Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
Phot by Amanda M Hatfield
Congressional members high tailed it out of Washington after passing a debt limit agreement, but Democrats Steve Israel and Tim Bishop wasted no time in holding a press conference at MacArthur airport on Long Island to blame Republicans for a crisis they created.
After the deranged Jared Loughner was subdued in Tucson, it took virtually no time at all for Democrat Sheriff Clarence Dubnik to start blaming rhetoric on the right to have driven Loughner to his deed. As the story unfolded, there was no such evidence to support the sheriff’s claim. If anything, Loughner’s leanings were leftward.
Let the games begin. The Republicans now control the House of Representatives and have pledged to cut $100 billion from the budget in short order. About half a beat later came the howls from the transportation lobby that they can’t possibly mean highway and mass-transit projects. Why is this even a matter for debate?
Comments submitted in response to a previous post, “The Progressive War on Federalism,” focused on the Electoral College and a movement called the National Popular Vote (http://www.nationalpopularvote.com) bill. Rather than argue against my point it only seemed to reinforce it. The objective of this movement, which before this commenter’s contribution I was unaware of, is to abolish, or should I say neuter, the Electoral College and replace it with the direct election of the president. This movement looks to further weaken the states and move us away from federalism and toward a strong monolithic central government. Here is my analysis.
When 300,000-500,000 of your closest friends, depending on who is doing the estimating, show up for a rally on the Washington Mall you would think it was somewhat newsworthy, no? Of course it is, that’s why the New York Times published the story on page fifteen. If you were walking by a newsstand and glanced at the front page, you wouldn’t have know that a half million of your fellow citizens got together with Glenn Beck to restore honor in America. The front page would entice you with:
I guess our friends at the times couldn’t find any fabricated stories of someone shouting the “N-word” at Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece Alveda King, who was one of the featured speakers, to elevate the story to the front page. Perhaps it would have been too embarrassing to mention on the front page that Al Sharpton’s counter-demonstration where “several hundred people packed a football field at Paul Laurance Dunbar High School to stage a rally commemorating Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.” Yesterday, you would have thought both rallies were the same size with crowd estimates of several thousand for each. Perhaps this shows the true value of racial politics today. America is tired of the race baiting and the false charges. President Obama was elected with hope and change to become the post-racial leader of the country. It appears the country has moved on without his leadership.
In another piece in the Times two Progressive women pine for a “Palin of Our Own”, to win the hearts and minds of America. The problem is America doesn’t want to listen to Janeane Garofalo or Joy Behar sneeringly spouting off about Sarah Palin. As far as any women Progressive politicians, who is there other than Hillary Clinton and we’ve seen that act and passed on it.
In another piece titled “Party Down”, Marc Ambinder tells us about the anti-incumbent mood, “Unlike parties, which often recruit candidates who would appeal to the average voter in a general election, these activists care only about nominating the person who accurately represents their own views and frustrations.” Appeal to the average voter? The problem with the Republican Party in the past is that they have been listening to the main stream media reports about who the “average voter” is. So they have elected so called “moderates” who get their clocks cleaned by real Progressives in the election. The left snickered in their sleeves while growing the government into the bloated, ineffective, couch potato that it is. It alarms those on the left that the Tea Party movement has changed all this and tone deaf incumbents are getting tossed left and right. They have unmasked the average voter to be conservative and by measuring candidates against a conservative yardstick, they have struck a chord with the voters who have long felt ignored and disenfranchised. Now those voters are energized and can’t wait to get to the polls. Reason for panic on the left, indeed.
We currently have a commission investigating how to deal with our ballooning deficit and Brobdingnagian debt. In the past we have had a commission on military base closings and I am sure there were others that don’t immediately come to mind. Why do we need them when Congress and the President have the necessary power to make these changes? Cowardice. It may be a harsh charge, but that is basically it, no one wants to go on record making tough choices, but if they can get an unelected bipartisan commission to make a recommendation that Congress can vote “all or none” then there are plenty of political fig leaves to go around.
“Well, I didn’t vote for that one, I voted for this one, but it was an all or nothing deal so I couldn’t separate them out.” We pay these people $174,000 each in base pay and they punt the hard choices to a commission. Why? Because they see their primary job as keeping that $174,000 per year job, something that gets easier once you are an incumbent, so long as you don’t make a major mistake, like a hard decision for the benefit of the country.
If you look at the Constitution, the powers granted to the federal government were few and defined, as Madison put it in Federalist No. 45. With such limited and defined powers, the federal government should focus on a limited number of items and deal with them directly. But the size and scope of the federal government has grown enormously and the current administration wants to grow it even more enormously. So don’t look for any tough choices. Look for more and more commissions to deliver up “solutions” that the weak kneed members of Congress can vote up or down for. This is gridlock by design.
Once you move most government functions to the federal level, how can anything possibly be accomplished? How do you pass a law that benefits New York and doesn’t harm Alaska? How much do Alaska and New York have in common? Perhaps that is why most major pieces of legislation coming out of Congress run into thousands of pages? Look at it this way, if a bill of twenty pages is applied differently to fifty states, you soon have 1,000 pages. But what the Constitution says is that there are a few enumerated powers given to the federal government and everything else is left to the states and the people. Let the people of Mississippi pass a law of twenty pages that suits the people of Mississippi and let the people of Idaho pass their own. This will bring about the ability for the other 48 states to look at these two examples and decide for themselves which one would work better in their state or choose a completely different path or none at all. But if it is all at the federal level you can yell and scream and jump up and down on your Congressman’s desk for all that matters and he can say, “Gosh, I’m just one of 435 members here. I agree with what you are saying, but…” If the issue is at the state level you have more clout and at the local level even more so.
But what we have is a government whose spending is out of control. We have a commission that will not report until after the mid-term elections and as sure as I draw a breath, their report will be full of new taxes including a Value Added Tax (VAT) to bring buckets of tax revenue to put out the spending conflagration. Sure there will be some spending cuts, mostly in the discretionary areas that don’t add up to much of the budget anyway, but probably make for good media coverage.
We need to shrink the monster. We need to take away from the federal government those responsibilities that are not spelled out in the Constitution and let the states and their residents decide how to handle the rest, if at all. If we don’t take these steps, the gridlock we see today will continue. The only difference will be that our Congressional representatives will be making over $200,000 a year before long to do what would get them fired in the private sector.
I received an e-mail from my Congressman telling me how he was on top of the situation in the Gulf:
“I am a member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which is at the forefront of an aggressive (sic) Congressional response to BP’s oil spill. Last week, I voted in Committee to approve a comprehensive legislative response to environmental and economic liability issues raised by the spill.”
As I had written about previously (The Regulators are Dead, Long Live the Regulators), this was just one more case of government failing us but then rushing out more legislation and control so it won’t happen again. If government was doing its job, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. So I wrote back to the Congressman.
Dear Congressman Bishop,
I read with interest your e-mail to me about the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which you say is at the forefront of an aggressive Congressional response to BP’s oil spill. Excuse my skepticism but this sounds like one more “we’re really gonna fix it this time,” response to the failure of government to do what they are already empowered to do.
You say the Oil Spill Accountability and Environmental Protection Act of 2010 “will ensure that responsible parties will be responsible for 100% of the oil pollution cleanup costs.” If I am not mistaken it was the Congress that passed a law limiting the damages from an oil spill to $75 million, which created a moral hazard that perhaps encouraged BP to cut corners. But wasn’t it BP who voluntarily waived the $75 million limit and has promised from the start that they would pay the full costs, thereby helping Congress remove the egg from their collective faces for including the limit in the first place? Don’t get me wrong, BP has a lot to answer for but at the same time BP applied to the government regulators for several waivers of safety tests and requirements that the government granted. If government had been doing their job, perhaps this would never have happened in the first place.
Aside from closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, I see no mention in your e-mail about holding Congressional hearings to ask the Obama Administration why they have not yet suspended the Jones Act and accepted the offer of help from twelve countries in the cleanup effort. When asked, Thad Allen and Carol Browner offered the weak excuse that no one asked them for a waiver. Why did the administration stand in the way of Louisiana building sand berms to stop the oil from reaching the coast because of environmental reasons? From an environmental disaster standpoint, doesn’t the oil gushing in the Gulf trump other concerns? We seem to have multiple agencies operating in the Gulf and each one is getting in the way of each other and no one in the administration is taking the lead to clear the red tape. Why is that Congressman?
Instead of talking about preventing avoidable disasters in the future, why don’t you find out why this avoidable disaster was not prevented by the regulations we have on the books and by the agencies in charge of doing so? For once, perhaps you can wait until those facts are known before you rush out to craft more legislation to fix a problem like you did with the financial services industries when it will be months before the Angelides Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has finished its investigation.
Government that works is more important than signing ceremonies for ill considered legislation that is rushed and voted upon but unread by our representatives.
Sincerely yours,
William R. O’Connell
I am sure there will be a signing ceremony and tough talk about how we’re really putting an end to this wild unfettered market, but if you trace it back this disaster had government leading the way. It forced the oil companies to drill in deeper water; it created a moral hazard by capping their liability for any spills to $75 million (which BP waived and accepted responsibility for the full costs); the regulatory agency in charge both collects royalty payments from the oil companies and assesses penalties for failure to comply with regulations; and that same agency granted BP several waivers to take shortcuts before the well failed. But don’t worry Congress is really going to get tough now.
Who doesn’t love a freebie? Who does not get a thrill of good fortune by finding money in the street, no matter how insignificant the amount? We may not believe in the Tooth Fairy, but many of us believe we have a rich benevolent uncle, Uncle Sam, who is willing to lavish upon us his wealth if only we would ask. The sad truth is that Uncle Sam is not rich, but penniless and is running a ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff blush.
Health Care for $20
One of the major reasons that health care costs are rising out of control is that no one is minding the store. While Washington twists itself in knots to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic of health care, we have little to no say in how our health care dollars are spent. Our health care “insurance” system is not really insurance. Insurance is meant to protect us from a financial catastrophe. Going to the doctor for a checkup is not a catastrophe. Paying a $20 co-pay for that checkup is like finding money on the street. There is no way anyone can get a physical exam, except by a hooker, for $20. It is a good idea to get a physical checkup every year? Yes, then pay the bill and ask what you are paying for and make sure you need it. You take your car in for service don’t you? Do you file an insurance claim when you do? Can you get it done for $20. Let’s get real. What we have is called third party payer and when someone else is picking up the tab, do we care what it costs? Really? But someone is picking up the tab. Look in your other pocket, because you are. If you are generally healthy and you get your annual checkup, your insurance premium (here in New York at least) will probably run around $10,000 per year. But, hey, you only paid $20 for that physical! What if you paid the full amount for the physical, say, $500. What if your insurance premium was cut to $5,000 because you would pay most routine medical costs out of your pocket and what if you could put the $4,500 left over ($10,000 original premium, minus $5,000 current premium, minus $500 cost of checkup), into a tax free account that can be used for future medical expenses or retirement if you don’t use it? If you are a young person and stay healthy into your mid-40s, you would have accumulated over $90,000 in your medical savings account and you still have catastrophic insurance coverage and the government stays out of the picture.
Retirement for Free
Like many well intentioned Government programs, Social Security, enacted during the Great Depression, seemed like a good idea at the time. When enacted there was about 15 workers paying in for each recipient drawing out. Today there are about a little over 3 workers paying in for each beneficiary. Bernie Madoff would blush at the audacity of it. On top of that the money that is paid into Social Security can only be “invested” in Treasury Securities so the return is lousy, but safe. People reacted to Social Security by saving less because the government safety net was there. Had people been encouraged to save for their own retirement, they would not be leaving their children this legacy of a ticking time bomb. So today, many young people feel the government’s hand in their pocket when they look at the FICA line on their pay stub, but don’t believe they will ever get a penny back. Nice concept.
Bring Home the Bacon!
What’s the measure of a good Congressman or Senator? Bringing home pork for the district, no? If you are like me, you get flyers every year or several times per year, touting how Congresswoman Jones obtained federal funding for that pier at the amusement park. With 435 Congressmen you can count on this, for each $1 that your Representative brings home $434 leaves the Treasury for each of the other Congressional districts and probably more, depending on the power and seniority of your Representative. Guess who’s paying for that Turtle Crossing in Florida? that bridge to nowhere in Alaska? that airport in Johnstown, PA that no one uses? That’s right, you are. What if we decided locally if we really needed a pier at the amusement park, and if we did, pay for it ourselves? Then we could let the people of Florida decide if they want to build a turtle crossing, the people of Alaska decide if they wanted a bridge to nowhere and the people of Pennsylvania decide if they wanted an airport that no one used. Then we could cut federal taxes by an equal amount to keep them out of mischief and help us pay for these projects if we really wanted them.
Let’s Get Organized
There was a time in our history where labor unions performed a valuable service. In those times when many industrial jobs were unskilled or semi-skilled, employers could dismiss someone on a whim and replace them within the hour. Unions gave those workers some counterbalancing power and fairer treatment. Today, we have a much more sophisticated economy and workers have more skills and mobility. Union membership has declined accordingly, in the private sector at least. Why is union membership still growing in the public sector? What is different about workers in the public sector that they still need unions? Are we suggesting that all government workers are unskilled? Why do teachers need a union? Are they not skilled such that they could sell their services to the highest bidder? Why do unions fight merit pay for teachers? Why are school principals, the de facto CEO of the school and who in New York easily make six figures, unionized? Do you get an idea why our K-12 public school system is trailing the world in performance?
In Michigan, privately owned small businesses that provided day-care services suddenly discovered that they were part of a union and union dues were being withheld from their government contractual payments.
Ms. Berry owns her own business—yet the Michigan Department of Human Services claims she is a government employee and union member. The agency thus withholds union dues from the child-care subsidies it sends to her on behalf of her low-income clients. Those dues are funneled to a public-employee union that claims to represent her. The situation is crazy—and it’s happening elsewhere in the country.
Ms. Berry, runs “The Berry Patch” a private day care center she operates from her home catering to low income clients. The money that was once paid to her, now goes to a union that does little for her. She is “self employed and wants nothing to do with the union.” Don’t you think we need more of these tactics in America? Card Check anyone?
Going Postal
And let’s not forget the Postal Service. As postal rates are again scheduled to increase on January 4, let’s look at this paragon of efficiency, that is actually authorized by the Constitution. In 2008, the Postal Service lost $3 billion, and the Postmaster General John Potter pulled down $800,000 in compensation including $135,000 in incentive bonuses. What do we have to pay this guy if he actually breaks even? Also, let us not forget this is also a very heavily unionized operation.
Don’t Worry, You Won’t Feel a Thing
During World War II, FDR needed to raise more revenue to pay for the war. Fearing a backlash, his team hit upon the idea of payroll withholding. Knowing the potential backlash that would result when taxpayers had to write that big check on April 15th, he rightly figured that if he took a little bit each week, he could take a lot more in total. Statists in Washington have never looked back. It’s like the tax that was imposed on telephone service to pay for the Spanish American War that is still in place today. Instead of picking our pockets every week, what do you think most Americans would say about the size of the federal government if they had to write one big check on April 15th? There would be no tax rebates, because there would be no tax withheld. Do you think Americans would force Congress to sharpen their pencils and scale back the size of government?
Help is On the Way
Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help!’” But perhaps the best example of how far from our founding principles our government has strayed comes from Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut as she spoke during a House End of Year Wrap Up Session:
“This House–we understand, we’re there,” she said. “You can count on us because we believe that it’s our moral responsibility to make sure that you and your family need our help.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the House of Representatives making sure I need their help. I need as little interference as possible from them. Their meddlesome intrusions in our lives is killing what made this country great. It is a point we cannot make often enough.
Reading one of the liberal pundit’s pan of Sarah Palin’s new book and how the reviewer harps on her inexperience, anyone with a room temperature IQ cannot help but ask, what about the guy who won? You can say she had little executive experience, only two years as governor of Alaska and two terms as mayor of 7,000 resident Wasilla. But while one may argue she had little executive experience, he had none. For that matter, neither did McCain or Biden. Legislative experience? Sure. Executive experience? No, and it shows.
Decisions, Decisions
What has he actually made a decision on? The economy? The porkulus package that is “saving” so many jobs, was put together by Pelosi. It was as if she brought it to him and said, “Here, sign,” and he did. Health care? He talked a great deal about it, but five or more proposals sprouted from different committees and like a demolition derby, banged around until there was one left, dented, but still moving.
Guantanamo? Iraq? Afghanistan? A decision, no, no, no, we need to ponder and confer more. Despite putting the commander, McChrystal, in place, Obama can’t seem to agree or disagree with his recommendation. And now, the granddaddy of them all, trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York.
Who’s the Boss?
This is what Barack Obama said:
“‘This is a prosecutorial decision as well as a national security decision.”
Er, no. This is a decision for the Commander in Chief. Don’t slough it off on some underling, no matter how lofty his title, so that at some future date you can put the blame on him. As Harry Truman (D) said, “The buck stops here.” It’s time, Mr. President, to step in, assert your constitutional authority and put a stop to this. The military tribunals were set up and authorized by Congress for just this purpose. It’s time to do the right thing. You took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to bow to your left wing base.
After 9/11, President Bush kept us safe for seven and half years. Less than a year into your presidency, we have had the worst terrorist attack on our soil since then. This was preventable. But we are already starting down the slippery slope of liberal happy talk and putting all Americans in harm’s way. Consider this, if the jihadists had their way and actually defeated us and took over, the first place they would go to slaughter the devils would be Hollywood. If you don’t want to protect America because it’s what you took an oath to do, then do it to save your Hollywood friends from themselves.
Just what is a czar anyway? And I am not talking about the Russian royal family. A czar is essentially a presidential advisor. Take a moment to think about that. Why does President Obama need to appoint 32, give or take, czars in his administration? Could it be that he really, really needs a lot of advising?
In the campaign, the main stream media, somehow diverted the attention away from Obama’s glaring lack of experience as the Presidential candidate and put all their focus on Sarah Palin’s “lack of experience.” Sarah Palin had more executive experience as a sitting governor and I emphasize executive experience, than Obama, Biden, and McCain combined.
But the media tut-tutted, and said “it’s only Alaska,” as for her mayoral experience, “it was a very small town.” When Obama slipped his teleprompter and tried to claim he was running a very large organization, his campaign, it was laughable. But don’t worry, he had Joe Biden to lean on. I feel better.
Presidents and The Experience They Brought With Them
Let’s take a look back at past elected presidents and the executive experience they brought to office:
Legislators Versus Executives
So, from the beginning of the 20th Century until the election of Barack Obama, only once has a president with only legislative experience been elected, John F. Kennedy. Nikita Khrushchev took advantage of Kennedy’s inexperience in their first summit in Vienna, and then there was the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the attempted overthrow of Castro. On top of those two building blocks we got the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought us closer than we have ever been to thermonuclear obliteration.
The Eternal Campaign
President Obama is no different. He has the least experience of any president since 1900. He effectively was only a United States Senator for two years, as he was busy campaigning for the next two years and resigned his last two years after being elected president. So what does he do? He does what he is comfortable doing and what he is good at, campaigning. He has held more press conferences in six months than his predecessor did in eight years. Who is running the show while Obama is running around? Is it Nancy Pelosi? Rahm Emmanual? His programs are falling apart. The stimulus isn’t working and more Americans say that it has hurt the economy rather than helped it (31%-25%) and that the rest of it should be canceled. His cap and trade plan is opposed by most Americans (56%) who don’t want to pay more in taxes to fight global warming. His government takeover of our health care is opposed by most Americans (53%-44%) and yet he presses on, figuring that with enough campaigning the American people will be won over.
This may be a long slog, waiting for 2012 and hoping our country does not get destroyed by all the power grabbing characters in Congress, who don’t care a whit about us, only about increasing the powerful control they have over our lives. We have the fight of our lives on our hands preventing the taking of our liberties.
