The Right lane update 3.02.13

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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I'm publishing today from a secure bunker in an undisclosed location so as to avoid the fallout from the apocalypse known as the sequester. Today, the $85 billion in federal spending "cuts" take effect now that the Senate failed to pass either Democrat or Republican alternatives yesterday. The devastation is unthinkable -- Biblical in proportion.  Funny thing; the sun came up, my phone is working, the talking heads were still pretending to report news and I went grocery shopping as normal. Do you think Obama, Biden, Pelosi and Reid were actually lying to us?  Ya! Think?

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Hail Armageddon  By Charles Krauthammer

“The worst-case scenario for us,” a leading anti-budget-cuts lobbyist told The Post, “is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens.” That a government drowning in debt should cut back by 2.2 percent — and the country survives. That a government now borrowing 35 cents of every dollar it spends reduces that borrowing by two cents “and nothing bad really happens.” Oh, the humanity! A normal citizen might think this a good thing. For reactionary liberalism, however, whatever sum our ever-inflating government happens to spend today (now double what Bill Clinton spent in his last year) is the Platonic ideal — the reduction of which, however minuscule, is a national calamity.  Or damn well should be. Otherwise, people might get the idea that we can shrink government and live on. The Obama administration has every incentive to make the sky fall, lest we suffer that terrible calamity — cuts the nation survives. Are they threatening to pare back consultants, conferences, travel and other nonessential fluff? Hardly. It shall be air-traffic control. Meat inspection. Weather forecasting. After all, the sequester is just one-half of 1 percent of GDP. It amounts to 1.4 cents on the dollar of nondefense spending, 2 cents overall.

Because of this year’s payroll tax increase, millions of American workers have had to tighten their belts by precisely 2 percent. They found a way. Washington, spending $3.8 trillion, cannot? If so, we might as well declare bankruptcy now and save the attorneys’ fees. The problem with sequestration, of course, is that the cuts are across the board and do not allow money to move between accounts. It’s dumb because it doesn’t discriminate.  Fine. Then change the law. That’s why we have a Congress. Discriminate. Prioritize. That’s why we have budgets. Except that the Democratic Senate hasn’t passed one in four years. And the White House, which proposed the sequester in the first place, had 18 months to establish rational priorities among accounts — and did nothing.  Which demonstrates that, for Obama, this is not about deficit reduction, which interests him not at all. The purpose is purely political: to complete his Election Day victory by breaking the Republican opposition. At the fiscal cliff, Obama broke — and split — the Republicans on taxes. With the sequester, he intends to break them on spending. Make the cuts as painful as possible, and watch the Republicans come crawling for a “balanced” (i.e., tax-hiking) deal.  In the past two years, House Republicans stopped cold Obama’s left-liberal agenda. Break them now, and the road is open to resume enactment of the expansive, entitlement-state liberalism that Obama proclaimed in his second inaugural address.  But he cannot win if “nothing bad really happens.” Indeed, he’d look both foolish and cynical for having cried wolf. Obama’s incentive to deliberately make the most painful and socially disruptive cuts possible (say, oh, releasing illegal immigrants from prison) is enormous. And alarming. Hail Armageddon.

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Americans see biggest monthly income drop in 20 years 

Feeling poorer?  Americans saw their income drop so dramatically in January that it marked the deepest one-month decline in 20 years. Personal income decreased by $505.5 billion in January, or 3.6%, compared to December (on a seasonally adjusted and annualized basis). That's the most dramatic decline since January 1993, according to the Commerce Department. The payroll tax cut's expiration played a role in January's drop, because most workers have to pay 2 percentage points more in taxes this year. The Commerce Department's "personal income" calculation subtracts out individuals' contributions to government social insurance programs like Social Security, which are funded by the payroll tax. Meanwhile, economists are closely watching consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the U.S. economy. They're waiting to see how the payroll tax hike will affect the broader recovery. Spending increased $18.2 billion, or 0.2%, in January. Some economists, like Chris Christopher, Jr. of IHS Global Insight, called that "anemic" and pointed to weak retail sales at low-end and mid-tier retailers as proof that consumers are being squeezed. The payroll tax cut "hurt many Americans where it counts -- in their pocket books," he said. Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, said its late January and early February sales have been slow, which it blamed on higher payroll taxes, delays in income tax-refund processing, and higher gas prices. Need more proof of the damage Obama is wreaking on the economy and people's lives?  That while he demagogues the sequester!

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No Deal on Budget Cuts Brings Criticism from All Sectors

President Barack Obama blasted for holding a news conference after the failed talks, painting a grim picture of how the cross-government cuts would affect average Americans.  “It's narcissistic, it's self-indulgent, blameless,” Limbaugh said on his afternoon program. “I've never seen this kind of self-absorption. It's uncanny. “This president stands up there today and he enjoys reciting the kind of pain Americans are going to feel,” Limbaugh added. “Now, he does it in a way that blames the Republicans for it.”

Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, agreed.  “The Obama administration is way overplaying the hysteria and is acting quite irresponsibly in their unwillingness to manage what really amounts to a small haircut on mostly discretionary spending,” Kibbe told Newsmax. “They can manage this better instead of demagouguing, but perhaps their vitriol is driven by a concern that the public might not actually notice a small haircut on the current increase in spending.”

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IRS Ready to Collect Billions From Insurers Under Obamacare

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released its proposal Friday to garner billions of dollars through annual fees on health insurers as part of the Affordable Care Act. Industry groups are quite upset, arguing that the fees will be passed along to consumers, The Hill reports. The fees, to be collected from most insurers, would register $8 billion next year and rise every year afterward, breaking $14 billion in 2018, according to the IRS. The amount of the fees would depend on an insurer’s net premiums. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), one of the industry’s top trade groups, lambasted the proposal, estimating it would cost insurers more than $100 billion over the next 10 years and hurt consumers. AHIP estimates that the fee would help push up the average family’s health insurance bill by $300 next year and more than $500 in following years. “This is a new $100 billion tax on health insurance,” AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach told The Hill. “Taxing health insurance is only going to make it more expensive.  So, remember the Liar in Chief said he would not raise taxes on "one dime"!!!

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New Food Insecurity Numbers Are A Wake Up Call - The Left using language to manufacture another crisis!

The total number of Americans who are having a tough time affording nutritious food includes 17 million children —22 percent of all children in the United States. The report asserts that the number of young people who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million. These new numbers do not reflect a starvation problem but rather describe a growing trend in American families called "food insecurity": a condition in which people lack basic food intake to provide them with the energy and nutrients for fully productive lives. The new figures are the highest since data collection began in 1995 and the Agriculture Department predicted the numbers for this year, 2009, are likely to be still worse.

Unemployment and the economy hurting families

In the United States one of the largest factors of food insecurity is unemployment. At the beginning of 2008, unemployment was at 4.9 percent.  By the end of 2008, it was almost 8 percent, and now it is in double digits: 10.2 percent.  "All the food banks have said that, over the last 12 months, they have seen an increase of about 30 percent statewide. So, we can expect those numbers to go up against next year," J.C. Dwyer of the Texas Food Bank Network told the PBS NewsHour.

Just who is "food insecure"?

These new figures do not mean that millions of people in the United States have absolutely no food in the house or are constantly hungry.  The report shows American families struggling to find enough nutritious food for all members of the family and turning to food stamps or other government aid, or getting food from food pantries and soup kitchens.
Local food banks are seeing more working families needing assistance. In some cases, families who donated to food banks last year are showing up at the same doors now in need themselves.

"This is unthinkable," says Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America, the largest organization representing food banks, "It's like we are living in a Third-World country."

Most of the families facing “food insecurity” contain at least one adult with a full-time job.  The highest hit are single-parent families: more than one in three single mothers reported that they struggled to feed their children.

Food insecurity can affect learning and performance

In the United States, however, hunger manifests itself in a less severe visible form but can have great consequences in school and social development.
Food insecurity can affect social skills and behavior, reading performance, mathematical skills, and weight gain. Not only does the brain need vitamins, minerals and protein, but physical hunger and worrying about money problems can distract students from their work, as well as cause depression and anger, recent studies show.

You likely noticed the Left is sounding an alarm about "nothing new".  They do acknowledge unemployment and the economy as factors while NOT saying the President and Democrats have accomplished NOTHING to reduce unemployment while placing more burdens on families.  Further, there is no mention of parents ensuring their children have enough of the right food to do well in school; it is your fault, you should/must do something.  Further, this study is not validated or the methods disclosed.  So gird thy self for the new crisis of the "food insecure".  No mention of income insecure or job insecure!

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Were Prehistoric Animals Real?

NO!  Does my answer shock you? No, I’m not one of those Christians that claim that all of the fossil record was put there by Satan to confuse us. I believe in the fossil record as being a record of plants and animals that lived in the past and died.  But none of them are ‘prehistoric.’ Think about it.  What does the word ‘prehistoric’ mean?  It refers to anything that existed prior to history or more accurately, recorded history.  Prehistoric is an evolutionary term used to help convince people that there were billions of years of unrecorded history prior to mankind coming on the scene. By referring to dinosaurs, pterosaurs and cavemen as being prehistoric, they are brainwashing you to believe that they all existed before modern man evolved the ability to write and record history.

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Texas Student Punished for Refusing to Swear Allegiance to Mexico  by Giacomo

McAllen Independent School District in McAllen, Texas lies along the US-Mexico international border across from Reynosa, Mexico.  The school district has a policy that excuses a student from reading certain parts of the US Declaration of Independence if it is determined that the student has a conscientious objection.  Additionally, the school district has a policy that prohibits any school from forcing a student to say the American Pledge of Allegiance. However, a 15 year old girl at Achieve Early College High School felt it was un-American to have to recite the Mexican Pledge of Allegiance and sing the Mexican national anthem as part of a class project, so she refused to do so.  The girl’s teacher, Reyna Santos then gave the girl an alternative assignment on Mexico and its independence, made her sit in class for several days and listen to the other students recite the Mexican Pledge and sing the Mexican national anthem.  In the end, the teacher still gave the girl a failing grade. The girl’s mother, Brenda Brinsdon believes the school violated her daughter’s constitutional rights by punishing her for refusing to swear allegiance to another country.  With the help of the Thomas More Law Center, a lawsuit has been filed against the school.  Richard Thompson, president of Thomas More Law Center commented on the case, saying:

“There is a sad trend in public schools across our nation to undermine American patriotism, but it’s encouraging to see students like Brenda stand up for America despite pressure from school officials.”

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"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."

--George Washington, Fifth Annual Message, 1793

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