Mindless and Spineless

Is the American Dream Slipping Away?

2012-02-13T23:33:00.001-05:00

By: Idaho Conservative Blogger

In one of my favorite movies “The Rock” after a tough day at work disassembling a terrorist’s bomb FBI agent Stanley Goodspeed (Nicholas Cage) tells his girlfriend bringing a child into this world today would be an act of cruelty. This is the exchange;

Stanley Goodspeed: Oh, just some terrorists decided to send a little care package. Box of goodies. Which had to be neutralized before blowing up the office...

[plucks a harsh note on his guitar]

Stanley Goodspeed: So I took the rest of the day off. Glass of wine, little guitar... Just relax.

Carla: Wow.

Stanley Goodspeed: I mean it, honey, the world is being Fed-exed to hell in a hand cart. I really believe anyone thinking even thinking of bringing a child into the world is coldly considering an act of cruelty.

[pause, Carla stares at Stanley]

Stanley Goodspeed: I know, I'm rambling, I'm complaining, I'm sorry. What's your news, baby?

Carla: I'm pregnant.... You didn't mean what you just said, did you?

Stanley Goodspeed: When?

Carla: Just right now, when you were talking about bringing a child into the world, and having it be an act of cruelty.

Stanley Goodspeed: I meant it at the time.

Carla: Stanley, "at the time"? You said it seven and a half seconds ago!

Stanley Goodspeed: Well... gosh, kind of a lot's happened since then...

Friday my wife and I became grandparents for the second time. A beautiful granddaughter joined our family. She is perfect. Now I don’t think bringing a child into the world today would be an act of cruelty but her birth got me thinking about my grandkids future in this great country of ours. I remember when our kids were born I had great dreams and aspirations for them. Knowing that they could make anything they wanted out of their life. Any dream was attainable through hard work and motivation. Or as the saying goes, the world was their oyster.

Now for the first time in my lifetime I’m worried for the future of our kids and grandkids. Will they have the opportunities I had? Will they dream big and have a chance to turn those dreams into reality? I’m not so sure. There is a good chance our beautiful granddaughter born Friday will live to see the turn of the next century. I can only imagine what time will bring to her and this country. Frankly it scares me, if President Obama is reelected I have no doubt we will go down a road forever changing this country right down to our foundation. I can’t fathom where it will end.

Our country’s national debt is at a breaking point. We are broke almost to a point of no return. The dream of home ownership is slipping away while the mortgage crisis starts to escalate again. Unemployment is at record number, Iran continues to threaten the entire world. Russia has surpassed us in space exploration and China, oh my, where to begin.

All the while President Obama continues to propose massive entitlements and government spending (excluding military spending), a record number of Americans are being foreclosed on their mortgages and forced out of their homes due to unemployment, Obama drags his feet on assisting Israel against the Iranian threat, NASA continues to be cut to the bone allowing Russia to control space after shutting down the shuttle program, and China continues to grab our debt and spend our interest money building up a huge military capable of a serious offence against anyone in the world. If Russia and China were to team up against the U.S. we would be in serious trouble. President Obama seems to not understand, “Peace through strength”.

We are living in serious times my friends. This November’s election just might be the most important election of our lifetime. I pray for all of our grandkids we get it right. We must win this battle.

I will close with another scene from “The Rock”

John Mason: Are you sure you're ready for this?

Stanley Goodspeed: I'll do my best.

John Mason: Your "best"! Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and *#$@ the prom queen.

Stanley Goodspeed: Carla was the prom queen.

John Mason: Really?

Stanley Goodspeed: [cocks his gun] Yeah.

Email: ICB

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Obama Losing With Catholics? Think Again

2012-02-12T12:19:00.001-05:00

By Austin Hill
“Can Obama win his battle with the Catholic Church?”

The words scrolled across the bottom of my screen. The cable channel “experts” were debating the President’s mandate that Catholic institutions provide employee insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs.

“The President is helping women with their reproductive health needs,” one of the pundits noted. “But how will the voters respond?” the host replied.

Indeed, the President of the United States instigated a battle with an entire church, and did so quite intentionally. And it’s futile to now ask “can he win?” (he’s already scoring political points– I’ll explain in a moment).

Americans should instead be asking some different questions: Why have we come to accept a U.S. President’s attack on a church as normal, as though it’s nothing more than the subject of armchair quarterbacking? Why do polls show that nearly half of the American electorate wants to re-elect him? And why did a clear majority of American Catholics vote to empower this man in the first place?

After touching-off a global fury with his ruling on healthcare expenditures within religious organizations, the President announced last Friday that he would allow an “attempt to accommodate” (notice that he did not propose to “exempt”) religious organizations with the mandate. Rather than requiring religious groups to pay for birth control, Barack Obama plans instead to require all insurance companies to offer birth control to all women that they insure, and to do so at no extra cost to their customers.

Reaction from prolife leaders to the “accommodation” was swift and negative, while many pundits still argued that it was un-constitutional. Yet the non-profit, Washington, DC-based Catholics United, Inc., offered its blessing on Mr. Obama, noting that “the new regulation will ensure that Catholic hospitals, universities and social service providers that are religiously opposed to contraception and sterilization do not have to provide or even refer for those services, while also requiring insurance companies provide contraceptive services free of charge to any enrollee who wishes to have the coverage.”

And herein lays President Obama’s political victory: he has yet again driven a wedge between some of the Catholic laity, and many of the Catholic clergy. He jabbed a stick in the collective eye of Catholic Church hierarchy over teachings that some Catholics don’t take seriously to begin with, and he now has at least some Catholic lay-organizations praising him for being reasonable and negotiable – even as Catholic Clergy remain disgruntled, and “un-reasonable.”

And notice how the President has yet again advanced his legacy of transforming the collective American psyche. According to Catholics United, hospital, university and social service workers will be able to live within their personal moral convictions, not because each human individual is endowed by their creator with the right to do so (as the U.S. Constitution tells us), but because Barack Obama’s “new regulation” will allow it to happen.

It’s disgraceful and frightening – and it’s brilliant politics by the President. Catholics and pundits like to pretend that the Church is monolithic on “sanctity of life” issues, but it is not. This was apparent when Father John Jenkins invited President Obama to speak at Notre Dame University in 2009.

Some Catholic clergy and laity were outraged at the time, yet Father Jenkins, the university’s President, insisted that it was a good thing. Sure, Barack Obama is the most enthusiastic abortion supporting President ever. But he belonged at Notre Dame because, as Father Jenkins noted, he is a symbol of “overcoming racial barriers.”

And here we are in 2012. The President proactively created a crisis (as community organizers and agitators do); he then repositioned himself as the sensible moderator; and he has now once again received the blessing and approval of American Catholics that are more in love with him, and Democrat politics, than they are with their church’s teachings.

But notice, further, what is being ignored by both the faithful, and not-so-faithful: a loss of personal freedom. The President of the United States is using his bully pulpit to force private businesses (insurance companies) to provide a service, while forbidding those businesses from being compensated for it. This tramples upon the right to private property, and our most basic understandings of human freedom, yet Catholics United not only fails to question this, they actually have blessed it – and they don’t seem to even consider what the constitutional ramifications of this might be.

Catholics, of all people, should know better - especially given the recent legacy of the late Pope John Paul II. Born in communist Poland and forced to flee to the U.K. to complete his theological studies (the Soviet Union apparently did not issue “accommodations” as President Obama has so benevolently done), Pope John Paul II warned the world after Eastern Europe’s collapse about the evils of government controlled economies.

Yet today, many American Catholic clergymen remain ambivalent to their Church’s recent teachings on economics and liberty. Many of them blessed Barack Obama’s candidacy, willingly handed-over more control of private economic resources to our government by approving of Obamacare, and now seem shocked that a politician is using that power in selfish and destructive ways.

It’s difficult to know if American Catholics will regain an adequate understanding of human liberty anytime soon. But Barack Obama will no doubt continue to score points with his own “true believers.”

Email: Austin Hill

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Solution Only Makes Matters Worse!

2012-02-10T17:47:00.000-05:00

At noon today (2/10/2011) President Obama responded to national outrage over his Obamacare, mandated requirement that all religious employers (such as charities, hospitals and universities) provide services that are in conflict with the Tenets to the religious institution.

Obama’s solution, “I am requiring insurance companies to provide these services (abortive drugs, contraception, and sterilization) at NO COST”

Does Obama really believe that the opposition is about money?

The “fix” to the Obama mandate still requires that religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control, abortion-causing drugs, and sterilization procedures to women.

Obama is still forcing religious organizations to offer the service that conflict with their beliefs!

But at “No Cost”!

What a joke that is! There are no free lunches! Unlike our Government, companies cannot rob the well-to-do when they need more cash. They cannot do things (at least for very long) for free! This means that the cost of these services will now be paid by everyone that purchases insurance. Ironically, that includes the Churches that were exempt!

Jim Jordan, the Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said
“This Obamacare rule still tramples on Americans’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion. It’s a fig leaf, not a compromise. Whether they are affiliated with a church or not, employers will still be forced to pay an insurance company for coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs”

“This is not just a problem for church-affiliated hospitals and charities. Under these rules, a small business owner with religious objections to abortion-inducing drugs and contraception must either violate his religious beliefs or violate the law.”

“The liberal Obama administration thinks its political goals trump the religious faith of American citizens. That isn’t right, fair, or constitutional.”

What we actually have here is an attempt for an unpressidented power grab!

It is just one more step toward the total destruction of the Constitution! If Obama can violate the First Amendment with impunity; if he can force private companies to offer services at the behest of the White House, he can do any damn thing he wishes and we my friends will be ruled by a dictator! -- WD

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Is Jesus On Board with Obama?

2012-02-05T17:10:00.000-05:00

By: Austin Hill

“Jesus would back my tax-the-rich policy.”

What a cynical way to characterize President Obama’s address at the recent National Prayer Breakfast. Yet CNN Money – and a bunch of other media outlets – described the speech precisely this way, after the annual event last week.

Christian faith, the President noted, compels him "to give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy."

Perhaps most interesting about the President’s speech is what people are NOT saying in its aftermath. For example, President Obama’s admission that his understanding of the Bible is his basis for his economic policies has not drawn any public concerns about the so-called “separation of church and state” (Barry W. Lynn – where are you?).

Likewise, there seems to be no apprehension about President Obama’s remarks from the ranks of religious leaders. Here was the 44th President of the United States claiming to have the support of Jesus of Nazareth on his proposed changes to the I.R.S. tax code, and the only raised eyebrows have come not from a Pastor, Priest or Rabbi, but from a lone U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

So in the absence of meaningful dialog on the matter, how about if we consider this question: was President Obama right? Is it true that Jesus Christ, were he physically among us today, would stand with President Obama and support the elevation of effective tax rates on high-earning Americans?

The subject at hand is deeper than what a single editorial piece can address. But let’s understand that viewing economics through religious lenses is not new, nor is it something that begins and ends with Barack Obama.

For centuries, philosophers, economists, and theologians have reflected on the intersection of morality and economics. Many theological works, including many of the teachings of Jesus Himself, take-on economic concerns and can serve to inform our view today of the world’s various economic systems.

It is also true that the world of the New Testament (the world as it was when Jesus walked the earth) and today’s globalized society are dramatically different. In the world of the Bible, for example, most people made their living exclusively from the land—in agriculture, or in some sort of a modest trade (we know that Jesus himself worked as a carpenter, and His disciples’ worked in the fishing business).

]We also know that back then, it was usually difficult to get ahead financially. The idea of “upward mobility” in society was essentially non-existent, and most people remained in the socioeconomic category of life into which they were born.

On this point, Historian D.E. Oakman of Pacific Lutheran University in Washington insists that “for the majority of the population, after they had paid their taxes, there was barely enough to eat.” There were few “rags to riches” stories in the ancient world, Dr. Oakman has noted, and most of the rich became wealthy through inheritance, patronage, or corruption. Thus, if you were “rich” back in biblical times, people were automatically suspicious of you because you probably got that way by oppressing the more vulnerable.

This “rich versus poor” dynamic remained in place throughout the world for several centuries. Even for several hundred years of England’s history, society consisted of the rich land owners (the “Lords” who owned the territories) and the poor (the “serfs” who were essentially enslaved to the land owners). This didn’t change, until the ideas of giving every citizen the opportunity to own property, and to sell their skills on the open market, became a societal norm.

These ideas were central themes in philosopher Adam Smith’s work “The Wealth Of Nations,” which, interestingly, was published the year our nation was founded- 1776. Likewise these ideas of individual liberty are also at the epicenter of our United States Constitution. And after almost two hundred and fifty years of American history, we now know this: while neither “upward mobility” nor a “middle class” existed when Jesus walked the earth, today our American-styled economic system of capitalism has enabled both of these possibilities to become realities, and to flourish.

So would Jesus support Barack Obama’s “tax the rich” policy? He would likely call on all Americans to be more caring of the poor. He might also remind us that, the last time he was on earth, government tax collectors were a source of oppression (anybody remember the story of Zaccehus from Matthew Chapter 5?).

Charity is not the same as government wealth redistribution. And if Jesus were on earth today he might urge all of us – President Obama included – to stop repeating the same old mistakes.

Email: Austin Hill

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"The Forgotten Man"

2012-02-04T00:11:00.003-05:00

In front of the White House

a man is sitting on a park bench in the throes of depression.

He is surrounded by all 44 presidents.

In the forefront, purposefully ignoring the depressed man is

President Obama, whose right foot is stepping on the Constitution.

James Madison is next to Obama, pleading with him to stop.

For a full screen version

“The Forgotten Man”

by Jon McNaughton

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Ineptocracy

2012-01-31T18:32:00.000-05:00

A new word found in political dictionaries.

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy)--noun

A system of government in which the least capable of leading are elected by the least capable of producing; and where those members of society that are least likely to sustain themselves or to succeed, are rewarded with goods and services which are paid for by confiscating the wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

SYN: Socialist. Communist, Marxist, Statist, Liberal, Progressive, Obamaist -- WD

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Do Government Programs Ever 'Fail'?

2012-01-30T08:53:00.000-05:00

by: Austin Hill

Americans have come to loath the idea that some business enterprises are so important and so “big,” that they can’t be allowed to fail - especially as it regards large corporations that “need” government bailouts. But have we developed a similar disdain for government programs that are treated as though they can’t possibly be failures?

After last week’s State of the Union Address and Republican presidential debate, one might think that the issue of “more or less government” in our lives is merely another consumer choice - kind of like Coke or Pepsi, McDonalds or Burger King. For example, as he recently reviewed America’s debate over President Obama’s government healthcare law, Columnist Carl M. Cannon characterized the battle this way:

“To liberals, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is a step toward ensuring improvements in health benefits, lower costs, higher quality care, economic security and fiscal sanity. Republicans, who invariably call it “Obamacare,” almost universally describe it as costly, intrusive, economically disastrous -- and a violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.”

In reality, the choices we make for our nation’s public policy are not all of equal merit – some can enhance our freedoms and our quality of life, while others clearly make matters worse. And many government programs that are intended to “solve” problems – most of which come from Democrats, but far too many of which come from Republicans – often times make matters worse.

It’s difficult to argue that President Obama’s healthcare reform law has solved any problems at all (notice that he’s not campaigning on the law’s success, but rather, on an agenda to protect it – “we can’t go back” he often notes). But let’s consider another signature program that the President has championed these past three years – his “Making Home Affordable” mortgage rescue initiatives.

Protecting one from losing their home may have seemed like an act of compassion. But in 2009, it became a matter of federal policy as the government intervened to try to curtail foreclosures.

In March of that year, President Obama introduced the set of federal policies budgeted to cost $75 billion in TARP funds, and which were intended to help make it “easier” for homeowners to remain in their homes and to continue paying on their mortgages.

The effort itself was complex and was formulated with both federal guidelines, and guidelines to be established by each of the individual fifty states. The effort also proved to be so confusing that about six months after the its inception, FreddieMac (one of the lenders that was offering the so-called “affordability assistance” to some of its borrowers) actually hired a private firm to send trained professionals door-to-door in certain regions of the country to explain to homeowners how the program worked.

The objective of “Making Home Affordable”—reducing monthly mortgage bills so borrowers would presumably keep paying on their mortgages—was to be accomplished on a case-by-case basis, and by a variety of means. Among the optional procedures were: lowering the interest rate of the loan (to as low as 2 percent in some cases); reducing the principle on the loan; and extending the term of the loan, in some cases to a maximum of forty years.

The government stipulated that, for certain qualified mortgage holders, loans that were held by the government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be refinanced or otherwise “modified” to provide the borrower with more manageable monthly terms. Not surprisingly, the government was also able to get some of the lenders who accepted “bailout funds” to follow suit, and begin modifying the loans of their struggling clients as well (even though to do so meant that these lenders would be working against their own interests, and foregoing revenues that they were clearly entitled to collect).

It all seemed like a great idea. But as is so often the case when the government intervenes into the free market, the results produced by the “Making Home Affordable” initiatives have been less than desirable. Within the first eighteen months of the program’s beginnings, more than 50 percent of the participants in the program ended up falling behind on their payments again. Our government’s well-intended effort to “solve” the mortgage default problem gave rise to an entirely new problem—the phenomenon of “re-defaults.”

And here’s another problem with the program: it focused on mortgage borrowers who were not keeping their commitments, and extended to them a benefit, while more responsible borrowers who were current on their payments received no benefit from their government at all. This is to say that, for all the good intentions involved, the “Making Home Affordable” program rewarded bad behavior – and produced more bad behavior in the end.

This is but one example of a well-intended government program that has cost the American taxpayer enormous amounts of money, has undermined hard working people who play by the rules, and has produced more negative consequences. Has it failed? Not according to our government.

The choices between big government and limited government are not inconsequential. Americans need to think, before they vote.

Email: Austin Hill

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Who Can? - The Government Can!

2012-01-27T19:47:00.002-05:00

Who can rob you bllind without calling it a crime?

The Government can!

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Our Civil Liberties On A Slippery Slope

2012-01-23T00:44:00.000-05:00

By Austin Hill
President Obama wants more tourists at Disneyworld. Mitt Romney wants the race for the nomination to be done already. And Newt Gingrich wants us to ignore his second ex-wife who claims that he once wanted an "open marriage."

The headlines of Election 2012 are packed with entertainment value. But here's something that the American people should want- and demand - from a prospective new President: some fresh ideas on protecting our civil liberties.

As the campaigns twist and turn with promises to ignite "job creation" and to eliminate Obamacare, very little has been said in this election cycle about a resource that is increasingly in short supply for U.S. citizens - civil liberty.

One might have thought that President Obama's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act in December, complete with its "indefinite detention without a trial" provisions, would have ignited some debate about the liberties of citizens.

To his credit, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was quick to condemn the new law and note that it signals a "descent into totalitarianism" (Congressman Paul has now introduced legislation to repeal the law). Yet Mitt Romney offered his approval of the law when asked about it, and stated that had he been President, he would have signed the bill into law himself.

So while the dominant news media focuses on allegations of adultery and cultural insensitivity among the candidates, the tentative nature of our liberty mostly gets ignored by both the candidates and the press. Worse yet, Republican frontrunner

Mitt Romney is now championing another liberty-crushing policy as a means of controlling illegal immigration: the mandate of a national I.D. card for all U.S. citizens.

The idea of a national I.D. card has been around for decades. Over the years Democrats have most often proposed it as a mechanism for easily determining one's citizenship, and one's

Eligibility for government-funded healthcare services. Republicans, on the other hand, used to consistently oppose the idea, on the grounds that in order to issue federal I.D. cards the U.S. federal government had to collect more private personal data about individual citizens.

And the rendering of one's personal information, Republicans used to say, was a violation of one's civil liberties.

But Republican opposition to big brother began to fade in the mid-2000's. With growing concerns about domestic terrorist threats and the pain of illegal immigration becoming more impossible to ignore, President George W. Bush signed into law the federal "Real ID" Act in May of 2005. The law was intended, among other things, to impose specific "standards" on the individual states regarding the issuance of driver's licenses and other state I.D. cards, as a means of tightening-up domestic national security. Yet despite the approval of the Congress and the President, well over half of all the legislatures in the individual states passed resolutions opposing the Real ID Act.

One of the states to oppose President Bush's Real ID Act was - not surprisingly - the libertarian-leaning Arizona. Yet at about the same time that Arizona officially rejected Real ID, the state was also on the verge of becoming ground zero for the nation's debate over illegal immigration. And this is when Republican elected officials seriously began to waiver on concerns about intrusive government.

Despite its opposition to Real ID, Arizona's Republican-led legislature forced a "crackdown" on business owners that employed illegal immigrants, by requiring employers to register their employees with the federal "e-verify" website. Signed into law by then Democrat Governor Janet Napolitano, Arizona began forcing citizens to allow their federal government to collect even more personal data on them, in exchange for the privilege of interviewing for a job.

This is to say that many of the same elected Republicans in the Grand Canyon state who were horrified at President Bush's violation of civil liberties, nonetheless had no problem pushing a statewide program
requiring the fed's to collect more of people's personal information. And it wasn't just Arizona - heavily Republican states like Virginia, Alabama, Utah and Georgia have all followed Arizona's lead, and have adopted similar statewide laws.

Of course, nobody with a healthy skepticism about the "good intentions" of government believes that a national I.D. card system would solve our illegal immigration problem. Those of us who are not so enamored with the quick-fixes of politicians recognize that illegal immigrants would likely figure a way to illegally obtain the I.D. cards, and the system would thus be compromised.

But equally as important, imposing I.D. card and "e-verify" requirements on the citizenry is an unjust, and logically flawed means of policing the problem. In stead of focusing on the origins of illegal immigration - a porous border, an inept immigration system, and people who flagrantly violate our nation's laws - such policies focus instead on law abiding citizens, and make them "pay" for the failings of others.

In 2003 Republicans were outraged when then-U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton proposed a national I.D. card program. Today, the Republican presidential frontrunner is campaigning with the idea.

Can America - and our civil liberties - exit the slippery slope?

Email: Austin Hill

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Did You Know That Muslims Discovered America? Or That Jerusalem Is An Arab City?

2012-01-22T21:43:00.000-05:00

Did you know that Muslims discovered America, that Jerusalem is an Arab city, that Jesus was a “Palestinian,” or that the state of Israel never existed?

That’s just some of the “history” that students in America’s K-12 classrooms have been taught in recent years

The problems with America's education system are not too little time in the classroom! It is the fact that we teach crap and nothing but crap because the administrators, the NEA and politicians want it that way and the teachers don't know any better or don't care!

Blessed are the homeschoolers; their children shall inherit the earth! --WD

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Do Social Conservatives Care About Capitalism?

2012-01-15T17:32:00.000-05:00

By Austin Hill
The Republican primary races are underway, and pundits are abuzz about whether or not religious social conservatives will embrace Mitt Romney.

That’s an interesting and worthwhile question. But here’s another interesting question: do religious social conservatives care about the free market economy, and capitalism?

I’ve pondered this question over the years, in previous columns and in various talk radio venues. When I do, I usually get very angry, visceral answers – responses like “of course we do,” and “how do you dare even ask?”

Despite the anger and discomfort, this is an important question to be asking. Religious social conservatives are large in number and can influence the outcomes of elections. And as our nation is currently at an economic crossroads, it remains to be seen what our country and our country’s economic system will be like in the future.

But before we think about capitalism, ponder this for a moment: who are “religious social conservatives,” anyway? According to research from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 70 Percent of American adults identify with some form of evangelical Protestant Christianity, mainline denominational Protestant Christianity, Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, or Mormonism.

Obviously, adherents to these various faith traditions do not all think alike on issues of culture and public policy. However many members of these religious groups share common, strongly-held beliefs and values, so it is not surprising that over the past several decades they have often exhibited similar responses to public policy concerns amid America’s changing cultural landscape.

This is to say that not every individual who practices one of these religious traditions necessarily qualifies as a religious social conservative. However, the religious social conservative movement is comprised of members all of these various faith communities, while the movement is most certainly dominated by Evangelical Protestant Christians.

The earliest beginnings of this movement can be traced back to the social upheaval of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s youth culture, and the 1973 Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision. After decades of non-participation in elections and public policy debates, many devoutly religious Americans became alarmed by a “hippie” generation that was determined to overthrow our culture’s authority structures, and by their government arbitrarily determining that unborn children were not really human beings.

Thus, “social conservatism” emerged as a movement that was focused on the most basic of all social structures– the traditional family. Over the past several decades, concerns about the life of the unborn child, the rights of parents, and the definition of marriage have all taken center-stage among social conservatives, while each of these concerns have been openly regarded as “moral issues” that are worthy of religious peoples’ attention.

While the long-standing concerns of social conservatives remain in-play today, the United States now finds itself at another turning point. Will our country continue as the “most free” among the world’s free market economies? Or will the U.S. devolve in to more of a European-styled, socialistic economy, where private individuals and businesses make fewer decisions with their own economic resources, and politicians and government bureaucrats make more of those decisions?

Given our nation’s economic crossroads, and given that social conservatives are so influential among the American electorate, the religious social conservative movement needs to look within itself and answer this question: should economics be regarded as one of the “moral issues” that is worthy of our attention? And if it is, then which economic system do social conservatives prefer – our free market capitalistic system, or a more socialistic, government-controlled system?

Economic systems and policies are, after all, an expression of how a society regards both its weakest and most powerful members and everybody else in between. Likewise, economic policies often play a key role in determining who “wins” and who “loses” in a society, and they can either encourage or discourage positive, productive behavior.

Social conservatives can begin addressing economic issues by first confronting a very common assumption that is widely held as true – the assumption that capitalism is an economic system built on greed and selfishness, while socialism is a system based on generosity and “fairness.”

Despite its prevalence, this is a false assumption. When properly understood and implemented, capitalism is an economic system that allows every willing participant the opportunity to gain entry into the marketplace; demands that every participant abide by a uniform set of rules; rewards people according to a system of merit; and allows private individuals and organizations the freedom both to succeed, and to fail. Special governmental favors – bailouts and so forth – are an anathema to a capitalistic economic system.

Socialism, however, places in the hands of politicians and governmental bureaucrats the power to take away increasing amounts of wealth from certain individuals (generally the more wealthy in a society), and re-distribute that wealth to people that are believed to be “deserving” of it. In such an economic system, personal responsibility, a system of merit, and one’s freedom to succeed and to fail, are all undermined.

Economics is absolutely a “moral issue,” and our nation’s economic dilemmas are numerous and profound. Will the influential social conservative movement have a voice in setting the course for our nation’s economic future?

Email: Austin Hill

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The Candidate That Will Unite Republican Voters

2012-01-13T01:41:00.000-05:00

Real Unemployment Rate: 11.4 Percent

2012-01-10T17:10:00.000-05:00

The White House has trumpeted recent rosy employment figures, but in their guts Americans know things aren’t getting better. They should trust their instincts.

Jobs are the No. 1 issue going into the 2012 election, which makes the unemployment rate a particularly important indicator. Lately, the trend seems to be favoring the White House. The December unemployment numbers showed a drop to 8.5 percent, down 0.2 percent from the previous month and over half a percentage point from August. In the “jobless recovery,” small moves like that take on outsized significance.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the last 12 months, a net of 1.5 million more Americans found work. This sounds like good news, but the civilian non-institutional worker population increased by 1.7 million over the same period, and the raw percentage of Americans working has basically flatlined at 58.5 percent. To the extent there are new jobs, it has more to do with the fact that there are more people creating more demand, not with any fundamental expansion in the economy.

This raises the question why the unemployment rate continues to improve. The answer is that the “official” workforce is shrinking. Only those working or actively seeking employment “count” in the unemployment statistics. The discouraged, the dropouts and those who don’t even bother trying to find work aren’t included in the official unemployment rate. The 30-year average participation rate - that is, the percentage of Americans in the workforce - is 65.8 percent. During the last three years, this number has fallen sharply to around 64 percent. While the potential worker population rose last year by 1.7 million, the official workforce only went up 275,000. Counting like that makes it easier to report better employment numbers.

An analysis posted last week at the Zero Hedge website looked at what the unemployment picture would be if participation rates were held steady. Using more realistic long-term average participation rates, the study calculated a current unemployment rate of 11.4 percent. While the Obama administration’s numbers keep getting better, rates based on long-term participation do not. Factor in the number of Americans who hold down two or three jobs just to get by, and those who are chronically underemployed make the picture even grimmer.

-- Washington Times

Editorial 1/10/2011

.No matter how grim the REAL unemployment rate is, you can bet that next November, the White House will be reporting that it is less than 8%. -- WD

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Mormonism Or Marxism: Which Would You Prefer In The White House?

2012-01-01T22:20:00.001-05:00

By Austin Hill
Is a Romney nomination inevitable?

No.

But former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is looking very strong in Iowa and New Hampshire, where presidential primary voting begins this week. Likewise, a current Rasmussen poll shows Romney with a six percentage point lead over President Obama in a hypothetical election match up.

So things are looking very good for Mitt Romney, as he seeks the Republican nomination for the presidency. And this means that Americans will likely have to answer an important question in 2012: which would you prefer at the White House -Mormon theology, or Marxist liberation theology?

I wish I didn’t have to ask this question. But as Romney gets closer to the presidency, the criticisms of his church affiliation and theological convictions will get louder. And if you’re troubled by Mitt’s Mormonism, you should be even more concerned about the religious affiliations of our current President.

As for Mr. Romney, he has thus far run a good campaign and has managed to mostly stay out of theological debates. But in the last presidential election cycle the “Mormon thing” proved to be unavoidable, and as primary voting begins in religiously conservative regions of the country, his Mormonism will become a big deal again.

Given this certainty, here’s some advice for Governor Romney: don’t repeat your mistake of 2008 of trying to convince “them” that you are one of “them.” The more you stand in front of conservative Evangelical and Catholic audiences and ascribe terms like “born again” and “Christian” to yourself, the more they’ll be saying “oh no you are not!”

Leave the theological battles over “who is really a Christian” to other people, Mr. Romney, and talk to us instead about the values and policy ideas that America so desperately needs.

When questions arise about your church, tell us, Mr. Romney, why your Mormonism matters: your church informs your understanding of why our society must uphold the dignity of every human individual; it teaches you about the profound importance of human liberty (I love your church’s “Choose The Right” motto – try telling us why it is so important that each of us have the freedom to “choose”); and it affirms to the world that marriage is good for society. Try to convey that, while our theological differences are real, our values are more universal and uniting.

On this point, you might borrow from former President George W Bush. In a little-known March 2001 speech, Bush spoke at the opening of the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington. Bush, of course, is a Methodist-turned-Evangelical, yet he was still warmly received at the ceremony by the Catholic hierarchy.

And Bush didn’t try to pretend that he was Catholic, either. “I may not be a parishioner…” he stated as he began his remarks, “but I’m a sojourner with you…” He then brilliantly went on to say that we are “one” with our values, and that the Pope was a great teacher of those values. To those who would prefer to bash Romney’s church rather than seriously considering who should be our next President, I would ask this: have you scrutinized President Obama’s theological affiliations the way you’ve scrutinized Mormonism?

For the record, Barack Obama hasn’t been known for regular church attendance since moving-in to the White House (this puts him in good company with many of our previous Presidents). Yet his decades-long affiliation with the radical Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a central outlet of liberation theology, is quite well documented.

This is to say that President Obama has been steeped in a theological worldview that essentially takes the economic and “class struggle” teachings of Karl Marx, and superimposes Bible verses over it. It preaches that successful people are oppressors who need to be conquered, and that the “oppressed” should live off of other people’s largess. These sorts of ideas -which are inherently economic in their nature -are prevalent in governments throughout the third world, Latin America, and parts of Europe. And they are blessed and affirmed in churches that espouse liberation theology – which is all a part of our President’s religious background.

Are there theological differences between Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, and the Evangelicalism and Catholicism that a majority of Americans embrace? Yes, there absolutely is.

But it is also true that the Mormon Church movement is an American-born religious movement, and teaches that freedom is something that is sacred and to be safe-guarded.

President Obama’s liberation theology, on the other hand, is at war with Western values. It teaches that freedom is inherently problematic (it inevitably leads to a society of oppressors and victims), and only through the power of government control can the evils of a free society be corrected.

I’d be delighted to see Mormonism replace the Marxism that presently inhabits the White House. But will Americans be willing to honestly examine them both?

Email: Austin Hill

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Senator Lugar (Rino-IN) attacks Tea Party

2011-12-27T14:47:00.000-05:00

“The Tea Party destroyed the chances for a Republican majority in the Senate at the last elections” – Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN)

Lugar further claims that if the Tea Party wants a Republican majority, they will have to support the “Old Elitist” like himself, who have experience at “politics as usual”

Why would the Tea Party want to return the likes of Lugar to the Senate?

Would it be that he supports federal gun control? Or that he voted for the dream act? Or that he votes for huge agriculture support programs, including Ethanol for fuel? Or that he supported Obama’s nominations to the Supreme Court? Or that he voted for TARP? Or that he voted to include criticism of sodomy in the definition of a “hate crime.”? These are all reasons to oppose the elestion of Rino's!

The Tea Party goals are not about a Republican majority in either branch of the Congress. The Tea Party’s goal is to elect Congressmen and a President that believes in and obeys the Constitution and will reign in government spending. If a candidate is a true Conservative, The Tea Party will support that candidate, regardless of party affiliation.

When Senator Lugar claims that the Tea Party prevented a Republican majority in the Senate, he is making reference to the fact that the Tea Party supported true Conservatives in opposition to Rino incumbents like himself.

The facts are that a Republican controlled Senate, led my Mitch McConnell and a number of RINO’s will be no different than what we have now.

If the Tea Party movement is to succeed at saving this nation, the “Old Elitists” like Lugar, Rove, the Bush’s and others have to go! "Politics as usual" is what is destroying this nation and what has crippled the Republican Party.

The elections of 2010 have shown that Conservatives win when they stop trying to look like “that other party”.

Let us pray that God still blesses America.

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Note To Harry Reid: We Found Some Unicorns

2011-12-18T12:34:00.000-05:00

By Austin Hill
What was the leader of the United States Senate thinking?

For months Senator Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats have been pushing for higher taxes on upper income earners. Congressional Republicans have argued that this is a bad idea, because people with wealth often start their own businesses and hire workers in the process – and government shouldn’t create disincentives for business and job growth.

So, facing a failure of his tax hike proposal, Harry Reid took to the floor of the U.S. Senate and responded to the critics who opposed his scheme, declaring: “Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They are impossible to find and don't exist."

They don’t exist? Really? Nobody with wealth ever starts a business and hires people to work at it? No, not in the insular political world of the leader of the United States Senate. As far as Mr. Reid was concerned, these "fictitious millionaire job creators" are mostly just "hedge fund managers or wealthy lawyers that don't do much hiring."

If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were even remotely in-touch with the nation he is paid to serve, he’d know that wealthy job creators have been trying to get his attention for nearly two years, crying for a reprieve from the oppressive Obama government for which he has been carrying the legislative water. But it’ll be another five years before Harry stands for re-election, so why bother with the realities of public policy? The short-term political gain Harry can reap by publicly demanding more punishment for “rich people” is all that matters right now – or so he likely thinks.

But, as if to produce a “teachable moment” for the bumbling Reid, none other than USA Today stepped-in three days after the Senator’s absurdities and provided a bit of a tutorial. You might say that, despite Harry’s certainty that they “don’t exist,” a writer at USA Today found a few “unicorns.”

In a December 15th article entitled “Economic optimism grows, but risks remain,” USA Today writer Paul Davidson provides examples of how private individuals with wealth are starting businesses, and - shocking- creating jobs! And here’s what else Davidson’s reveals: public policy emanating from Congress and the White House directly impacts business owner’s decisions about whether or not to expand. For Harry and Nancy and Barack it may all be a political game, but they nonetheless wield a lot of power over us and they’re playing with our livelihoods and futures. A quick perusal of Davidson’s article provides a snapshot of how things work in the real world – a world outside of the Obama gamesmanship.

In Evanston, Ill., Davidson notes, a guy described as a “serial restaurant entrepreneur” Mitch Dulin opened a shop called “Central Street Café” last summer. Dulin jumped in to his new venture, according to Davidson, largely because his instincts told him that the local economy was improving, and, so he reasoned, if he had waited much longer then the rock-bottom lease rates that were available would likely begin to rise. "I saw things getting better," Dulin was quoted as saying, and "if I were to wait a year, the lease would cost me 20% more." Imagine that – without direction from Harry Reid or Barack Obama, Mr. Dulin sought to use his money wisely – and his pursuit of wisdom led to business expansion.

But wait, there’s more! As Davidson reports, “Dulin says he paid cash for the renovation of the space — at a cost of $500,000 to $1 million — and (he) might not have gone ahead with the project if he had needed to get a loan.” Uh-oh! Looks like we found a unicorn here! Mitch Dulin had hundreds of thousands of his own dollars to spend on his own business start-up, which likely qualifies him as one of those dastardly “millionaires” from whom Harry Reid wants to confiscate more money. And Dulin’s new restaurant employs 14 full time workers, all of which were previously employed.

Elsewhere in Davidson’s article we learn of “Nurse Next Door,” a franchised in-home healthcare business based in Canada. The company was moving ahead with plans to expand in the United States, but then stopped last summer when the Congress and the President raised our government debt ceiling higher and our government debt was downgraded. “NND” has since begun moving again on their expansion plans, but the point remains clear: as Senator Reid and President Obama play short-term political war games with our nation’s fiscal and monetary matters, real-life “unicorns” are operating in the real world, trying to make prudent decisions with their capital. The more punishment that Reid and Obama dole-out to the money people, the more likely the money people are going to simply hold on to what they’ve got, and not risk and invest.

As Senator Reid and President Obama continue with their gamesmanship, America remains starved for sound fiscal and economic policies. How much longer can the “unicorns” last with them?

Email: Austin Hill

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Nero in the White House

2011-12-17T16:56:00.000-05:00

The following was reprinted from the WorldNetDaily.com. The old WatchDog is in full agreement and thinks that it should be required reading for every potential voter.

Emphasis was added by Me! -- WD

Nero in the White House
by Mychal Massie (8/8, 2011)

Three significant historical events have been eclipsed by Obama: 1) Jimmy Carter will no longer be looked upon as the worst president in American history; 2) Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton will no longer be recognized as the greatest liars in presidential history; 3) Clinton's stain on Monica's dress, and what that did to the White House in general and the office of the president specifically, will forever pale in comparison to the stain and stench of Obama.

I need not spend much time on the failure of Obama as president. His tenure has been a failure on every measurable level. So much so, in fact, that some of the staunchest, most respected liberal Democrats and Democratic supporters have not only openly criticized him some even more harshly than this essayist but they have called for him to step down.

Richard Nixon's words "I am not a crook," punctuated with his involvement in Watergate, and Bill Clinton's finger-wagging as he told one of the most pathetic lies in presidential history, in the aftermath of Obama, will be viewed as mere prevarications.

Mr. Nixon and Clinton lied to save their backsides. Although, I would argue there are no plausible explanations for doing what they did, I could entertain arguments pursuant to understanding their rationales for lying. But in the case of Obama, he lies because he is a liar. He doesn't only lie to cover his misdeeds he lies to get his way. He lies to belittle others and to make himself look presentable at their expense. He lies about his faith, his associations, his mother, his father and his wife. He lies and bullies to keep his background secret. His lying is congenital and compounded by socio-psychological factors of his life.

Never in my life, inside or outside of politics, have I witnessed such dishonesty in a political leader. He is the most mendacious political figure I have ever witnessed. Even by the low standards of his presidential predecessors, his narcissistic, contumacious arrogance is unequalled. Using Obama as the bar, Nero would have to be elevated to sainthood.

As the stock markets were crashing, taking with them the remaining life saving of untold tens of thousands, Obama was hosting his own birthday celebration, which was an event of Epicurean splendidness. The shamelessness of the event was that it was not a state dinner to welcome foreign dignitaries, nor was it to honor an American accomplishment it was to honor the Pharaoh, Barack Hussein Obama. The event's sole purpose was for the Pharaoh to have his loyal subjects swill wine, indulge in gluttony and behavior unfit to take place on the property of taxpayers, as they suffer. It was of a magnitude comparable to that of Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski's $2 million birthday extravaganza for its pure lack of respect for the people.

Permit me to digress momentarily. The U.S. Capitol and the White House were built with the intent of bringing awe and respect to America and her people. They were also built with the intent of being the greatest of equalizers. I can tell you, having personally been to both, there is a moment of awe and humility associated with being in the presence of the history of those buildings. They are to be honored and inscribed into our national psyche, not treated as a Saturday night house party at Chicago's Cabrini-Green.

The people of America own that home Obama and his wife continue to debase with their pan-ghetto behavior. It is clear that Obama and family view themselves as royalty, but they're not. They are employees of "we the people," who are suffering because of his failed policies. What message does this behavior send to those who today are suffering as never before?

What message does it send to all Americans who are struggling? Has anyone stopped to think what the stock market downturn forebodes for those 80 million baby boomers who will be retiring in the next period of years? Is there a snowball's chance in the Sahara that every news program on the air would applaud this behavior if it were George W. Bush? To that point, do you remember the media thrashing Bush took for having a barbecue at the White House?

Like Nero who was only slightly less debauchery's than Caligula with wine on his lips Obama treated "we the people" the way Caligula treated those over whom he lorded.

Many in America wanted to be proud when the first person of color was elected president, but instead, they have been witness to a congenital liar, a woman who has been ashamed of America her entire life, failed policies, intimidation and a commonality hitherto not witnessed in political leaders. He and his wife view their life at our expense as an entitlement while America's people go homeless, hungry and unemployed.

Mychal S. Massie is a syndicated op-ed columnist and former host of the top-rated talk show on the Rightalk Radio Network, "Straight Talk with Mychal Massie." He is a former self-employed business owner of 30-plus years. Mychal is a frequent inspirational / motivational speaker and a regularly featured guest on national and regional TV / talk-radio programs. The online version of his column is carried exclusively by WorldNetDaily.com and enjoys a loyal, supportive readership from around the world.

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Is This What Democrats Want For Our Future?

2011-12-13T19:08:00.000-05:00

By Austin Hill

Terrorist threats are on the rise, government debt threatens the world, and the value of our currency is being questioned almost daily. Is this the “fundamental change” that Democrats wanted from President Barack Obama?

Like it or not, President Obama sets the agenda for the Democrats. And it’s time for every elected Democrat – especially those in Congress – to answer some questions. Is this your idea of the American future? Is this your vision for the United States? We should be asking these questions in light of two broad areas of domestic policy:

National security policies that ignore trends of murderous behavior:

Within the first eighteen months of the Obama presidency, the United States sustained no less than three terrorist attacks on American soil. The first one quickly became known as the “Ft. Hood Massacre,” an inside job wherein Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army Major, a psychiatrist – and a devout Muslim - killed 13 Army service members and wounded 29 others, all within the confines of the otherwise “secure” Fort Hood Army Base in Killeen, Texas.

At the memorial service for the murdered service members, President Obama noted that “no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts” – implying that the Islamic faith had nothing to do with Mr. Hasan’s murderous behavior – this, despite the fact that Hasan himself claimed that he was acting in accordance with his religion.

Weeks later Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was permitted to board a Northwest Airlines jet in Amsterdam and fly to Detroit on Christmas Day, despite repeated warning signs that the passenger intended to do harm in the U.S. While the explosives that the now-famous “underwear bomber” was able to smuggle on to the flight did not detonate to their intended extent, they did nonetheless cause an in-flight explosion.

After the attack – and after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared that “the system worked” (she admitted a day later that our air security system had failed), we were to learn that the man about whom repeated warnings were ignored was a “devout Muslim” and claimed to be operating at the direction of Al-Qaeda.

On May 1st 2010, NYPD officers were able to disarm an ignited bomb planted in a parked vehicle in Times Square. Two days later federal authorities arrested Faisal Shahzad in connection with the attack, whereupon federal agencies rushed to point out that Shahzad was an American citizen and that the attack was “home grown.” The authorities also tried to downplay the fact that Shahzad had only been a U.S. citizen for 14 months, was originally from Pakistan, and was also a self-described Muslim.

While seemingly ignoring the proliferation of terrorist attacks carried-out by people who call themselves Muslims, President Obama and members of his Administration have largely refused to acknowledge the pattern. Even this past week the Obama Administration officially classified the Fort Hood Massacre as merely a matter of “workplace violence,” as though the immense security breaches of a military compound were to be taken no more seriously than an angry outburst at any other business establishment.

Economic policies that encourage dependency and malign productivity:

President Obama’s speech at Osawatomie high school in Kansas last week is being heralded by some as his most profound speech thus far. But few of the President’s supporters have bothered to question if his rhetoric bares any resemblance to reality.

Prior to his inauguration, he claimed, America had been a nation where “those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments…but everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t.”

Really? Do the President’s supporters realize that over half of the American population has private investment and savings accounts, and that such items are not merely luxuries afforded only to those “at the top?”

Elsewhere in the speech, the President noted that the upcoming election will be, in part, about “whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure a retirement.” Yet the very fact that any of us can even hope for these things demonstrates the functionality of American-styled capitalism over the past many decades.

The President, of course, ignores these economic realities. Instead, he insists that our pathway to prosperity is higher taxes, and more governmental spending of our resources – in short, more of his control over our nation’s wealth. Policies of these sorts have been painful failures for years in Venezuela, Indonesia, and his father’s homeland of Kenya. Yet the President who has positioned himself as a de facto CEO of huge chunks of the economy – with authority over everything from banks to car companies – is still vying for more control. Is this what Democrats envision for another four years – an economy that revolves around the selfish needs and desires of one man?

Email: Austin Hill

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Obamanomics And Bill The Crane Shop Owner

2011-11-27T21:15:00.001-05:00

By Austin Hill

What could possibly be wrong with Obamanomics?

Just ask Bill the crane shop owner.

Bill Looman is the owner of U.S. Cranes L.L.C., a Waco, Georgia-based company that sells and services cranes and hoists. He has apparently found it difficult to hire new workers because of the dramatic increase in governmental regulations placed upon small businesses in recent years, and the overall sluggishness of the economy.

Not being able to expand one’s business is an unfortunate thing. But being harassed because you dare to speak your mind about current economic conditions is something different. And it wasn’t until Bill the crane shop owner actually went public with his assessment that our government was impinging on his business, that things got really dicey.

Six months ago, Looman began posting signs on his company vehicles which read “New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone.” This wasn’t a political statement from Looman, so much as it was a statement about the current business and economic climate, and his belief that things won’t improve until Barack Obama exits the presidency. "I've got people that I want to hire now, but I just can't afford it,” Looman noted in a recent television interview. “And I don't foresee that I'll be able to afford it unless some things change in D.C."

According to Looman, initial reaction to this message was mostly favorable – responses were positive by about a ’20 to 1” ratio, he claimed. But last week, a photo of one of these signs went viral on the internet. This led Bill the crane owner to temporarily shut-off his telephones, Facebook account, and company website, to protect himself from a barrage of threatening calls and web postings.

The fact that an American business owner puts himself at risk simply by having financial struggles – and that he makes matters worse by daring to speak his mind about those struggles - is a very disturbing thing. It tells us that Americans have lost sight of even the most basic principles of both economics, and the “right to free speech.”

First, let’s think economically about Bill’s situation. What is the purpose of his crane business? Does it exist simply for the sake of ‘hiring people,” or is “hiring” the result of Bill’s business first having successfully fulfilled a series of other purposes?

Basic economic understanding tells us that U.S. Cranes, L.L.C. exists for the purpose of providing valuable products and services to its customers, and in the process of delivering those valuable products and services, to produce a profit for its owners. As such, “hiring” is a function of “supply and demand:” as demand for U.S. Cranes’ products and services grows, the company will eventually need to hire additional workers as a means of supplying what their customers need.

This is both a very basic, but also a very essential understanding of how our economy works, yet basic and essential economic understanding is in short supply right now. Americans all across our country – and even in the White House – falsely assume that businesses exist first and foremost to “create jobs” and that “not hiring” is evidence of greed and wickedness.

But let’s assume for a moment that Bill the crane shop owner is wrong, and that he has no legitimate concerns about the economy or his ability to hire workers. Is Bill free to express his views of such things, even if they are inaccurate?

For far too many Americans, the answer to this question is a decisive “no.” For them, Bill’s “right to free speech” (and yours and mine as well) ends, where Barack Obama’s agenda begins. The President has told small businesses to hire, so they should hire; the President has said that conditions are right for hiring, and one ought not to disagree with him.

What the President and his antagonistic supporters seemingly fail to understand is that the more belligerent they become with business owners, the less productive those businesses become. As Steve Wynn, C.E.O. of the publicly traded Wynn Resorts, Ltd noted last summer on a conference call with his investors, “… This administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime…my customers… are frightened of this administration… Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America…those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, God, don’t be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama’s deal and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America…”

Americans have a big decision to make in the year ahead. Will we give President Obama another four years to have his way with us? Or will we affirm the right of each individual in our country to find their own way – even Bill the crane shop owner?

Email: Austin Hill

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WVU Salutes Armed Services

2011-11-26T21:00:00.000-05:00

West Virginia University Mountaineer Marching Band

Salutes the

Armed Services (2011)

Back in my younger (much younger) years,

there was a radio program called,

"Say It With Music"

In this halftime show

The West Virginia University University marching band did a great job of

Saying with Music and Formations--

"We salute all branches of the United States Armed Forces!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-23T22:05:00.001-05:00

A Happy Thanksgiving wish for ALL of YOU--

( click here )

This Card is from the Jacquie Lawson Collection

Three And A Half Days Of "Real Life" Training Needed For OWS

2011-11-15T18:14:00.000-05:00

Bill Whittle has the 'Occupy Wall Street' Idiots figured out!

His Video says it ALL--

..

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“…Brought To You By, OWS!”

2011-11-13T14:17:00.000-05:00

By Austin Hill
Have you seen the new Occupy Wall Street ad campaign?

Yes, I said the “ad campaign!” In a slick thirty-second video commercial, eight activists appear on camera, presumably gathered outdoors at an OWS event, and each describes in a sentence what they want from their country.

Ironically, the OWS folks paid big bucks for their ad to appear - gasp! – on the Fox Newschannel. Funny how capitalism works, isn’t it? The presumably evil Rupert Murdoch-owned enterprise collected the occupiers’ cash, and in return the occupiers got what they wanted – access to FNC’s huge audience.]

The “encampments” may soon be winding-down, given the death and disease that is proliferating. But the rhetoric remains, and it’s worth examining. Here’s what they said in their commercial – and some of the implications of it all.
Occupier number one, a casually dressed, twenty-something African American man: “…I want to see more serious political conversations starting to happen…” Serious political conversations are always happening in America, but they’re not found in soundbytes and protester chants. And if one is serious about conversation, one must be prepared to dialog rather than just “emoting,” and to have one’s assumptions challenged.

Occupier number two, a casually dressed 20-something Caucasian man: “I want corporations out of the government, and I want people back in…” This is a heart-felt way of expressing frustration over the influence that large companies have over our nation’s public policy. This is a legitimate problem, for sure, and it’s a concern that resonates with a lot of Americans – even many non-occupiers.

There are also a couple of logical errors here. For one, people don’t need to get “back in” our government – they never “left.” In fact the most important component of any government – or any corporation for that matter - is the people. Without people, there is no government or corporation. There is only material matter.

Secondly, this expression fails to acknowledge how corporations get “into” government in the first place: politicians allow it to happen. This is not a problem with our economic or political system, but rather, it’s a matter of bad government policy makers making bad decisions.

Occupier number three, a casually dressed middle-aged Caucasian woman: “I want peace, rather than militarization…” It’s not difficult to imagine this lady saying much the same thing some forty years ago in the face of the militarization of Viet Nam. But our nation’s peace was threatened then, and it still is today. Thus we need a military, whether anyone likes that or not.

Occupier number four, a casually dressed 20-something Caucasian woman: “I want the top wealthiest Americans to be taxed higher and that money to go to education…” At least this woman is honest with her feelings. Instead of couching it in pejorative ambiguities – “rich people need to pay their fair share,” for example (what a great way to imply that rich people don’t pay their “fair share,” without defining what “fair share” means), she’s being straight forward. She wants other people to have more of their money confiscated by government.

What she is not so honest about is how public education funds are currently being spent. Six-figure salaries, and tax-payer funded car allowances, travel and dining accounts and mobile telephones are common expenditures for public school district office personnel (not so much with the teachers themselves). It’s difficult to say that this kind of “education spending” is all “for the children,” and this kind of selfish waste should be an anathema to the occupiers, if only they’d care to learn about it.

Occupier number five, a middle-aged Caucasian man in business attire: “I want economic justice…” Yes, and don’t we all? But what does this mean?

Occupier number six, a thirty-something Caucasian man in casual clothing: “I want greater regulation of the banks and the markets.” Okay, but how much is “greater?” President Obama has significantly increased governmental regulation of banking and financial institutions, but it doesn’t occur to some that this has actually caused higher banking fees and less lending. Shall we do more of the same, and expect a different outcome?

Occupier number seven, a middle-aged, possibly Hispanic- looking man in casual dress: “I want my kids to have a job, and healthcare.” Probably most American parents would want these things for their kids. The real question is how one obtains them: are we “entitled” to “a job” and “healthcare,” or must one “earn” them? What level of a job, and what level of healthcare, is anybody “entitled” to?

Occupier number eight, a middle-aged Caucasian man dressed in construction worker garb: “I want true democracy for the ninety-nine percent of us that don’t have it anymore…” This is a common refrain from the occupiers. But I’d like to ask this man “who represents you in the Congress and in your state legislature? Or how about in your city council or school board?”

Sadly, many of the occupiers seem to have very little familiarity with how our system of representative government works, and they don’t seem interested in learning.

What becomes of the OWS encampments and their commercials is anybody’s guess. But the questions and the rhetoric remain – and they warrant a response.

Email: Austin Hill

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I Have This Theory --------------------

2011-11-07T20:38:00.000-05:00

Article from the Wall Street Journal - by Eddie Sessions

"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group (George Soros anybody?) took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author.

His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial.. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital.. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska . It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and

Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, nearly 3 full years into his presidency, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President.. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.

Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain ...

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.

Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.

Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.

He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America . He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.

Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life.

When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.

We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America ?

NOTE: No matter what the "facts", our country has been taken over by statists call them Marxist, Communists, or Islamists, they are have the same Goal, DESTROY AMERICA!

If we fail to remove them from power in the 2012 election, America will be lost!

All of the citizens of the World that have died in opposition to oppression, from the Crusades to the present shall have died in vain. The last hope of freedom shall have perished and WE will be the Dummies!!!!! --WD

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Regime: NO! People: YES! On 2nd Amendment

2011-10-29T10:28:00.037-04:00

All of you that pay attention to such things know that the Obama Regime has been attacking the Second Amendment from day one.

Obama selected an Attorney General, Eric Holder, who is venomously opposed to the private ownership of any firearms. Holder is also very bitter over his loss before the U.S. Supreme Court in the “District of Columbia v. Hiller” case in which the Court ruled that the 2nd Amendment phrase, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” means that individual citizens cannot be denied the right to own and keep arms.

The Court later confirmed that it also applies to every city and state when they struck down Chicago’s gun ban. Note: DC is still not in full compliance with the ruling. Chicago has done very little to comply with the ruling)

There have been and continues to be a flurry of executive orders directed at limiting the private ownership of specific classes of guns and also guns in general. Most of these Executive orders violate the 'Enumerated Powers' as are enumerated in the Constitution.

One recent fiat is a “regulation” that bans the ownership/purchase of firearms by a user of a controlled substance. Note that it does not state ‘illegal substance’. As of now the only substances which the regulation is being applied to are ‘illegal drugs’ specifically, ‘marijuana’, and that includes ‘medical marijuana’ which is prescribed by a doctor.

This at first, seems to be a benign regulation, but there is no evidence to indicate that marijuana contributes to homicides or firearm accidents. However, once the public accepts the policy, they will broaden the enforcement to deny ownership to users of other controlled substances such as Percocet, Vicodin, or perhaps, even Blood Pressure medications.

This President wants to void the 2nd Amendment via International Treaty(s) ranging from CIFTA to the UN Small Arms Treaty.

Obama has also appointed two staunchly anti-gun judges to the Supreme Court.

Most recently, the Administration has been caught in a case that would, if we had an honest media, make “Watergate” look like a game of tag. In what is known as “Operation Fast and Furious”, the BATFE took part in the illegal purchase and transfer of at least 2000 firearms ranging AK-47’s to .50 Caliber Sniper Rifles to Mexican drug cartels. At least two of those weapons have bend used to kill U.S. agents.

Why was this done?

The regime was desperate to generate data in support of their false claims "that most of the drug cartel weapons come from the U.S." The administration has reported that 80% of cartel weapons come from the U.S., but the facts show that less than 10% were obtained in the U.S. The Obama Regime wanted to generate a backlash against what Obama and Holder see as “lax U.S. gun laws”. You can bet the farm that both Obama and Holder knew of, and at a minimum, gave the stamp of approval to the commission of this crime.

While Obama has been the most anti 2nd Amendment President in history, his actions have generated a pro gun attitude among the voters. His election generated more gun and ammunition sales than any other event in history. Sales of both guns and ammo continue to be strong.

The good news is that, according to a Gallup poll that was released this week, many of the firearms that have been flying off the shelves in the past two+ years were purchased by Democrats and women.

Gallup found the number of Democrats willing to admit to having a sidearm jumped 8 points from 32 percent to 40 percent. After Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the number of armed women has grown by 10 points to 43 percent.

Nearly 75% of respondents to the poll opposed handgun bans – that is an all-time high

Gallup reports Democrats who own guns now outnumber the Liberals who want to ban them.

Contrary to Democrat propaganda, crime has not soared with the expiration of the Clinton-era ban on some semiautomatic rifles, nor with the over turning of either the DC or Chicago gun bans.

Violent crime has declined as the number of armed citizens has risen.

All of which proves that the anti-Second Amendment Liberals have been lying to us.

Crime cannot be prevented by enacting laws that only restrict what the law-abiding can do.

As this truth sinks in, more gun grabbers will be converted into gun owners.

The Second Amendment has truly gone mainstream.

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Liberalism vs. Communism

2011-10-18T12:02:00.000-04:00

What is the difference between liberalism and communism?

Answer: The Communist admits it.

Occupy This!

2011-10-16T18:48:00.001-04:00

By Austin Hill
Hey Wall Street “occupiers.” What do you suppose would happen to the United States if the rest of us – I’ll call us “the other 99.99%” – started behaving like you?

Will you allow this question to “occupy” your minds for a moment? Seriously, what would happen to our country if we all chose to do nothing but take up space on “public” property (or even on other people’s private property as some of you have done), consume resources at other people’s expense, and spend several days in a row not producing things? Have you even thought of what might happen, if the rest of us followed your “example?”

Participants in the nationwide “occupy” movement would probably be shocked to know this. But the fact is, their oh-so-important demonstrations are able to occur as they do because the majority of us in America do not think and act the way they do. In fact, to be even more precise, their choices are enabled in no small part by – gasp!- American-styled Capitalism! Yet just as those who burn the U.S. flag fail to understand that the object they desecrate is emblematic of the freedom they exercise, the occupiers fail to see that the “C-word” which they loathe is precisely what makes their occupying possible.

Consider the property on which the demonstrations are occurring. Most of them have happened on public property – city streets, public parks, and so forth – while some of the protestations have migrated on to privately-owned commercial and residential property. In either case, the demonstrations have occurred on property that belongs to somebody - property that has been purchased with money, and that is “owned” by some group or individual.

The occupiers seem to convey a vague belief that land just simply “exists,” and it rightly belongs to “everybody.” Yet if they were only interested in “land” on which to hang-out, then they could just as easily gather in the virgin forests of upstate New York or the un-refined terrain of the rural Nevada desert.
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But that’s not what the occupiers are doing. Oh, no, they’re enjoying the modern comforts and conveniences of developed land – land entailing well-built and maintained streets and sidewalks, and nicely manicured lawns – all of which were created by somebody else’s labor and purchased with that dreaded thing called money.

And guess what, occupiers? The labor that built the streets and walkways, the education that prepared the laborers, and the capital that purchased the land and paid for the labor, were all brought about by capitalism and our free-market enterprise system. Even if you’re on “government property,” the government bought it with tax dollars that were generated in our free-market economic system.

\Speaking of labor - how would you like it, occupiers, if both government and private-sector workers in and around your demonstrations chose to join you, rather than to continue working at their jobs and continue serving you? Imagine, for example, if the NYPD officers assigned to patrol Wall Street – no doubt dismissed as “oppressors” or “the man” by the occupiers but who nonetheless keep the demonstrators safe – were to stop working at their jobs, and chose instead to become occupiers themselves. Might you, occupiers, become a bit inconvenienced, or maybe even endangered?

And what if the workers and managers at the local Starbucks, McDonald’s, and other service businesses chose to protest with you, and allowed their stores to remain closed? Might that create a little problem, occupiers?

Or what if the owners and operators of these for-profit capitalistic enterprises actually became as greedy and evil as you characterize them to be, occupiers, and they started denying you entrance in to their facilities? What if you could no longer do your potty breaks and your after-the-overnighter-in-the-park wash ups in their restrooms that are paid-for with the wealth of the business owners?

The occupy movement appears as though it will be with us for the foreseeable future. And perhaps the only thing worse than the selfish, narcissistic, vacuous behavior and rhetoric of the occupiers is the fact that our President and members of his party in Congress have given their blessing to it all.

The good news is that a majority of us Americans do not speak and behave as the occupiers do. We choose to both consume, and to produce, and we choose to think as well as to feel. We understand the basic tenet of capitalism, that one earns a day’s pay by doing a day’s work.

We also realize that if too many people choose only to consume and live off the largesse of others, then our nation is doomed. And as the late, great “one percenter” Steve Jobs might say, a majority of us choose to “think different.”

Email: Austin Hill

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"Collateral Damage" Of The Good Kind!

2011-10-11T17:46:00.000-04:00

The Obama/Clinton Department of State has apologized to the family of Samir Khan; they have even apologized for not having offered their condolences sooner.

For those that do not know, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were killed in Yemen, on September 30 2011, when the car in which they were riding was targeted by an unmanned Predator drone.

Anwar al-Awlaki, who was a U.S. citizen had been linked to numerous terrorist attacks on America, was an Imam and marked for assassination by presidential order was the intended target.

Khan who was also an American citizen, had moved to Yemen, a couple of years ago, to help produce Inspire, an English language blog. Khan described himself as “proud to be a traitor to America”, and while he lived in Charlotte, North Carolina maintained an anti-American web.

Khan was also the author of "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom".

The killing of Khan is what we might consider "Collateral Damage" of the good kind!

However, Obama's State Department decided that we needed to beg forgiveness for killing another stinking Terrorist!

This man was a self identified enemy of America whose death should be celebrated, not apologized for.

Is there anyone in this regime that has an IQ above 40? ……20? …..10?

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Labrador, Real; What Minnick and Sali Could Never Be

2011-10-11T16:33:00.000-04:00

Note: The following does not add much to the "Fast & Furious" discussion, it does however, reflect on how effective a freshman Congressman can be if he/she has the guts to take a stand - WD

By: Idaho Conservative Blogger (ICB)
Last week Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador Called on Attorney General Holder to resign over the Fast and Furious debacle and the national media went wild.

Kevin Richert wrote in the Idaho Statesman, “Not bad for a freshman lawmaker from Idaho? No. Pretty remarkable for a freshman lawmaker from Idaho. And it shows that Labrador has the keenest political instinct of any elected official in Idaho. I’m not calling Labrador a natural. But he’s close.”
In September Labrador told me of Holder and Fast in Furious, “It’s impossible that something of this magnitude that needed to go through the Attorney General’s office, it’s impossible that he didn’t know in my opinion.”

He went further last week saying Holder was, “either lying to grossly incompetent”

Richert said in that same article that, “Minnick was in the majority, but consistently tried to distance himself from Obama and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.” I will take it a step further, Minnick tried to walk the blue dog line too close and his liberal colors showed through. When he tried to distance himself publicly he looked unsure, weak, and unreal.

Richert said, “Sali was given to flakiness and abrasiveness.” No doubt Sali’s mouth was his biggest weakness. His new power as a Congressman seemed to go to his head and his mouth was right with it. Sali seemed to only make the news when he said a major gaffe and had to explain himself.

Niehter Minnick or Sali seemed to come across as “real” or genuine. That is what makes Labrador so refreshing. No one can say Labrador isn’t real or genuine and he is picking his battles wisely and Idahoans and the media are noticing. He doesn’t pander to the media and when he engages the media he holds his ground and has proven he can spar with the best of them.

In almost every way Labrador is the Politician Minnick and Sali could never be.

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A Synopsis Of The Protestors (To Whom Obama Extends His Sympathies)

2011-10-09T12:16:00.000-04:00

By Austin Hill
“…You don’t see CEO’s driving to work in a junky old Honda like I am. They’re driving Bentley’s. And I want MY BENTLEY! And I want it NOW!”

Those were the remarks from a caller to my local talk show at Boise, Idaho’s 580 KIDO radio last Wednesday. “Bobby” is a self-described entry-level worker at Walmart and he was calling my show to explain to me what the “Occupy fill-in-the-blank-with-the-name-of-the-city” protests were all about (yes, even in “red state Idaho” the protestor class was blocking traffic and creating quite a disturbance).

As Bobby explained it, he doesn’t get a fair hourly wage or an adequate dental plan from Walmart. And, of course, I don’t “get it” either, because I just don’t know what it’s like to be in his shoes (he doesn’t know a thing about me, but he’s certain of his assessment nonetheless).

It’s been quite an eye-opening week as the “Occupy Wall Street” uprisings have spread nationwide. And now that President Obama has blessed the movement with his “sympathies,” it’s time for us peaceable, law abiding, working class types to consider what those “voices” are saying.

The “movement” is disorganized, and it’s nearly impossible to connect it with any specific groups or associations (the recent “honing in” on the protests by labor unions and race-based activist groups and other typical Democrat party supporters notwithstanding). Yet despite the ambiguities, I’ve been studying-up on the protestors quite carefully this past week, reviewing lots of news reports and interviews, and conducting a few of my own interviews as well. Here are a few of my observations.

The movement is very “white:” Watch any news report or homegrown video of the protests, and it becomes apparent – most of “them” appear to be “Anglo,” even in heavily non-white cities like Los Angeles. Of course there’s nothing necessarily wrong with people being “white,” but it is noteworthy that in most any other case where large concentrations of white people were publicly demonstrating and advocating for something other than socialism and anarchy, the dominant media in our country would immediately presume that the movement had a “racist/white supremacist” connection.

But this is different, and I first noticed this as I watched activist Al Sharpton interviewing a protestor on MSNBC last week. As Sharpton robotically blurted out the sentence “the movement contains diversity and non-violence” (I won’t bother correcting Al’s grammar), split-screen showed a young white male spokesperson that Sharpton was about to interview, and another shot of a nearly all-white crowd. It appears that as long as the white folks are opposing free-markets and capitalism, being white is just fine for Al and company.

Many in the movement seem very articulate, and appear to be college educated: I’ve been struck with how well-spoken many of the interviewed protestors have been, and how many of them claim to be school teachers (which requires one to have a bachelor’s degree at a minimum) and members of other white-collar professions. This past week I’ve been engaged in email dialog with a man who is a design engineer for the publicly traded Micron Technology Corporation, who took time off from his job to protest in Boise (he emails from a Micron address, and is livid with me about my questioning and criticism of the movement).

In another instance, I watched a video report on Youtube of a man who traveled from St. Louis to join the protestors in New York City. Speaking to a reporter, protestor “Justin” said:

“..All I know is that in my hometown, my fellow school teachers are losing their jobs in our district, while executives on Wall Street continue to get million dollar bonuses from companies that are financed with our tax dollars. How it is that corporate America has more of a voice in our government that everyday Americans is beyond me, and it needs to stop…”

Many of the protestors seem to lack critical thinking skills: His eloquent vocal presentation notwithstanding, “Justin” didn’t demonstrate the slightest ability to navigate the complexities of local, regional and national issues. Somebody in St. Louis lost their job, while somebody else in New York got “rich,” so therefore America is an unjust nation. It’s pretty simplistic – and faulty – “thinking.”

Many of the protestors seem to have no basic comprehension of economics, history, or common “Western thought:” “Lisa,” a local protest spokesperson in my hometown, explained on my talk show that it’s a “leaderless movement,” and “everyone consents to everything before we do anything.” She would appear to be unfamiliar with French philosopher Francois Rabelas’ concept that “nature abhors a vacuum,” and that “leaderless movements” always devolve into either chaos, or dictatorships.

And Victoria seemed thrilled that “the money is flowing in from everywhere,” as she noted to a New York Daily News reporter that tens of thousands of dollars have already been “donated” the movement. She apparently is unfamiliar with the concept of “rational self interest,” a basic tenant of free market economics. She likes money, and so do investors and executives – yet she is obsessed with her concerns over other people’s “greed.”

The protestors will likely be with us for the foreseeable future. The rest of us need to wake-up and realize that they are a big part of what animates the Obama campaign.

Email: Austin Hill

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Quote From Thomas Sowell

2011-10-03T12:50:00.000-04:00

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." --Thomas Sowell
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How Is A Job Created, Mr. President?

2011-09-18T22:12:00.001-04:00

By Austin Hill
If I could get close to President Obama, close enough to speak to him, I’d like to ask him this question: “Mr. President, how, exactly, is a job created?”

It’s a rare opportunity for one to speak directly with the President of the United States, and I’m not anticipating that any of the privileged few who speak with Mr. Obama regularly – members of his Administration and the White House media correspondents for example – will approach this subject with him. But after nearly three years of the President claiming that he is “creating (or ‘saving’) jobs,” even as unemployment rises and actual job creation has stalled, questions about the President’s policies have quite naturally begun to emerge.

Typically the inclination is to ask “where are the jobs you promised us Mr. President?” To this, we have heard the President offer clever responses like “shovel ready wasn’t as..uh…shovel-ready as we expected” (he made this little quip with a chuckle in his voice back in June, at a meeting of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in North Carolina when he was confronted with the problems of federal government regulations delaying construction projects for months, or even many years). But Americans need to take a step back, and ask a preliminary question – not a question about “where are the jobs?” but rather, “how is a job supposedly created in the first place?”

President Obama frequently juxtaposes “Wall Street,” i.e., wealthy bankers and investors, from “Main Street,” i.e. everyday working class people, and he insists that his policies are supportive of those on “Main Street.” Given his affection for all us “Main Street types,” he would do well to look to the wisdom of Main Street for an answer to the question “how is a job created?,” and for some clues as to why job growth isn’t happening.

Take for example a Main Street couple named Steve and Gwynn. The married business partners co-own own a small chain of six Mexican food restaurants, with locations in two different Western states. While consulting with them recently on some of their marketing and advertising strategies, I got an earful from them about how the federal government is impacting their business – and the impact has not been positive.

For one, Steve and Gwynn’s greatest struggle with advertising is not about getting customers in to their restaurants. While the past three years have been a struggle for them, their revenues for 2011 have thus far out-paced 2010 on a month-by-month basis, and their Limited Liability Corporation is doing well financially.

Interestingly, Steve and Gwynn’s biggest challenge is with labor. While the hourly rate at which they employ kitchen help is slightly over the government mandated minimum, they still have a difficult time finding and retaining workers for these otherwise “entry level” positions.

Why would American small business owners have difficulty finding workers in an economy that is producing painfully high unemployment? “It’s easier and more lucrative for some adults to collect unemployment benefits than it is to work,” Steve notes. In short, the unemployment benefits provided with a stroke of President Obama’s pen have, at least in Steve and Gwynn’s case severely decreased their labor pool. As for teenagers and young adults (a demographic with severely high unemployment rates) who might be candidates to work at Steve and Gwynn’s restaurants, Gwynn noted to me that “too many kids don’t want to get dirty at work, so even when we hire them they generally don’t stay very long.”

But what happens when a qualified adult applicant is willing to get trained and ready to work – surely a fulltime salaried job is “created” for them, right? “We hire as few fulltime employees as possible” Steve explains. The reason is that they can’t figure out how to fully comply with the Obamacare federal health care laws. “We paid three law firms to consult us on how to comply with that law when it first came up” Steve explains, “and all three firms gave us three different explanations. I think we’re in compliance with our folks right now, but we hire as few full-timers as possible, to reduce our risks of fines incase we’re doing it wrong.”

So Main Street small business owners Steve and Gwynn hire as few full time employees as possible. But that probably means that they are creating more part time jobs, wouldn’t you think? “We know the I.R.S. doesn’t like this” Gwynn notes, acknowledging that the Obama Administration has hired an Army of additional I.R.S. agents to make sure that, among other things, businesses aren’t failing to extend fulltime jobs to people simply as a means of avoiding the healthcare benefits required for full time workers. “We put ourselves at risk if we hire somebody full time, and we’re susceptible to different risks if we hire people part time” she says. “We’re kind of on the run from our government, but we’re doing our best to stay strong.”

President Obama could learn much from everyday small business owners about how genuine, authentic “demand,” and not legislation, is what creates a job. He could also learn why his policies are eliminating them.

Email Austin Hill

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The Communist Takeover Of America - 45 Declared Goals

2011-09-13T11:13:00.001-04:00

The following is an excerpt from, "The Naked Communist," (published 1958) written by Cleon Skousen.

It describes the 45 Goals that the Communist Party set in 1958 as to their methodology to takeover, The United States of America.

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use "united force" to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

It is amazing how much of this agenda has already been achieved!

The election of 2012 will be our last opportunity to stop their complete success in destruction of this Nation!

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A Sadly Secularized 9-11

2011-09-11T21:47:00.000-04:00

By Austin Hill
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York may think himself high-minded and practical. But he has acquiesced to some of the most unfortunate and destructive forces in our country.

As I write this, nobody has any idea, really, how the ten year anniversary of “9-11” will transpire. Hopefully the day will come, and go, without any civil unrest or – God forbid – terrorism.

Hopefully Americans will remember, and reflect. No doubt millions of us will pray, both within houses of worship and privately within our own minds.

But this we do know: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made it clear that clergy have been forbidden from participating in the city’s official 9-11 commemorative ceremony. The city that was ten years ago and is still today regarded as the epicenter of a huge American tragedy, will commemorate the event with a purely secular, irreligious ceremony, devoid of any official representations of any particular religious traditions.

From a historical standpoint, a secularized commemoration would seem to miss some of the essence of what happened on September 11, 2001 and in the days and weeks that followed. It is, after all, a matter of record that many houses of worship provided safe harbor to displaced victims of the tragedy, and that clergymen and women rushed to provide counsel and sustenance.

Bloomberg’s ban also seems to ignore the reality that the first certified fatality in the 9-11 disaster was, in fact, a clergyman. After learning of the attacks, Father Mychal Judge, a Catholic Priest and beloved Chaplain to the Fire Department of

New York rushed to the scene to meet then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

At Mayor Giuliani’s request, Father Mychal began praying aloud for the city and the victims. At the moment that he was struck in the head with debris and killed, eyewitnesses noted that Father Mychal had cried out repeatedly "Jesus, please end this right now! God, please end this!"

But that was ten years ago. Today there’s a new Mayor in town, and he has taken a decidedly different approach. And Mayor Bloomberg’s clergy ban is unfortunate, for at least a few different reasons.

For one, Bloomberg’s ban exemplifies a flawed conceptualization of “tolerance,” and “diversity.” While his motivations have not been made clear, presumably Mayor Bloomberg’s ban is intended to protect certain religious groups that might not participate in the ceremony, from being “infringed upon” by those other religious groups that might otherwise be represented by clergy at the event. It is a logic that says “for the sake of diversity of religious traditions, we won’t acknowledge any religious traditions at all.”

Faulty as this view is, it is nonetheless nearly impossible to get most Liberal Americans to think any differently. Not long ago Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was the Attorney General of Arizona and banned all “holiday decorations” – Christmas ornaments, menorah candles, and so forth – from her offices, for the very same “tolerant” reasons.

Bloomberg’s ban also strikes a blow at human freedom. Whereas in the American tradition one has a God-given right to speak their mind and to express themselves, and government’s role is to safeguard that right, in the contemporary Liberal mindset such freedoms are problems to be managed and mitigated by government. “America is a far more diverse and pluralistic country today than it was at the time the U.S. Constitution was written,” Liberals will remind us. “What was intended by the Founders of our country does not, and cannot apply today.”

n the end, Bloomberg’s ban is painfully intolerant and assumes the worst about his country and the city he serves. It says that Americans can’t handle their freedom appropriately, and must have less of it.

It may also say something painful about the Islamic world, and a level of intolerance there. Might Mayor Bloomberg have mandated his ban so as to appease those involved in some of his personal business ventures in the Middle East? If so, why would people in the Middle East object to American clergy praying publicly?

The ten year anniversary of 9-11 will hopefully be meaningful and peaceable. But the intolerance entailed in such flawed ideas of “diversity” will remain – and should be reversed.

Email: Austin Hill

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Remembering 9/11

2011-09-11T13:34:00.000-04:00

The first building is in flames;

a second plane crashes through the second building!

The Pentagon burns!

Flight 93 & the "?Let's Roll" are remembered!

Sept 11, Smoke and Dust bellow into the sky!

Yesterday, the skies are clear but there are no towers!

Raising the Flag!

A gesture of both Pride and Defiance!

Liberty is a well-armed lamb

2011-09-07T20:25:00.002-04:00

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin

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Williston, ND -- Where Free Enterprise Is At Work!

2011-09-07T17:26:00.000-04:00

Free Enterprise, that's right, good old reliable capitalism is at work in Williston, ND and things are BOOMING!

They are creating that three letter word, JOBS, JOBS, JOBS, by the score

No stimulus needed!
.

Obama, thus far, has not been able to muck it up! However, he has the EPA hard at work trying to find away to shut it down.

After all, Obama and his fellow liars have been telling Americans that there is no oil to drill!

Commebnts are invited!
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Obama, “Ph.D’s,” And Some Bizarre Ideas About Labor

2011-09-06T14:53:00.000-04:00

by Austin Hill
There is absolutely nothing wrong with President Obama’s big-government economic policies. We simply need more of them, and more time for them to work – or so the President and many academicians would have us believe.

It’s interesting to watch Barack Obama run for re-election against his own track record. When he became President in January of 2009 he promised to “fundamentally transform” America, and in terms of our nation’s economic policies he has certainly achieved this objective.

But after almost three years of “transforming”- which has involved putting healthcare under government control, a government take-over of two car companies, huge expansions in government control over banking and lending institutions, hundreds of millions of dollars spent to create “green jobs,” and a roughly 30% increase in government spending overall – nobody seems happy with the results (not even the President himself). In light of the history-making “zero job growth” month of August, things are perceived as being so bad that many Americans who once believed the President’s promises about job creation and free healthcare are now wondering if – maybe – our government needs to try a different approach.

This doesn’t seem to deter President Obama, or many of his ideological soul mates. At the White House, as in many universities, it is simply understood that private individuals and organizations only do reckless and self-serving things with wealth. And it is equally understood that when super smart politicians and government bureaucrats control greater portions of the nation’s wealth – with more taxation, more government spending, and more government regulations – well, those super smart politicians always produce great results for everybody.

Thus, despite the growing discontent among us everyday folks, the President is vowing more big-government programs, while highly educated intellectuals at universities and think tanks keep thinking of more big-government “ideas.”

]We’ll get to some of President Obama’s plans in a moment. But first, consider this idea from Yale graduate Daniel Hamermesh, Ph.D., currently an Economics Professor at University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Hamermesh has proposed special legal protections for “ugly people” in the workplace. Yes, he calls them “ugly” rather than homely, and he argues that “being ugly” is a disability that should be protected under the “American’s With Disabilities Act.”

Good looking people have all the advantages in this economy, Dr. Hamermesh suggests, and “for purposes of administering a law,” he reasons that “we surely could agree on who is truly ugly, perhaps the worst-looking 1 or 2 percent of the population.” “Affirmative Action for ugly people” (another term he uses) would likely create lots of opportunities for employment law Attorneys, but it is difficult to imagine that this would incentivize businesses (other than law firms) to begin hiring again.

Then there’s one of my favorites – the “Spread The Jobs Around” agenda from University of Michigan alumnus Dean Baker, Ph.D. As head of the left-wing Center For Economic And Policy Research in Washington, D.C., Dr. Baker has proposed that businesses be “encouraged” (read “mandated”) to stop laying-off workers, and instead be “encouraged” to cutback fulltime workers’ hours and wages so as to “share” the work and wages with everybody, and keep people on payrolls.

“Spread the Jobs Around” probably looks great on paper at Dr. Baker’s office, and it sure seems like a super-smart guy’s clever way of preventing the unemployment rate from going higher (something Obama desperately needs). But if business owners are further restricted (government already places enormous constraints on hiring and firing practices) from hiring and firing whomever they need to in order to be profitable, businesses will have even more reasons to NOT hire new workers.

As for President Obama himself (by the way, his degree title is “J.D.” in case you’re interested), he recently established a new division of our federal government whose agenda looks like the mission statement of a college “diversity” office. By Executive Order, the President has created “The White House Office of Diversity And Inclusion.”

Exactly what this “office” will attempt to do to business owners is unclear (and the lack of clarity from the government is yet another one of those things that creates uncertainty in the economy and inhibits job growth – but I digress), yet its’ stated agenda reads as follows: “Eliminate demographic group imbalances in targeted occupations and improve workforce diversity. To attain this, special initiatives have been created targeting specific groups, including Hispanics, African Americans, American Indians, women and gays and lesbians.” In short, the President has a problem with some of his key supporters – Black and Hispanic people in particular: the unemployment rates among these groups are in some regions topping 30%. The goal of the “Diversity and Inclusion” office would appear to be to threaten and coerce businesses into hiring more workers from these “minority” categories, so as to enhance President Obama’s chances for re-election.

’ll know more of what the President intends to do about “jobs” after his upcoming speech. But we can be assured of this right now: Barack Obama will seek more control of the economy as a means of “fixing” it.

Email: Austin Hill

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Great Quotation!

2011-09-05T15:43:00.000-04:00

Those that are running up the debt are

Financial Pedophiles

-- Author Unknown

Yet Another Attack On The "Tea Party"

2011-09-05T10:04:00.002-04:00

The “Tea Party” movement is only two years old, but it is proving to be the dominant political force in the nation. It is a force which cannot be ignored by the left.

That means that the Left has to do all they can to discredit the movement! Another group of Socialist volunteers has stepped up to the plate.

This weekend the American Political Science Association has gathered in Seattle for their annual convention where several professors have presented papers which argue that tea party members are more likely to harbor racial hostility. These arguments are alleged to be based on answers to a pre-election survey administered in 2010.

What became eminently clear is that, it is the professors that are demonstrating a bias. Most of them appear to have obtained there PHD’s from Headnrectum University where the methodology which they teach is to arrive at a conclusion, and then mold the “data” to support the conclusion. That’s the same ‘science’ that has given birth to the hoax of global warming!

Some excerpts from the papers presented:

“Tea party supporters were substantially more likely than other voters to question how much effort black Americans are making to advance themselves, versus being held back by social factors.”
-- Alan L. Abramowitz, Emory U.

“Tea Party activists have denied accusations that their movement is racist, and there is nothing intrinsically racist about opposing ‘big government’ or clean-energy legislation or health care reform. But it is clear that the movement is more appealing to people who are unsympathetic to blacks and who prefer a harder line on illegal immigration than it is to other Americans.” -- Gary C. Jacobson, U. California San Diego

“Tea Party supporters displayed high levels of racial resentment and held very negative opinions about President Obama as compared with the rest of the public and even other Republicans.”
--Alan L. Abramowitz, Emory U.

Common themes among the papers included the argument that “Tea Party” members demonstrate that they are racists by their dislike of Obama.

Apparently these academics do not see Obama’s shredding of the Constitution, his runaway spending, his failure to perform, his constant lying, and his hatred of Capitalism as legitimate grounds to dislike hum.

Among the “Tea Party” member’s other faults, were –

-They tend to be ‘Evangelical’, believe in capitalism, support the Constitution, support the profiling of criminals, and, oh my God, they support absolute FREE speech.

-Tea Party members are opposed to “Illegal Emigration”. (While none of the reports clearly said so, but it probably includes the objection to “Illegal Emigrants” voting)

-Tea Party members have this nasty tendency to support treating terrorists as war criminals who are not entitled to U.S. Constitutional protections for acts performed outside the U.S.

While the Watch Dog is not a member of Tea Party, I do support what the Tea Party stands for.

The Tea Party is, in this writer’s opinion, providing the only leadership that can save this once great nation from slipping forever into the abyss of socialism!

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Hiking Stupid

2011-09-01T13:33:00.001-04:00

Will Obama Attempt A “Spread The Jobs Around” Scheme?

2011-08-28T12:00:00.010-04:00

By Austin Hill
Yes, you read correctly.

“Spread the jobs around.”

You’re probably familiar with Barack Obama’s well documented intentions to “spread the wealth around.” In a discussion about his vision for economic recovery back during the campaign of 208, he expressed that intention using those precise words (do a web search with the President’s name and the phrase, and see what pops up).

Today, the President struggles with the political consequences brought about by the stifled economy, which has been brought about his own “wealth spreading” ways. Yet within the Obama worldview, it makes sense that a President who has displayed no vision for wealth creation – he has only championed ways in which to re-distribute existing wealth – would likewise have no real vision for job creation, and would instead attempt to “spread around” the inadequate number of jobs that already exist.

Enter Dean Baker, an Economist at the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. As if perfectly timed with the President’s upcoming address on the economy, Mr. Baker has proposed what he calls a national “work sharing” program, calling it a “quick route to full employment.”

A quick visit to the “Center’s” website provides a brief description of Mr. Baker’s academic paper on “work sharing.” Describing the overall program, the website indicates that what is being proposed is a “system of work sharing that would give employers an incentive to maintain workers on their payroll at reduced hours as an alternative to laying them off. The system would be attached to the existing system of unemployment compensation, with short-time compensation as an alternative to unemployment compensation. This means that work sharing would require no new government bureaucracy…”

While recently being interviewed about his “work sharing” concept on the Fox Business Channel, Mr. Baker further elaborated, stating “"...we're talking about a situation where workers would work somewhat fewer hours, and make somewhat less money…” As an alternative to being laid-off altogether, Mr. Baker surmises that “alot of workers would take that in a second..."

Indeed, what Mr. Baker is proposing is best described as a “spread the jobs around” approach to employment. And no doubt it has some of the same appeal, mostly emotional appeal, that candidate Obama’s “spread the wealth around” ideas did three years ago. But just because it “looks good on paper” doesn’t mean that it’s good, functional, or even “fair” public policy. In reality, the “spread the jobs around” idea is flawed on multiple levels.

For one, the idea of making public policy of this sort erroneously presumes that businesses aren’t already “spreading around” the workload at times. Politicians, government bureaucrats, and many academicians don’t understand this, but actual business owners and managers have to make difficult decisions with their staffs every day.

If one worker is productive and another is not, an owner or manager has to make tough choices to maintain and bolster productivity. If budgets shrink, a business must make move so as to maintain productivity while at the same time trimming expenditures. This may involve “spreading around” the workload and employee compensation, re-assigning workers to different tasks, or in some unfortunate cases laying-off workers. But when layoffs must occur, a business will generally try to retain the most productive workers, while sacrificing the least productive.

An arbitrary government policy that would force businesses to “spread the jobs around” would likely undermine businesses quite severely. Rather than prioritizing productivity, as business owners and managers must, “spread the jobs around” establishes as its goal the reduction of the unemployment rate. So what if the most competent and productive workers get their hours and wages cut, as a means of providing hours and wages to less productive workers? When desperate incumbent politicians are running for re-election, spreading the jobs around becomes an attractive policy idea if it can help reduce the unemployment rate in the short run. Thus the needs and interests of the politicians are dramatically different from those of businesses.

Another problem with “spread the jobs around” is that it begins with the wrong question in mind. Asking “why is the unemployment rate so high?” is worthwhile. But a better question is “why are so many American businesses experiencing strong profits and all time high levels of productivity, and still not hiring new workers?” Those questions are related, but they are not the same. Politicians and liberal think-tank operators don’t want to ask the “why no hiring” question, because the answer traces back to some of their favorite policy creations.

The worst part of “spread the jobs around” is that it makes mediocrity acceptable. It says “America can no longer create wealth and opportunity for all, so we must force some of that opportunity out of the hands of certain individuals, and arbitrarily place it in the hands of certain others.”

“Spread the jobs around” implies that for some people to win, others must fail just a bit. This is consistent with the Obama worldview, but it is repugnant to a majority of Americans.

Email: Austin Hill

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Obama Defines Himself As "Unpatriotic"

2011-08-25T12:11:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama, while campaigning in 2008, offered a harsh condemnation of President George W. Bush’s fiscal policy:

“The problem is, that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up the national debt from 5 trillion for the first 42 presidents — number 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.”

.
Now, in just 3 years, Mr. Obama (#44) has racked up a larger debt than George W. Bush did in 8 years.

According to his own definition, Barack Obama is no patriot!

Most of you had already figured that out, but this should erase any lingering doubts!

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Public Service Announcement!

2011-08-23T12:35:00.001-04:00

At the request of the Obama Regime,
         we post the following:

    "Public Service Announcement"

 It's Bush's Fault!

Questions For A Nation That Has Lost Its Way

2011-08-15T18:29:00.000-04:00

By Austin Hill
A new poll shows that 73% of Americans think our country is on the wrong track.

Are you one of the seventy-three percenters?

The poll from Reuters/Ipsos Public Relations was conducted between August 4 and August 8. Given the turmoil over the federal government “debt deal,” the downgrade of federal government debt, and the dramatic shifts in the global stock markets during this period, it’s not surprising that the “wrong track” figure leaped ten percentage points – up from 63% - compared to the same poll conducted exactly one month prior.

What was a bit surprising, however, was that this relatively high percentage of Americans reported “wrong track” status for the country, despite the fact that there were slightly more registered Democrats surveyed than there were registered Republicans. Given that Democrat ideology rules the U.S. Senate and the White House, it would make sense that registered Democrats in America would be more pleased with the leadership of their fellow Democrats who hold elective office.

But if the United States is on the wrong track – if our nation has truly lost its way - then a couple of other questions should follow: A) what is the “right track” for America ? And B) How will we know when we’re “on” it?

Rather than try to quickly answer these two questions, I’m suggesting that we all should first contemplate several other questions. As the title of a famous sales training book once noted, “questions are the answers” – so here are a couple that can help move the process forward:

Who manages wealth the best – private individuals and groups, or politicians and government bureaucrats? For most of my adult life – that is, since the days of the Reagan presidency - the United States federal government has been fairly respectful of every American’s right to create, and possess monetary wealth, and has mostly avoided being punitive towards the wealthiest in society.

Additionally, our government’s leadership has been fairly accepting of the notion that when Americans are permitted to keep more of their own wealth, rather than less of it, they usually do productive things with it that ultimately benefit the overall economy. Even Democrat President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors noted in 1994 that "It is undeniable that the sharp reduction in taxes in the early 1980s was a strong impetus to economic growth."

Yet today our nation is afflicted with a terrible philosophical malaise – I call it “the politics of envy.” With a President who campaigned on a pledge to “spread the wealth around,” many Americans today make the assumption that the wealthiest among us achieved their earnings by questionable if not immoral means and deserve to have ever-increasing portions of it taken from them in the form of “higher taxes.” Likewise the assumption is made that when individuals possess large sums of wealth they only do “selfish” things with it, whereas politicians can force wealthy people to expand their businesses and “create jobs” and can spend people’s money in ways that benefit “everyone.”

This esteemed view of government seems terrific – but is it really accurate? The agenda of President Obama and his Democrat party has helped create an environment where roughly half of the population pays no income taxes, so presumably the President has spread at least some wealth “around.” But have the new controls and mandates and regulations placed on businesses – all in the name of the “collective good” – really been beneficial to anybody? As Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts, LTD recently noted, “those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President…” Indeed treating business owners and “the wealthy” as though they are something less than dignified respectable human beings has produced a stagnant economy, and the constant threat from the President to raise taxes on the wealthy makes matters worse not better.

And here’s another soul-searching question for a nation that is on the “wrong track:” is America strengthened when growing portions of its citizens are content to live off of the largess of others? According to the Congressional Budget Office, the signature domestic agenda item of our current President – “Obamacare,” if you will – has led many of our fellow Americans to believe that they simply no longer need to work for a living because of all the “free” assistance they can get from our government.

This is not just political “spin” or partisan punditry. It comes directly from Douglas Elmendorf, the Director of the non-partisan C.B.O. It was none other than Mr. Elmendorf himself who noted in late 2010 that, outside the healthcare sector of our economy, the greatest impact of the Obamacare agenda will be in the labor market as the program incentivizes people to not work. Is this really something that puts America on the “right track?” It may be helping to bring down the unemployment rate, but it is certainly not leading our country to prosperity and productivity.

The pain of a stagnant economy and high unemployment is quite evident, while the flaws of bad government policy are not always so obvious. Americans should be contemplating these, and lots of other questions, as we seek to get our nation back on course.

Email: Austin Hill

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Down Grade Is No Big Deal; But Spending Is!

2011-08-08T15:50:00.001-04:00

Late Friday, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) announced that they had lowered the United State’s credit rating from an AAA to an AA+. Moody's also followed suit with a down grade of their own.

In the real world, this reduction in credit rating is not a big deal. The stock market will be volatile for a few days or perhaps a week for investors to figure this out, but in the long run this reduction will have no lasting effect. The U.S. role in the World economy has not changed.

The only exception would be if the Obama administration intentionally creates a crisis.

As soon as the White House heard about the down grade, their spin machine was set into motion. They accused S&P of incompetence, they blamed Bush, they blamed the House of Representatives, they blamed the Tea Party, and they blamed the kitchen sink. Most of all, they blamed the House because of the drawn out negotiations to finally raise the debt ceiling in the eleventh hour.

You will note that they do not see themselves responsible at all. Nor did they point out that they had inherited an AAA rating from George Bush.

The down grade came as no surprise to those who were paying attention! The credit rating agencies had told anyone that would listen that the U.S. needed to cut spending by at least $4 trillion, in real spending, if we wanted to retain an AAA rating.

According to at least one S&P spokesman, the first bill PASSED by the House of Representatives and backed by the “Tea Party” would have met ALL the requirements. But as we all know the White House and Harry Reid declared it dead on arrival. Throughout the discussions on raising the Debt Ceiling, it was the Senate Democrats and the White House that stood as obstructionist’s and offered no plans of their own. And it was the Democrats that opposed all real spending cuts.

It has been made very clear that the only path back to an AAA rating must contain a ‘Balanced Budget Amendment’, because Congress cannot pass a bill that any future Congress or even by themselves cannot change.

Both parties are too blame for the massive debt. However, 80% of the current problem lies squarely on the shoulders of the Obama regime. A quote from S&P specifically said that Obamacare would require significant modifications to bring down the growing costs associated with it.

S&P never, in spite of the Democrats claims, stated that tax increases were needed and neither did Moody's. In fact, one of their concerns was that we keep going to a relatively small number of sources with our ever growing taxation.

A GAO report stated that if we doubled the amount of taxes received from all current payers, we would still fall short of our annual expenditures by about ½ a trillion dollars.

It is the “Tea Party” that was pushing for a ‘Debt Ceiling’ bill that would have protected the AAA credit rating and moved the nation toward a sound financial policy by insisting that a ‘Balanced Budget Amendment” be moved through Congress and sent to the states.

The Democrats have been terrified by the grassroots ‘Tea Party’ movement and take every opportunity to attack them. “Why? Because that is what they do!” (line borrowed from Chris Plante/talk radio host).

However, if we are going to save this nation, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Conservatives, and others had better adopt the ‘Tea Party’ values of getting back to the Constitution, while reducing the size and cost of the Federal government.

Ronald Reagan used to say, “The government is not the solution to the problem, the government is the problem.”

Never has that been truer than it is today. We have the EPA about to cost millions of jobs and trillions of dollars with phony baloney, Cap and Trade’ carbon regulations, Obamacare is already on its way to bankrupt the nation while destroying the best heath care system in the World, and there is the planned energy policy which will cost even more jobs and kill the economy, just in case all else fails.

If you don’t believe that Obama wants to economically destroy America, ask yourself, If he wanted to destroy America’s economy and prestige, what would he have done differently? The answer is nothing would have been different!

No one could be that wrong or that stupid by accident!

Wake up People! You have to be the ones that save America!

God bless the ‘Tea Party’ and all others that think like them.

The Door Bell

2011-08-04T14:05:00.000-04:00

“Job Killing Tax Cuts” And A Guy Who Called Rush

2011-07-31T23:30:00.000-04:00

By Austin Hill
What’s more important: the wellbeing of each individual citizen in America, or the wellbeing of government?

One of the reasons that the United States occupies a distinguished place in the world is because the American founders prioritized the wellbeing of the individual person. Government, the founders believed, should be the servant of individual people. This was a rather significant departure from the view that individual people should be the servant of their all-important government.

Unfortunately, many Americans today prioritize the wellbeing of government above all else. Take for example our President, Barack Obama.

Throughout the debate over our nation’s debt and deficit, President Obama has made it clear that politicians and bureaucrats must be permitted to go on spending money as they see fit. Any limitations on government borrowing or government’s ability to collect taxes will result in calamity, whereas borrowing and taxing will enable all the societal goodness that can exist.

The President’s vision defies historical fact. But here’s a quote from a press conference on July 16th, where he addressed the public pressure to curb government spending, that he and the Congress have been facing:

“….Some of these decisions are tough…but they don’t require us to gut Medicare or Social Security…they don’t require us to stop helpin’ young people go to college…they don’t require us to stop, you know, helpin’ families that have got a disabled child…they don’t require us to violate our obligations to our veterans…and they don’t require quote-un-quote job killing tax cuts…”

Much of this is simply rhetorical. Nobody has proposed “gutting” Medicare or Social Security. Nobody in Congress has suggested that college students or parents of disabled children should be abandoned.

But notice President Obama’s choice of words about taxation – “job killing tax cuts.” Nobody who has even a remote acquaintance with basic economic concepts actually believes that allowing private individuals to retain more of their own wealth decreases “job creation.” Indeed it’s just the opposite – the more wealth that individuals can keep for themselves, the more likely it is that they will invest money in business enterprises that will lead to employment opportunities. Yet, there he is, the leader of the free world, fussing over alleged “job killing tax cuts.”

This “government is everything” mindset doesn’t begin and end in Washington. Last week I happened to catch Rush Limbaugh engaged in conversation with “Carl,” a 24 year old caller to his talk show who was arguing that we all must sacrifice more (especially “rich” people) to keep the government goodness flowing. A portion of the conversation went like this:

Carl: A tax cut depletes necessary revenue needed to keep the government operational and functioning.

RUSH: Carl, that's not what a tax cut is. A tax cut is you work for a living, and you are paid X. At the present, you have a tax rate -- let's just pick one, may not be accurate -- of 30%. Which means that 30% of every dollar you earn goes to Washington, but the money starts with you. It's yours. You earned it. You did what was necessary to be paid that money.

Carl: Exactly.

RUSH: If a tax cut happens, and your tax rate goes to 20%, then all of a sudden you get to keep 80¢ of every dollar you earned rather than 70¢ of every dollar you earned. How in the world is that spending?

Carl: Because when I spend that money out of my own paycheck, that's money that I spend on my own life. When the government spends my tax dollars, they're spending it on necessary infrastructure that's to keep the entire government running, to keep schools running…

RUSH: No... Wait a minute. So are you telling me that you believe that it is more important for government to spend whatever money it has than it is for you to spend whatever money you earn?

Carl: The government spending tax dollars benefits everybody, whereas me spending my own money benefits me…

Apparently Carl hasn’t been taught that when he spends his own money, it benefits the person who grows his food, manufactures his clothes, and so forth.

Rush’s conversation reminds me of a question I recently encountered while serving as a panelist at a university forum on economic growth. As a student took to the microphone and noted that she had read my bio on my website, she stated “your degrees are in literature and philosophy, and you’re not even an economist, so why do you think you have the right to speak about economics?”

I reminded the woman that in America, I have the right to speak about nearly anything; the university had the right to not invite me; and she had the right to not listen. I also suggested that the question about which is more important – individual people, or the government – is really a philosophical question more than anything else, so as a trained philosopher I was probably qualified to participate in the event.

President Obama will likely never embrace this “people before government” philosophy. But will America ever return to it?

Email: Austin Hill

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A Conversation With Gang of Six Member, ID. Sen. Mike Crapo

2011-07-28T09:30:00.000-04:00

By ICB Today I had a chance to speak with Idaho Senator and Gang of Six member, Mike Crapo.

ICB: I appreciate you taking a couple of minutes for us. There has been a lot of talk about what’s going on with you and the Gang of Six proposal and the debt ceiling debate and my understanding is these are two separate issues are they not?

Crapo: Absolutely yes, the gang of six proposal was developed in an effort to latterly change the fiscal policy of the United States in a very comprehensive way to help us deal with our much broader issue, the debt crisis. You know once we pass the debt ceiling battle we will still have a debt crisis and ours is a much broader, larger, more comprehensive change of American policy.

However, given the fact that we have a debt ceiling battle going on right now all or part of it could be used as a part of the ultimate solution if the negotiations turn that way but it doesn’t necessarily have to.

ICB: I think part of the confusion came when the House voted on Cut, Cap, & Balance the same day the Gang of Six proposal was released then the President came out and tried to downplay what the House had done and said that the Gang of Six proposal was an alternative.

Crapo: Yes, that was never intended to be the case. As a matter of fact I’m a co-sponsor of the Cut, Cap, & Balance bill in the Senate and voted for it. And frankly the two bills are not inconsistent at all as a matter we need the Cut, Cap, & Balance bill which includes a balanced budget amendment and then we also need to do something along the order of the Gang of Six bill and then we need to do another 4 trillion dollar bill after that to truly get a handle of our over spending.

ICB: I think that a lot of reason why people are panicking is because, and correct me if I’m wrong in the Gang of Six proposal is discusses the elimination of some deductions, the mortgage interest deduction, the charitable contribution deduction, and the child deduction. Is that accurate and are those scare tactics or what’s going on there?

Crapo: I’m glad you asked for that clarification because actually what we do, we do mention those but we mention them to make it clear they are NOT being eliminated. So the mortgage interest, retirement contributions, charitable giving and so forth those tax preference items would be maintained and protected under our approach and some people have reported it the opposite. They have said we were trying to get rid of them. There’s one other clarification I’d like to make, there is a lot of attack out there saying that our approach is a tax increase and that also is not correct. Our approach is to eliminate some of the tax expenditures in the code yes, but to use that in order to reduce rates and we reduce income tax rates dramatically. We cut the corporate rate as well and we totally repeal the alternative minimum tax and then we expect that this very pro-growth reform of the tax code by flattening the code, condensing its six rates into three rates and dramatically reducing those rates is going to have a huge simulative impact on the economy and the revenue that will come from stimulating the economy, from growing the economy is the revenue that we allocate in our plan to deficit reductions.

ICB: And I believe that top bracket of 35% is dropped to 23 – 29% correct?

Crapo: That’s correct, let me tell you the rates because what we do is we give a range of rate alternatives to the finance committee and it puts together the bill that we mandate that they do. What we do is we drop the top rate from 35% down to a range of 23 to 29% and then the middle rate goes down to 14 to 22%, and the bottom rate goes down to a range of 8 to 12% and these are dramatic reductions, you can see in the top bracket that it’s a minimum of a 6% point reduction and maybe a 12% point reduction in the tax rates.

ICB: Some have criticized that the proposal cuts too deeply into military spending.

Crapo: Well, we tried to achieve a balance because, when I say military, the term we used was security spending and the reason I say that is because that’s broader than just our national defense it includes Homeland Security and other departments like that but the securities spending is about half of the discretionary spending and so we said that it should bear its pro rata share, about half of the reductions and that is what we are proposing in our plan, now we can debate whether we have the room to find those kind of savings in defense, I believe we can and I believe that to do it on a pro rata basis in terms of its percentage of the budget is the fairest approach to approach it but we may need to adjust that if we move forward and if analysts show that we cannot maintain our national security at equal or better levels then we certainly can adjust that. There is a tremendous amount of waste that we have been able to identify in the DOD contracting process and we believe we can have a significant effect in finding savings and actually increasing the efficiency of our defense department through some of these reforms.

ICB: Some are saying that a lot of this is going to end up being meaningless because if it comes about it might make this fiscal year’s budget being negotiated, it may have impact there but in the long term when we’re looking at cuts that won’t take place for another 3,4,5,6 even 10 years down the road, it’s going to be null and void because come next budget season next year and the year after that because it will all have to be re-negotiated over again. Are there any securities in your plan that locks your changes in place if they pass?

Crapo: Yes, as a matter of fact that concern is a completely valid concern about all of the plans that are being negotiated and discussed right now to re-state it, the only thing you can count on in the current congressional budget enforcement system is the first year. Every year after that is nothing more than a projection and if history is any kind of a guide it will not happen and congress will not honor those targets. What we do in our Gang of Six proposal is we establish what I consider to be the most powerful enforcement mechanism that congress has ever had. We stop congress dramatically from using emergency designations to get out of meeting budget targets. We also force a process of identifying what Congress does when it does declare emergencies. And then we provide that even if Congress somehow breaks the caps that there’s an automatic sequester of funds across all government to bring the spending back to the cap levels and that sequester is protected and enforced with a mandate that you can’t break it without bringing a separate individual statute that must pass with 67 votes and that 67 vote protection on a separate statute to protect the sequester in my opinion will hold and that will assure that we will be able to keep Congress on target. Notwithstanding the attacks out there, our plan cuts taxes, grows the economy, and uses economic growth as the revenue part of the solution.

ICB: Thank you Senator Crapo for taking the time.

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Loathing Obama And Loving Harry Reid: The Myth Of “Pro-Business” Democrats

2011-07-24T18:11:00.002-04:00

By Austin Hill
A note to business men and women who call themselves Democrats: you really can’t have it both ways.

You can’t continue supporting your party and your favorite Democrat politicians, and also expect that you and your business associates will remain free to take risks, to invest, to innovate, and to succeed. This is because your political party is no longer about ideals – it is all about one person, a persona, an individual.

It’s all about a man named President Barack Obama. And to say that President Obama is “just not that into you,” would be an understatement. He is downright hostile to you, your accomplishments, and to private sector enterprise in general.

A few days ago the worlds of business and political news were rocked by Steve Wynn, C.E.O. of the publicly traded Wynn Resorts, Ltd. The headlines stated that “Wynn Slams Obama On Business,” but if you read or listened to any of his actual remarks, you’d realize that there really wasn’t much of any “slamming” going on.

More accurately, Wynn’s comments seemed very accurate, rational and fair – as though he was simply stating the obvious.

Speaking with a calm tone during a corporate conference call last week, Wynn stated, among other things: “… This administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime…my customers… are frightened of this administration… Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America…those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, God, don't be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama's deal and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America…”

After acknowledging the Obama-driven “fear” among America’s entrepreneurs and investors, Wynn further states that “the guy (President Obama) keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, they’re holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it…It is the truth. And that's true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States… until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs…”

If you’re “shocked” by any of this, I have a question for you: Why? Are you surprised that a Democrat and business executive had the audacity to state the obvious? Or is Wynn’s analysis of the President not so obvious to you?

Column space doesn’t allow me to chronicle the many ways President Obama has been spiteful to private enterprise, but consider this from the summer of 2008. Several American oil corporations had just posted some robust profits, even as gasoline prices were surging across the U.S. Standing before a stadium full of adoring fans, candidate Obama said this: “…You’ve got oil companies making record profits… no companies in history have made the kind of profits the oil companies are makin’ right now…one company, Exxon Mobil, made eleven billion dollars…billion, with a “b” ….last quarter….they made eleven billion dollars the quarter before that…makin’ money hand-over-fist…makin’ out like bandits…”

Did you get the gravity of this, Democrat business executives? It was easy to dismiss this as simple “class warfare politics” given the spike in fuel prices back then. But This was our future President, using his platform to directly chastise an American corporation, calling them out by name, and expressing his disdain because – because why? - it was successful. “Record profits” was the company’s grave sin, and Barack Obama likened them to thieves.

What part of “anti-business” do you not understand, executives?

Fast-forward to January 29th of 2009. Despite the economic decline, some of the nation’s lending institutions had just posted some hefty – here’s that horrible word again – profits. Worse yet, the companies paid their executives - gasp! – bonuses. President Obama chastised this achievement, stating “there will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses…now’s not that time..” Apparently President Obama believes that it is sometimes preferable for companies to be unprofitable.

As for the idea that one can embrace certain Democrats, while still rejecting the Obama agenda.. I’m guessing that Steve Wynn enjoys a respectable friendship with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. But Reid belongs to the party of Obama, and has carried the water for the President’s legislative agenda. There’s no distinguishing between the two of them, at this point.

In this present crisis, one can respect private enterprise, or one can ascribe to the “weird political philosophy of the President.” But there’s no middle ground between the two.

Email: Austin Hill

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Thune: BATFE's Gun Runner Program Must Be Exposed !

2011-07-23T11:01:00.002-04:00

From: gunsandpatriots (Jul 18, 2011 )

In an exclusive interview with Guns & Patriots editor Neil W. McCabe, Sen John R. Thune, R-S.D., describes his anger over the 'Gun Runner' program managed by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) that allowed firearms that would have been stopped by normal procedures to flow to Mexican criminal organizations.

Video

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ICB Spotlight Interview, Walter E. Williams Pt. 3

2011-07-20T23:09:00.000-04:00

By ICB

Where we left off

ICB; What is it that makes black conservatives or black Republicans such a target? They get enough grief from other blacks but they also get attacked by whites as not being real “black people” because of their political views. Why is that?

Williams; Well, I don’t know (laughing) A lot of white people feel essentially, guilt. This is why on my web site this has been up for a number of years, it’s called “The Gift”.

It’s a gift that I wrote and it’s a certificate of amnesty and pardon that I’ve granted to all Americans of European ancestry for both their own grievances and those of their forbearers against my people. And the reason I wanted to do that is so white people stop feeling guilty and stop acting like damn fools. You see with me and with Michael Steele and Tom Sowell and let’s say a number of conservative, free market blacks they don’t give white liberals any reason to feel sorry for us. (Laughing) you know all of us who have achieved, we have high income so a white liberal, what’s he going feel sorry about? So maybe that’s a big part of it.

ICB; As far as the GOP Presidential field goes, who’s catching your attention?

Williams; Well, I think that my view is that any of them would be better than Obama.

ICB; Anyone striking out better than the others for you?

Williams; Well, if anybody, somebody like Michele Bachmann.

ICB; I was hoping you would say her over Mitt Romney.

Williams; But, you know it’s a question of well, (Laughing) you want somebody to win in 2012 and I don’t know if Michele Bachmann can but I surely share her values.

ICB; Your new book, Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?

Would you tell us why you wrote this book and what will people get out of it?

Williams; Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination is the title, what I argue in the book in all the chapters, many of the problems that black Americans face cannot be blamed on discrimination to the extent that people say it can be blamed on racial discrimination, which is not to say racial discrimination does not exist. But many of the problems have nothing to do with racial discrimination.
Read More > >

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Judge Napolitano: An Open Letter to Boehner

2011-07-15T18:42:00.001-04:00

Judge Andrew Napolitano extends his thoughts to Speaker of the House, John Boehner, in an open letter concerning the looming debt ceiling deadline and the struggle for sanity on Capitol Hill.

Dear Mr. Speaker,

When the Founders at the Constitution Conventional in 1787 created the House of Representatives, it was fashioned to act as the voice of the people within the institutional checks and balances of the Federal Government. That's why the entire House faces reelection every 2 years. That's why Constitutionally, you don't have to even be a member of Congress to serve as speaker. And that's why the Constitution allows for thousands of members of the House for our current population. It is the people's house, and the people spoke last November. They cried out against a government completely out of control. After President Bush grew the U.S. debt by $7 trillion dollars in 8 years in office, and President Obama added $4 Trillion in just 2 years in office, the people cried out against big-government policies that are sabotaging the economy and taking over our lives. And because they cried out, you are no longer just John Boehner from Ohio. You are now the second in line to succeed to the presidency. You are the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives has just 8 working days left before the August 2nd debt ceiling deadline, and by wide margins in whatever way the question is asked, Americans do not want to see the debt ceiling raised. They're sick and tired of paying interest on borrowed money; money borrowed in their name. The Federal Government borrows so much money from so many sources, Mr. Speaker, that no-one knows for sure just how much it owes to its lenders. It already appears that it has exceeded the legal limit set by the congress at $14.294 trillion, and they actually at this moment in time are closer to $14.5 trillion. The White House is putting intense pressure on you and on Congress to raise that limit. The President's apologists have even suggested invoking the 14th amendment to bypass the will of Congress and borrow money without legal authority. Given the way the White House has run roughshod over your House in the matter of the "not-war" in Libya that our military is still "not" engaged in, the word of the President's lawyers that there is no presidential power in the 14th amendment to borrow money on his own can hardly be trusted. This is a president who does not regard the Constitution as a limit on the exercise of governmental power. But the President can only get away with violating the Constitution, Mr. Speaker, if you let him do so.

If you stand up for the will of the people, you will restrain him. This is the moment of truth for the Congress, Mr. Speaker. The scare-mongers and the chicken-littles in DC will tell you that the sky will come tumbling down if the debt ceiling isn't raised, even though your colleagues, Senator Pat Toomey and Rep. Tom McClintock, have introduced legislation that would prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt obligations.

I have two words for you, Mr. Speaker. Stop it. That's right, just stop it. For too long our government has spent beyond its means and in our names, sinking us and generations as yet unborn into deeper and deeper debt. And you, Mr. Speaker, can stop it. The President stands with the big-business, big-banks, big-government complex, and against the American people. He's even prepared to defy the laws of economics. But the American people are not ignorant as he thinks they are, and you know that.

Mr. Speaker, you have the opportunity to do something that no standard bearer of small government has ever been able to do in our modern era; get the government to live within its means. You can do it by standing firm with your colleagues in the Congress who are leading the call for change. You can stop it. You can force the Federal Government to make the difficult decisions to bring itself within its means and begin to loosen the chains of debt that have been foisted on our country by a centuries worth of progressive big-government architects. End it this summer, Mr. Speaker. Stop it. Tell the President, "not a penny more." Stand up for the American people, bring government within its means, and begin the restoration of our republic.

If you do this Mr. Speaker, if you restrain the federal beast, you will become one of history's great champions and heroes of freedom. If you don't, we'll all go through this again the next time a president wants to spend beyond the government's means and chain us all down to more debt.

Mr. Speaker, don't let us down.

-Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Reprinted from "The Blaze"

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Is Mitch McConnell Crazy, Or What?

2011-07-14T14:23:00.004-04:00

As usual, I started the day by checking the accumulated E-mails.

The first message was from a friend and fellow blogger who had written in very large bold letters, “Is Mitch McConnell Crazy, Or What?

She was referring to the Senate minority leader’s latest attempt to bow to Democrat demands on the debt ceiling limits.

McConnell suggested that the President should be given the power to raise the debt level without Congressional approval.

Isn’t that the type of thinking that allowed us to get into this financial mess?

There is no Constitutional requirement for a debt limit. It was a legislative decision, and in this writers opinion, a very good idea.

A balanced budget amendment would eliminate the need setting a debt limit; It would be automatically set by the growth or decline of the economy with the acceptation of requiring a super majority of both house of Congress during times of war. But we do not have a balanced budget amendment and it will take 4-6 years to enact one!

Democrats control the Executive and one-half of the Legislative branches of government. However, the Constitution requires that spending bills originate in the House of Representatives which Republicans control. This is a very powerful tool which gives the Republicans control over taxing and spending.

And this is a power that McConnell has suggested that we cede to the president. So the question, is the Senator a big in the closet spender, or a coward, or crazy. He says that he fears that Republicans will be blamed if the nation defaults on its credit.

First it should be known to all, in spite of Obama’s lies, the nation WILL NOT default if the spending cap is not raised. The monthly U.S. income exceeds $200 Billion. Less than $30 billion is required to service the debt. That leaves plenty of money to cover Social Security, military payroll, veterans’ care, border patrol and much more. At present, who does or doesn’t get paid is determined my Obama!

Mitch McConnell is suggesting that we give the only control that we have to the president.

McConnell is a COWARD! He fears being blamed for a default. Of course, if he and other Republicans cave on new taxes, they be blamed too. He is correct, the media (propaganda mill) will blame the Republicans. If you are going to have to fight the propaganda branch of the Dumbo Party, won’t it be better to be defending a 'save America vote'?

Mitch McConnell’s suggestions have been absolutely wrong.

McConnell needs to be replaced as Minority Leader.

Several Jr. Senators have shown far more leadership! -- WD

Note: My sources tell me that the Republicans are introducing a bill in both Houses that will require that the President pay the nations debts as follows:
1. Service the debt
2. Social Security
3. Military Payroll
4. Border Patrol and other Security Agencies
--WD

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ICB Spotlight Interview, Walter E. Williams Pt. 2

2011-07-12T09:47:00.000-04:00

By Idaho Conservative Blogger (7/12/2011)

Note: Part 1 of this interview can be found here.

When we left off I had asked Mr. Williams for a prediction on the current budget battle, he said,

Williams; (Laughing) Well, my prediction is that the Republicans are going to cave. You hear them talking now, well we will raise the debt ceiling if the congress or senate agrees to a balanced budget spending limit amendment to the constitution. That’s B.S. because you won’t get something like that until 7 years down the road, or 5 or 6 years to get an amendment ratified. And they are talking about spending cuts over the next 20 years. If they were serious they would follow Rand Paul the Senator from Kentucky, he proposed that they cut $500 billion out of the budget today. (Laughing) but they’re not going to do that.

Here is the problem that we face as a nation. That is, you say well what can Americans do? I often answer when people ask me that question, are we so as Americans arrogant enough to believe that we as a set of human beings are any different from the Romans, the French, the English, the Portuguese, the Spanish? What I’m saying is these are great empires of the past that went down the tubes. And they went down the tubes for precisely the kind of things we are doing. The probability is that some historian writing 50 years or 100 years from now, he might say look we had this great powerful nation but now it’s a banana republic, it’s a third rate nation.

ICB; Is president Obama the worst President we’ve ever had?

Williams; Well, he comes really close. I’ve always said that he’s going to be a failed Presidency just like Jimmy Carter. I said that early on in his Presidency, as a matter of fact I think even before he became President, I said we risk having a failed Presidency and I think that one of the tragedies is that it’s a tragedy that the first black President be a failed Presidency. I don’t know that I would call him the worst President but he comes pretty close. More > >

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ICB Spotlight Interview, Walter E. Williams. Pt. 1

2011-07-10T00:27:00.000-04:00

By Idaho Conservative Blogger (10 July, 2011)

Let me start by saying I am a huge fan of Walter Williams.

If you didn’t know, Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Walter E. Williams holds a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from UCLA. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College and Doctor Honoris Causa en Ciencias Sociales from Universidad Francisco Marroquin, in Guatemala, where he is also Professor Honorario.

Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980; from 1995 to 2001, he served as department chairman. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California State University Los Angeles, and Temple University in Philadelphia, and Grove City College, Grove City, Pa.

Dr. Williams is the author of over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader's Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. He has authored six books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary "Good Intentions," All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa's War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication, Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks, and More Liberty Means Less Government. More > >

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Them's Fightin' Words

2011-07-09T10:11:00.001-04:00

No explanation needed

Telling It Like It Is!

2011-07-05T19:23:00.001-04:00

The men and women of our armed forces have a knack for finding humor in their duty.

For example, those that flew Hilary Clinton around Iraq enjoyed assigning the helicopter a call sign-

"Broom Stick One"

As you probably know the Boeing 474 carrying the President has the call sign-

"Air Force One"

Now we hear that the Airmen are referring to Air Force One by its actual function and call it-

"Golf Cart One"

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California,The “Failed State”

2011-07-03T17:29:00.001-04:00

By Austin Hill
“Failed state.”

That sounds harsh, doesn’t it? Do a web search with the words “failed state” and names like Somalia, Haiti, and Sudan will appear on your computer screen.

Unfortunately, the 31st state in our union – California – is looking more and more like a “failed state” as well. And this should matter to every American, because like it or not, California is both a global economic epicenter and a spectacular place in the world.

My native homeland of California is home to the highest mountain in the contiguous forty-eight states (Mount Whitney), the lowest valley (Death Valley), Facebook, “Surf City, U.S.A.”(Huntington Beach), Apple Computers, The World Champion San Francisco Giants, the most fertile farm land in the world (San Joaquin Valley), eBay, Legoland, Cisco Systems, “the entertainment capitol of the world” (Hollywood), three U.S. Presidents (Richard Nixon by birth, and Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan by “adoption”), and Mitsubishi Motors of North America. It remains a global leader in the agricultural, information technology, and aerospace sectors. If it were its own country, it would comprise the eight largest national economy in the world.

This is to say that California can be and should be a place of robust economic opportunity across multiple sectors. But politicians and government employee labor unions have a stranglehold on the state (sound familiar?). Businesses and capital are now leaving while actual economic output is slumping.

Most academicians and government bureaucrats who keep track of the world’s “failed states” still won’t admit that Greece belongs on their lists, so the idea that California has in any sense “failed” isn’t even considered. But if we take seriously the criteria for determining a “failed state,” then the sad truth about California becomes painfully clear.

One of the most often quoted authorities on failed states is The Fund for Peace, a Washington, DC-based non-profit think tank organization, and among the many indicators of a failed state that “FFP” notes is “uneven economic development among group lines.” This notion of “uneven economic development” often has “life or death” implications in places like Zimbabwe or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, yet the idea is every bit as real in California as it regards the disparity between the government, and the private sector economy.

For the record, the government of California presently entails a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion – a deficit that is expected to swell to about $25 billion by the middle of 2012. With this as his backdrop, Governor Jerry Brown took office in January noting at the time that California had a history of “kickin’ the can down the road” with its budget woes, and that his plan to solve California’s dreadful fiscal problems would involve both cuts in government spending, and – if California voters approved – tax increases.

Yet Governor Brown is a life-long government employee, and will have nothing to do with cutting state spending where it is most problematic – in the arena of government employee salaries, benefits, and retirement pensions. In fact, while he has been completely unable to implement his plan of “temporarily extending” certain “temporarily inflated tax rates” (which de facto amounts to a tax increase plan), he has continued lining the pockets of unionized government employees with more lavish expenditures on their salaries, benefits, and retirement pensions.

In April, for example, Brown approved a new contract for the California Prison Guard’s union, which allows guards to accrue unlimited numbers of un-used paid vacation days each year. When a guard retires, the un-used vacation time can now be “cashed-in” at the guard’s highest salary rate- a sweet pay-off from Governor Brown to a labor union that spent nearly $2 million on his campaign last year.

And here’s where yet another set of criteria comes in to play for determining a “failed state.” According to the Fund for Peace, failed states often exhibit “a disappearance of basic state functions that serve the people, including a failure to protect citizens from terrorism and violence…” The high-minded folks at the FFP may not know this, but – shocking news! – California has so horribly mismanaged its prison system that it can’t afford to facilitate all of its prisoners.

After being taken to court over the conditions in which they were detaining convicts – which included as many as 54 prisoners sharing one toilet – the California government was ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in May of this year to release huge numbers of prisoners. This is to say that California’s leaders had plenty of money to spend on their unionized prison guards, yet it doesn’t have enough money to properly facilitate prisoners so as to comply with federal requirements.

Is this “failure enough” to get anybody’s attention? By the FFP’s own criteria, California has failed to fulfill a “basic state function” and to protect “citizens” from “violence.”

The Fund for Peace needs to sound the alarm bells over the California government’s failures, but they probably won’t. It’s up to the state’s citizenry to demand better leadership in Sacramento – before it’s too late.

Email: Austin Hill

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Obama Gives New Grant to ACORN

2011-07-03T08:04:00.001-04:00

By Matthew Vadum
Why is President Obama apparently defying federal law by funding ACORN?

Judicial Watch discovered that the Obama administration is flouting the will of Congress by giving federal taxpayer money to ACORN.

Obama's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) gave a $79,819 grant to the largest branch of the ACORN tree, ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC). AHC filed papers last year legally changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). It's the same old organization with a brand new ACORN-free name.

Worse yet, the grant funds a political agitation and indoctrination program. Here's HUD's euphemistic description of the program:

Education and Outreach Initiative grants (EOI) - HUD awarded $6.8 million to organizations that educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws. Groups will also conduct fair lending workshops, community meetings, and individual counseling activities focused on homeowners at risk for discrimination.

According to HUD, the grant money came out of fiscal 2010 appropriations.

That's a big problem.

As I reported previously, in 2009 Congress passed four separate appropriations bills that contained language blocking federal funds from flowing to ACORN during federal fiscal year 2010, which ran from Oct. 1, 2009 through Sept. 30, 2010. All four of the laws prevent ACORN and its affiliated groups from receiving federal taxpayer dollars.

The funding prohibition in Public Law 111-117 (PDF) applies specifically to HUD. It spells out in pretty clear terms that ACORN shouldn't be getting any government funding. Let's see just how clearly it spells it out:

Division A - Section 418. None of the funds made available under this Act or any prior Act may be provided to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations. [p. 80 of PDF]

Division B - Section 534. None of the funds made available under this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries. [p. 125 of PDF]

Division E - Section 511. None of the funds made available in this division or any other division in this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries. [p. 279 of PDF]

Yet despite the ban, President Obama, who worked for ACORN as an employee and as the group's lawyer, found it in his heart to hand over $79,819 of your money to his thug friends at ACORN.

As I warn in my new book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, ACORN is still with us, doing its best to destroy American capitalism and democracy.

The group is gearing up right now to make sure President Obama gets reelected in 2012. Its state chapters have adopted assumed names and remain active. Project Vote, ACORN's vote manufacturing factory, continues to operate unmolested in ACORN's Washington, D.C. office.

You've been warned.

Note: This article is reprinted from 'The Ameriucan Spectator' of June 30, 2011.
This the same ACORN that has had many of its personnel indited for voter fraud after the last presidential election -- The same ACORN for which Barack Obama worked as a 'Comunity Orgabnizer' -- WD.

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Happy Birthday America--July 4, 1776 - 2011

2011-07-02T18:19:00.005-04:00

On July 4th, the United States of Americas will celebrate her 235th Birthday!

Will it be her last?

Or perhaps the beginning of the end and she will suffer a slow agonizing death.

There is little doubt that she is in intensive care! She is dying because her life blood, her citizens, all of us have been complacent, we have allowed ourselves to be misled by our internal enemies. We have allowed our schools to become propaganda mills for the left where they undermine America. We have allowed our media to become shills for the left. We have allowed many of our churches to be high jacked by the left. We have allowed Socialist/Marxist to take over our federal government and use our tax dollars to buy our votes. We have stood by while our federal government has imported millions of illegal aliens (sorry- undocumented workers) who are voting in our elections.

What are we going to do? Are we going to try (and at this point trying may be all that is left) to save her? The next election will tell the tale!

If Obama is reelected you might as well pull the plug.

If the House fails to stand strong on the raising of the debt limit—the next election may well be too late!

In the hope that we can encourage some much needed patriotism we present two beautiful birthday cards. We hope that you enjoy them and then take an oath to do what you can to save what has been the greatest and most generous nation on earth

We do not want the next card to be an expression of Sympathy -- WD

Card 1 Card 2

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Wisdom For The Fed Chairman With “No Idea”

2011-06-26T22:37:00.000-04:00

By Austin Hill For the record, I don’t assume that the Federal Reserve chairman can ever know exactly what’s happening with the economy. And for the record, I never assume that anybody else can either.

Yet it was extraordinary to hear Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledge last week that he has “no idea” why our economy is so “fragile.” This is the man who has overseen the lending of more than $3 trillion American taxpayer dollars to foreign banks; the rapid-fire acquisition of the former giant Merrill Lynch by the gargantuan Bank of America; the multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout of Wall Street; and the $800 billion “economic stimulus bill” from the Congress and the Obama Administration.

And now, this man with immense power over the entire world’s wealth and yet who has never been elected to any public office, has to admit that he has “no idea” why things aren’t going the way they were “supposed to.” As Trisha, a caller to one of my daily talk shows noted to me last Thursday, “We pay these people in Washington waaay too much money for them to simply ‘not know….’”

I appreciate the outrage of my fellow taxpayers over a government that has spent us into oblivion and now concludes that it has “no idea.” But I also think that this moment in time can be a “teachable moment” – if the agents of our government will be taught.

First, think about the “Obama stimulus spending.” I wonder if Mr. Bernanke has any idea how this money was actually allocated. Among the roster of expenditures was one hundred and twenty million of our tax dollars for the hiring of part time workers at senior citizen’s community centers. $87 billion for Medicaid “family planning services” (contraception). And $650 million to “assist” Americans in buying digital TV converter devices. And then there was one of my favorites from the Obama stimulus plan, the $335 million allotted for the “Booty Call” sexually transmitted diseases education program.

Free condoms and converter boxes do not spell “wealth creation.” And we can all imagine what gets stimulated when you participate in the “Booty Call” program - - but it is certainly not the economy.
The lesson here – for Mr. Bernanke, and everybody else– is that politicians and government bureaucrats DO NOT use our money as wisely as private individuals and organizations. Nobody with their wits about them would believe for a moment that doling-out “free” stuff from the government would expand the economic pie. Yet “stimulus funds” – money allocated by the Congress and President Obama specifically for the purposes of “stimulating” the economy – were spent on things like birth control and TV gadgetry, while the promised “shovel ready” infrastructure projects remain a mystery.

When private individuals and groups are left to handle their own money – and allowed to feel the pain if they fail to manage it properly - then they usually manage it in a wise way. But when politicians and bureaucrats spend our money, they’re spending somebody else’s money – and when it’s somebody else’s money, it too easy to spend it in foolish and self-serving ways.

And here’s another lesson: Even the smartest of government “leaders” often cannot handle our money better than we can individually. I still remember the Obama-Biden campaign’s “mixer” for young professionals that I attended back in September of 2008. I was a “fly on the wall” at the Phoenix, AZ hotel suite, as lots of MBA’s and JD’s and VP’s mingled around, buzzing about candidate Obama’s intellect and all the “super smart” people he would bring with him to Washington to fix the economy. By then it was apparent that Phoenix , the second-most rapidly rising real estate market in the U.S. was in nosedive mode. But Obama had a “mortgage bailout plan” that was going to fix everything – or so the party-goers told me.

Today people with late payments and bad credit scores get loan modifications, while those with current payments and good credit can’t get a return telephone call from their bank. The “super smart” people who went to Washington intent on “helping those who are hurting” have transformed the financial system into a structure that coddles the reckless, while punishing the productive.

And I wonder if Mr. Bernanke – or anybody else in the Obama Administration – has ever thought of this: In order for an economic system to function, every participant in the system has to be treated like they are fully human. From the poorest entry-level worker, to the wealthiest executive and business owner, we all must be treated like the free, grown-up, fully dignified human beings that we are meant to be. This means we must be “free” to succeed, “free” to fail, and incentivized to do the right thing.

Yet in the Obama economy, the poor are told “you can’t accomplish it on your own.” The rich are told “you’ve accomplished too much.” Business owners are told what they can and cannot do with their operating capital.

All these “lessons” really amount to matters of human character, and no amount of central bank tinkering can render them unimportant. These lessons are available to all of us, right now. Even to the man with “no idea.”

E-mail: Austin Hill

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"War Powers Act" Is Not Constitutional

2011-06-16T14:31:00.001-04:00

The Congress has announced that it is suing Barack Obama for violation of the “War Powers Act”, because of our involvement in Libya. Mr. Obama argues that the Act does not apply to this situation, for a number of reasons. All of those reasons make little sense. The real question is about the constitutionality of the Act.

So what is the “War Powers Act”?

The War Powers Act is a law passed by Congress after the Vietnam War which seeks to define and limit the powers of the president of the United States to command the armed forces into combat without Congressional approval.

President Nixon's vetoed the Act which he felt of “dubious constitutionality”. Congress over road the veto and the Act became Law.

The most important provision is that if the U.S. armed forces go into combat the president must get a resolution from Congress authorizing the mission. If the resolution is not passed then the forces must be withdrawn from the combat within sixty days. Since it was passed no president has ever acknowledged its validity but they have always, with exception of Bill Clinton in Kosovo, complied with it.

Is the “War Powers Act” constitutional?

It is quite clear that the Constitution makes the President the Commander-in-Chief of all of the armed forces.

It is equally clear that only the Congress can declare war; and also that Congress has the power of the purse for fighting any war. Either House can refuse to appropriate the monies needed to fight. However, stopping funds that have already been appropriated will require a veto proof vote in both the House and the Senate.

Nothing else on the matter of war is spelled out.

The argument over how much control Congress has over the Presidents power to wage war first became an issue during the Jefferson presidency. Mr. Jefferson sent the Navy (which included the Marines) to Mediterranean Sea to fight the Barbary Pirates (who were Muslim) and put an end to their acts of piracy on merchant shipping. Congress was opposed and refused to appropriate monies for the endeavor.

Jefferson reasoned that the ships and their crews were an ongoing everyday expense and were not therefore in need of addition funding. His only expenses were therefore, the repair of our ships, gun powder / shot, and wounded or lost men. All of which he paid for with training and general funds (now known as discretionary funds). One has to believe that Jefferson knew and followed the powers granted to him via the Constitution. For more on this subject, go HERE.

It matters very little if the court sides with the argument that the President has virtually unlimited power to wage war or it the court sides with those that argue that Congress must grant permission for the President to engage in war: the “War Powers Act” is on its face, unconstitutional!

If the President has vast powers to wage war, the Act is an attempt to constrain power granted by the Constitution, without a Constitutional amendment. That is not legal!

If the President cannot wage war without the approval of Congress, the Act is an attempt to grant power to the President that is not granted by the Constitution, without a Constitutional amendment. That too is illegal!

It is hard to imagine a decision by the Supreme Court that would let the “War Powers Act” stand as law!

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Quotation Of The Day

2011-06-13T10:44:00.000-04:00

"There is only one way to kill capitalism—by taxes, taxes, and more taxes."
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--Karl Marx

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The “Government Is Always Good” Economy

2011-06-12T21:15:00.000-04:00

By Austin Hill

Have you noticed that economic data seems to almost always be reported as a surprise these days? As bad news emerges, it’s being portrayed as though nobody could have possibly seen it coming!

Michael Barone, the esteemed editorialist and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, along with the “Instapundit” blogger Glenn Reynolds, have both noted that the word “unexpectedly” has often accompanied media descriptions of our economy as of late. Sentences like "Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall," and "New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed," are pretty standard stuff right now, as President Obama ramps-up his re-election bid.

Barone pointed out that to some degree, this is symptomatic of the political bias of many journalists. “It's obviously going to be hard to achieve the unacknowledged goal of many mainstream journalists -- the president's re-election -- if the economic slump continues” he wrote late last month. “So they characterize economic setbacks as unexpected, with the implication that there's still every reason to believe that, in Herbert Hoover's phrase, prosperity is just around the corner.”

But Barone also noted that many media professionals really believe President Obama’s economic policies – massive government regulation of business, and lots and lots of deficit spending – are actually conducive to economic growth. “A less cynical explanation,” Barone noted about the surprised reporters, “is that many journalists really believe that the Obama administration's policies are likely to improve the economy. Certainly that has been the expectation as well as the hope of administration policymakers.”

I think that Barone is correct on both accounts. But I also believe that journalists and members of the Obama Administration are not the only people who are surprised. Lots of “Obama faithful,” who were quick to embrace his economic rhetoric as the 2008 crisis unfolded, are now genuinely shocked that things haven’t worked out.

President Obama, of course, ran a successful campaign by portraying himself as the “un-George W. Bush” candidate. While painting his actual opponent John McCain as a “carbon copy” of Bush back in 2008, Mr. Obama was able to rhetorically juxtapose his policies on just about everything – economic matters included – with President Bush’s policies, and a majority of voters went with the guy who was offering “change.”

The flawed assumption that many of our fellow Americans made – an assumption that many are still making today – is that President Obama’s policies must be good, because they’re different from those of his predecessor. This assumption not only entails a lack of knowledge of both Presidents, but it also entails some horribly wrong-headed assumptions about economics, itself.

Stop and ask some of the Obama die-hard’s. You’ll find many of them still juxtaposing Bush with Obama, and their conclusion is simple: “Obama good, Bush bad.” And from this they often try to derive thoughts on economic policy, which frequently end up looking something like “government good, business bad.”

Think about it. It’s a fairly common belief that “under Bush the economy was un-regulated, and that’s how out-of-control business people drove us over the cliff. But now that it’s regulated, things can only get better.” President Obama still reiterates this theme, in a variety of different ways.

Of course, the idea that our economy is, or was “un-regulated,” is utter nonsense. The electronic device with which you’re reading this – a computer, “electronic tablet,” iPhone, whatever –was designed, assembled, transported, and sold under heavy U.S. government regulation, and it’s powered with electricity that was generated under heavy regulation. The same would have been true had you read one of my columns back during the eight years of the Bush presidency, as well.

As for the mortgage lending meltdown – well indeed, bad government was a big part of that problem. Yet it wasn’t a lack of government regulation that helped bring about the crisis, but rather it was too much of the wrong type of government regulation that did the damage.

For years the feds sought to make it increasingly to buy real estate, all in the name of the “affordable housing” agenda. Flawed as his presidency was, George W. Bush actually tried at least twice to reign-in the out-of-control lending, only to be shot-down by both Democrats and Republicans in the Congress (a fact I documented succinctly in my latest book – see below).

Selfish and destructive as the easy lending policies were in the long run, the cheapening of the mortgage markets brought about so much short-term political gain for congressional members that they couldn’t bring themselves to say “no.” And in a similar way, President Obama is today acting-out his own self-serving agenda.

Bailouts and “waivers” go to companies that can be politically beneficial to Barack Obama. And while the President says he “saved the American automotive industry,” in reality he “saved” some unionized assembly jobs – which is good for his political base – while G.M. remains fiscally unsound and continues to lose money.

Hopefully the President’s loyalists will soon realize that government is not always good. It can’t happen too soon.

Email: Austin Hill

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EXPOSED: Pro-Gun Groups Blocked From Arms Trade Treaty Discussions

2011-06-10T15:50:00.000-04:00

The UN wants to make all firearms subject to international law

Your help is needed to stop the Senate from ratifying "The UN Arms Trade Treaty" when it comes up for a vote in the Senate.

Conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to stop the world-wide gun ban. Newly elected Kentucky Senator, Rand Paul, has vowed to fight to end Obama and Hilary Clinton's work with the UN to pass the "Arms Trade Treaty." Paul said, "Disguised as an 'International Arms Control Treaty' to fight against 'terrorism,' 'insurgency' and 'international crime syndicates,' the UN's Small Arms Treaty is in fact a massive, global gun control scheme."

Note that pro-gun NGO (non-government organizations) representatives were told that they would be shut out of most of the meetings. All of the pro-gun organizations are NGO's.

The Arms Trade Treaty could:
• Prohibit firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public.
• Prohibit any transfer of firearm ownership.
• Require US citizens to deliver any banned firearms they own to the local government collection and destruction center or face imprisonment.
• Require micro-stamping on all guns.
• Destruction of "excess" firearms.

If you believe that the U.S. Constitution and the 2nd Amendment will prevent this, read -- "Legislating By Treaty"

FAX All 535 CONGRESSMEN -- Let them know that you are against the "The UN Arms Trade Treaty"

Stop The UN Arms Trade Treaty & Defend Your Gun Rights!

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Political Truism

2011-06-09T14:43:00.000-04:00

Republicans attack the problem!

Democrats attack the Republicans!

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Message From California : “American Citizens Need Not Apply”

2011-06-05T19:10:00.002-04:00

By Austin Hill

The United States is ordered by a “government of the people, by the people, for the people…”

But in modern-day California , it’s not so obvious any longer which “people” the government is allegedly serving.

Let’s go back to September of 2010. In the midst of the Golden State ’s contest for a new Governor, a woman named Nicky Diaz Santillan held a press conference in Los Angeles – along with her famous Attorney Gloria Allred – and announced that she was suing Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman.

Santillan, we were to learn, had been a live-in housekeeper for the Whitman family between 2000 and 2009. After she was fired from that position she decided to do what Californians often do, and she sued her former employer for “emotional and financial abuse.”

Ms. Santillan happened also to be an illegal alien -a fact she revealed at her press conference -and had stolen an American citizen’s Social Security number so as to falsify documents and to portray herself as a citizen, when she was seeking employment with Whitman.

It was quite a spectacle, that strange September day in California . Seated behind the microphones and in front of the cameras of the American media, flanked by an American Attorney who had accessed the American judicial system to sue an American citizen named Meg Whitman, sat an illegal alien named Nicky Diaz Santillan.

Nobody dared to ask questions about the fact that Ms. Santillan’s presence in California was a violation of federal law. And nobody said a word about her admission to the crime of identity theft. It was all about the alleged “abuse” done to her by the American Meg Whitman.

In fact, California ’s top law enforcement agent at that time – Attorney General Jerry Brown – had nothing to say about illegal immigration and identity theft either. Brown was the Democrat nominee for Governor, and he was polling behind Whitman. So rather than address the apparent crimes and confessions, Brown instead joined the chorus of critics claiming that Whitman had been “insensitive” for ending Ms. Santillan’s employment.

Shortly after that press conference, Brown began to poll ahead of Whitman. On Election Day in November, Brown trounced Whitman by nearly fourteen percentage points.

In California , trying to uphold the law with illegal aliens can be a very costly thing. Yet the political benefits of allowing illegal aliens to live above the “government of the people” can be enormous.

After the election, California was rocked by another bizarre event. At Fresno State University , one of California ’s largest tax-payer funded schools, the campus newspaper revealed that their student body president Pedro Ramirez was an illegal alien.

Whether Ramirez was “outed,” or he “arranged to be outed,” is not quite clear. But after the news broke, Ramirez set out on a well orchestrated series of international media interviews (he rapidly became the “guest of choice” at “CNN En Espanol”) and a speaking tour to promote the federal “Dream Act” amnesty legislation. He flew up and down the state of California , and even paid a visit to Washington , D.C. to “lobby Congress” on behalf of illegal immigrants.

Ramirez’ presence in California was a violation of federal law, yes. But once again, California government officials didn’t dare ask the obvious questions: How does he pass through security check points at airports? Does he have an American passport? Does he have a California Driver’s License? How did he obtain these documents? Was identity theft involved?

It’s a “government of the people,” sure. But what does this mean any longer in California ?

Not only does California ignore definitions of “crime” and “punishment” in cases involving illegal aliens, it is now about to legislate preferential treatment for illegal aliens which, de facto, will put U.S. citizens at a disadvtange. With a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion – a deficit that is expected to swell to about $25 billion by the middle of 2012 – California is cutting back on funding for everything from highway maintenance to K-12 education.

But – alas! – the California legislature has nonetheless found money in the coffers to fund special college and university grants intended specifically for illegal alien students (Americans need not apply). It’s called the “California DREAM Act,” and it’s sailing quite smoothly through the legislature right now.

In the 21st Century, it’s difficult to imagine that tax-payer funded college scholarship programs designated for “citizens and legal residents only” would be met with favor anywhere in America . But in modern-day California – a state that will probably be asking for an “Obama bailout” in the near future - tax-payer funds set aside “for illegal aliens only” is quite acceptable.

Yes, it’s true - the United States is ordered by a “government of the people, by the people, for the people…” But in our 31st state, it’s a government that is “for” just about anyone – except the American Citizen.

Email: Austin Hill

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That They Shall Not Have Died In Vain

2011-05-27T15:12:00.003-04:00

It has been said that when a man or woman joins the military, they sign a blank check. That blank check is their pledge to pay any price, up to and including their life, in service to their country.

Memorial Day is a special day that is set aside to honor those that paid that blank check with his or her life.

Thousands of persons dating from the American Revolution in 1776 to the present have attempted to express the nation’s gratitude for the sacrifices made by these men and women. None have done it better or more eloquently than the following:

"It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

This quotation is from the “Gettysburg Address" which was delivered by Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the cemetery located on one of the fields of the Battle of Gettysburg. When Lincoln gave this speech America was only 87 years old and was engaged in a great civil war.

Lincoln did more than honor the dead! He made a plea that “we the living be highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.“

President Lincoln knew that no matter how many men died on the battlefield, the nation would have to be preserved by the people and their elected representatives.

And so it is today!

Last November, Republicans won a startling victory in which they gained control of the House, made major inroads to the Senate, and gained control of the overwhelming majority of the Statehouses.

It was clear that we the people were and are opposed to Obamacare and the vast majority of Obama’s agenda. It is very clear that the voters want for runaway spending to end.

A few days ago in an irrelevant New York district a Democrat defeated a weak Republican candidate for a seat in the House of Representatives. Already we see the Republican leadership has forgotten the November victories and are in a panic over this one vote. If John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders are afraid to stand up for the people, lets kick them aside and get on with saving this nation from its most destructive enemy the Democrat/Marxist party.

On this Memorial Day, We Americans need to make the pledge that we the living be highly resolved that those who died in the service to this country shall not have died in vain; and that we will do whatever is necessary to restore a government of the people, by the people, for the people as is clearly defined by the Constitution. -- WD

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The Feds, The Economy, Your State And Your School Board

2011-05-15T20:17:00.004-04:00

By Austin Hill The wisdom of the American people is prevailing in some of the most unlikely places.

Unfortunately, the local public school board is typically not one of those places.

As the federal government goes deficit-crazy and state governments continue to feel the recession’s impact, some good things are actually starting to develop. Fiscally conservative ideals are emerging in states as diverse as Wisconsin, Idaho, New Jersey and Ohio.

In these states and in others, governors and legislatures have stood-up to the ever-expanding demands of government employee unions, reigned-in employee compensation growth, and have cut state spending. Even in liberal Massachusetts the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted last week to limit the powers of their state government employees’ unions.

This is good news for the American taxpayer, and good news for the overall U.S. economy. But when state governments start to spend fewer tax dollars, that often means fewer state tax dollars are flowing to local public school districts. And when that happens, the affairs of local public school districts can get especially outrageous.

Your local school district may be the exception, and its collective behavior may be entirely “above the board.” But the sad reality for teachers, students, and parents, is simply this: in the face of tight budgets, most local school boards across the nation would rather fire teachers, than reign-in other school district expenses. The reason for this is simple: when teachers lose their jobs, students suffer – and “student suffering” gets parents and other voters in the mood for a tax increase.

It sounds cynical, I know. But think about it from the vantage point of political strategy. if school boards actually tried to manage the taxpayers’ money in such a way as to serve the students, first and foremost, then every effort would be made to retain good teachers and keep class sizes small. This would mean that school boards would look “up the food chain” in to the administrative ranks, rather than “down to the classrooms,” when the need arose to cut the budget.

But that’s generally not what happens in most public school districts. The preference for board members is usually to eliminate teacher positions, or at least to “threaten to eliminate” teacher positions – because when budget cuts are felt in the classroom, voters become more amenable to tax hikes – and tax hikes usually provide more money for the school district to spend.

Consider the case of the Mount Diablo School District in the San Francisco suburb of Concord. Like every other public school district in California, Mount Diablo is being threatened with a dramatic shut-off of state tax revenues, as the bankrupt state government grapples with a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion – a deficit that is expected to swell to about $25 billion by the middle of 2012.

So the elected members of the Mount Diablo School District met in open session last week. They heard public testimony, with local residents pleading to “spare the teachers jobs” at the open microphone. Members of the board even offered their own impassioned dissertations about how “every one of our teachers is a human being,” and many of the teachers “have their own families,” and they all “touch our families in such important and necessary ways…” And then the board voted unanimously to terminate one-hundred eleven of those “human being” teachers. Unanimously. No dissenting voters.

After getting the “dirty work” completed, the elected board members at the Mount Diablo School District then proceeded to vote in favor of spending over $9 million on school building upgrades. All in the same school board meeting, all on the same night.

The board made it clear that the $9 million or so that they were spending on structural enhancements was money approved directly by voters and designated for such purposes, and could not possibly have been spent on retaining teachers. Legally speaking, it was probably accurate that the revenues could not simply be used for “more urgent purposes.”

But doesn’t this speak to a degree of mismanagement by the district board? Why wouldn’t a school board in California be anticipating a shortfall in state tax revenues, given that the state government is broke, and begin strategizing a way to retain teachers, rather than enhancing buildings?

The mismanagement of the Mount Diablo School District becomes even more apparent when you turn the calendar back a couple of months. In March of this year, the district board voted to raise the salary paid to the district legal counsel by $28,000.00 (that person now takes home $190,000 annually), the facilities and projects manager got a raise of $11,000, and the director of certificated personnel got a nice $6,000.00 annual income boost (each one of these employees also receives taxpayer funded healthcare and retirement benefits).

If school districts genuinely cared for students, then budget cuts would more often happen at the district office rather than in the classroom. But nobody wants to raise their taxes just so the Superintendent or the staff Attorney can keep their six-figure salary and benefits. Thus, “firing teachers” becomes the best political strategy.

Students, parents, and teachers deserve much better.

Email Austin Hill

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What Price? The Osama bin Laden Raid

2011-05-11T19:54:00.000-04:00

With all the discussion about the Osama bin Laden mission, no one has asked why Osama did not hear those big heavy helicopters landing outside his compound. A normal helicopter can be heard from miles away. When one lands in a yard or a street nearby, it sounds like all hell has broken loose.

So why didn’t Osama brace for an attack when he heard the helicopters land? He never heard them. The U.S. Military has highly classified stealth (nearly silent) helicopters. Attack (small weapons carrier) versions have been secretly used in the past.

The Stealth aircraft used in the Osama bin Laden raid are large craft said to be a based on the Blackhawk (H-60) airframe, and was used in an active role for the first time in Osama bin Laden raid in Abbottabad.

It has been reported that the Navy SEALs destroyed most of the top-secret helicopter before they left bin Laden’s compound. Shortly after the raid there were news videos showing a tractor-trailer hauling away the remains of that helicopter.

From my own experience with classified equipment, I am certain that the Seals and the Aircrew were well aware of the need to prevent the technology from falling into undesirable hands. They would also be trained in what and how to destroy it. However, destruction of the important part(s) is not always 100%.

ABC has reported that, China wants to examine the wreckage of the helicopter.

A Pakistani official was quoted as saying, “We might let them take a look”.

According to ABC, Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism adviser, said that he would be surprised if the Pakistanis have not already given the Chinese access to the helicopters remains.

The Chinese provide Pakistan with missile technology as well as other systems. This mishap provides Pakistan with a way to give China something in return.

We can only pray that the mission that got bin Laden did not also transfer one of our most guarded technologies to the Chinese.

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"Thank You, Soldiers"--Tussing Elementary, Colonial Heights, VA

2011-05-10T13:06:00.004-04:00

Most of you are well aware of the anti-American, anti-Religion, and anti-Military teachings that prevail in the nation’s liberal controlled public school systems.

We frequently learn of children being suspended from school for quoting or possessing a Bible! And they don't dare to mention God!

We hear of kids being suspended from school for wearing/displaying the American flag on Cinco de Mayo!

We hear how young men and women who have enlisted to enter the military after high school graduation are booed by their fellow students during graduation ceremonies.

We could go on for many pages, but you get the point.

Mindless & Spineless is elated to report that at least one elementary school's faculty and students proudly stand for America and especially those heroes that serve that we may live!

That school is: Tussing Elementary School in Colonial Heights, Virginia.

It was Virginia that contributed the most to the founding of this once great nation, and it seems that Virginia has taken the lead among the states that are attempting to fight back against the tyranny that now rules the nation.

Click Here > Listen as the 3rd Grade (Class of 2009) of Tussing Sings!

God Bless Tussing Elementary!
God Bless America! -- WD

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A “Third Income Tax” To Fund Public Education?

2011-05-08T14:27:00.000-04:00

By Austin Hill
Unemployment is rising, the federal government is broke, and so are many of the states. Now more than ever America needs its various governments to exercise restraint, and to scale-back on spending.

And in the midst of this environment a stunning proposal has emerged in the nearly insolvent state of California: a third income tax.

The proposal is actually worse than a mere “additional” income tax – and I’ll explain this in a moment. First let’s look at the “other two” income taxes.

For the record, if you’re an American and you work and you earn personal income, your U.S. federal government imposes a tax on that income (most of us are well acquainted with this). And workers in forty-three of our fifty states also have their personal income taxed even further by their state government (the states of Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming do not impose a state income tax on their residents).

But now California, with an average statewide unemployment rate of over 12% (in some regions the rate is over 20%) and a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion, is considering the imposition of a third income tax. The additional income tax rate would vary, according to which region of the state one lives in, and would be imposed directly by school districts and county governments.

Many of California’s public school districts (there are over 1000 of them) are themselves broke, just like the state government. And because of a California law that was brought about by passage of a ballot initiative back in 1978 (it was famously known as “Proposition 13”), California school districts cannot simply do what most public school districts in America do, and continually raise property taxes higher and higher.

So in the absence of additional state tax dollars, and without the option of raising local property taxes, California school districts are searching for additional revenue streams to feed their never-ending spending addictions. In response, the California legislature is contemplating a new law that would literally grant local school districts broad new authorities to tax personal income – a third income tax for California residents – according to the needs of the individual school districts themselves.

Along with the ability to impose a third income tax on residents’ income, this newly proposed power would also grant school districts the authority to impose additional sales taxes on alcohol, cigarettes, oil drilling (believe it or not there is some of this still going on in California), “sugary beverages,” and “medicinal marijuana.” Teachers unions in California are elated with the idea of “all the additional tax revenue” that school districts would theoretically have to spend on unionized teacher contracts, and Governor Jerry Brown, who is indebted to government employee unions, would theoretically stand to gain politically from the idea.

But while Jerry Brown and his government employee union friends are seeing dollar signs, California business owners – already saddled with undue taxes, regulations, healthcare and worker’s compensation insurance requirements – are seeing chaos. In what has been described as “a confusing patchwork of tax rates for both businesses and individuals,” business advocacy groups are reacting to the legislation with horror, realizing the disparity it could create among businesses operated on opposite sides of a school district boundary.

Given that each of California’s 1000-plus school districts would have the authority to set their own rates on the additional income and sales taxes, both businesses and individuals would be faced with the chaos and inequality of paying different income and sales tax rates depending on what public school district they found themselves in. As Gina Rodriquez, vice president of the California Taxpayers Association noted, this would pit “school district against school district.”

In addition to the chaos and confusion that the school district taxes would create, there is the disturbing fact that some people – indeed several people in the California legislature – actually think it is a good idea to levy a third income tax on a citizenry that is already living with double-digit unemployment. This is perhaps the greatest injustice entailed in California’s new scheme.

The very fact that California’s legislators would propose such an idea underscores the perverse, incestuous relationship between government employee unions, and the Democrat Party. Nobody can argue from the standpoint of sound economics that a third income tax will do anything but harm the overall California economy, but that seemingly doesn’t matter to Governor Brown and his fellow Democrats.

As long as Democrat politicians can continue to re-distribute increasing amounts of wealth into the hands of unionized government employees, the unionized government employees will continue to do the grassroots political work to keep Democrat politicians in office. The government employees gratify the politicians, and the politicians gratify the government employees – and the person who works and creates wealth in the private sector pays for it all.

Noble statesmen and women across the country have recently begun to say “no” to this kind of destructive public policy. But the perversion rages on – for now – in California.

E-mail: Austin Hill

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Slouching Towards Insolvency (The California Way)

2011-05-01T18:52:00.000-04:00

By Austin Hill
The U.S. Federal Government is on a collision course of debt and deficits.

And California may be the best example yet of “the feds on steroids.”

As state governments continue to feel the recession’s impact and are staring-down daunting fiscal challenges, the wisdom of the American people has been prevailing in some of the most unlikely places. In states as diverse as Wisconsin, Idaho, New Jersey, and Ohio, Governors and legislatures have stood-up to the ever-expanding demands of government employee unions, reigned-in employee compensation growth, and have cut state spending. Even in liberal Massachusetts the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted last week to limit the powers of their state government employees’ unions.

But the wisdom hasn’t yet made it all the way out to the Left Coast. With a budget deficit of somewhere between $10 and $15 billion – a deficit that is expected to swell to about $25 billion by the middle of 2012- California politicians have continued their self-serving spending sprees of the past many years, while at the same time legislating itself further and further away from any semblance of being “business friendly.”

Like it or not, California is both a global economic epicenter, and a spectacular place in the world. It is home to the highest mountain in the contiguous forty-eight states (Mount Whitney), the lowest valley (Death Valley), Facebook, “Surf City, U.S.A.”(Huntington Beach), Apple Computers, The World Champion San Francisco Giants, eBay, Legoland, Cisco Systems, “Hollywood,” three U.S. Presidents (Richard Nixon by birth, and Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan by “adoption”), and Mitsubishi Motors of North America.

This is to say that California can be and should be a place of robust economic opportunity across multiple sectors. But politicians have a stranglehold on the state, and consequently, businesses and capital are leaving, while productivity is slumping.

After Governor Jerry Brown took office in January, he noted that California had a history of “kickin’ the can down the road” with its budget woes, and that Californians had been treated with “evasions,” “accounting gimmicks,” and “smoke and mirror” tricks on state finances. At his first State of the State address, he announced that his plan to solve California’s dreadful fiscal problems would involve both cuts in government spending, and – if California voters approved – tax increases.

This seemed very reasonable. Very practical. Very “bi-partisan,” if you will. And indeed Governor Brown has brought about some cuts in government spending, in part by eliminating taxpayer funded mobile telephone and vehicle privileges for government workers (most of us in the private sector don’t get “free” mobile telephones and cars from our employer, but this had apparently become standard operating procedure for many California government employees).

But the pathway to a tax increase has not been so smooth. Allowing California voters the opportunity to vote themselves a tax increase requires the state Assembly and Senate to legislate a special election, and Brown has insisted that the passage of special election legislation must have at least some Republican legislative votes.

Thus far, however, Republican legislators have refused to cooperate. Government employee unions are now becoming even more fierce with their demands that Brown and the legislature just simply “legislate tax increases” without a public vote, but Governor Brown has remained consistent with his pledge that “the people” must decide on tax increases, and that Republican legislators must provide political “buy-in.”

So what do California leaders do when the deficit is exploding and tax hikes are at a stand-still? In Governor Brown’s case, he has committed to spending millions of more non-existent tax dollars on unionized government employees. For example, earlier in April Brown approved a new contract for the California Prison Guard’s union, which will allow guards to accrue unlimited numbers of un-used paid vacation days each year. When a guard retires, the un-used vacation time can now be “cashed-in” at the guard’s highest salary rate- a sweet pay-off from Governor Brown to a labor union that spent nearly $2 million on his campaign last year.

The precise cost to the taxpayer for this political quid-pro-quo is impossible to know right now. But state government estimates suggest that Brown just saddled Californians with an additional $600 million in pension liabilities.

As for California legislators, they’ve been working on bills that would ban the sale of caffeinated beer, raises taxes on “sugary soda drinks,” require all public school children to be taught “Gay History,” and mandate the establishment of an official California “Parks Make Life Better” month. There have even been efforts at a bill that would require the use of a “fitted sheet, instead of a flat sheet, as the bottom sheet on all beds within a California lodging establishment…”

Indeed, the wisdom of America is breaking-out all across the country -except at the White House, the U.S. Senate, and across that vast region known as our 31st state.

Email: Austin Hill

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Liberals Are Lamenting “Cronyism?”

2011-04-25T13:09:00.001-04:00

By Austin Hill What do you call it when a group of liberal activists in San Francisco pay $76,000.00 to attend an exclusive fund raiser with President Obama, and then disrupt his speech in front of his private audience with a protest song?

Some, no doubt, can dismiss this as a simple matter of “unrequited love” or “unmet expectations,” or maybe even just call it “amusing.” Yet the reality of the matter is more serious: Left-Wing America is still looking to Barack Obama to be their savior despite his repeated failures of the “savior test.” Barack Obama, on the other hand, is still expected to “pass” the test one of these days soon.

As America’s approval of President Obama hit a record low in recent days, and a mere twenty-two percent of Americans believe that our country is “heading in the right direction,” liberal disapproval of the President has become louder and more visible. And there is something important to be learned about a group of liberals calling themselves “Fresh Juice Party,” when somebody doles-out the cash so ten group members (at $5,000.00 each) have the privilege of sitting in a private room with the President, and then use that exclusive opportunity to interrupt the President with a song that asks “where’s our change?” and laments the erosion of constitutional liberties.

Apparently the “Fresh Juice” folks thought that growing the size and scope of government, and concentrating more power in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats – agendas with which Senator Obama openly campaigned for the presidency back in the day – would make us all “more free,” instead of “less free.” But why would anybody with even a scant knowledge of world history, believe that these kinds of assumptions could be true?

Less familiar than the “Fresh Juice” incident are the emerging antics of a group calling themselves “U.S. Uncut.” An offshoot of the European “U.K. Uncut,” this group has devoted itself to protesting what they call American “corporate tax cheats,” and as their website rather childishly states, “If you have $1 in your pocket, then you have more than ExxonMobil, General Electric, & Bank of America paid in taxes last year, combined…”

Of course, the notion that these corporations “pay no taxes” is absurd. Every one of them is accountable for payroll taxes (and their employees certainly pay income taxes as well). But what if G.E. paid no additional taxes on their $5 billion of profit generated in 2010 from their U.S. operations? What if, as the New York Times asserted, it is true that G.E., with an “aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore," is getting a “special break” from our government?

Could it be that the cozy relationship between General Electric’s C.E.O. Jeffrey Immelt and President Obama has led to some of these “special breaks?” It’s a matter of public record that Mr. Immelt was a financial contributor to the President’s first campaign; and in less than a month after being inaugurated President Obama appointed Mr. Immelt as one of his “advisors,;” and after President Obama managed to get his “healthcare reform” legislation passed, the General Electric corporation was released from having to comply with the law’s mandates; and late last year the G.E. corporation was also given a “waiver” from having to comply with federal environmental regulations as they work towards building a power generating plant in California.

The protestors from “U.S. Uncut” and the “Fresh Juice Party” would probably prefer to ignore this, but there is every reason to believe that G.E. – and Bank of America and ExxonMobil and a bunch of other large corporations – get special favors and “waivers” from our government, because they can be personally useful to President Barack Obama. Left-Wing America continues its political tactic of only accusing Republicans of being “in bed” with “greedy corporations.” But the man they elected President, through bailouts and waivers and blatant influence-peddling, has used the force of government to make himself a de facto CEO of huge chunks of the economy. He is now using that power for his own personal benefit. “Power corrupts,” Lord Acton once said, “..and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” even if you’re Barack Obama.

The government corruption that “U.S. Uncut” and “Fresh Juice” are so offended by is fortified and expanded by the expansive government for which they vote. America desperately needs less government intrusion in our private affairs, not more of it, yet Left Wing America still seems to be stuck in their rut of assuming that as long as Obama controls things, he’ll make it better for everybody.

America’s fourth President James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary…” Today, the Fresh Juice Party’s homepage reads “it would be wonderful if the words and deeds of our elected officials were as sweet as fresh juice…”

Will the Left Wing America ever learn?

Email: Austin Hill

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Soros/Obama Conspire To, “End America as we know it!”

2011-04-23T14:12:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, George Soros hosted a major economic conference, called the Bretton Woods Event, whose purpose was to change the entire global economy. The main objective is to remove America as a key player in the world’s economy by destroying the Dollar. The major media paid little attention to the event.

What can George Soros do to harm the Dollar? You may ask.

It was the billionaire Soros who crushed the British pound through currency trading. He has declared that he plans to reform the world’s currency system. The America hating Soros has publicly stated, America must end its reign as the world reserve currency. In 2009, Soros wrote, “The dollar no longer enjoys the trust and confidence that it once did, yet no other currency can take its place.”

In October 2009, Soros founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) with a donation of $50 million of his own money. The founding of INET was a major move toward undermining the dollar.

Long time Soros friend, Nobel Prize Winner, Joseph Stiglitz chairs the ‘UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.’ Stiglitz is arguing for a new 'global system,' saying the current one is 'fundamentally unfair because it means that poor countries are lending to the U.S. at close to zero interest rates.'

It has only been a few weeks, since the Bretton Woods event, but the move against the dollar has gained momentum rapidly. In 2009, Soros wrote “The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system to ensure that they will be active supporters.”

Those rising powers have begun to join together--
The BRICS member nations - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – held a summit meeting one week after Soros held his. The BRICS nations are calling for “Restructuring of the World War II-era global financial system and an eventual end to the long reign of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency.”

One of the options being considered is called “Special Drawing Rights” (SDRs). SDRs are essentially a mix of - the Euro, Japanese Yen, Pound Sterling and U.S. Dollar. A switch to the SDRs would result in the decline of the U.S. economy.

There is also considerable support to include the Chinese Remimbi in the SDR’s.

The odds on favorite to become the new leader of the “International Monetary Fund is former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This is significant because Brown is a Soros believer and attended the Bretton Woods Event.

Brown’s major contribution to that conference was the line, “American and European dominance is no longer a fact.'

Soros once pledged that he was willing to spend every penny of his vast fortune to bring America to her knees. He is working hard to make that desire a reality.

For years, Soros has used his billions to influence elections, fund radical anti-American organizations including ACORN, La Raza, MoveOn.org, NOW and the Center for American Progress -- an organization that is feeding progressive talking points to the Obama administration.
There is a great deal of evidence that indicates that Soros, through his many organizations, bought the 2008 election for Obama.

Obama, who also hates America (read his damn books) is repaying Soros big time!

Just look at what Obama is doing to undermine the economy and the dollar:
1. Extremely high fuel prices cause by the administration!
2. Bankruptcy as the result of government spending
3. A total moratorium on any new Oil and Gas production
4. Destruction of the Coal Industry and forcing the shutdown of Coal fueled power plants
5. The pushing of Cap and Trade regulations by the EPA
6. The government seizure of corporations, with more to come
7. The massive redistribution of wealth
8. The takeover (and destruction) of the healthcare system
9. The absolute refusal to recognize the need for budget-cuts
10. He has done absolutely nothing to help create jobs.

All of these have led to a major reduction in the United State’s bond rating, as announced by Standard and Poors, this week.

That reduction in our bond rating has greatly strengthened Soros' hand, and you now have the makings for “The End of America as we know it!”

“The End of America as we know it!”; wasn’t that an Obama campaign pledge?

Obama's answer to everything is a big speech packed with lies.
-- WD

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Spare Us the Hypocrisy, Mr. President

2011-04-18T12:35:00.003-04:00

By Linda Chavez
Friday, April 15, 2011
President Obama offered few concrete suggestions for spending cuts this week in his much-anticipated speech on reducing the federal debt, but he had lots to say about raising taxes.

"As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally borne a greater share of this burden than the middle class or those less fortunate. Everybody pays, but the wealthier have borne a little more," the president said. So he wants to raise the top marginal tax rate to 39.6 percent and eliminate itemized deductions for the top 2 percent of earners.

What the president didn't say is that he has taken full advantage of each and every tax deduction available to him in order to lower his taxes on his more than $5 million per year income. No one forces Obama to take these deductions, which he objects to so strenuously for everyone else in his income bracket. So let's take a look at the deductions he took last year (the president's 2009 return and that of Vice President Joe Biden are available online):

In 2009, Obama took itemized deductions of $514,819, a foreign tax credit of $59,372, and a deduction for interest on his home of $52,195. He was also able to take a deduction for $49,000 he contributed to his self-employed retirement fund. If he had not taken these deductions, he would have paid taxes on an additional $675,386, which in his income bracket would have meant he owed somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 more in taxes at the top marginal tax rate of 35 percent.

Furthermore, he instructed the Nobel committee to donate his entire $1.4 million Nobel Prize directly to 10 charities, thereby avoiding the necessity of declaring the money as income on which he would have owed an additional $490,000 in taxes.

If the president is so appalled at the rich and their ability to hire accountants to take advantage of each and every deduction, why doesn't he simply take the standard deduction on his tax return, like most Americans? In 2009, he could have claimed an $11,400 standard deduction for married couples, as well as an additional $7,300 for his two daughters. Admittedly, that's a loss of more than $650,000 in deductions -- but at least he could avoid looking like a hypocrite by advocating one thing for everyone else and doing quite another himself.

Obama might even get a few of his liberal millionaire and billionaire friends to go along if he leads by example. Obama supporter Warren Buffett is famous for declaring his taxes are too low. Maybe Buffett would be willing to forego filing all those additional schedules on his tax return and simply take the standard deduction instead. Last year, Buffett claimed he paid an effective rate of 17.7 percent on the $46 million he earned, or roughly $8 million. But if he'd simply taken the standard deduction, he would have paid almost twice that in taxes. No one stopped him from doing so.

And then there's Obama's good friend Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric CEO and chairman of the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Mr. Immelt's firm will pay no federal income taxes on the more than $5 billion it earned in the U.S. in 2010. It's all perfectly legal. The company can take net operating losses to offset its tax liabilities, including certain carryovers from previous years. What's more, Immelt has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to take advantage of all tax deductions the company is entitled to.

But there's nothing that stops Immelt from paying additional taxes on his personal income if he chooses to forego deductions. According to GE's annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, GE paid Immelt $7.3 million in cash and perquisites worth almost $400,000, in addition to stock currently worth $7.4 million, which vests over time.

Perhaps Obama should ask Immelt to skip his itemized deductions for the year and fork over $5 million to Uncle Sam. Somehow I don't see that happening. Like most limousine liberals -- who fly private jets to global warming conferences and live in 10,000 square-foot houses -- President Obama talks a great line but lives very differently.

When the president voluntarily gives up his deductions and asks his wealthy donors to do the same, he'll have some moral authority to argue, as he tried to in his speech, that he wants a tax code that "is fair and simple -- so that the amount of taxes you pay isn't determined by what kind of accountant you can afford." Until then, spare us the hypocrisy, Mr. President.

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Obama Held Hostage To His Assumptions

2011-04-17T12:05:00.002-04:00

By Austin Hill
Nero is believed to have “fiddled,” during the Great Fire of Rome …

And today, as international authorities fret about mounting U.S. government debt and the risk of an ensuing global economic crisis, the most powerful man in the world seems to be in a precarious situation as well. President Barack Obama appears to be clinging not to his lyre, as Nero allegedly did, but to his rigid, narrow, very limited worldview, despite the fact this behavior seems to work against his own self-interests.

Much has been said about the President’s address to the nation last week regarding the U.S. fiscal crisis. The Wall Street Journal called the speech “toxic” and “partisan” (go back and read their succinct analysis if you haven’t already). Charles Krauthammer called it a “disgrace.” Most critics regarded it as political speech, devoid of substantive policy.

No doubt the President had a “political need” to fulfill. Congressional Republicans have in the past few weeks seized the mantle of fiscal responsibility, as the news of our out-of-control government debt has remained top of mind. So he artfully attempted to ride the fence between being President, which requires one to set productive policy, and running a re-election campaign, which requires an incumbent President to appeal to his political “base.”

But President Obama’s speech on the fiscal crisis was not merely political. It was also highly ideological. Despite how counterintuitive it may seem to pursue an expansion of government spending while a good bit of the world is seeking a government “downsizing” (including much of Europe ), President Obama’s proposals fit with what we know about him.

The governing philosophy that leads our President to these sorts of proposals has been identified by many different names. Statism, Marxism, Socialism – the Obama agenda arguably contains elements of all of these philosophies, and more.

But rather than trying to connect President Barack Obama to somebody else’s pre-established political philosophy, it’s useful to examine what appear to be the philosophical assumptions with which the President operates. Here are just a couple of the assumptions that currently seem to have engulfed the President:

“Government always know best” – President Barack Obama seems to have very little confidence in the abilities of private individuals and groups to solve problems, and seems to view individual liberty as a problem to be “managed.” Thus, no matter what the dilemma – the rising cost of healthcare, the collapse of American automobile companies, or a proliferation of “bullying” on school campuses – the President’s instinctive responses are almost always the same.

Form a commission. Convene a summit. Appoint a Czar. Set-up a new “department.” The President seems to assume that with more oversight and control, government will always act benevolently and in the “collective interests” of all, whereas private individuals and organizations are almost always suspected of acting selfishly and destructively.

This philosophical assumption was absolutely entailed in the President’s remarks about our fiscal crisis. While Congressman Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee Chairman proposed to expand competition in the healthcare markets as a means of reducing Medicare costs, an indignant President Obama would have nothing to do with the idea (as the Wall Street Journal pointed out the President stopped short of calling this idea “murderous”).

The only means by which entitlement spending on Medicare can be controlled, so far as President Obama is concerned, is to have all Medicare coverage decisions routed through an un-elected commission in Washington so as to eliminate “unnecessary” Medicare payments (this approach also re-affirms his previously stated belief that greedy medical doctors have a proclivity to bill Medicare for unnecessary procedures, simply because they want the money).

“Private resources ultimately belong to the government” – President Obama is well known for his “sprea- the-wealth-around inclinations, given his now famous run-in with the “Joe the Plummer” character during the 2008 presidential campaign. What often goes unnoticed, however, is that he frequently speaks not merely of government’s “right” to re-distribute private wealth, but of government’s ultimate ownership of it.

This philosophical assumption was apparent in the President’s fiscal crisis speech as well. When discussing the taxation rates imposed upon America ’s top income earners, President Obama insisted that America “can’t afford” to leave these rates in place. Both explicitly, and implicitly, the President was saying that our government incurs a cost, when it does NOT take money away from private individuals.

How can this be? The government “loses” money, when it does not take money away from private citizens? President Obama has been using this line of reasoning for nearly all of the twenty-eight months of his presidency. It ultimately points towards a believe that your money, at the end of the day, belongs to the government, and it’s up to agents of government to determine how much you’re permitted to “keep.”

The President’s philosophical assumptions are not merely a matter of politics. They are a part of who he is. Can America withstand this?

Email: Austin Hill

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Trump For President? Really?

2011-04-10T14:18:00.001-04:00

By Austin
President Donald Trump.

Do those words, strung together in that order, seem strange?

After the release of last week’s Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showing Trump tied for 2nd among the prospective Republican presidential nominees, a lot of people are undoubtedly trying to wrap their minds around the idea.

If it seems out of reach for you, consider this: it was only three and a half years ago that the words “Barack” and “Obama” were so foreign to the American lexicon that they drew red flags from your spellchecker (and if you haven’t enabled a Microsoft update on your computer lately, you may still be plagued with red flags).

So here we are today, into the third year of the Obama presidency. And when Trump says things like “America has become the laughing stock” of the world, and the world’s “punching bag,” and we’re all getting “ripped off” by our government – well, it’s difficult to argue otherwise. His words resonate deeply with a good many of us.

Of course there is a gulf of difference between being a public figure that successfully connects with people’s fear and anger, and being a statesman who successfully executes the duties of elective office. But one does not generally get to be the latter, without first accomplishing the former.

So before you dismiss Trump altogether – and before you get overly excited about the prospect of a Trump presidency – consider a few of these ideas.

First, consider the thoughts of “Harold” – a regular reader of my columns who frequently (yet thoughtfully) emails me to criticize what I write. Harold seems to assume that I speak for the Republican Party – which of course, I don’t – and he’s been visceral in his complaints to me about how the Republican Party has been, so far as he’s concerned, “ignoring” Trump.

Harold gave me permission to quote from a personal message he sent to me back in October of 2010 – so here it goes: “…Some people may write-off Trump as nothing more than a nutty by-product of reality TV. But Austin, at least he’s a productive nut. At least Trump has taken the opportunities that being an American has afforded him, and made something of himself and produced something of value with those opportunities. Our current President is a nut of the destructive kind who spouts the gospel of economic re-distribution and paves the way for his mindless followers to live off the largess's of the productive. I’ll take a productive nut, over a destructive nut, any day…”

I doubt that Trump would wear the label “productive nut” with any great sense of pride. But that aside, it’s difficult to deny the legitimacy of Harold’s premise.

In some ways, Donald Trump has perhaps come to represent opulence and excess. Yet beyond the “brash” and the “flash,” Trump also represents productivity, success, and wealth creation. And Americans are intuitively recognizing that those are three things our country desperately needs more of right now.

President Obama, on the other hand, has spent far too much of his presidency trying to make us all more dependent on government for everything, while also making sure that no individual or group is allowed to amass too much wealth for themselves. When you juxtapose the two, Obama clearly looks more and more like the “thing that is ailing us,” while Trump looks more and more like the “cure.”

This is not the first time that Americans have had that horrible sinking feeling about our federal government’s leadership, and have looked for a presidential candidate that was somewhat “unconventional.” When I was a kid, for example, there was quite an aggressive push to “draft” a certain other businessman for the presidency.

Amid the country’s chronic unemployment, double-digit inflation and international humiliations of the late 1970’s, Americans began to lose confidence in not only President Jimmy Carter, but the two major political parties generally (sound familiar?). This brought about an attempt to draft then-Chrysler Corporation CEO Lee Iacocca to run as a Republican challenger to Democrat Carter, the belief at that time being that America needed a “real executive” to run the country (Iacocca later admitted that he never gave serious consideration to the opportunity, although in the late 1980’s the Democratic Party tried again to draft him for a run against Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush).

In 1992, with a mild recession underway and conservative Americans woefully underwhelmed with incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush, the “Independent” candidacy of Ross Perot sprung up. Politically speaking Perot proved to be nothing more than a spoiler candidate that paved the way for President Bill Clinton. He did nonetheless provide quite a “wake up call” for the Republican Party.

So can Donald Trump become our next President? There’s a campaign waiting for him if he wants it. And if Americans are sufficiently fed-up with the status quo then, yes, he most certainly could be.

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Salary Caps Don't Apply To Obama's "Friends

2011-04-06T16:24:00.003-04:00

Almost daily, Obama or one of his thugs complains about what some corporate executive earns. It is a part of the propaganda mill designed to paint U.S. businesses as EVIL.

However, if you work for one of the corporations that Obama illegally seized or you work for a quasi-corporation like Fanny Mae or Freddie Mac, the sky is the limit, after all, the bill is paid by American taxpayers.

Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae need a couple of hundred billion dollars every month or two to cover losses. But the executives in both corporations “earned” massive bonuses.

GM (Government Motors) was illegally exempted from paying taxes so that they could look profitable when the GM stock was placed on the market. They actually lost big bucks and used monies that would have been used to pay those taxes, to pay-off part of the bailout loan. Yet the executives are receiving big bonuses.

According to Obama, it perfectly all right to pay executive bonuses with tax dollars; it is EVIL for the non-government sector to pay bonuses using corporate monies.

Read on----

Outrage: Freddie and Fannie Execs Pocketed $35 Million In Taxpayer Money

Friday, 01 Apr 2011
By Jim Meyers

Top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were paid more than $35 million in the past two years while the two bailed-out mortgage finance giants were receiving $153 billion in support from taxpayers.

The huge payouts came to light in a new report published on Thursday by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General.

“Although the Enterprises [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] have lost billions of dollars and continue to depend upon federal support to remain in business,” the report states, “their senior executives continue to receive multi-million dollar salaries.”

At Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association), its chief executive officer received $9.3 million in total compensation in 2009 and 2010, the report reveals. The CEO is Michael J. Williams, who joined the company in 1991.

At Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Association), CEO Charles E. Haldeman Jr., former head of Putnam Investments, made $7.8 million in the two years since the company was taken over by the federal government. < Read more of the story >

Administration Approves Bailout Pay Packages

Friday, 01 Apr 2011
Newsmax

WASHINGTON (AP) — The four companies still receiving government bailout aid won't be able to raise the amount of cash they pay out to their top executives this year, the administration's pay czar has ruled.

The decisions, released late Friday, cover 2011 compensation for the top 25 executives at General Motors Co., Chrysler, American International Group Inc. and Ally Financial Inc., the former financing arm of GM. The rulings clear the way for millions of dollars in salary and bonuses to be paid out by companies that are still repay the billions in aid they received during the financial crisis from the government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

While the companies can't give cash raises, they are being allowed to boost the value of deferred stock awards to their executives. The Treasury Department defended that decision, saying it is in line with pay guidelines that it used to make compensation decisions in 2009 and 2010.

The government's findings do not identify the executives by name but only by salary rankings.

The highest-paid executive at insurance giant AIG will total compensation of $10.5 million in 2011, including a $3 million salary, the largest of any of the pay packages approved Friday by the pay czar. AIG confirmed in a filing with regulators Friday that President and CEO Robert Benmosche's pay will stand at $10.5 million this year, the same package he received in 2010. < Read more of the story >

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Saving America From Greedy Politicians

2011-04-04T18:24:00.000-04:00

By Austin Hil

“…Sadly, we could end up with a generation of Americans who want to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles…”

Without explanation, that quote may seem like the ramp-up to a joke. It might be part of a Jay Leno monolog. Or you could follow it up with the famous Jerry Seinfeld “…not that there’s anything wrong with that” line.

But that analysis actually appeared in last Friday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. In an editorial entitled “We’ve Become A Nation Of Takers, Not Makers,” Senior Economics Writer Stephen Moore noted that among a large portion of America’s college students and recent graduates, government employment is viewed as superior to private sector enterprise because of the “near lifetime security” that government agencies offer their workers.

“When 23-year-olds aren't willing to take career risks” Moore noted, “we have a real problem on our hands…”

To help make the case of our “real problem,” Moore noted that there are presently more Americans working for their government than there are Americans working in the private sector construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities industries combined. And when you compile this bit of information with the reality that government agencies don’t produce wealth at all – they merely “collect” portions of the wealth that is produced in the private sector as tax revenue and then spend it to produce government services – then, yes, one can see a bit more clearly why Moore concludes that we have moved decisively from a “nation of makers to a nation of takers.”

The “takers” and “makers” analysis is powerful, and hopefully makes sense to lots of Americans. One doesn’t have to think too deeply to understand that if an insufficient number of us are “making” things and producing economic value, and too many of us are merely “taking” and consuming the insufficient amount of “things” that are made, well, then, eventually a nation runs out of things to “take.”

Yet understanding the vicious cycle that keeps our nation on this very destructive path is quite challenging for some. It requires one to understand some very basic things about economics, yes, but also requires one to care enough to understand a few things about our nation’s politics – and “politics” and “economics” are two subjects that many Americans find distasteful.

But consider this: many of the politicians that set policy regarding government employment have a personal self-interest in continuing the trend of creating more government employee “takers” – even if to do so is, in the long run, bad for the country. Mayors, County Supervisors, Governors – and yes even our President – can generally count on grass-roots volunteerism, campaign contributions, and votes from large blocks of government employees, as long as they protect and enhance the ranks of government employment and shelter government workers from the ups and downs that the private sector experiences.

President Barack Obama leads the way with this destructive and self-serving politics. He has made it a central theme of his presidency to speak often of the need for “shared sacifice,” noting that we all must be willing to “give a little” in order for our nation to fully recover from the “great recession.”

Yet when the government of Wisconsin sought to let their state employees “share” in the sacrifice, President Obama intervened and insisted that government employees were being “maligned.” In reality, state taxpayers in Wisconsin pay nearly 100% of the costs of government employee retirement pensions, and well over 90% of government employee’s healthcare insurance costs. The uproar in that state was never about Wisconsin indiscriminately firing government workers or cutting the workers’ benefits, but about the necessity of government employees taking more financial responsibility for their own retirement and healthcare.

But President Obama will have nothing to do with government employees being made to sacrifice. The more lavish their employment, the more they will vote for Mr. Obama and his party. And so our President, instead, maligned the Government officials of Wisconsin that were trying to save their state from insolvency.

A similar situation is unfolding in California. Governor Jerry Brown presides over the absolute worst statewide fiscal mess in the history of our country. He prides himself in “cutting government spending” his first ninety days in office, yet most of the “cuts” came from the elimination of taxpayer funded mobile telephone and vehicle privileges for government workers (most of us in the private sector don’t get “free” mobile phones and cars anyway, but this had apparently become the norm for a good many California state employees).

But Governor Brown absolutely must cut state spending further, and to do so requires that he reduce California employee retirement and healthcare benefits. Yet government employee labor unions bankrolled Brown’s campaign last year, and they now “own” him. Thus, Governor Brown has chosen to treat his fiscal mess as a “revenue” issue, rather than a “spending” issue, and is now pursuing a “raise taxes on the rich” solution.

Will America reverse course, and move away from being a nation of mere takers? We must first reject the self-serving politicians who are the greatest benefactors of the “taking.”

Email: Austin Hill

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