Choosing The Right Lane

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

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Charity Begins With Wealth Creation  By John Stossel
Charity — helping people who have trouble helping themselves — is a good thing two times over. It's good for the beneficiary and good for the donor, too. Stephen Post's fine book, "The Hidden Gifts of Helping," reveals that 76 percent of Americans say that helping others is what makes them most happy. Giving money makes us feel good, and helping face-to-face is even better. People say it makes them feel physically healthier. They sleep better. Private charity is unquestioningly better than government efforts to help people. Government squanders money. Charities sometime squander money, too, but they usually don't.  Proof of the superiority of private over government efforts is everywhere. Catholic charities do a better job educating children than government — for much less money. New York City's government left Central Park a dangerous mess. Then a private charity rescued it. But while charity is important, let's not overlook something more important: Before we can help anyone, we first need something to give. Production precedes donation. Advocates of big government forget this.  We can't give unless we (or someone) first creates. Yet wealth creators are encouraged to feel guilt. "Bill Gates, or any billionaire, for that matter," Yaron Brook, author of "Free Market Revolution" and president of the Ayn Rand Institute, said on my TV show, "how did they become a billionaire? By creating a product or great service that benefits everybody. And we know it benefits us because we pay for it. We pay less than what it's worth to us. That's why we trade — we get more value than what we give up. So, our lives are better off. Bill Gates improved hundreds of millions of lives around the world. That's how he became a billionaire."  What especially offends Brook, and me, too, is stigmatizing wealth creators. The rich are made to feel guilty about making money. I sometimes attend "lifetime achievement award" ceremonies meant to honor a businessman. Inevitably, his charity work is celebrated much more enthusiastically than his business creation. Sometimes the businessman says he wants to "give back."  Says Brook, "It's wrong for businessmen to feel like they need to 'give back' as if they took something away from anybody."  He's right. They didn't.    If we value benevolence, we must value creation.  

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"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head."

--Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788

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America has brand-new Benedict Arnold

He single-handedly delivered the swing vote to approve Obamacare and perhaps even crushed the American health system that has been the envy of the world. WND has selected U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. for its first-ever Benedict Arnold Award. “There are lots of bad guys out there who would qualify as ‘Villain of the Year,’ but precious few candidates for the ‘Benedict Arnold Award,’” explained WND Vice President and Managing Editor David Kupelian. “Benedict Arnold, after all, was a good guy; he was an American general in the Revolutionary War who fought valiantly on behalf of the Continental Army – that is, until, for reasons yet unknown, he defected to the British side and betrayed the cause he had formerly served.”

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Obama Orders Pay Raises for Congress, Federal Workers while America suffers!

President Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President Joe Biden. According to disclosure forms, Biden made a cool $225,521 last year. After the pay increase, he’ll now make $231,900 per year. Members of Congress, from the House and Senate, also will receive a little bump, as their annual salary will go from $174,000 to 174,900. Leadership in Congress, including the speaker of the House, will likewise get an increase.

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Obama Pushing U.S. Over ‘Cliff,’ but GOP is Real Target by Tad Cronn                                                                                                        

President Obama on Friday said “the hour for immediate action is here” to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” that will increase everybody’s taxes by letting President Bush’s tax policies die. For most people, the time for immediate action has come and gone, but that wasn’t the real purpose of the Roadblock in Chief’s press conference late Friday. Obama has always been OK with letting the Bush tax policies expire. Despite all his blather about support for the middle class, Obama loves the thought of raising taxes on everybody. In opposing the Bush policies previously, Obama blamed them for the country’s deficits and characterized them as an unwarranted sop to “rich” people, all as part of his class warfare strategy of winning Democrat votes. The orchestrated “fiscal cliff” debate is about the imminent expiration of those cuts, which for years have helped keep down everybody’s tax rates and have probably done more long-term stimulating of the economy than anything Obama has ever proposed. The late-Friday press conference — time chosen to discourage any possible response from the GOP and to dominate the weekend TV news shows — was designed to set up the narrative of a responsible Obama making reasonable requests of the irresponsible, upper-class-coddling Republicans. He emphasized repeatedly that Sens. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell were working on a compromise to be voted on by Congress this weekend, but should that fail — here’s the key — then Obama had ordered Reid to bring forward a “bare minimum” bill to “cut” taxes on the middle class and extend unemployment benefits. In other words, Obama has not given an inch and is setting up a situation where he is daring the GOP to vote against his plan to raise taxes on small businesses and anybody else making $250,ooo or more per year. Once that happens, Obama will have Reid bring up essentially the same plan again for a “straight yes or no” vote, as the president characterized it. In other words, Reid will ram the plan through the Senate one way or another. The “Bush tax cuts” that were so evil, according to Obama and the Democrats, will then become the “Obama tax cuts” for the middle class, with the top end lopped off. This will put the House Republicans in the no-win position of either rejecting a deliberately last-minute, “bare minimum” plan to “help the middle class” or giving in to Obama’s scheme to raise taxes on small businesses in an ongoing recession. Either way, the GOP loses and the Imperial President wins.

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Sen. Graham: Obama's Cliff Meeting 'Political Theater' By: REUTERS

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders were to meet on Friday for the first time since November with no sign of progress in resolving their differences over the federal budget and low expectations for a fiscal cliff deal before Jan. 1.  Instead, members of Congress are increasingly looking at the period immediately after the Dec. 31 deadline to come up with a retroactive fix to avoid the steep tax hikes and sharp spending cuts that economists have said could plunge the country into another recession. "It's feeling very much to me like an optical meeting than a substantive meeting," said Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, noting that it was not a sign of urgency to set a meeting for mid-afternoon with a deadline just days away.

"Any time you announce a meeting publicly in Washington, it's usually for political theater purposes," Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on Thursday on Fox News.

"When the president calls congressional leaders to the White House, it's all political theater or they've got a deal. My bet is all political theater," said Graham, adding that he did not believe an agreement could be reached before the deadline.

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The Fiscal Cliff Diversion

The US economy is already over the fiscal cliff and falling at an increasing rate.  Today’s economic questions should be focused on its rate of descent; will the rate increase or can it be arrested before the rocks below are reached.  After the election the economy has continued to implode, yet its downward plunge has been largely ignored by the mainstream media (MSM).  Apparently the MSM’s economic orthodoxy is now only centered on fiscal cliff narratives.  The MSM’s focus on the cliff gives Obama, their hero, economic cover since the cliff story is the economic story and not the terrible economic results occurring weekly and monthly. Currently it is difficult to find economic data related to the past two months (or past three years)which is positive; whether it is meaningful growth in employment, an increase in the labor participation rate, a consistent uptick in GDP, a reduction in the workforce dropout rate, a reduction in government spending or a reduction in the deficit et. al. Many fiscal cliff narratives have incessantly talked about tax increases/decreases, spending, debt, deficits and the intransigence of the President or the Republicans (mainly Republicans) to compromise.  With compromise a deal to move the country forward on important economic issues can be attained.  Certainly future economic performance will be significantly affected by many of the outcomes related to the cliff negotiations.  Yet the narratives seldom mention the Obama administration’s past or current record on economic issues…a dismal report card that demonstrates no sustainable success on any level over the past four years.

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Hey Lefties! Here’s An Example Of The Need For “Assault Rifles” by Tim Brown

OK, I used the term “assault rifles” in the title to get your attention. Now let me explain that I do not believe they are assault rifles. They are merely rifles capable firing many rounds quickly. The Left gun control crowd has been saying that there is no need for these kinds of weapons, but my friends nothing could be further from the truth and I want to share with you just one instance that everyone should be able to understand just how needy these weapons are. The year was 1992, twenty years ago, when following a jury trial, four Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted, in April, after being accused in the video recorded beating of a black American named Rodney King. As a result, people throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area rioted over six days because of the verdict. They engaged in idespread looting, assault, arson, and even murder. The damage these criminals caused was well over $1 billion! The rioting finally came to a halt after the California National Guard, along with U.S. Marines from Camp Pendleton were called in to help stop them. During the riots, more than 60 people were killed and over 4,000 were injured. On April 30, the second day of the riots, Korean-Americans saw the police fall back from Koreatown, leaving them to defend themselves in the midst of heavy looting and fires. A store owner at the time, Jay Rhee, told the Los Angeles Times, “we have lost faith in the police.” The Times reported in May of 1992:

In the shadow of a flaming mini-mall near the corner of 5th and Western, behind a barricade of luxury sedans and battered grocery trucks, they built Firebase Koreatown.

Richard Rhee, owner of the supermarket on the corner, had watched as roving bands of looters ransacked and burned Korean-owned businesses on virtually every block.

But here, it would be different. “Burn this down after 33 years?” asked Rhee, a survivor of the Korean War, the Watts riots and three decades of business in Los Angeles.

“They don’t know how hard I’ve worked. This is my market and I’m going to protect it.”

From the rooftop of his supermarket, a group of Koreans armed with shotguns and automatic weapons peered onto the smoky streets. Scores of others, carrying steel pipes, pistols and automatic rifles, paced through the darkened parking lot in anticipation of an assault by looters. “It’s just like war,” Rhee said, surveying his makeshift command. “I’ll shoot and worry about the law later.” From tiny liquor stores in South-Central Los Angeles to the upscale boutiques in Mid-Wilshire, Korean store owners have turned their pastel-colored mini-malls into fortresses against the looter’s tide. For many store owners, the riots have become a watershed in the struggle for the survival of their community. The store owners shot off at least 500 rounds into the sky and ground to break up masses of people that were looting. They could have only accomplished that with the types of weapons they were using.

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Feinstein Assault Weapons Ban Covers Rifles, Pistols and Shotguns

The New Year is just around the corner and although the Senate still hasn’t made a fiscal cliff deal, Senator Diane Feinstein already has parts of new gun control legislation ready to go. Two Sunday’s ago on NBC’s Meet the Press, Feinstein talked about giving President Obama a bill he can “lead on” and used the term assault weapon loosely. Feinstein has posted a summary of what the legislation will cover, which includes a ban on semi-automatic handguns and shotguns in addition to rifles. The legislation also requires registration of previously purchased guns. If passed, ATF would be in charge of enforcement which should be a huge concern to gun owners.

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Krauthammer: Obama Using Cliff to Start GOP 'Civil War' By: Dan Weil

President Barack Obama has been winning the public relations battle so far in his dispute with Republicans over the fiscal cliff, but the GOP will come out on top if there’s a cliff dive, says syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. Perhaps the biggest area of disagreement between the two sides is over raising taxes on the wealthy. House Speaker John Boehner was willing to accept such an agreement, as insisted upon by Obama. But the Republican House conference rebelled against that idea last week. As for the president, “he’s been using this, with ruthless skill to fracture and basically shatter the Republican opposition,” Krauthammer told Fox News on Thursday. “His objective from the very beginning was to break the will of the Republicans in the House and to create an internal civil war. He’s done that.” But Republicans should realize they’re playing from a position of strength Krauthammer says. "I think the Republicans will surely have a much stronger hand [if] we go over the cliff, assuming Obama stays very hard line and offers only humiliating conditions,” he said. Obama’s need for congressional approval to raise the debt ceiling and thus avoid default early next year gives Republicans leverage, Krauthammer says. “With bravado, he [the president] says 'Oh, that's a game I won't play.' He has to play, he's the president." Both parties have something to gain from a jump off the cliff, according to Politico. Republican congressmen can tout their opposition to tax increases and avoid primary threats from the right. And Democrats can say they fought tax reductions for the rich and entitlement cuts.

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64% Believe in God of the Bible

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Two-out-of-three Americans (64%) believe in the God of the Bible. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey also finds that 12% do not believe in God at all. Eleven percent (11%) believe in some form or essence of God, five percent (5%) in some other form of God, and eight percent (8%) are not sure.  Those who do not believe in God are evenly divided as to whether or not believers are foolish: 42% say they are, but 42% disagree. Among those under 40, just 53% believe in the God of the Bible. That figure is 70% for those aged 40-64 and 73% for senior citizens. Women (68%) are a bit more likely to believe in the Biblical God than men (60%).