Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer. So, the summer of recovery has been a incredible success, Americans are back to work, business is good, people are spending money, the government isn't borrowing our grand kids futures, the national debt is being paid down. Unfortunately, not one of those points mentioned have come to fruition. Obama, his administration and the majority democrat congress has blown over a trillion (with a "T") dollars and the economy is faltering so badly that economists are worried about the dreaded "double dip recession." However, the 'end around" redirection play, the anointed one decided to play was the ol' "They talk about me like a dog." Actually, I believe this is the third time you have talked about yourself as a dog. Every time the liberals get in trouble, they consistently unleash the personal narratives and and embellished personal indignities persecuted against them. Obama is the master of this. Woe is me. The main point of this article today is I am sick of the liberals playing the "blame game" for the last nineteen months. Take responsibility, it's called accountability. The "Keynesian method" of spending your way out of the recession involving a lot of government. It doesn't work, it never has, and never will. John Maynard Keynes had it wrong and Obama's ideology will lead us off a cliff. Is that his intention? If you look at the Cloward-Piven Theory, (The ultimate objective of this strategy—to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income—will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income.) Wow, that sounds like socialism to me? Maybe, I'm just paranoid. Peter Orzag, Obama's former budget advisor, recently came out for extending Bush tax cuts for two more years. I'm sure Barry O. will take his advice. Poor Obama, even Paul Krugman has come out against Obama's inferior, almost non-existent plan to fix the economy. I heard over the weekend that the Obama administration wants to spend $50B for infrastructure projects. Unfortunately, a high ranked administration official said that these projects would not start until next year. I feel Obama doesn't have a clue how to stimulate the economy. Nor does his handlers. The typical move that comes right out of the liberal democrat playbook, page 45, chapter 6, sub-chapter 3, says when in doubt, throw money at it. Obama gets an "A" in this. This is a carefully planned ploy to cast negativity against the republicans. They know spending $50 billion that we do not have, will not do anything to help create jobs in the here and now. Obama knows if he would reduce payroll taxes and capital gains, it would do more than any of his hair brained tax and spend plans. Bloomberg speculated that the unemployment would go to 10.1% by the middle of next year. Change you can believe in. I saw the President
The economic numbers continue to campaign for republicans
By Ron Hart
The laws of economics are the new Jim Crow laws. If the Democrats cannot paint their opponents as racist or greedy, then they are pretty much out of solutions for any issue.
Economic numbers tend to be more biased when the administration overseeing them knows nothing about business and the economy. Attorney General Eric Holder has a team of lawyers trying to figure out whom to sue over our dismal economic state. As every liberal Democrat from John Edwards to Eric Holder knows, the way to make money in America is to sue someone who is productive and has money to take.
But the Democrats’ problems are nothing some nice word-smithing cannot fix. Instead of focusing on the four million jobs lost in 2009 alone, they have invented their own metric, “jobs saved or created.” The main jobs they are looking to save now are their own in November.
The “me, my and I” speeches Obama gives, in which he takes credit for his minor accomplishments and blames Bush for all else, no longer work. The economy has been under Democratic House and Senate rule since 2006. Obama taking credit for jobs “saved” is like the 9/11 hijackers taking credit for creating TSA jobs.
I would not be surprised if the White House spins the latest bad jobs numbers to somehow make them look better for businesses in America. To their way of thinking, each month businesses have a larger and more talented pool of unemployed workers from which to hire. But businesses are not hiring, because they have no idea how much extra cost ObamaCare will mean for each employee and how much increased regulation will be placed on them at the fiat of this bumbling administration.
The states with the worst unemployment are Democratic-dominated bastions where years of liberal policies have wrought havoc. States like California, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, which have been the Petri dishes of Democratic economic theories, have the highest unemployment rates. If that is not a leading economic indicator of the results of Obama’s economic policies, I do not know what is.
My guess is that by continuing to use semantics and by nuancing each economic issue, the Obama White House will appeal to its base for re-election. These are the 51% of Americans who can be told “things are better” but who are not good enough at math to know they are, in fact, not. We know them as the liberal Democrat base.
The Obama cabinet seems like it was assembled at Ikea by a college poli-sci professor. JP Morgan did a study of administrations which had the most and fewest cabinet members with business experience. The result helps explain our current economic mess.
The president whose cabinet had the highest percentage of private sector folks was none other than Dwight Eisenhower, who oversaw an era of sustained economic growth. Fifty-eight percent of the members of his cabinet had private sector experience. Until Obama, Kennedy’s cabinet had the lowest percentage of members with private sector experience, at about 27%. The average since 1900 of every president is about 38%. As he has with many things, Obama’s cabinet has set a new low on this metric of real world experience; only 7% of his cabinet members have private sector experience. That 7% probably matches the percentage of his cabinet members who paid their income taxes properly.
The reason businesses are sitting on $1.7 trillion in cash, and banks hoarding another $1 trillion in reserves they could be using to make loans, is that they have no confidence in this administration. Many believe there will be a “double-dip” recession caused by those double-dips in Washington. Until it knows it will not be taxed through the roof, regulated to death, and then lambasted for political gain, no business is going to make the leap of faith to invest in the USA. Ultimately, growth and expansion are private businesses’ expressions of faith and confidence in the economy, something they currently do not have.
Hopefully, come November Nancy Pelosi will learn some economic truths, like the cost of a coach airline ticket from Washington D.C. to San Francisco.
Ron Hart is a syndicated op-ed humorist, author and TV/radio commentator. Email Ron@RonaldHart.com or at visit RonaldHart.com.
The broadening of a movement.
BY Lee Harris
Lively debate continues about just how many people showed up to attend Glenn Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial, but there has been less interest in exactly why they showed up.
To many hostile observers, the event was simply the latest installment in the ongoing antics of the Tea Party. But the keynote of the occasion, “Restoring Honor,” along with its celebration of “traditional American values,” suggests a decided movement, if not away from, then at least beyond the Tea Party. Far from being directed exclusively at Tea Partiers, Beck’s rally addressed those millions of ordinary Americans who are deeply resentful at what they perceive as a massive and well-coordinated attack on traditions they hold sacred. From this perspective, Beck’s rally signals a potentially major shift in the dynamics of today’s populist discontent. A political movement that can galvanize those who are united in defending “traditional American values” can have far more clout and influence than the Tea Party movement by itself can ever hope to have.
The Tea Party began as an antitax and anti-big government movement. Many of the most prominent Tea Party spokesmen showed little interest in the vexing cultural issues that have increasingly divided Americans for several decades—indeed, most seemed quite happy to distance themselves from such hot button topics as abortion, immigration, and gay marriage. Out of the gamut of “traditional American values,” the Tea Party focused almost exclusively on our Founding Fathers’ preference for limited government. Scant attention was paid to the emotionally charged themes celebrated in the Beck rally—the sacred causes of national honor, patriotism, God. To the Tea Party, the only sacred cause was liberty, including the liberty to ignore or even to flout traditions venerated by other people in their society.
Philosophically speaking, the Tea Party movement was libertarian in its inspiration, but the spirit of libertarianism has always been opposed to the spirit of traditionalism—the very spirit evoked at the Beck rally. Those who faithfully adhere to a tradition, and who are dedicated to preserving it intact from generation to generation, must often be willing to curtail their own personal liberty out of respect for the traditions they hold sacred. They will often feel it their duty, moreover, to curtail the individual freedom of other people for the same reason, including those who do not share their own veneration. A somewhat trivial example of a sacred tradition trumping personal liberty are the blue laws in many states that forbid the sale of alcohol on Sunday. To the libertarian, nothing could be more objectionable. Why should an antiquated tradition, and one resting on purely sectarian religious ground, keep me from buying beer on Sunday? But the strict libertarian will be apt to have the same negative attitude to the claims of other so called “sacred” traditions. To the extent that they stand in the way of the exercise of one’s personal liberty, they are simply a violation of one’s natural rights.
In many ways, the intense media scrutiny that accompanied the birth of the Tea Party movement, focusing on its antitax and antigovernment message, obscured the real split in the American psyche, which is essentially a cultural divide. On the one side are those Americans for whom nothing can be more sacred than honor, patriotism, and God, and who get goose-bumps at the very mention of these words. On the other side are those who instinctively cringe at what they regard as the shameless display of such manipulative emotionalism. Similarly, to his admirers, Glenn Beck has been a voice crying in the wilderness, a prophet who warns us that we have been wandering in darkness too long. To detractors, he is a clown and a buffoon, at best, a dangerous demagogue, at worst. And the same holds true for the heroine of the rally, Sarah Palin.
Yet those who deplore Beck or Palin fail to see that the reason for their popularity stems from their uninhibited willingness to evoke and champion precisely those values and themes that the overly fastidious and sophisticated perceive as crude and corny. It is when Beck and Palin are behaving most boorishly in the eyes of their cultured despisers that they are most apt to win the enthusiastic cheers of their devoted admirers.
By centering the rally on the defense of “traditional American values,” Beck deftly managed to reach out to those many Americans who, while mildly sympathetic to the Tea Party, were by no means prepared to commit themselves to doctrinaire libertarianism. No doubt these Americans hold liberty to be sacred, but they also regard as sacred precisely the same “traditional American values” that were the subject of the Beck rally—honor, patriotism, and God. The tens of thousands who flocked to the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 are only a small sample of those Americans who are deeply worried that their most cherished values and traditions are under attack by an arrogant elite that wishes to impose its own supposedly more “enlightened” values on the nation.
The Beck rally bore abundant witness to the profound degree of alienation that American traditionalists feel when they look at the mass culture that surrounds them, and which they see as intent on mocking everything they hold to be sacred. Sure, they might want lower taxes and smaller government, too; but they also want to return to an era in which their own traditional values were reflected in the TV shows they watched, the movies they went to, the education that their kids received in the public schools paid for by their tax dollars. They do not want to see what they cherish most in the world held up to ridicule, especially when the ridicule is presented in attractively packaged forms that are designed especially to appeal to their own kids. They resent what they perceive as the indoctrination and brainwashing of the next generation. They feel that their own deeply held “traditional American values” are under attack—and they are right.
In short, the Beck rally marks a significant turning point in today’s people’s revolt—away from the narrow issues of the Tea Party—while initiating a new stage of the culture war, which is what the great American divide is really all about.
Lee Harris is the author, most recently, of The Next American Civil War:The Populist Revolt Against the Liberal Elite.
A Call to Arms:
9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington - 2010
We are organizing another huge 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington. In 2009 we rallied hundreds of thousands of people and marched right up to the capitol building in Washington. This year, we are coming back in full force, and we will be focused on one message — Remember in November!
Click here to RSVP for the 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington!
This event will be organized by the same coalition that organized the original 9/12 March on Washington — including FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, National Taxpayers Union, The Institute for Liberty and a host of other great free market groups from around the country.
FreedomWorks and allied conservative groups
What: 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington, DC – 2010
When: Sep. 12, 2010, 10:00am until 5:00pm
Where: The Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol building (MAP)
Why: To protest big government and support lower taxes, less government and more freedom
Question of the day:
Will any democrat incumbents mention the new healthcare law while campaigning?
Polls we can live by:
27% Strongly agree with the President's job performance
45% Strongly disagree
Presidential approval index rating: minus 18%
45% Somewhat agree with the President's job performance
55% Somewhat disagree
56% Favor repreal of healthcare law
39% Say repeal is likely
General congressional ballot:
Republicans-48%
Democrats-36%
31% Favor passage of a second stimulus
55% Oppose
Pathetic Funnies:
Quote du jour:
As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others.
Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June, 1788
Writings of Our Founding Fathers
Federalist Papers
Federalist No. 57
The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation
From the New York Packet.
Tuesday, February 19, 1788.
Author: Alexander Hamilton or James Madison
To the People of the State of New York:
THE THIRD charge against the House of Representatives is, that it will be taken from that class of citizens which will have least sympathy with the mass of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few. Of all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution, this is perhaps the most extraordinary.
Whilst the objection itself is levelled against a pretended oligarchy, the principle of it strikes at the very root of republican government. The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust. The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government. The means relied on in this form of government for preventing their degeneracy are numerous and various. The most effectual one, is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people. Let me now ask what circumstance there is in the constitution of the House of Representatives that violates the principles of republican government, or favors the elevation of the few on the ruins of the many? Let me ask whether every circumstance is not, on the contrary, strictly conformable to these principles, and scrupulously impartial to the rights and pretensions of every class and description of citizens? Who are to be the electors of the federal representatives? Not the rich, more than the poor; not the learned, more than the ignorant; not the haughty heirs of distinguished names, more than the humble sons of obscurity and unpropitious fortune. The electors are to be the great body of the people of the United States. They are to be the same who exercise the right in every State of electing the corresponding branch of the legislature of the State. Who are to be the objects of popular choice? Every citizen whose merit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country. No qualification of wealth, of birth, of religious faith, or of civil profession is permitted to fetter the judgement or disappoint the inclination of the people. If we consider the situation of the men on whom the free suffrages of their fellow-citizens may confer the representative trust, we shall find it involving every security which can be devised or desired for their fidelity to their constituents. In the first place, as they will have been distinguished by the preference of their fellow-citizens, we are to presume that in general they will be somewhat distinguished also by those qualities which entitle them to it, and which promise a sincere and scrupulous regard to the nature of their engagements. In the second place, they will enter into the public service under circumstances which cannot fail to produce a temporary affection at least to their constituents. There is in every breast a sensibility to marks of honor, of favor, of esteem, and of confidence, which, apart from all considerations of interest, is some pledge for grateful and benevolent returns.
Ingratitude is a common topic of declamation against human nature; and it must be confessed that instances of it are but too frequent and flagrant, both in public and in private life. But the universal and extreme indignation which it inspires is itself a proof of the energy and prevalence of the contrary sentiment.
In the third place, those ties which bind the representative to his constituents are strengthened by motives of a more selfish nature. His pride and vanity attach him to a form of government which favors his pretensions and gives him a share in its honors and distinctions. Whatever hopes or projects might be entertained by a few aspiring characters, it must generally happen that a great proportion of the men deriving their advancement from their influence with the people, would have more to hope from a preservation of the favor, than from innovations in the government subversive of the authority of the people. All these securities, however, would be found very insufficient without the restraint of frequent elections. Hence, in the fourth place, the House of Representatives is so constituted as to support in the members an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people. Before the sentiments impressed on their minds by the mode of their elevation can be effaced by the exercise of power, they will be compelled to anticipate the moment when their power is to cease, when their exercise of it is to be reviewed, and when they must descend to the level from which they were raised; there forever to remain unless a faithful discharge of their trust shall have established their title to a renewal of it. I will add, as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it. If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty. Such will be the relation between the House of Representatives and their constituents. Duty, gratitude, interest, ambition itself, are the chords by which they will be bound to fidelity and sympathy with the great mass of the people.
It is possible that these may all be insufficient to control the caprice and wickedness of man. But are they not all that government will admit, and that human prudence can devise? Are they not the genuine and the characteristic means by which republican government provides for the liberty and happiness of the people? Are they not the identical means on which every State government in the Union relies for the attainment of these important ends? What then are we to understand by the objection which this paper has combated? What are we to say to the men who profess the most flaming zeal for republican government, yet boldly impeach the fundamental principle of it; who pretend to be champions for the right and the capacity of the people to choose their own rulers, yet maintain that they will prefer those only who will immediately and infallibly betray the trust committed to them? Were the objection to be read by one who had not seen the mode prescribed by the Constitution for the choice of representatives, he could suppose nothing less than that some unreasonable qualification of property was annexed to the right of suffrage; or that the right of eligibility was limited to persons of particular families or fortunes; or at least that the mode prescribed by the State constitutions was in some respect or other, very grossly departed from. We have seen how far such a supposition would err, as to the two first points. Nor would it, in fact, be less erroneous as to the last. The only difference discoverable between the two cases is, that each representative of the United States will be elected by five or six thousand citizens; whilst in the individual States, the election of a representative is left to about as many hundreds. Will it be pretended that this difference is sufficient to justify an attachment to the State governments, and an abhorrence to the federal government? If this be the point on which the objection turns, it deserves to be examined. Is it supported by REASON?
This cannot be said, without maintaining that five or six thousand citizens are less capable of choosing a fit representative, or more liable to be corrupted by an unfit one, than five or six hundred. Reason, on the contrary, assures us, that as in so great a number a fit representative would be most likely to be found, so the choice would be less likely to be diverted from him by the intrigues of the ambitious or the ambitious or the bribes of the rich. Is the CONSEQUENCE from this doctrine admissible? If we say that five or six hundred citizens are as many as can jointly exercise their right of suffrage, must we not deprive the people of the immediate choice of their public servants, in every instance where the administration of the government does not require as many of them as will amount to one for that number of citizens? Is the doctrine warranted by FACTS? It was shown in the last paper, that the real representation in the British House of Commons very little exceeds the proportion of one for every thirty thousand inhabitants. Besides a variety of powerful causes not existing here, and which favor in that country the pretensions of rank and wealth, no person is eligible as a representative of a county, unless he possess real estate of the clear value of six hundred pounds sterling per year; nor of a city or borough, unless he possess a like estate of half that annual value. To this qualification on the part of the county representatives is added another on the part of the county electors, which restrains the right of suffrage to persons having a freehold estate of the annual value of more than twenty pounds sterling, according to the present rate of money. Notwithstanding these unfavorable circumstances, and notwithstanding some very unequal laws in the British code, it cannot be said that the representatives of the nation have elevated the few on the ruins of the many. But we need not resort to foreign experience on this subject. Our own is explicit and decisive. The districts in New Hampshire in which the senators are chosen immediately by the people, are nearly as large as will be necessary for her representatives in the Congress. Those of Massachusetts are larger than will be necessary for that purpose; and those of New York still more so.
In the last State the members of Assembly for the cities and counties of New York and Albany are elected by very nearly as many voters as will be entitled to a representative in the Congress, calculating on the number of sixty-five representatives only. It makes no difference that in these senatorial districts and counties a number of representatives are voted for by each elector at the same time. If the same electors at the same time are capable of choosing four or five representatives, they cannot be incapable of choosing one. Pennsylvania is an additional example. Some of her counties, which elect her State representatives, are almost as large as her districts will be by which her federal representatives will be elected. The city of Philadelphia is supposed to contain between fifty and sixty thousand souls. It will therefore form nearly two districts for the choice of federal representatives. It forms, however, but one county, in which every elector votes for each of its representatives in the State legislature. And what may appear to be still more directly to our purpose, the whole city actually elects a SINGLE MEMBER for the executive council. This is the case in all the other counties of the State. Are not these facts the most satisfactory proofs of the fallacy which has been employed against the branch of the federal government under consideration? Has it appeared on trial that the senators of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York, or the executive council of Pennsylvania, or the members of the Assembly in the two last States, have betrayed any peculiar disposition to sacrifice the many to the few, or are in any respect less worthy of their places than the representatives and magistrates appointed in other States by very small divisions of the people? But there are cases of a stronger complexion than any which I have yet quoted.
One branch of the legislature of Connecticut is so constituted that each member of it is elected by the whole State. So is the governor of that State, of Massachusetts, and of this State, and the president of New Hampshire. I leave every man to decide whether the result of any one of these experiments can be said to countenance a suspicion, that a diffusive mode of choosing representatives of the people tends to elevate traitors and to undermine the public liberty.
PUBLIUS.
References:
http://www.hotair.com/
http://www.thehill.com/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
http://www.nro.com/
http://www.dailycaller.com/
http://www.theblaze.com/
http://www.americanspectator.com/
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://www.politico.com/
http://www.foundingfathers.com/
Ron Hart
Lee Harris
Library of Congress/Federalist Papers
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment