My last post chided US Senators for worrying themselves about FaceBook privacy when there were so many other problems facing the nation, I specifically mentioned the economy. Let me be clear on one thing though, what I mean about them concentrating on the economy is that they should be stopping any new bills from either side which hurt the economy by adding unnecessary red tape or harmful costs where none are warranted. The best policy for the congress to follow is non-intervention.
The only thing that the government needs to do is to ensure that there is a level playing field for private economic players with as few potholes as possible slowing things down. Most government types try to add too much intervention and control when all they need to do is stand back and let the people go about their business and pay their taxes.
The US congress needs to kill cap and trade, card check and the so-called banking reform bills as none of them will achieve what they set out to do and all will hurt business. With these major economic policy decisions still up in the air there is still too much uncertainty for businesses to start employing again.
Tags: congress, economy, government, non-intervention, red tape
Just noticed this article on the web.
FOUR UNITED STATES SENATORS have written to Facebook wunderling Mark Zuckerberg and urged him to make it easier for users to protect their privacy.
Associated Press has seen a copy of the letter, reports that it is signed by Senators Charles Schumer of New York, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Mark Begich of Alaska, and Al Franken of Minnesota, and says it is on its way to Zuckerberg. Since these are US Senators, we don’t expect they favoured the email approach to old fashioned post, though.
What on earth is the US Senate doing involving itself in a social networking site? Did some of Obama’s supporters get found out and now they want to make sure it won’t happen again?
Good to see they are living up to the public opinion of the US Congress. Hate to think they would be wasting time worrying about the economy or something else inconsequential.
Us senators are concerned about facebook privacy – The Inquirer
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,”
The above quote should be instantly recognizable as coming from the Declaration of Independence which goes on to list the matters which are self-evident along with a long list of grievances based on said matters. Many other things are self-evident to the average conservative and the fact that they are so self-evident has been largely responsible for the situation we face where the statists on the left have managed to distort even the language that we use in our politics.
Conservatives see many things as self-evident. Things like individual freedom and free markets are so obviously superior to failed concepts such as socialism that we have not really seen it as necessary to defend them from the many attacks the left makes on a daily basis. How can anybody think that all of the disastrous experiments involving central economic control have just been bad luck? Yet those on the left would have us believe that if they just tried again with more control they will succeed this time. Just give up your freedom and the chance of being successful on your own merit and they will deliver a communist utopia.
Don’t Cuba, China and the USSR count as failures? Michael Moore would have us believe that Cuba has superior health care than the USA but this author hasn’t yet heard of boatloads of Americans trying to escape to this socialist Nirvana.
The progressives (now there’s a badly mangled piece of language, claiming that people who want to retry the failed experiments of regimes that no longer exist because they didn’t work are somehow aiming for progress) have been trying to paint the GOP as the party of “No” for a long time now and have enjoyed some success because conservatives have not thought that they even needed to defend their predilection for avoiding making the same mistakes proven in history to be failures.
Let’s look at the “no” thing another way. Conservatives like limited government, free markets and individual responsibility because they have been demonstrated to provide the better results than all other forms of government. Compare that to automotive engineers with their liking for round wheels. There is no such thing as a perfect wheel. They need to have tyres on them to provide reasonable grip and also to allow some flex to absorb some of the road shocks. The tyres eventually wear out and need to be replaced. The wheel and tyre assembly needs to be balanced by adding weights to offset heavy spots.
What would an automotive engineer say if somebody suggested that perhaps another shape should be tried to avoid these problems, say oval or square? Some automotive engineers might gently tell the person who suggested this that the changes would result in new problems without in any way addressing the original problems. Many would not bother to even grace the suggestion with a reply thinking that the wrongheadedness of such a suggestion would be self-evident.
Another thing that is self-evident is that the current rush of huge bills being rammed through by the statists all share one common theme. They are all about expanding government power with a light dusting of faked concern for the American people who are largely aware that this is a big government scam and thus oppose the bills, much to the chagrin of the Obama regime.
When the ruling party seizes on an issue and then tries to make people afraid of it while crafting a bill that expands and helps to perpetuate their grasp on power I am happy that we have people in Washington who say “No!”, just like I am happy that automotive engineers won’t allow somebody to put square wheels on my car.
To all of those out there who like the way that things are being done and don’t mind giving more power to Obama and his cronies just think about this. How would you like it if Ron Paul or Dick Cheney or Newt Gingrich had the power that you are willingly passing to “The Won” because chances are that something like this will be happening? Puts issues in a whole different light doesn’t it?
Tags: declaration of independence, freedom, independence, party of "no", self-evident
A link from the whining Frank Rich of NYT led to an older article Scott Wong of azcentral.com has much to say about the “assault rifle” that was carried by a citizen to the Phoenix Convention Centre in Arizona. Don’t look for a mention of the fact that some of the fringe media showed only the weapon and mentioned racism despite the fact that the citizen carrying the weapon was an African-American.
What is mentioned is the intimidation factor.
He was demonstrating his Second Amendment rights," Gallego added, "but he was clearly there to intimidate people who were there exercising their First Amendment rights.
Don’t bother looking for any mention of the Black Panthers intimidation of voters in Philadelphia on the same site. The only place that episode is mentioned is by readers in the comments.
Wong also gives some space for the views of Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign.
The possibility that these weapons might be grabbed or stolen or accidentally mishandled increases the risks of serious injury or death to all in attendance.
Notice the friendly new face of the Brady Campaign, not willing to demonize the citizen exercising his Second Amendment right they now demonize all of society as well as denigrate that citizen by implying that he does not know how to safely handle his weapon.
Notice that the left always whines about how dangerous their opponents are. They are having convulsions trying to twist incidents and tie them to the Tea Party movement. The zero arrest record of the Tea Partiers is really annoying them.
azcentral.com blogs – PHXBeat – Man with AR-15 rifle at Obama rally sparks concerns
Tags: Black Panthers, Frank Rich, Gun Control, Tea Party, whining liberals
With all of the talk about the process that was used to pass the healthcare “health insurance reform” bill most of the pundits have not thought through the full effects of the bill. This is understandable but we need to remember that the left has thought it all through and are fully aware of all of the ramifications.
Despite the claim about arbitrary insurance rate hikes of thirty to fifty percent recent average annual increases have only been in double figures once since 1997 and were at 3.1 percent in 2008, the last year shown in the government figures. The average profit margin of the insurance companies is running just over ten percent or a little less than book publishers or exactly the same as shipping companies. Maybe we need to get a bill passed to stop them gouging the public too.
President Obama said many things about the insurance companies:
There have been reports just over the last couple of days of insurance companies making record profits, right now," Obama said during a prime-time news conference. At a time when everybody’s getting hammered, they’re making record profits, and premiums are going up. What’s the constraint on that? … Well, part of the way is to make sure that there’s some competition out there.
Now, despite all the progress and improvements we’ve made, Republicans in Congress insist that the only acceptable course on health care is to start over. But you know what? The insurance companies aren’t starting over
I just met with some of them on Thursday, and they couldn’t give me a straight answer as to why they keep arbitrarily and massively raising premiums – by as much as 60 percent in states like Illinois. If we do not act, they will continue to do this
With the bill passed, insurers can no longer refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions and there can be no lifetime caps on care. The insurance companies cannot raise their rates as the government now controls this. What will happen? They will be driven to bankruptcy. Then the only entity able to step in will be the federal government which they will be only too happy to do (with a few snide shots at the failure of private enterprise and capitalism along the way) and the progressives will have what they wanted all along – a single payer system putting them in complete control.
Tags: bankruptcy, healthcare, Obama, single payer system
As I get older I find myself much more interested in history than when I was a young man. One of the things that I like about history is that it shows the ignorance of the liberal elites who think that their ideas are “progressive” when most of the things they think need to be done have already been tried and failed dismally, often hundreds of years ago.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”
– Professor Alexander Tytler over 200 years ago
Many people would think the above to be “radical” thinking.while others would find it remarkable for its prescience. Both opinions are wrong. It is a simple and obvious fact. Since the American people failed to hold the federal government to their oaths to protect and defend the constitution by allowing them to appoint liberal judges to the supreme court who then go about interpreting the constitution with progressive theories the entire system of checks and balances has fallen apart.
"If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?"
– South Carolina Senator William Draden 1828
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one…."
– James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792
Numerous supreme court decisions have allowed congress to do this very thing with decisions that pervert the meaning and intent of the founding fathers so much that they would not recognize the republic that they tried so hard to protect by binding the government with the chains of the constitution.
"It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights… Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power… Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go… In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
–Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.
"I see,… and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power… It is but too evident that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic."
– Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1825.
What would Thomas Jefferson say if he saw the federal bail-outs, the healthcare bill and the erosion of property rights?
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow."
– James Madison, Federalist no. 62, February 27, 1788
What would James Madison think of the bills running over 1,000 pages and being inscrutable even to trained lawyers?
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition."
– Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, February 15, 1791
Liberals, and republicans, have both had their dirty hands in this effort to increase the power of the government while the majority of the people continued voting for those whose hand-outs they approved of.
"Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them."
– Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions
State governments are also completely bereft of any sort of intestinal fortitude having stood back and allowed the erosion of their rights as enumerated by the constitution while begging for federal largesse. They should have been refusing to recognize any federal laws which infringed on states rights or were unconstitutional but were too busy with their noses in the trough.
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error."
– Robert Houghwout Jackson, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge at the War-Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg
What can be done to stop the wilful destruction of the constitution by the very people sworn to protect it?
"[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights."
– Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia [1782]
If the government does not fear the people then the people will soon have cause to fear the government.
“Nor should our assembly be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia [1782]
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The founding fathers foresaw what would happen if one of the branches of government grew too powerful, their words remind us that men cannot be trusted with power and need to be constrained by rules. They did the best job they could of putting the necessary rules into the constitution but the people became complacent and many of them greedy for what the toils of other men had earned, thinking it their right.
We can only hope that it is not too late.
Tags: constitution, founding fathers, government excess, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson
The quote “Don’t worry, it’s just campaign rhetoric, it’s not serious.” seems to sum up the huge variance between Obama’s promises, his speeches and his stated policies from his actions.
After all, he’s in permanent campaign mode . . . . for supreme leader of the world.
Tags: campaign rhetoric, Obama, policies, supreme leader
Attorney General, Eric holder, taking a break from hounding the CIA, spoke on what the administration plans to do to curb the violence in Chicago which recently took the life of an honor student and was shown on video on various news channels.
He mentioned the need to talk to educators, parents and student in an effort to understand the violence. Noticeably missing from that list was the police. Of course they might not be enlightened enough to want to understand the causes as most police just want to prevent the crime from occurring.
Holder also said that the latest methods would need to be used to deal with the problem. As a progressive liberal he must not, under any circumstances, admit that the current situation is merely the fruit of “latest methods” which molly-coddle criminals. Liberals cannot entertain the idea that replacing what works with what sounds good and disregarding the outcome is no way to run anything, far less the criminal justice system.
Naturally Governor Quinn suggested what states need to combat violence is more money from the federal government. Liberals have never met a problem caused by their own failed policies that they didn’t think that they could solve by throwing even more of the taxpayers money at it.
Tags: chicago, Eric Holder, failed liberal policies, youth violence
I have been watching various news services discussing the current political scene and I am getting fed up with the politically correct terminology being used by everybody regarding the different political divisions. Moderate Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, progressives, liberals and so forth are only clouding the issues rather than making things clearer.
Let’s start with progressives. Even Glenn Beck is using the term now. The only thing progressive about these extreme left-wingers is that they want to progress from liberalism, through socialism to communism. Just remember that communism is also called “scientific socialism”. These people are communists, pure and simple. As communists they have no place in government and should all be tried for treason as they want to change the form of government. They swore to protect and defend the constitution but all they want to do is to undermine it.
Mainstream media is another term that needs to be changed. They are no longer mainstream, most of them are simply cheerleaders for the communists and should be shut down. This will happen naturally unless the head communist, President Obama, decides to bail them out so he does not need to campaign any more. What we are now talking about is fringe media which only serves a small portion of the people. Probably less than 10% of the people would identify with the core of communists who are controlling the direction of the Democrats these days.
Moderate Republicans or Republicans in Name Only (RINO) are not really republicans at all. Basically if they want to vote with the Democrats using the specious reasoning that they are voting their consciences why don’t they just make the switch and join the Democrat’s completely rather than being the window dressing for claims of bipartisanship in liberal policies. The fringe media love them but conservatives find them distasteful, rather like obvious homosexuals who are afraid to come out of the closet.
The rest of the PC terms will have to wait for another article for now as I don’t have the time to list them all. Political correctness is a socialist tool in any case so we conservatives should shun the use of any PC terms and hold the people who use these terms feet to the fire until we are all speaking plain English once again.
Tags: communists, democrats, liberals, Political Correctness, progressives, treason, undermining the constitution