The Right Lane update 13.15.13

The 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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A Tale of Two Budgets

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson

It's budget time in Washington, which for the last four years has meant the Democrat-controlled Senate not passing a budget. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, released his third "Path to Prosperity" budget with several tweaks to previous versions. Believe it or not, Ryan's Senate counterpart, Patty Murray (D-WA), also released a budget blueprint this week. Naturally, one budget is reasonable, and the other exacerbates the problem.

Ryan's budget is far from extreme as the Left wants us to believe. On the positive side, he made changes to bring the budget into balance in 10 years instead of 30. But spending under his budget still increases 3.4 percent annually compared to Democrats' planned 5 percent growth. Over a decade, that means federal expenditures of $41 trillion instead of $46 trillion. Ryan calls for, but does not assume, tax reform -- just two individual income tax brackets of 10 percent and 25 percent, which would create far more economic growth than any "stimulus" plan. He emphasizes economic growth rather than austerity. On the downside, Ryan assumes that the recent Obama tax hikes remain in place and that tax revenue will be roughly 19 percent of GDP over the next decade, almost a whole percentage point higher than the post-1980 average. While his budget does assume the repeal of ObamaCare -- impossible given the current White House occupant -- it keeps ObamaCare's $1 trillion tax increases.

Just as Barack Obama's budget has, the plan counts "savings" from no longer fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet those expenses won't be incurred regardless of what budget, if any, becomes law. Though Ryan's budget is generally strong on defense, this accounting gimmick is disappointing. Finally, Ryan's budget continues to put off real entitlement reform. Medicare reform is deferred until 2024, and Social Security isn't touched at all. In light of political reality in Washington, this is at least understandable, but since Ryan's budget stands no chance of becoming law, why not lay out real limited government priorities? These programs are unsustainable in their current form -- Medicare will be insolvent by the time reforms kick in -- and Ryan's plan should have been stronger and more than just "not the Democrats' plan."

For what would be the first Senate budget since before the iPad was introduced, Democrats return to their old standby -- tax hikes. Sen. Murray's plan calls for yet another $1.5 trillion in tax hikes mostly through "closing loopholes" (read: decreasing or eliminating deductions), but at the same time, it makes no effort to balance the budget. Ever. And that's in spite of assuming 20 percent of GDP in revenue, which is far above the post-World War II average. So if this so-called "balanced approach" isn't about achieving actual balance, why the higher taxes? Obama has provided that answer repeatedly: It's an issue of "fairness." Indeed, "balance" simply means higher taxes to go along with higher spending, including another $100 billion "stimulus" this year. The defense budget is the only thing facing reduction -- and it's $658 billion smaller than the House budget 10-year plan. Regarding entitlements, "the Senate budget insists on 'keeping promises' it cannot keep." It continues the $20 trillion War on Poverty [which has not and will not be won by a nanny state] by increasing welfare spending even more, with feeling. And of course, ObamaCare remains part of the package.

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Sun Still Rises After Sequester So Prez Comes Up With Plan B To Insure Hardship By Bernard Goldberg

So what's a president supposed to do when it looks like his credibility is going down the drain because he made up scary stories about how sequester was going to end life as we know it? Come up with Plan B, what else.  First, a few words about Plan A. Remember when the president and his posse told us about how meat inspectors would get furloughed and meat wouldn't get inspected? And how long lines at the airport would get even longer? And how kids wouldn't get educated because teachers would lose their jobs? And how the sun wouldn't come up in the morning? (Okay, I made that one up). All because of sequester?  And remember how he didn't bother to tell us that even after sequester the federal government would still spend billions more this year than last year? Which means — despite what he did tell us — there would be absolutely no cuts in spending … just cuts in the increase in spending … and really small cuts at that, a few pennies on the dollar.  Then the really bad news kicked in, for the president anyway. The sun came up and no one died because they ate tainted meat and kids didn't get kicked out of school and teachers didn't get laid off and blah blah blah blah blah!  So here's where Plan B comes in. The president had to show us that he really was right about the hardship he predicted, so he flexed his political muscles and did what any great leader of the American people would do: He shut down tours to the White House, just as spring break for little kids was approaching.

·       Thanks to Tom Coburn, the Republican senator from Oklahoma, we learn that taxpayers are funding a government program that studies how cocaine affects the reproductive habits of quail — and not even American quail. We're shelling out $181,000 to figure out how blow affects Japanese quail.

·       [Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano] can find savings in the wasteful grant program that gave America an underwater robot for Columbus, Ohio and a BearCat armored—personnel carrier to guard a pumpkin festival in Keene, N.H. (population 23,000).

·       Did you know that the White House employs three calligraphers? Did you know they make a total of $277,000 a year? How about this: The Environmental Protection agency gave away $141,000 — fasten your seat belt! — to fund a Chinese study on swine manure. And the National Science Foundation shelled out $325,000 to build — wait for it — a robotic squirrel.

·       "The government gave a $3700 grant to build a miniature street in West Virginia — out of Legos. It shelled out $500,000 to support specialty shampoo products for cats and dogs."

·       White House, gave $27 million to fund — ready for this? — pottery classes … in Morocco!

There's more. A lot more. But I'm getting sick just typing up all this stuff. You should be too, unless you're part of the roughly 50% of Americans who don't pay any federal income tax — so why should you care, right?

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MAN STUFF: Men Are Born to be Wild  By Doug Giles

When God created Adam, he didn’t breathe life into this divine concoction of spit and mud in order to develop a race of weak, lazy, irresponsible and chubby quiche-eaters. God made Adam to be a provider, protector, hunter and hero of Jehovah’s created order. Adam was not carved out of a dirt clod … to be a clod.  God’s original and unchanging job description for man and his offspring was and is to be a protector of what’s right, a prosecutor of what’s wrong and a builder of what is holy, just and good. Please also note that when Adam was created, God didn’t throw up a Holiday Inn next to the spot where he was fashioned.  There were no 7-Elevens. No A/C.  Neither Sushi bars nor hair salons.  And this one’s really going to hurt … no McDonalds.  Adam was placed, purposefully, in the wild.  The wild brought out something in this leader that your favorite shopping mall simply couldn’t provide. God’s second in command was directly connected with the Spirit of the Wild. Adam, the wild man, drew directly from the earth.  Fast food for Adam was the fleet-a-foot Antelope he was trying to smack with a rock.  Adam lived in naked partnership with wild beasts, birds, gigantic lizards and monster sharks.  And guess what, Adam was not with some gay guy called Steve, he was with a beautiful woman: Eve.  And she was down with it, as well.  This is the way it was.  And God said, “It is good!”

I know this doesn’t sound like “paradise” for those who are immoral, lazy, stupid and fat, but it was God’s and primitive man’s idea of Yippee Land.  So, what caused this initial state of bliss to be lost to Adam?  Where did he go wrong? What did he do, or rather not do, to lose this NRA Xanadu-like existence?  And what lesson from creation can we learn? Here it is: Adam’s reticence to be the wild man God called him to be cost him the sweet haven of Eden’s crib.  He refused to rule righteously and conquer the serpent, which put him on the outs with his Creator and demoted him to somewhere east of Eden.  What happens when the Wild Man motif is gone, smothered, and vilified?  Well, the snakes take over.  That’s how it originally was; that’s how it has always been. The song remains the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.  As long as the strong Wild Man attitude is absent, you can expect the corrupters and compromisers to fill that holy vacuum.

The current, hopefully momentary, societal emasculation of the Wild Man spirit has brought about the devolution of God’s original desire: an earth ruled by man and by woman that is righteous, beautiful and secure.  And guess what, America? We can expect hell on earth as long as the original Wild Man spirit is absent from our culture, from our churches and from our families.

So what is the Wild Man spirit?  The Wild Man is a person, according to one writer, “Who has a solid connection to God defined by his standards plus a deep understanding and appreciation of creation in all of its wildness, beauty, complexity and austerity.” He’s the person who is god-smacked watching a wicked thunderstorm, who trips watching an eclipse, who sweats and is weirdly exited when riding out an earthquake and who is both terrified and overjoyed beholding a tornado.  The Wild Man feels one with God and with the wild.  This sends him in search of “Eden” — the way it must have been.  The Wild Man understands both the fundamentals of God and the funk of nature.

The Wild Man experience produces an attitude, and this attitude is a threat to all that is evil.  The person who is wild has the attitude that he is not an easy prey. He ceases to be lugubrious and begins to become a lion.  He becomes a hazard to cultural constructs that would keep him, those he loves and all mankind dumb and down.

With wisdom from above and senses honed on earth, the Wild Man is not a dutiful and domesticated “cow” of the politically, ecclesiastically and culturally correct constructs.  He is a lion … a strong, wise, fun-loving, lioness-loving leader,  with a mission: to care for his family, his community and his culture as faithfully as he can.

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The Dangers of the Disaffected and the Unemployed

The global financial crisis has caused a global unemployment crisis while Europe has become the epicenter of that crisis. However, we are not that distant to Europe's problems.  As we have watched, rampant unemployment give way to a political crisis as austerity measures galvanize radical political agendas opposed to the status quo. Because unemployment is so pervasive, jobless, disaffected people are embracing radical ideas espousing a wide variety of ideologies. With unemployment in Greece at over 7% for all these months, it is not surprising to see radical left-wing groups gaining support from those who have become deeply disaffected by the unemployment crises. We are not immune by a long shot!  As we saw in the 70's & 80's, the rise of radical groups and in more recent years marked the rise of such groups within the Democratic party that are publicly advocating extreme socialist/progressive measures.  Given this history and the manner in which the current crises are producing radicalized and unemployed people, I say we must examine these far-left groups and the types of anti-capitalist and anti-Republican form of Government they can be expected to advocate. It is also important to remember that we are not the only country in which the population, particularly the left, is radicalizing. Italy, too, has seen increased leftist radicalism. Pay attention! What is happening in our country could herald things to come that are downright scary.  We must embrace the possibility that the disaffected and unemployed can be rallied to follow a political ideologies that will bring down our Republic (and Capitalism) - one that has made this nation the most powerful economic country in the world.  We must address and counter the radicalized agenda and message.  The so called 47% must be engaged in a way they see a pathway to success.  Doing nothing but making them and their radical leaders wrong puts every patriot at risk.  Being right means nothing; these people must be influenced in such a way they choose to follow. 

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Secret Service Agent Blasts Obama

A former agent blasted President Obama for blaming the Secret Service for the decision to shut down White House tours, calling it “an act of political cowardice” on Your World with Neil Cavuto this afternoon. Dan Bongino explained that the agency’s job is to provide security for the White House; it does not determine who comes in. “To say that this was the Secret Service, and that they somehow injected themselves into a political decision — well, do they get to tell [the president] to stop taking vacations and to stop going golfing as well?” Bongino said. “This doesn’t even pass the smell test.”

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The Search for More Pork on Mars Continues by Gary North

There isn’t any life on Mars. There is no evidence that there ever was life on Mars. But there is surely pork on Mars. NASA wants to continue to slice off plenty of it. NASA today is eligible for sequestration, preferably 100% sequestration. NASA does nothing worth financing by the private sector. It never has. But now there are threats of sequestration. NASA is running scared. So, what’s a bureaucracy to do? Recycle that old favorite, life on Mars. To keep the search going, the media run stories once a month on “we’ve almost found it.” The basic story never changes; only the names of obscure scientists change. Because nothing is ever proven, NASA has to keep adding new names of “almost, but not quite yet” experts. I mean, it would look silly if the same old scientists kept saying “almost, but not yet.” The latest report is in the Sydney Morning Herald. You will recognize its outline. The outline never changes. It begins with a question — a question that has produced no answer for a century. “Was there once life on the Red Planet?” A definitive answer still eludes us, yet every sample from NASA’s Curiosity rover takes scientists a step closer to deciding whether Mars – today freezing cold, bone dry and bombarded by radiation – might once have been habitable. Translation: The pork search is open-ended. It will continue until NASA is sequestered once and for all. The search will go on, no matter what. This is government-funded science. No search ever ends until there is a discovery that confirms the thesis. At that point, the budget doubles, in order to pursue the discovery’s fabulous implications. This is inter-generational pork.

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NRA’s Keene: Democrats Shocked by Support for Second Amendment By: Cyrus Afzali and Kathleen Walter

National Rifle Association President David Keene believes President Barack Obama and other Democrats who want to expand gun control have been shocked by the outpouring of support for the Second Amendment. Speaking at CPAC 2013, Keene said former President Bill Clinton was right when he warned Obama around Christmas last year to tread carefully as he considered expanding gun restrictions. “[Gun control proposals were] one of the main reason for Republicans seizing the House in 1994. Americans care about the Second Amendment and the president is seeing that,” Keene said. Keene was in Albany recently following the passage of expanded gun control in New York. There, he witnessed more than 10,000 people braving the rain to protest the expanded laws, which he believes sent a strong message to the president and Democrats. “There are rallies like that all over the country. Members of Congress are receiving lots of letters. It’s clear the narrative that the president tried to construct was wrong. That’s the reason a lot of what [Obama] proposed is being slowed down,” Keene said.

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Obamacare set to ‘implode’

The House Republican budget plan assumes the repeal of Obamacare, and while the political votes may be hard to find, a leading health-care expert told WND the flaws of the system will likely lead to its implosion in the near term. Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute and one of the leading policy-based critics of Obamacare. She said House Republicans are right to keep pushing for the repeal of Obamacare because of the myriad ways it afflicts the nation’s fiscal health. “When you look at the overall impact of this law on the economy, we know that it’s hugely important in depressing job creation,” she said. “It’s forcing companies to put people on part-time when they need full-time workers. The incredible number of new taxes, a trillion dollars in new taxes in this law just in its own right. It is one of the major factors that is depressing economic growth. When you have economic growth depressed, you don’t have the tax revenue that you need.”

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Government Has 'Effectively Nationalized' Home Mortgage Industry By: Glenn J. Kalinoski

The home mortgage sector in the world’s largest economy has been “effectively nationalized,” says George Melloan, former deputy editor of the editorial page for The Wall Street Journal. Government agencies — primarily Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also the Federal Housing Administration — insured or purchased more than 90 percent of home mortgages originated in 2012, a $1.3 trillion business, compared with 30 percent in 2006, according to ProPublica data. Melloan, author of “The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism,” traced the situation back to the end of the last century, citing government and “powerful” lobbies.  “When President [Bill] Clinton forced the banks to begin their subprime mortgage binge in the 1990s, he called it ‘affordable housing’ for people with limited means, a politically appealing idea,” Melloan wrote in an opinion article for The Journal. “But the real muscle came from well-heeled lobbies — the builders, real estate agents, bankers and construction-worker unions.”

Fannie and Freddie reported earnings last year after costing taxpayers more than $180 billion over the previous three years. But the turnaround is “not entirely” good news, he noted. “[It] makes it more likely that their present limbo status as effectively nationalized banks — originally intended as temporary — will be prolonged,” Melloan explained.  “There are still lots of private banks and mortgage companies generating and servicing mortgages, so the government doesn’t ‘own’ the whole industry. But the government (or the lucky half of the population who pay income taxes) now owns most of the risks,” he added. 

“The moral is that government backing — implicit during the heyday of Fannie and Freddie and explicit today — leads to sloppy banking and ultimately to defaults,” Melloan wrote in The Journal. “Taxpayers, with little knowledge of the commitments made on their behalf, become responsible for the losses.”  In addition, student loans, which were taken over by the government in 2010, represent “another trillion dollar business,” with delinquencies “rising rapidly.” “Some observers ask whether these will cause America's next ‘subprime’ crisis,” he noted. Melloan added that taxpayers are also “on the hook for failed banks” because of the exposure provided by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which was created in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Act. “This council is commissioned to ‘resolve’ the nation’s ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks when they fail, most likely with taxpayer money if the 2008 precedent is any guide,” wrote Melloan.  “Thanks to developments over the last four years, the government is now insuring a large chunk of America's nearly $16 trillion economy — while being essentially bankrupt, having run budget deficits exceeding $1 trillion for the last four years,” he wrote. “The future insurance and entitlement obligations are, of course, off the books.”

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