax Payer Tea Party in Centennial Park in Fort Myers.

http://www.winknews.com/news/local/42019772.html

This is not about safety, but it is about censorship, stepping on the United States Constitution and silencing the masses.  Instead of asking Rosko to get insurance, why not ask government to stop f***ing us over?

And just by chance that it is about insurance, how dare the government of the State of Florida try make more, thereby stealing more taxpayer dollars from us. What a shameful ploy.  How dare they!

Our Constitutional rights are at stake.  The good people of Florida should attend this rally anyway. 

While msm would like to say that this is a Conservative and/or Republican initiative, it is so much more than that.

Again, I cannot say enough that it is not about being Republican or being a Democrat, it is about being American, standing up for yourself and making government accountable.  Are you a taxpayer?  Are you an American citizen? If so, then this IS ABOUT YOU.

Why does the government want to beat up on anyone who speaks up against their abuse and violations?  Should we expect water hoses and german shepherds?  Is that where we are going here?  If so, then government should take a lesson from history.  It did not stop us back in the day and it will not stop us now.

This is about righting the wrongs and it is time we remind Washington, D.C. that they WORK FOR US!

Designated Conservative has set forth a brilliant idea and an even better letter to accompany her idea.  It is definitely worth checking out.

Other articles:  GOVERNMENT CANCELS TEA PARTY = CANCELLING AMERICA

As America’s Muslim population grows, so too does the influence of Islamic law, or Shariah, in daily life in the U.S.

“Shariah Law is the totality of the Muslim’s obligation,” said Abdullahi An-Na’im, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta. According to An-Na’im, Shariah is similar to Jewish Talmudic Law or Catholic Canon Law in that it guides an adherent’s moral conduct.

“As a citizen, I am a subject of the United States,” An-Na’im said. “I owe allegiance to the United States, to the Constitution of the United States. That is not inconsistent with observing a religious code in terms of my own personal behavior.”

While many view this as a testament to the “great American melting pot,” others see Islamic law’s growing influence as a threat. Shariah’s critics point to cases such as the airport in Minneapolis, where some Shariah-adherent taxi drivers made headlines in 2006 for refusing to pick up passengers they suspected of carrying liquor. The drivers’ aversion to alcohol stemmed from a verse in the Qur’an that describes “intoxicants and gambling” as “an abomination of Satan’s handiwork.”

Last year, a Tyson Foods plant in Shelbyville, Tenn. replaced its traditional Labor Day holiday with paid time off on Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival – marking the end of fasting during Ramadan. A labor union had requested the change on behalf of hundreds of Muslim employees- many of them were immigrants from Somalia.

But public outcry over the decision to dismiss Labor Day quickly prompted the company and union to negotiate a new contract that makes accommodations for both holidays.

In 2007, the University of Michigan installed ritual foot baths to accommodate Islamic tradition. “These things are beginning to percolate up as Shariah-adherent Muslims insist that their preferences and practices be accommodated by the rest of the population,” said Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy – a Washington think tank.

Gaffney predicted the U.S. could soon face problems similar to some Western European countries, where the religious values of Muslim immigrants sometimes clash with their highly secular host cultures.

But Professor An-Na’im believes it will be different in America. “The variety of American secularism – which is much more receptive of public displays of religion and a public role for religion – is, in fact, more conducive for Muslims to be citizens and to be comfortable with their religious values and citizenship than European countries,” An-Na’im said.

FOX NEWS

While some may see this as much to do about nothing.  There should be some concern here.  For example, the married European couple thrown into jail for having sex on the beach in Dubai.  Why? Because they disrespected the laws of Dubai.

Another example, but this one on the homefront. Many of the cab drivers in New York City are of Islamic faith.  Many of these Islamic cab drivers practice Sharia law.  Many of these cab drivers come from countries where the woman is silent in more ways than one.

On too many occasions during my adult life, I have hailed a cab in New York City only to end up in an argument with these guys.  Too many of the arguments bordered on “explosive”.  However, being a New Yorker and maybe lucky, I have stood my ground because I refuse to be disrespected by a visitor to my country. 

The arguments were stupid, but they started it.  They often had to do with my preferred route to my destination which these males members of Islamic community refused to abide by.  Not to mention, to let them to take their preferred route would guarantee me a higher fare.  On occasion, the police were even involved. 

On more than occasion, I called my son on the cellphone and asked that he meet me in front of my building upon arrival of the cab.  You should see the look on their faces when my son walks up to the cab and asks “Ma, are you alright?”  These schmucks do a 360 and quick.

In fairness to NYC cab drivers, especially those of Islamic faith, not all of them are like that, just too many of them are like that.

Now imagine if Sharia law were to infringe upon American society.  Where would my rights as a woman, an American and a African American Woman be?