Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Stunning News Item Slips by AP's Editors: 'Government Shutdown' Doesn't Shut Down Much of Anything

I've never heard of the Associated Press' Andrew Taylor and -- based on his article from yesterday -- we may never hear from him again.

Social Security checks would still go out. Troops would remain at their posts. Furloughed federal workers probably would get paid, though not until later. And virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, would remain open.

That's the little-known truth about a government shutdown. The government doesn't shut down.

...The air traffic control system, food inspection, Medicare, veterans' health care and many other essential government programs would run as usual. The Social Security Administration would not only send out benefits but would continue to take applications. The Postal Service, which is self-funded, would keep delivering the mail. Federal courts would remain open...

...from a practical perspective, shutdowns usually aren't that big a deal. They happened every year when Jimmy Carter was president, averaging 11 days each. During President Reagan's two terms, there were six shutdowns, typically of just one or two days apiece. Deals got cut. Everybody moved on.

Attention, GOP leaders: let President Obama shut the government down.

If they can't cut spending, it's going to shut down soon anyhow -- when the whole freaking system collapses. And that's not my opinion - that's TurboTax Tim Geithner's take.

Let. Obama. Shut. It. Down.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

Friday, February 25, 2011

The Fork In the Road

“Greece would not have fallen had it obeyed Polybius in everything, and when Greece did meet disaster, its only help came from him” Pausanias, 8.37.2, Inscription on the Temple of Despoina near Arakesion.


In Book VI of his Histories, the ancient Greek historian Polybius described three basic forms of government, each categorized by the number of those in power. He listed monarchy (rule by the one); aristocracy (rule by the few); and democracy (rule by the many). Polybius described, over time, how each type of government would gradually decline into their various corrupted forms of tyranny, oligarchy and mob rule, respectively.

Polybius believed that Republican Rome had designed a new form of government that could help check this inevitable decline. Rome combined all three forms of government -- monarchy (its elected executives, called consuls); aristocracy (the Senate); and democracy (the popular assemblies). In this mixed form of goverment, each branch would check the corrupting ambitions and power of the others.

Polybius, Aristotle and Cicero all praised the construction of a "mixed constitution" and the requirement of a separation of powers within government.

The French nobleman and legal expert Charles-Louis de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu, studied the rise and fall of the Roman Republic. He believed that a properly designed government, in order to prevent tyranny, would require three branches of government. He wrote, "If it is to provide its citizens with the greatest possible liberty, a government must have certain features. First, since 'constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it … it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power' . This is achieved through the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government... [to prevent any one] from acting tyrannically."

The British philosopher John Locke was also keenly interested in a design for government that would prevent it from descending into tyranny. In the late 17th century, Locke argued that monarchs had no "divine right" to rule; instead, he asserted that the source of power lay in the people. Furthermore, he stated that humans were born into this world with certain natural and "inalienable" rights including to "life, liberty and property". Locke believed that government could not grant these rights because they were God-given; therefore, no government could take them away or withhold them from the people.
 
Thomas Jefferson used Locke's concepts as central tenets when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He proclaimed the government's duty to protect the sacred attributes of the individual: "...to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form..."

"...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

As well, America's Founding Fathers repeatedly cited Baron de Montesquieu's seminal Spirit of the Laws and its emphasis on checks and balances within government. As James Madison wrote, "the oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu."

We conservatives are originalists: If the Constitution's meaning is not interpreted as the framers intended, if it can be altered at will, then what protects any law from arbitrary interpretation, from the capricious whims of the ill-intentioned?

If the Constitution is "living and breathing", an amorphous guidebook of suggestions that may freely be interpreted based upon current events, trends, whims or biases, what then are the limits on government? And if the Constitution doesn't mean what it says, what protects individuals from the encroachment of government intrusion into every aspect of individuals' lives?

The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution strictly limits the power of the Federal Government. It states, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. In the Founders' view, state and local governments were free to experiment -- to serve as "laboratories" in the words of Justice Louis Brandeis -- in areas prohibited to the federal government. In the 1980's, for example, Oregon's successful welfare reform efforts became the models for subsequent actions by other states and even the federal government.

When the federal government ignores and breeches the Tenth Amendment, it represents an illegal diminution of representative government at the state and local levels. It represents a subtle attack on individual liberty.

The once-powerful states, which created the federal government by ratifying the Constitution, have become -- in the words of Mark Levin -- "administrative appendages of the federal government." The states are subject to ever-increasing federal regulation, strangled by dictates from agencies old and new, and held hostage through billions in federal tax dollars. Levin asks, "Does anyone believe that the states would have originally ratified the Constitution had they known this would be their fate?"

The path the modern federal government is on today was presciently described by Stuart Chase in 1942. He wrote that the agenda of the Fabian Socialists -- who had launched a counter-revolution against America's founding -- was to create an authoritarian and completely centralized government apparatus. The agenda of the Fabian Socialists include:

• Strong, centralized government
• Government-controlled banking, credit and securities exchange (TARP, etc.)
• Government control over employment (the "Employee Free Choice Act" to speed unionization of the workplace)
• Unemployment insurance, old age pensions (lengthy unemployment benefits, Social Security)
• Universal medical care, food and housing programs (Obamacare, food stamps, HUD)
• Access to unlimited government borrowing (massive deficits)
• A managed monetary system (an opaque Federal Reserve)
• Government control over foreign trade (China tire tariffs)
• Government control over natural energy sources, transportation and agricultural production (drilling moratoriums, the EPA's regime of "Cap-and-Trade")
• Government regulation of labor (the Wagner Act, monopolistic power of trade unions)
• and Heavy progressive taxation.

This indeed describes "the road we are traveling": accelerated by branches of government controlled by Democrats who took an oath to uphold that which they ignore. While it may no longer be called socialism directly, nonetheless socialism it is. The Fabian Socialist counter-revolution began in earnest in the U.S. in 1933 with the imposition of the "Welfare State" and it has been steadily progressing since. It confiscates ever more taxes, consolidates ever more power, while bankrupting program after program. And always -- always -- the federal government proclaims its need for more money and more power, promising that if only it can levy one more tax, enforce one more regulation, create one more program it will be able to solve all of man's woes.

The Greek historian Thucydides observed that "The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage." And in writing about the calamitous Peloponnesian War that engulfed and ultimately destroyed his society, he added that, "Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought."

History teaches us that the decline of a society and the demise of a government comes with the institutionalization of corruption and a wanton disregard for the written law. Such is our situation today, wherein the states have become puppets of an all-powerful federal government that confiscates more and more private property while exerting increasing control over every aspect of our lives.

Today our federal government's most powerful branch is one never conceived by the Framers: the unelected fourth branch of government -- the enormous federal bureaucracy -- that acts at the president's behest. It defies a federal judge in Florida who has voided Obamacare. It ignores a federal judge in Louisiana who has held the Interior Department in Contempt of Court for failing to lift an unconscionable drilling moratorium. And it now decides which laws it will enforce and which it will not, the "Defense of Marriage Act" being only the most recent example.

If we are to protect our society from despotism and decline, whose counsel should we then cherish? Should we honor thousands of years of human experience and the wisdom of history's greatest philosophers -- Polybius, Cicero, Aristotle, Montesquieu, Locke, Jefferson, Adams and Madison among them? Men who understood the nature of a government's despotic decline and sought to construct a system to counter it?

Or should we disregard their guidance and instead follow the Fabian Socialists? Are these philosophers and founders to be replaced by the likes of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Richard Trumka?

The greatest bulwark against tyranny in America has always been the Constitution, which instantiates our exquisitely designed system of private property, God-given individual liberties and free enterprise.

This is our generation's fork in the road and the stakes of our decision could not be higher. If we are to protect our society from the inevitable decline and despotism that has infected so many societies since the beginning of time, in whom should we trust? If we are to shield our children from the tyranny against which our founders fought and so many Americans shed blood, in whom should we put our faith?

I contend that we must fight the anti-Constitutional counter-revolution using every political tool at our disposal. We must pledge to return our country to the rule of law, as it was originally defined by our founders and codified in the Constitution. For anything less condemns our descendants to the fate that Thucydides described. The choice is clear. The question is simple. Which road will you choose?


Monday, February 21, 2011

15 Best Signs from the Pro-Walker Rally in Madison #wiunion #solidaritywi

Heather Radish's Flickr feed has a comprehensive gallery of signs from the pro-Walker rally held Saturday. Stunning we haven't seen any of these on the network news shows, no?















The whole gallery can be found here.


Hat tip: Ace o' Spades.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Mark Levin puzzled by Ann Coulter's bizarre endorsement of Chris Christie, who supports gun control, amnesty, Obamacare and climate legislation

Cub Reporter Biff Spackle was kind enough to transcribe the following soliloquy by radio host Mark Levin last Monday night.

I want to politely address my dear friend -- and she is my dear friend -- Ann Coulter. We've had some email exchanges.

What is your great love of Chris Christie based on? The man supports gun control. The man appoints a radical Islamist to a judgeship. The man is for amnesty [for illegal aliens]. The man is, to some extent, part of the "green" movement. He campaigned for Michael Castle.

And it's interesting. [Mitt] Romney is being attacked, correctly by the way, for RomneyCare. Yet here we have Obamacare, we have 28 states challenging it: 26 states in one suit; Virginia in another suit; Oklahoma in another suit -- and New Jersey's sitting on the sidelines.

Why? I cannot believe it's the cost. Because I have offered, as have others, to do it for free. Just sign your name on a brief. That's free. And yet Christie sits on the sidelines.

So he either supports [Obamacare] or I don't know what. Maybe while Romney's explaining RomneyCare, Christie can explain his [tacit support of] Obamacare.

But the idea that if we don't back Christie, who's already said he's not qualified enough to be president, that Romney is the winner and that we were warned about McCain, is a little rewrite of history. Nobody was more against McCain than I. Then at the very end I said we had to vote for him to stop Obama. But I fought him every step of the way. Ask McCain's people. They hate me. Feeling's mutual!

Anyway, it's a little bizarre to me. The way I see Chris Christie is he's Christine Todd Whitman as a male. I do like his fiscal positions. I do like the way he deals with the public sector teachers' unions. That's all to the good.

But when you're the president of the United States, you've got a whole lot of issues that affect a whole lot of people.

And it's not good enough to be good on one out of 20. So this [obsession with Christie] I don't get.

I agree completely. Christie has a number of troubling positions -- some even outright bizarre -- that seriously limit his acceptability as a GOP nominee. At least until he explains himself thoroughly on these issues.

Coulter isn't usually off-key on these sorts of things: but she couldn't be more wrong with her premature statements regarding Christie. Nominating another mushy centrist -- and I count the governor of New Jersey as one, based upon his track record -- will guarantee Barack Obama a victory in the general. And that we cannot accept if this Republic is to survive.


Image adapted from: Politico.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Allen West's Letter to His Constituents

West is a hero. And I'm not talking about his commendable military service -- just his first month in Congress.

Over this past week I have watched and listened to members of the House of Representatives from across the aisle.

I am appalled at their ignorance, belligerence, and dishonest rhetoric filled with empty emotional platitudes. Have they no shame in realizing that their inept, incompetent failures are the reason why we are debating this continuing resolution? They failed to pass a budget during the 111th Congress.

Have they no honor in realizing that their fiscal irresponsibility over the past four years has resulted in our standing on the precipice of a fiscal canyon from which we may not recover.

Also troubling are the events in the state of Wisconsin which mirror those that happened in Greece several months ago. We are witnessing the abject hostility of a unionized entitlement class that is being lauded by the liberal left, seemingly to include our President.

It is such a critical time for our Republic, yet there seems no visionary leadership — it is as if America stopped producing adults. I have never seen a greater assembly of petulance and sophomoric behavior as what I have witnessed this week on the floor of the House of Representatives.

To those across the aisle, please explain to the American people how your economic policies have created a better environment for long-term sustainable growth.

This debate is about jobs and the economy.

It begins with remedying the spending problem on Capitol Hill. It includes tackling the burdensome taxation and regulation policies strangling our country. It is the understanding that Keynesian tax and spend policies did not grow America’s economy, but the indomitable, entrepreneurial spirit of the American people.

Government sets the conditions for job and economic growth, it does not create jobs.

I am pleased that we are having open debate in the peoples' house. However, there is clearly something lacking in this discourse — the recognition of the failure of the bureaucratic nanny-state liberal policies.

Rest assured that I will do everything in my ability to stand firm and lead on the principles that make America exceptional.

God bless Allen West.

This is a man who our country's founders would have embraced.

Allen West and Michelle Bachmann are my front-runners for the Presidential nomination in 2012.


Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Photo: 2012 Budget vs. the Constitution

This kinda says it all.


Via: @Citizens_United

Paul Ryan: the Mayans were wrong--the world doesn't end in 2012. According to the CBO, it ends in 2037.

Interviewed on the Mark Levin Show last night, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) levied blunt, caustic and, at times, shocking criticism at President Obama's budget.

[On the President's budget]


It has a $1.6 trillion tax increase. Doubles the debt in five years. Triples it in ten years. Adds $13 trillion in new debt over the course of his budget. Borrow, spend, tax -- and does nothing... let me repeat that... nothing to decrease the drivers of our debt. It adds to the problem.

I was incredulous. I really was expecting something different... given that he formed a fiscal commission, I was on the fiscal commission... he told us we have a serious problem, we've got to deal with it, let's go forward... he didn't even put any of the fiscal commission recommendations in here.

His discretionary spending levels are way above what was recommended by the fiscal commission. And [it] was stacked with Democrats, so he's to the left of his fiscal commission, he's not addressing the debt and deficit crisis, and what this does for economic growth -- it costs us jobs... he's doubling down on what he's done the last two years. And, candidly, I thought we'd see... triangulation. A little moderation after the last election. And, unfortunately, he decided not to do that...

[On economic uncertainty]


Milton Friedman said that today's deficits are tomorrow's tax increases... they're just deferred taxes. So this is what businesses see, this is what entrepreneurs see, this is what banks that are financing businesses see.

They see massive deficits, massive borrowing, no end in sight -- there's going to be another tax increase tomorrow on top of the other increases coming into law -- with much higher interest rates, because if we don't get this debt under control, interest goes up. We have to pay people more to lend us money.

...So to suggest that we're going to have these low interest rates forever with economic growth, I think... ignores the obvious.

[On the "continuing resolution" funding the implementation of Obamacare]


We're going to have an amendment on the floor to de-fund Obamacare... but more important... than that, the President wants to lock in these really inflated levels of spending. He increased spending 24% across the board... with the Stimulus an 84% increase... of domestic government agencies, so he wants to lock in those spending increases. And we're trying to take them back. That's what this whole fight's about.

We want to rip out all of the spending increases that took place over the last two years. We're actually going deeper than that this week, because we're doing it just for the next seven months. We're taking back a year's worth of spending cuts for the next seven months. And if you annualize that, we're going about $170 billion in cuts.

For the rest of the fiscal year, we're going down to 2006, 2005 levels in some areas. And we want to put funding limits on bills, on agencies, that are in charge of implementing Obamacare. Now we're obviously going to have an impasse. Something tells me he's not going to sign our bill. So that's part of the impasse we're going to have, starting in March.

Then we go to our budget, which we write, where we show our vision for the government... the debt, the deficit, the economy, taxes... then, after that, sometime in May, this estimate moves around, we have a debt ceiling and we are not interested in rubber-stamping big government. We want to use that as leverage to get serious spending controls around big government as this debt ceiling is dealt with.

[On future tax rates reaching 60-80% in 20 years]


I asked the CBO for these numbers, I know them off the top of my head. My kids are 6, 7 and 9 years old... by the time my kids are my age -- I'm 41 -- I asked the CBO, "What will the future tax rates have to be if we don't get this debt under control?" And this was before the current budget, which makes it worse.

They said the lowest tax bracket, now at 10%, goes to 25%. Middle income tax brackets go to 66%. And the top bracket goes to 88%. We've had those numbers run.

Look, the CBO -- their own economic model breaks down in 2037. Because the computer at the Congressional Budget Office basically says [it] can't conceive of the economy continuing past 2037 because of the strangulation of debt. Because of the debt burden.

So they think the economy crashes well before my kids are even raising their own kids.

You're welcome, kids.

Actually, don't thank me. Thank all of the Democrats who fell for the marketing hype and voted for this catastrophe.


Transcript hat tip: Cub Reporter Biff Spackle.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

CPAC 2011 Straw Poll Results -- and Commentary #cpac11

The results of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll are in.

The number of voters were up dramatically this year, emblematic of increased interest in constitutional conservatism nationwide.

Here's a preview of the results: the biggest bloc of voters were college-age students.

Like last year, 18-25 year old attendees dwarfed all other segments, which makes the straw poll less than useful for predicting anything of significance.

In addition, voters were overwhelmingly male.

Interestingly, 91% of all respondents listed cutting the size of government and reducing government spending as their #1 or #2 priority.

Cutting spending was, by far, the preferred choice for balancing the budget.

And attendees were generally optimistic that Congressional Republicans could achieve their highest priorities.

The collegiate-aged attendees stuffed the ballot box for Ron Paul. While Paul has admirable stands on many domestic issues, his isolationist foreign policy positions are downright nutty. He's a foreign policy kook, plain and simple.

In response to the young idealists, may I suggest they contemplate the following: You can't be a super-power without the ability to project power.

We defeated the Nazis by teaming with known bad guys -- the Soviets. After teaming with them, we immediately devolved into the Cold War stalemate. The Cold War was won through an aggressive foreign policy that involved protecting our national security interests -- energy and freedom among them -- across the globe.

Today we are in the midst of a war between Christendom and Islam that has heated up and cooled down for centuries. At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam appeared poised to overrun all of Christian Europe. We are simply in a new phase of a very old war.

Today, we can't run and hide and hope that advanced weapons won't harm us here at home. China's 2007 anti-satellite test demonstrated that crippling technologies -- which could throw our society into chaos -- are very real.

Iran continues its work on nuclear armaments and intercontinental ballistic missile technologies, its steady progress delayed only by a clever cyber-attack. Its leaders believe that the return of the Twelfth Imam can be hastened by fomenting 'argmageddon'.

Mexico, on our unprotected southern border, is a failed narco-terror state with roughly 30,000 of its citizens killed in the last five years alone -- and refugees streaming north on a daily basis.

Venezuela, Hugo Chavez' dictatorship, is now said to be fielding Iranian military personnel and missiles with 'scientific' collaboration revolving around warhead design and nuclear technology.

The military regime of North Korea recently torpedoed a South Korean warship and is threatening to retest its nuclear weapons.

China is on the move: building aircraft carriers, stealth fighters, destroying satellites in an effort to test space-based weapons, and locking up energy contracts across the globe.

Again, you can't be a super-power without the ability to project power. SDI and missile defense must be expanded. Our military power must be increased, not decreased.

The world is a very dangerous place -- and many take for granted that our civil society will always be as it is. History tells us otherwise. All over the world people live in desperate squalor, under despots, tyrants and maniacs. For most of human history this has been the case.

We have a precious society, our United States, and we must do everything in our power to protect it.


p.s., I am encouraged by Michelle Bachmann's showing -- she is a forthright, brave constitutional conservative who understands the reality of the situation in Washington and abroad.

p.p.s., I would recommend that anyone looking for a historical perspective read the seminal article "No Substitute for Victory."


Hat tip: Tabitha. Linked by: Michelle Malkin and The Tatler. Thanks!