Presidents, Precedents:
News flash: This is not 1982, and Obama is not Reagan.
The important difference is this: There was a good reason for the Volcker-Reagan recession: defeating inflation. American voters may not be terribly economically sophisticated, but they sure as heck did notice when inflation went from 13.5 percent to 3.2 percent — in two years. Presidents’ effects on the economy are overstated (economies are complicated and many of the most important factors are exogenous to public policy), but tackling inflation was a matter of politics and policy. The recession was hard, but we came through with something to show for it. For instance, mortgage rates that were 7 percent instead of 19 percent.
What, precisely, will we have to show for having come through the Obama recession(s)? A gigantic new federal entitlement program? Staggering amounts of debt? Persistently high levels of unemployment? That’s the best-case scenario. The worst case scenario includes pre-Reagan levels of inflation, a debased dollar, and a deep double dip in Recession Round 2. Obama’s first-class temperament is not going to do him a lot of good with a third-class economy.
Has ObamaCare’s Unpopularity Caused ‘Abject Panic at the White House’? Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.” [ When you can’t do it with one lie, use another one! – JS ]
And Now: The Stealth Obama Ocean Grab: It's not enough that the White House is moving to lock up hundreds of millions of acres of land in the name of environmental protection. The Obama administration's neon green radicals are also training their sights on the deep blue seas. The president's grabby-handed bureaucrats have been empowered through executive order to seize unprecedented control from states and localities over "conservation, economic activity, user conflict and sustainable use of the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes." [ Yet another Obamunistic massive power grab by decree! – JS ]
We Can't Spend Our Way to Recovery: To get our country back on the right track The Heritage Foundation's Solutions for America chapter on Reining in Runaway Spending and Deficits recommends: Stop Digging, Rein in Entitlements, Enact Spending Caps, Empower States, Empower the Private Sector, Ban Corporate Welfare , Bring Federal Pay in Line with the Private Sector
“If I Had ONLY a Gun”: The only thing that stops a spree shooter is a bullet, either from their gun when they commit suicide or from someone else who intervenes to stop further loss of life. Law enforcement responses that quarantine the shooter compound the problem, while aggressive “active shooter” protocols that push police officers into the scene in small teams or as individuals tend to reduce casualties. The police response is moving toward being on the scene as fast as possible with a gun; we ought to follow their reasoning and allow people to have a fighting chance, not advise them to play dead and call the cops on their cell phone. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Difficult Decisions Needed: What to Do :Genuine spending reforms are the only way to bring the budget under control. Lawmakers should rescind the remaining funds from TARP and the failed stimulus bill, as well as repeal the unaffordable health care law. Next, they should enact tough spending caps to help lawmakers set priorities and make trade-offs. Congress should then disclose the massive unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; put those programs on long-term budgets; and create an entitlement reform commission. Finally, lawmakers should enact the necessary entitlement and programmatic reforms that can keep government within those limits.
"[Some people] have a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. I believe that it is easier to establish an absolute and despotic government amongst a people in which the conditions of society are equal, than amongst any other; and I think that, if such a government were once established amongst such a people, it would not only oppress men, but would eventually strip each of them of several of the highest qualities of humanity. Despotism, therefore, appears to me peculiarly to be dreaded in democratic times." -- Alexis de Tocqueville
The Real Agenda of Some [anti-Christian] College Professors:
On many campuses, a significant number of faculty members are representatives of what has been called the “adversary culture.” Their agenda is nothing less than to separate students from their Christian beliefs and their intellectual and moral commitments…
…writing in a Seattle newspaper, a teacher of English and college adviser at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois reveals this ideological agenda in even more shocking terms. Bill Savage reacts to the fact that the so-called conservative “red” states are “outbreeding” the “blue” states, which are more liberal in voting patterns. Identifying himself as a political liberal with no children of his own, Savage acknowledges that he and his fellow liberals have a lower fertility rate than conservatives. Nevertheless, he insists that educated urban liberals need not despair. He expresses confidence “that blue America’s Urban Archipelago can grow larger, more contiguous, and more politically powerful even without my offspring.” How?
“The children of red states will seek a higher education,” he explains, “and that education will very often happen in blue states or blue islands in red states. For the foreseeable future, loyal dittoheads will continue to drop off their children at the dorms. After a teary-eyed hug, Mom and Dad will drive their SUV off toward the nearest gas station, leaving their beloved progeny behind.”
Then what? He proudly claims: “And then they are all mine.”
“The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome becomes bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance”. Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC
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