In pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free
markets and individual liberty
"There is but one straight
course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Labor to keep alive in your
breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."
--George Washington,
The Rules of Civility, 1748
~~~~~~
The Real Meaning of
the Fiscal Cliff: “We Were All Lying in 2011” by Gary North
In August 2011,
the House, the Senate, and the President all agreed: taxes on all Americans
would rise, and government spending would slow on January 1, 2013. They signed
that law in order to get Republicans to agree to an increase in the
government’s debt ceiling. They lied. They had no intention of raising
taxes, reducing spending, and getting closer — marginally — to a balanced
on-budget budget. It was all a charade. It was another example of kick the
can. They did not take the law seriously. They thought there would be some
last-minute deal to keep taxes lower, keep spending higher, and run another
trillion-dollar deficit — maybe even more. Now they are trapped by their own
lie. They cannot get a deal. The scheduled tax hikes and spending slowdown
will hit the economy in a few days. “Oh, woe!” The government is now trapped
by its own public relations deception. The promised return to at least the
fringes of fiscal sanity threatens to create a recession. Both sides blame
the other for not finding a way to kick the can again. Neither side really
expected to go through with this reform. It was all for political show.
It was political theater. It was all a charade to fool the rubes back home.
“We have a solution to the deficit. We’ll begin to implement it on January 1,
2013. Trust us.” Trust Congress? To quote Nancy Pelosi: “Are you serious?”
Now they are hoisted by their own gaseous petard. They cannot come to an
agreement on kicking the can. They now face the grim reality of their own
charade. Frantically, they take the fall-back position of politics. They point the finger.
They blame the other political party. “It’s all their fault!”
~~~~~~
Democrats pushing
for Bush-era tax cuts?
Democrats seeking a deal to avert the
year-end “fiscal cliff” are trying to etch into stone the signature economic
achievement of Republican President George W. Bush by permanently extending tax
cuts enacted during his tenure. President Obama
has put the extension of the tax cuts for most Americans at the top of his
domestic agenda, a remarkable turnaround for Democrats, who had staunchly
opposed the tax breaks when they were written into law about a decade ago. With
Obama leaving his Hawaii vacation for Washington Wednesday evening and
lawmakers returning Thursday, the main dividing line between Republicans and
Democrats has come down to whether tax rates should increase for top earners at
the end of the year, when the Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire. While
Republicans want to extend all the cuts, Democrats are pushing to maintain
lower rates on household income below $250,000. Those lower rates significantly
reduce the taxes of nearly all American households that earn less than $250,000
— and many who earn more, even if tax rates are allowed to increase on income
above that figure.
~~~~~~
President Obama’s
Health Exchanges Are Mistakes, Not Markets
The lines are now
drawn in the latest installment of our grand experiment in the “laboratories of
democracy.” The deadline for states’ decisions to establish their own health
care exchanges passed: Eighteen states and the District of Columbia will do it,
seven states will form a “federal-state partnership, and twenty-five states
have refused. Time will tell which states have made the right decision. Yet
citizens evaluating the actions of their respective states need to understand
that, despite the media’s coverage of this debate, these exchanges aren’t
“markets.” Indeed, we’ve already seen ObamaCare change the definition of “tax”
and “penalty.” Even before its passage, the debate over this law polluted
the definition of the word “access” beyond recognition. Now, it seems “market”
is next. Describing the “exchanges” as markets may sound nice, but it’s
deceiving. When Americans hear the term “market,” they think of free
people seeking to exchange goods or services. No actor or planner “creates”
a free market. Markets are supposed to be organic: They develop and evolve
under the influence of many variables as people seek to meet the needs of
others by exchanging labor or goods. Government has long elbowed its way
into these free exchanges, setting rules and regulations for how buyers and
sellers must act. Yet there comes a point when government’s prescriptions are
so great, that they distort markets beyond recognition. The actors in
the exchange are really just carrying out government’s dictates, not responding
to the needs and desires of potential customers at all.
~~~~~~
Vatican newspaper
compares marriage equality to communism
Faced with recent setbacks in the United
States and in Europe, the Catholic Church has intensified its increasingly
uphill battle against gay marriage.
The latest salvo
came on Monday (Dec. 17), with a front-page article in the Vatican’s semiofficial
newspaper, L’Osservatore
Romano. Historian Lucetta Scaraffia compared
proponents of gay marriage, with their championing of “marriage equality,” to
20th-century communists who wooed millions with their promise of perfect social
and economical equality. Scaraffia, a 64-year-old former feminist activist who
later became a fervent Catholic, has often written in the Vatican newspaper on
the issue. For her, the idea of gay marriage is a product of the
same “egalitarian utopia that did so much damage during the 20th century
… deceiving humanity as socialism did in the past.”
~~~~~~
Note to Gun-Control Liberals: You Can’t Handle the Truth by David L. Goetsch
As
they typically do following high-profile shooting incidents, liberals are
taking advantage of the Sandy Hook tragedy and the Jovan Belcher/Kasandra
Perkins murder-suicide to turn up the volume in the debate over one of their
favorite issues: gun control. To liberals, the solution to every problem
is the same: pass another law and increase the size of government. But
liberal solutions do not work and never will work because they ignore some
obvious truths. For example, here is a truth that liberals admit but like to
ignore: The government spends billions on its so-called “war on drugs,” but to
no avail. Drug use is higher than it has ever been. Immigration laws do
little to deter illegal immigration. They just create jobs for criminals
who specialize in circumventing the laws. Prohibition did not stop the sale and
consumption of alcohol. It just created a black market for liquor, a
market that flourished. New gun-control laws will be equally ineffective,
and liberals know it. Why are liberals so determined to avoid dealing with the
hard truths about gun violence in America? It’s because they can’t handle the
truth. The first and most important truth that must be faced
about gun-violence in America is that liberals who are so vocal about passing
gun-control laws are hypocrites—they are not
interested in reducing gun violence in the first place. They are simply
pandering to naïve Americans and those poor grieving families of shooting
victims to make it appear that they care and are doing something.
~~~~~~
Sen.
Grassley: GOP Has 'Leverage' Over Obama on Fiscal Cliff By: Jim Meyers and Kathleen Walter
Longtime
Sen. Chuck Grassley tells Newsmax that Republicans have a “great deal of
leverage” on President Obama because they can refuse to raise the debt ceiling
unless he agrees to spending cuts. The Iowa Republican also says the
president wants the nation to go over the fiscal cliff because it will raise
everyone’s taxes — then he can be seen as saving the middle class by lowering
their taxes in the new year. Grassley was first elected to the
Senate in 1980. He is member of the Budget and Finance committees and the
former chairman of the Finance Committee. In an exclusive interview with
Newsmax TV, Grassley addresses claims by some Republicans that President Obama
wants the nation to go over the fiscal cliff and let the Bush-era tax cuts
expire. “He hasn’t shown any leadership because he doesn’t know how to
compromise. He does want us to go over the cliff because he’s holding all the
cards. He’s got nothing to lose. You go over the cliff, everybody’s taxes are
going to go up, particularly the two percent where he wanted the rates to go
up. Then he’ll come back after the first of the year, suggest for people under
$250,000 to actually decrease their taxes, so he not only [gets] a tax increase
on the wealthy, but he’s going to end up being a person that saves the middle
class because going over the cliff raises taxes on everybody. He’s in a
position where he gets everything and he can still lower taxes for the middle
class after the first of the year. Maybe they’ve only been going up for a
couple of weeks or maybe a month, but eventually, we’re going to not raise
taxes on the middle class."
~~~~~~
Media
Turns Good News Into Bad, And Blames Republicans
by Mark Horne
The
good news is simple enough: consumers are cutting back in their spending. This
may not be pleasant for some people because they want to sell more stuff. But
their welfare is not the general welfare. The general welfare is obvious:
people need to spend less and save more. The Guardian reports:
“Retailers
pulled stocks lower Wednesday as US markets reopened following the Christmas
holiday. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 49 points to 13,090 as of noon.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell seven to 1,419 and the Nasdaq
composite lost 19 to 2,993… Major US retailers fell following a glum report on
US holiday sales. Macy’s and Urban Outfitters lost 3%. Sears Holdings fell
nearly 5%. The MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse report found that sales of
electronics, clothing, jewelry and home goods increased just 0.7% in the two
months before Christmas compared with the same period last year. That’s well
below the growth of 3 to 4% growth that analysts had expected and the worst
performance since 2008, when spending shrank during the Great Recession”
(emphasis added).
This
is, hopefully, a turning point from past foolish behavior. Thanks to
consumer credit and boundless fantasies about how it will all be taken care of
in the future (commonly called “consumer optimism”), consumers have been
spending more than they bring in. This doesn’t just mean that they are in debt;
it also means that almost every industry is selling goods and services to
Americans on the basis of wealth that doesn’t really exist. No matter how
much Wal-Mart boasts in low prices, the truth is that their expectations
regarding how much they sell are shaped by a past history of consumers willing
to use credit and to not bother to save.
~~~~~~
In
Bloomberg’s Fairy Tale GUN Free Communist World
New
York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg lives in a fairy tale world … a place of make
believe where dictators direct every aspect of the citizens’ lives … from what
they are allowed to eat and drink, to what they can legally own, to what they
can even think. Mayor Bloomberg said over the weekend that President Obama
should bypass Congress and by EXECUTIVE ORDER, take action on gun control or
thousands of people will die. He even named a number: 48,000 people: “If he
does nothing during his second term, something like 48,000 Americans will be
killed with illegal guns.” Has he lost his mind? Why is no one looking into
his mental stability? First let’s examine some of the phrases he uses: “Bypass Congress.” “Executive Order.” It seems to me that
Bloomberg’s view of America is more like a communist dictatorship rather than
President of a Republic. Of course, Bloomberg knows the only way dictators can
rule lives is to take away their ability to rise up and fight back against
tyranny.
~~~~~~
Gallup: Majority of Americans Hold Favorable View of NRA By: Stephen Feller
A
majority of Americans have a favorable view of the National Rifle Association,
according to a new Gallup poll. The poll also found that views of the gun
advocacy group were more positive among gun owners, although owners said the
NRA did not always reflect their views. Fifty-four percent of respondents to
the Gallup survey said they held a mostly favorable or very favorable view of
the NRA, while 38 percent said they had a mostly unfavorable or very
unfavorable view of the organization. That is down from a high of 60
percent favorability in 2005, but still far above the low of 42 percent
recorded in 1995.
No comments:
Post a Comment