Tag Archives: Washington

More Thuggish Behavior From The Government

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Leadership flows from the top. If the leaders of our government respect their fellow Americans,  that respect filters down to the state and local level. If our federal government is out of control, we can expect our local government to be moving in that direction.

Today’s Wall Street Journal posted an editorial (there is no link–it is subscribers only) entitled, “Disclosure as a Political Weapon,”  The article relates the experience of Robin Ferris, a resident of Puyallup, Washington. Ms. Ferris campaigned to recall former Pierce County treasurer Dale Washam. She charged Mr. Washam with mistreatment of employees, abuse of government resources, and other misdeeds. There is a state law that limits the amount voters can donate to a recall campaign to $800. Ms. Ferris hired the Institute for Justice (IJ) to challenge the law on a pro bono basis. The IJ won the case., but that wasn’t the end of the story. The Washington state Public Disclosure Commission threatened to fine Ms. Ferris more than $500,000 for failing to report the pro bono work of the IJ as an in-kind contribution to her recall campaign, stating that the ‘contribution’ should have been listed in the campaign’s public disclosures. The Commission had previously threatened a pro-life group, Family Pac, with similar action after losing a referenda campaign in 2010.

So why should we be concerned about this? Keep in mind the recent Internal Revenue Service scandal regarding conservative groups, and consider that pro bono legal services as political contributions could cost many groups their 501 (c) (3) status. Organizations with the 501(c) (3) status are prohibited from direct engagement with political campaigns. Included in these groups are such politically diverse organizations as the ACLU and the ACLJ. Without these organizations, only wealthy Americans would be able to challenge the actions of the government.

The article concludes:

Democrats and their media allies have made a crusade of more disclosure as a way to discourage political spending by businesses. But as the Institute for Justices’s tax-exempt jeopardy shows, disclosure is a weapon that can be used to silence many groups, including those that fight for civil rights and legal due process. It’s another example of liberals trampling on liberal principles.

Those of us who are conservatives need to remember that we have to guard all of our rights all of the time. It seems that there are those in America who choose winning elections over free speech.

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Using Scare Tactics To Discourage Whistleblowers

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I will admit that I have only followed current events for the last twenty years or so, but I can’t remember ever hearing anything like the story I am about to report.

Yesterday Breitbart.com reported that two ABC News reporters who entered the Peck Federal Building in Cincinnati were escorted through the building by an armed uniformed police officer with the Federal Protective Service. The Peck Building is a public building, it is also the home of the Internal Revenue Service office in Cincinnati.

The article at Breitbart reports:

At the [Cincinnati] IRS office on the fourth floor, a woman who answered the buzzer referred reporters to officials in Washington, though they were not returning very many calls. That staffer also said she was not allowed to speak to anyone – a line that was repeated by agency personnel during the week.

IRS headquarters in Washington denied that a no-talk rule was official policy because, after all, agency staffers still have a constitutional right to talk to whomever they want. …

Not so, said IRS folks in Ohio.

One of them, who asked not be named, told ABC News that security guards did remind employees of the official policy not to talk with the press – a warning cemented by the punch line “or risk losing our jobs.”

All we need is one honest, brave employee to come forward and explain exactly what happened. Unfortunately, that would be the Obama Administration’s worst nightmare and they will do everything they can to keep that from happening.

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The People Who Are Winning The Economic Lottery In President Obama’s Second Term

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The economy is recovering at the speed of snails. The last raise my husband received paid more to the government than it did to him–and he is one of the lucky ones who has a steady job. So who is prospering in the current economy?

On April 25, Forbes Magazine posted a list of America‘s wealthiest counties:

While Loudoun (VA) ranks at the top, it’s far from alone on the list of wealthiest counties that surround Washington. In fact, it’s just the beginning. The neighboring counties of Falls Church City, Fairfax, Arlington and Prince William in Virginia and Howard County in Maryland all make the cut, giving the D.C. area six of the nation’s ten wealthiest counties. All boast median household incomes between $93,000 and $117,000 annually.

This is one of many reasons why the Tea Party exists. This is also one of many reasons why the Tea Party is such a threat to the government establishment (both Democrats and Republicans). But it gets even more interesting…

Clarice Feldman posted an article at American Thinker today about how the current scandals are impacting the pocketbooks of Washington lawyers. The article is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but makes some really good points. The scene is a Washington bistro frequented by lawyers, politicians, and upper-level civil servants. The restaurant is packed with lawyers celebrating the coming uptick of business in Washington.

This is just a sample of the article–please follow the link above to read the entire article:

“What are the colored badges for?” I asked.

“They signify which scandal defendants they are representing so they can exchange useful procedural and related information without disclosing who they are representing or breaching client confidentiality. The orange tag means the attorney is representing someone in the Benghazi scandal.”

“I see seven — probably Petraeus, Clinton, Rice, Donilon, Brennan, Nuland, Rhodes. And the blue badge?” I asked, sipping the drink.

“IRS scandal,” George whispered, wiping the counter to appear more inconspicuous.

“Hmm,” I thought, “Shulman, Ingram, Miller, Lerner, and some others to be named at a later date. And the red badge?”

“Small table — must be Justice officials on the Associated Press scandal.”

“Yeah, so far Holder and his deputy Cole. Will Cole cover for Holder who preposterously testified he recused himself because he speaks to the press, that he can’t remember when he recused himself, and that he didn’t follow the statutory mandate for recusal procedure?”

“You did notice,” Joe laughed, “that the ‘security breach’ which Holder claims occasioned the wiretapping of reporters turns out to be AP waiting to publish until they got the CIA’s approval but before the White House crowd could publicly pat themselves on the back for getting the underwear bomber?”

“Wasn’t that something? The whole story is too flimsy to hold a drop of water and even the press can grasp this one.”

At least someone is actually prospering in the Obama economy.

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How To Avoid The Facts While Conducting An Investigation

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Carol Platt Liebau posted an article at Townhall.com yesterday about the Inspector General‘s report on the Internal Revenue‘s dealing with people and groups associated with conservatism. Ms. Liebau has one of those analytical minds that can sort through the fluff and get to the heart of the issue. Her article is amazing in the way it asks the questions no one investigating seemed to be interested in asking.

The article reports:

There’s nothing in there about the targeting of individuals, as I noted last night.

There’s nothing in there about who leaked documents to the media (which I wrote about here).

There’s nothing in there about how an Obama relection campaign chairman came to possess confidential information he used to attack Mitt Romney.

What the report reveals — more than anything else — is that it’s a starting point for some sharp inquiry by Congress, raising more questions than it answers.

These are two of the questions Ms. Liebau wants answered:

2. On page 3, the report notes that “During the 2012 election cycle, some members of Congress raised concerns about selective enforcement.”  What were these members told? What investigation had been done internally — and by whom — before members like Orrin Hatch were assured that their concerns were baseless? This goes to whether members of Congress were deliberately lied to — and by whom — and whether their concerns were even taken seriously in the first place.

3. Also on page 3, the report states that some members of Congress asked the IRS to investigate whether existing 501(c)(4)’s were engaged in improper campaign activity. In other words, some members were urging greater scrutiny of 501(c)(4)’s.  What members were these? Whom did they contact at the IRS? What were they told, and by whom? It would be interesting to know whether any former staffers of these members participated in the wrongdoing.  What’s more, if top officials were responsive to these requests, it might suggest where direction for the targeting came from.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is amazing how much paper you can use to say nothing and how many questions you can ask that do not lead in the direction of finding out the truth.

I am reaching a point where I think 99% of the people now in power in Washington should be voted out of office.

 

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The Extra Zero That Changed The Bill

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There has been a lot of talk recently about the immigration bill that Congress will be considering in the near future. There is one school of thought that says it is a political bill–not designed to pass, but designed to make House Republicans lose the 2014 election. Based on some recent changes to the original bill, that seems to be very likely.

Yesterday Byron York at the Washington Examiner reported that there has been a change in the original bill that significantly changes the cost.

The article reports:

The bill establishes a “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Trust Fund” to cover the various costs of reform.  It directs that when the bill is enacted, $6.5 billion will be transferred from the Treasury to the trust fund.  And then the bill specifies money to be appropriated for the start-up costs of the process to legalize the estimated 11 million immigrants currently in the country illegally.

The original bill said this: “On the later of the date of the enactment of this Act or October 1, 2013, $100,000,000 is hereby appropriated from the general fund of the Treasury, to remain available until September 30, 2015, to the Department [of Homeland Security] to pay for one-time and startup costs necessary to implement this act.”

The substitute bill reads differently: “On the later of the date of the enactment of this Act or October 1, 2013, $1,000,000,000 is hereby appropriated from the general fund of the Treasury, to remain available until September 30, 2015, to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State to pay for one-time and startup costs necessary to implement this Act.”

Wow. We went from $100,000,000 to $1,000,000,000, and the bill hasn’t even passed yet. Imagine where it could go if it were passed!

The article in the Washington Examiner includes an update:

UPDATE: After this item was posted, a Gang of Eight spokesman emailed to say that, “The initial $100 million number listed for startup was incorrect; $1 billion is needed to ramp up operations to handle 11 million applicants and other new visa programs.  The money will be refunded to the Treasury from fines collected, so it is deficit neutral over the next few years.”

Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.

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Will Congress Ever Have The Integrity To Pass A Law Requiring Its Members To Live Under The Laws It Passes?

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When America was founded, the idea was that average Americans would go to Washington to serve in government for one or two terms and then return to private life, living under the laws they had passed while in Washington. Unfortunately, that principle has gone the way of corsets and hoop skirts.

Yesterday Politico posted an article with the headline, “Lawmakers, aides may get Obamacare exemption.” Really? If it isn’t good enough for Congress, let’s repeal it on the spot. There is no reason to keep a law in place if Congress does not want to live under it.

The article reports:

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

It is becoming very obvious that Obamacare is a mess. It is unfortunate that the Republicans have not come up with an alternative they could bring to the floor and pass to replace it.

The article reports:

Republicans, though, haven’t been able to coalesce around a legislative health care plan of their own, either. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pushed a bill this week that would shift funds from a health care prevention fund to create a high-risk pool for sick Americans. That bill couldn’t even get a vote on the House floor as conservatives revolted, embarrassing Cantor and his leadership team. GOP leadership pulled the bill.

Is there anyone in Washington who has a clue?

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About Those FAA Tower Closings…

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On Saturday, Hot Air posted an article citing some interesting details about the FAA towers that are about to be closed due to sequestration. There are a number of towers that can be closed without endangering public safety. Obviously, because of budget cuts, the government had to decide which towers to close down.

The article reports:

It’s not just the number of towers being shut down, but which specific ones. And more to the point… who works there. When you scan down the list of closures, these are all towers which are managed and staffed by private contractors. Not one of them is staffed up by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union. That’s something of a remarkable coincidence, isn’t it?

…No FAA air-traffic facilities will be shut down for at least a year, Doug Church, spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union, said in an e-mailed statement.

The FAA’s union contract requires that controllers get at least a year’s notice before a facility is closed, Church said. The agency Feb. 22 issued a list of 49 FAA towers that were subject to closing in addition to the private towers.

It is truly a shame that the people Americans elected and sent to Washington choose to play games with the budget rather than solve the increasing debt problem in America. The only way we can remedy this is to send people to Washington who are willing to risk not being re-elected in order to do what is necessary to fix the problem. We have some officials in Washington who are trying to fix the budget problem, but obviously we need more.Enhanced by Zemanta

Sequester Cuts For Thee But Not For Me

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Today’s Boston Herald is reporting that as Democrats in Congress scream that the sequester cuts are the end of the world, the Democrats in the Massachusetts congressional delegation spent nearly $200,000 in bonuses, pay hikes and new hires in a timeworn tradition of end-of-the-year handouts. Despite their concern about closing the federal deficit, the Massachusetts congressmen increased their payroll by $196,000 in the last three months of 2012.

The article reports:

Local Democrats tried to place the lion’s share of the blame on House Republicans for forcing the sequestration because they hold a majority in the House.

“Most of them come to Washington because they don’t like government, they don’t think government should play a role in our lives. Maybe they don’t know anybody who needs heating assistance,” Capuano said at a local anti-sequester rally in February.

Ian Prior, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said, “The fact that the delegation is bemoaning all the cuts and saying they are standing up for the working class while they are passing out bonuses and beefing up their staff is rank hypocrisy.”

Until America’s voters wake up to the fact that they are being taken to the cleaners by their so-called representatives, I think we can expect more of the same.

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The Impact Of Obamacare On Your Doctor

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On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal posted an article by Scott Gottlieb discussing the impact of Obamacare on doctors. The article points out that the regulations in Obamacare will move doctors toward being 40-hour week employees rather than being in charge of their own offices.

The article reports:

…Because when doctors practice in small offices, it is hard for Washington to regulate what they do. There are too many of them, and the government is too remote. It is far easier for federal agencies to regulate physicians if they work for big hospitals. So ObamaCare shifts money to favor the delivery of outpatient care through hospital-owned networks.

The irony is that in the name of lowering costs, ObamaCare will almost certainly make the practice of medicine more expensive. It turns out that when doctors become salaried hospital employees, their overall productivity falls.

This is another result of government by special interest groups. In this particular case, the special interest group is the unions.

The article explains:

All of this reduced productivity translates into the loss of what should be a critical factor in the effort to offer more health care while containing costs. Yet hospitals aren’t buying doctors’ practices because they want to reform the delivery of medical care. They are making these purchases to gain local market share and develop monopolies. They are also exploiting an arbitrage opportunity presented by Medicare‘s billing schemes, which pay more for many services when they are delivered at a hospital instead of an outpatient doctor’s office.

This billing structure exists because hospitals are politically favored in Washington. Their mostly unionized workforces give them political power, as does their status as big employers in congressional districts.

This is another example of a law regulating health care that was written without concern for the impact it would have on medical care for individuals in this country. The law was written with special interest groups and government control in mind. It needs to be repealed and rewritten with the needs of American citizens in mind.

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The “Gore Effect” Strikes Again

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It seems that every time global warming believers try to get together for a rally or a government meeting it snows or we have record cold temperatures. This has become known as the “Gore effect.” Well, the Gore effect has struck again.

Politico is reporting today that the House Science, Space and Technology Committee announced that it’s postponing its environmental subcommittee’s scheduled 10 a.m. hearing on the state of the science behind climate change. As a reason, it cited “weather.” Washington is expecting as much as 11 inches of snow today and tonight.

The article reports:

The session was apparently designed to shore up the knowledge of subcommittee members ahead of expected new carbon regulations from President Barack Obama. As of Tuesday evening, a committee spokesman had insisted the show would go on.

From the start, the idea of holding a climate hearing during a paralyzing D.C. snowstorm seemed ripe for snarky comments.

Don’t buy into global warming science? Here’s your March snowstorm — call up Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and his grandchildren for help with your Al Gore igloo project.

In case you are a new reader of this blog, one of the best websites explaining what is actually happening with the earth’s climate is Anthony Watts’ site, WattsUpWithThat. I highly recommend it as an antidote to the climate change hysteria on the political left.

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Misplaced Priorities

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As spring break approaches and class trips are planned to Washington, D. C., the White House has announced that tours of the White House will be cancelled until further notice due to the budget cuts in the sequester. Meanwhile, The Weekly Standard reported today that the three White House calligraphers, with annual salaries of $96,725, $85,953 and $94,372 (for a yearly total of $277,050) are not in danger of being laid off.

It really is unfortunate that budget cuts seems to bring out the worst in our President. He is trying to do things to anger the public so that he can increase spending and taxes.Please remember that this is all about the 2014 elections. If the Democrats can win the House of Representatives, government spending and government growth can continue unchecked. That is the reason the President is attempting to use the sequester to turn public opinion against budget cuts and against the Republican party. It is important that voters stay informed and not fall for this plan.

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Stating The Obvious

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On March 4th, I posted an article about the sequester (rightwinggranny.com) which included the following:

Glen Reynolds at Instapundit has a very interesting take on this:

Somebody should really put in a FOIA request for communications between the White House and agencies about sequester implementation. There’s gold in those emails.

Well, there are still a few good reporters left.

Stephen Dinan at the Washington Times reported today:

In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections.

He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who gave him this reply: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

It hurts my heart to think that there are people in our government who are purposely trying to harm the American public for political purposes. For example, closing the White House to public tours is a political move designed to make the public mad so that they will blame the Republicans. Never mind that the Republicans were not the authors of sequestration. I am sure some of the money needed to keep the White House tours going could be found in the President’s vacation fund or in reducing the number of personal assistants we are providing for the First Lady.
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How To Use The Sequester To Further Your Political Agenda

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I honestly have to admit that both Republicans and Democrats are quite capable of using the fact that the sequester has gone into effect for political gain. What I am deeply concerned about is how President Obama is putting aside the good of the American people in his quest to destroy the Republican party, have Democrats take full control of Congress next year, and put forth an agenda to the left of anything America has ever seen.

The Washington Examiner posted an article on that subject today.

The article at the Washington Examiner cites the Washington Post:

“The goal,” The Washington Post reports, “is to flip the Republican-held House back to Democratic control, allowing Obama to push forward with a progressive agenda on gun control, immigration, climate change and the economy during his final two years in office, according to congressional Democrats, strategists and others familiar with Obama’s thinking.”

The article in the Washington Examiner explains how President Obama plans to use the sequester:

For perhaps the first time in the history of the United States, it is in the political interest of a president to inflict maximum pain on the American people. Obama could have spent the last 16 months preparing to mitigate sequestration’s impact on the American people, as any responsible manager would have. Instead, he has done the opposite, explicitly ordering government agencies not to prepare for the worst. And he has refused all Republican efforts to pass legislation that would minimize the sequester’s pain.

Glen Reynolds at Instapundit has a very interesting take on this:

Somebody should really put in a FOIA request for communications between the White House and agencies about sequester implementation. There’s gold in those emails.

This is the price we pay for putting a community organizer who is not a leader in the White House. It is up to the voters next year to decide how they feel about President Obama’s plan.

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Scaring American Voters For Fun And Profit

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The chart below is from Heritage.org. It shows the actual impact of sequestration on federal spending:

Government spending is expected to grow from $3.6 trillion to $6 trillion over the next 10 years. Sequestration will cut only 2.4 percent of this spending.

The article at Heritage.org reports:

Tax increases are no solution. President Obama already grabbed $618 billion in tax increases. These tax hikes harmed opportunity for Americans by increasing taxes on investors and job creators, and yet the budget remains out of balance. Washington has a spending problem—not a revenue problem—and only spending cuts can put the budget on a path to balance.

Spending cuts from sequestration and more are necessary. Without them, Americans will suffer even more in the future as economic uncertainty undermines opportunity and as deficits become growth-reducing debt. The good news is that there are smart ways to cut spending to offset sequestration, and at least six bipartisan ways to reform entitlements.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, PJ Media reports:

The sequester is officially still three days away, but the Obama administration already is making the first cuts, with officials confirming that the Homeland Security Department has begun to release what it deems low-priority illegal immigrants from detention.

The move is proving controversial. Immigrant-rights groups say it shows the administration was detaining folks it never should have gone after in the first place, while Republicans questioned the decision-making.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that runs the detention facilities, said in a statement that the “current fiscal climate” has forced it to do a review of spending, and part of that is taking a look at who is being detained.

“As a result of this review, a number of detained aliens have been released around the country and placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release,” ICE said in a statement.

This is such garbage that there are no words for it. Again, the sequester is a cut in the rate of growth. Even with the sequester the government will spend more money this year than they did last year. To say that prisoners have to be released to cut the budget is nonsense. It is scare tactics of the worst kind. This is only one example of what happens in Washington when you attempt to cut federal spending by even a small amount. The President should be ashamed of himself.

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Can We Elect More Senators Like This?

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The Courier-Journal in Louisville Kentucky reported on Thursday that Senator Rand Paul is returning $600,000 to the U.S. Treasury. He saved the money on Senate office operating expenses during the past year.

The article reports:

The $600,000, which amounts to about 17 percent of Paul’s $3.5 million office budget, was in addition to about $500,000 he saved two years ago, his first year in the Senate, Paul said.

He said the savings were realized by “watching every purchase,” including keeping close tabs on expenditures for “computers, paper, ink cartridges. Everything we buy.”

He said he also keeps close watch on travel expenditures and noted that, although he frequently flies between Washington and Kentucky, his staff seldom does. He said he also doesn’t pay his staff excessive salaries.

The article lists a number of Senators in both parties who have returned money to the government. That is a start.Enhanced by Zemanta

The Law Of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again

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The Wall Street Journal posted an editorial today entitled, “ObamaCare and the ’29ers.’” When I first looked at the title, I thought it was about the unemployment rate of the twenty-something generation. It’s not. It’s about how ObamaCare is affecting the number of hours employers allow their employees to work.

The article reports:

The law (ObamaCare) requires firms with 50 or more “full-time equivalent workers” to offer health plans to employees who work more than 30 hours a week. (The law says “equivalent” because two 15 hour a week workers equal one full-time worker.) Employers that pass the 50-employee threshold and don’t offer insurance face a $2,000 penalty for each uncovered worker beyond 30 employees. So by hiring the 50th worker, the firm pays a penalty on the previous 20 as well.

Is Washington capable of making anything simple?

The article explains how the mathematics of employing people under ObamaCare work:

The savings from restricting hours worked can be enormous. If a company with 50 employees hires a new worker for $12 an hour for 29 hours a week, there is no health insurance requirement. But suppose that worker moves to 30 hours a week. This triggers the $2,000 federal penalty. So to get 50 more hours of work a year from that employee, the extra cost to the employer rises to about $52 an hour—the $12 salary and the ObamaCare tax of what works out to be $40 an hour.

This chart from the article shows the number of people currently working part-time:

image

It’s time to repeal ObamaCare, replace it with something that has actually been thought through, and get the American economy working again.

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Forbes Magazine Gets It Right

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Yesterday Forbes.com posted an article that totally explains the lack of representation that the average American receives in Washington. The article talks about the “country class” of Republicans–identifiable by their opposition to ever-bigger government financed by ever-higher taxes as opposed to those Republicans who side with the “ruling class“–those Democrats who support higher taxes and bigger government. Because of those Republicans who are now aligned with the “ruling class,” the ideas of many Americans are not represented in Congress.

The article states:

Thus public opinion polls confirm that some two thirds of Americans feel that government is “them” not “us,” that government has been taking the country in the wrong direction, and that such sentiments largely parallel partisan identification: While a majority of Democrats feel that officials who bear that label represent them well, only about a fourth of Republican voters and an even smaller proportion of independents trust Republican officials to be on their side. Again: While the ruling class is well represented by the Democratic Party, the country class is not represented politically – by the Republican Party or by any other. Well or badly, its demand for representation will be met.

The author of the article seems to believe that the current crop of Republican and Democrat leaders will result in the formation of a new political party. As much as I don’t like that idea (it takes a long time for a third party to actually get people elected), I can see the roots of that in the Tea Party. America is well along the road to bankruptcy. We have Washington screaming about sequestration, when upon close examination you find out that sequestration does not cut spending–it only slows the rate of growth. Upon close examination, you also learn that all you would have to do to limit the potential damage that might be caused by sequestration is to give various government agencies control of where they cut the rate of growth. Why hasn’t either the President of Congress suggested that? This is a political issue–not a practical issue. If it ever gets out that sequestration is not a spending cut and that the panic we are hearing is totally unnecessary, Congress might not be able to raise our taxes. Make no mistake–even though we are being told that we need to raise taxes on the ‘evil rich,’ the eventual goal is to raise taxes on the middle class. Be forewarned. We are being played by some very smart politicians who reside in Washington.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article at Forbes. It is fascinating.

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Tuning Out The Media Hysteria Related To The Budget Sequester

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Today’s American Spectator posted an article about President Obama’s comments yesterday regarding the sequestration that is due to take effect on March 1st.

The article points out:

President Obama’s federal government is slated to spend $3.6 trillion this year. That is $3,600,000,000,000. The supposedly draconian sequester will reportedly cut that by $85 billion, which is just 2%. In fact, as Mark Levin pointed out last night, the actual cuts for this year from that level are $44 billion, which is 1% of the budget.

This is the reason we need an attitude adjustment in Washington. The Washington establishment (of both parties) panic at the thought of a one percent budget cut.

National Review today quoted Rand Paul:

“It’s a pittance. It’s a slowdown in the rate of growth [of spending],” said Paul. There are “no real cuts.” He also said he voted against the sequester because he “didn’t think it was enough” since it “doesn’t really begin to cut [actual] spending.”

The ‘draconian cuts’ President Obama is talking about are not even cuts–they are simply reductions in the rate of growth.

The American Spectator reminds us:

And the sequester will help the economy, not hurt it. The sequester means the federal government will not drain another $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years out of the market economy, but leave it in the market to contribute to higher production. How does the federal government borrowing or taxing that money out of production in the private sector and using it to hire more bureaucrats, or to spend on more welfare for people who are not working and not producing, contribute to more jobs, more hiring, more economic growth, and more prosperity? It doesn’t, which is why Keynesian economics never works.

So what is going on here? The Washington culture of we want more of your money so that we can spend more is on full display.

The article at the American Spectator also reminds us that under the current tax rules, the rich do pay their fair share:

President Obama also persisted yesterday in spreading the dishonest falsehood that billionaires pay lower tax rates than theirs secretaries. That is based on a cartoon version of our tax code. CBO reports to the contrary that in 2009 the top 1% paid an average federal tax rate of 29%, while the middle 20% paid an average federal tax rate of only 11.1%, and the bottom 20% paid an average federal tax rate of 1%. We need a law that would hold President Obama personally liable when he uses the trappings of office to spread outright fairy tales.

We can solve the nation’s financial problems, but first we need to change the culture in Washington regarding spending. If we don’t do that, we will become western Europe–with permanent high unemployment rates and no money to defend ourselves (which actually is the job of the federal government).

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Overreach In Gun Laws

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A lot of the discussion of gun violence and limiting access to certain kinds of guns overlooks what the Second Amendment is actually about. The purpose of the militia was to protect us from the kind of totalitarianism we had experienced under the British. Now, some of those attempting gun control have forgotten about the rest of the U. S. Constitution.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air reported today that the State of Washington may be guilty of this. The article reports:

But then, with respect to the thousands of weapons like that already owned by Washington residents, the bill says this:

“In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall … safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.”

In other words, come into homes without a warrant to poke around. Failure to comply could get you up to a year in jail.

That is a law that should be illegal! It is interesting to see this sudden interest in assault weapons when a Justice Department study reveals:

Justice Department researchers have concluded that an assault weapons ban is “unlikely to have an effect on gun violence,” but President Obama has not accepted their report as his administration’s official position.

“Since assault weapons are not a major contributor to US gun homicide and the existing stock of guns is large, an assault weapon ban is unlikely to have an impact on gun violence,” the DOJ’s National Institute for Justice explains in a January 4 report obtained by the National Rifle Association. “If coupled with a gun buyback and no exemptions then it could be effective.” That idea is also undermined by the acknowledgement that “a complete elimination of assault weapons would not have a large impact on gun homicides.”

The research in that report didn’t stop Obama denouncing “weapons of war” during his State of the Union speech on February 12.

So what is this really about? It is much easier for a government to control an unarmed citizenry than an armed citizenry. Americans have never been about being controlled by the government. If we are serious about protecting our freedom, we need to look at the statistics and not buy into the rhetoric.

Regular Readers Of This Blog Know This, But Here It Is Again

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I  have periodically posted the YouTube video “Burning Down the House” on this website to remind people what actually caused the housing bubble as opposed to what they were being told caused the housing bubble. There is a reason I am posting it again.

In December 2012, a website called examiner.com posted a story with the headline, “New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies.” Sounds like the video at YouTube. The study was done by the National Bureau of Economic Research and released the week of December 21, 2012.

The article reports:

-No one was making bad loans to unqualified people until Democrats came along and threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn’t go along with the left’s Affirmative Action lending policies…all while federally insuring their losses. Even the New York Times warned in the late 1990s that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to this exact catastrophe.

-Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left’s favorite blatantly partisan “fact-checkers,” Snopes, admits (while pretending to ‘set the record straight’).

If we are to remain a free people, we need to understand facts–not spin. The lies that have been told about the financial collapse of 2007 are astounding. Even worse is the fact that the Dodd-Frank legislation passed as a result of the collapse does not come anywhere near addressing the core issue.

The graph below from the National Bureau of Economic Research study shows the impact of the Community Reinvestment Act on mortgage lending:

It is time to change both the Washington culture and the media culture. Unless we do that fairly quickly, we will cease to exist as a free, prosperous nation.

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If The Truth Is Not Repeated Often Enough The Lie Will Take Over

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Yesterday the Washington Examiner posted an article with a quote from Dan Rather on the supposed National Guard documents concerning George W. Bush.

Dan Rather is quoted as saying:

Number 1 – the facts of case are not in dispute.

Number 2 – no one had ever established that the documents were forged (those who attack them argued that we didn’t do enough to demonstrate that they were not forged) The whole documents argument was a camouflage – what was described in the documents was factual. As for the trap argument — could have been, might have been but nobody has ever proven that. What I know, all I know, is we reported a true story. Whatever you think of the documents, facts are facts.

Yes, Mr. Rather, facts are facts. First of all, the charges against President Bush have never been proven. Second of all, the fact that the documents were forged has been proven.

The article includes comments by Font expert Thomas Phinney, who has built a career on typography:

I am on the left wing of the political spectrum, and I am also a typography expert who was quoted twice in the Washington Post about the memos, and approached by ABC News to get my opinion on the topic. TL;DR: they were blatant forgeries.

…The assertion that all the attacks on the Bush National Guard story were “partisan political” attacks is nonsense. I voted against Bush in both elections, and I donated money to his opponents. But that doesn’t change my assertion that the memos were clear forgeries. None of the hundreds of typographers who have come to one of my presentations has even tried to collect the $1000 reward I have repeatedly offered to anybody who can produce a device, available in 1972, that could have produced those memos. (The Selectric Composer and the IBM Executive typewriter are not plausible candidates, btw.)

It’s an old story, but I guess it needs to be retold occasionally. Winston Churchill is quoted as saying, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” In this case at least we have the information to refute the lie.Enhanced by Zemanta

Sorting Out The Truth In Congress

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UPI reported today that the statement by Harry Reid that Congress has already cut $2.6 trillion from projected future deficits by reducing non-defense programs alone is simply not true. Fact Check originally posted the story.

Fact Check reports:

Democratic claims of $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction refer not just to spending cuts. For example, President Obama said at a news conference on Jan. 14 that he had signed “a total of about $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the past two years.” But Obama included in that figure only $1.4 trillion in actual “spending cuts.”

Obama’s figure also included more than $600 billion in tax increases on upper-income individuals, which he signed Jan. 3. And it included about $500 billion in reduced interest payments, resulting from reduced future borrowing. A spokesman for Reid, whom we contacted by email, also conceded that Reid’s higher figure includes what he called “tax savings,” by which of course he means higher taxes.

The problem with cutting spending is part of the culture of Washington. Money equals power, and the more money Washington controls, the more power it feels it holds. Establishment politicians in both parties have learned that lesson well. Unless groups like the Tea Party bring new faces into Washington who refuse to enter into that culture, the runaway spending will continue, and Americans will be asked to turn over more and more of their hard-earned money.

If the American people want the runaway spending to stop, they need to make their voices heard at the ballot box. Just because someone has been in office for twenty years, they are not necessarily working for you!

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About Those Stimulus Reports

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Yesterday’s Weekly Standard reported that the required reports on the President’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) have not been released.

The article reports:

In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved.  Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck.

Quarterly reports are required by law–the last on was posted in 2011. Where is the transparency the President keeps talking about?

The article concludes:

With only 58.6 percent of Americans currently employed — down 2.4 percent from the time of Obama’s first inauguration — it’s not surprising that the Obama administration doesn’t really want to fulfill it legal responsibilities and release subsequent reports on its failed “stimulus.”  However, it hardly seems fair — to use one of Obama’s favorite words — that the rich and (extremely) powerful think that they can choose whether or not to abide by the laws they spearhead and sign, while the rest of us are forced to obey them. 

Perhaps it’s time for the rich and powerful to do their fair share and obey the laws that they enforce against others.  And perhaps this is something that the House of Representatives might want to look into.

The only thing the stimulus did successfully was increase our indebtedness. It’s time to stop the excessive spending.

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Something To Keep In Mind As We Debate Who Should Be Allowed To Have Guns

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Townhall.com posted a story today about a store owner who stopped a robbery.

The article reports:

Robberies happen far too often, but a robber coming face-to-face with a gun-carrying grandmother is a little more rare.

Ernestine Aldana owns a grocery store near the corner of Muskego Avenue and Becher Street in Milwaukee. On Dec. 14, Aldana was working in the store when a man entered the store and pulled a knife on her.

“I was really scared,” she said.

But as the man reached for cash from the drawer, Aldana pulled a gun from underneath the counter.

“I didn’t think,” she said. “I didn’t remember what was being said. I just took a step back, grabbed the gun and that was that.”

As the gun came out, the man ran away.

Aldana said she and her husband have owned the grocery store for just over two years and have not encountered any problems before this. She said her son bought the gun for their protection, but they never thought they would have to use it.

It is a pretty safe bet that the story would have ended differently if Adlana had not owned the gun and kept it handy. This is the kind of story we need to keep in mind as we listen to Washington discuss laws that will take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, but not out of the hands of criminals.

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Jim DeMint Will Resign From The Senate In January

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The following is a press release from the Office of Senator Jim DeMint. It was released today:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) announced that he will leave the Senate at the beginning of January to become the next president of The Heritage Foundation, the largest and most respected conservative think tank in America.

“It’s been an honor to serve the people of South Carolina in United States Senate for the past eight years, but now it’s time for me to pass the torch to someone else and take on a new role in the fight for America’s future.

“I’m leaving the Senate now, but I’m not leaving the fight. I’ve decided to join The Heritage Foundation at a time when the conservative movement needs strong leadership in the battle of ideas. No organization is better equipped to lead this fight and I believe my experience in public office as well as in the private sector as a business owner will help Heritage become even more effective in the years to come.

“I’m humbled to follow in the footsteps of Ed Feulner, who built the most important conservative institution in the nation. He has been a friend and mentor for years and I am honored to carry on his legacy of fighting for freedom.

“My constituents know that being a Senator was never going to be my career. I came to Congress as a citizen legislator and I’ve always been determined to leave it as citizen legislator. South Carolina has a deep bench of conservative leaders and I know Governor Haley will select a great replacement.

“One of the most rewarding things I’ve done in the Senate is work with the grassroots to help elect a new generation of leaders who have the courage to fight for the principles of freedom that make this country so great. I’m confident these senators will continue the legacy of conservative leaders before them.”

Jim DeMint was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998 after owning a successful advertising and market research company for twenty years. DeMint left the House after limiting himself to three terms and then was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and re-elected in 2010.

During his time in office, DeMint has been tireless advocate for Americans taxpayers. His goal has been to support and defend the Constitution, which was written to preserve liberty by restraining the federal government. Toward that end, he authored legislation to balance the budget, ban earmarks, replace the tax code, and reform our entitlement programs. He also led the fight against unconstitutional power grabs like the Wall Street bailout and Obamacare.

This is wonderful news for the Heritage Foundation and sad news for the Senate. Jim DeMint has been an honest representative of conservative values during the time he has served in Congress. Jim DeMint was first elected to the the House of Representatives in 1998 and was elected to the Senate in 2004.

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