the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" ...

"Of the four wars in my lifetime,

none came about because the U.S. was too strong."

- Ronald Reagan

Today we stop to thank the men and woman of the United States military who have always been there to defend the very umbrella of liberty that we as a nation prosper under. Nothing in this great country would be here if a tiny minority of our citizens were not willing to, as a quote from a movie once said, “pick up a weapon and stand a post”. 

As our government struggles with out-of-control spending that threatens to bankrupt our country, the progressives always try to balance their social spending with cuts to defense spending. The end result of this is that we send our sons and our daughters off to fight wars under-equipped and under-trained for the missions at hand. From Manassas in the Civil war to Corregidor in WWII to Pusan Perimeter in Korean to Black Hawk down in Somalia, American combat forces have died because of a lack of resolution of Americas to fund our military at the levels required to carry out what our elected official’s demand of them.

Let us never forget the sacrifice of the American fighting man and let us resolve to always pressure our government to maintain the best trained and best equipped fighting force on earth.

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported for Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”   - John Adams

"Mighty men of valor, men trained for war, who could handle shield and spear, and whose faces were like the faces of lions."  - 1 Chronicles 12:8

"Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn."  - Gen. Douglas MacArthur

"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."  - John Stuart Mill

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." –Ronald Reagan.

"He which hath no stomach to this fight let him depart. But we in it shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!! For today, he that sheds his blood with me shall always be my brother.”  - William Shakespeare

 

Thank you to all Veterans past and present

and a special thanks to CAAT Black of the 2/2 Marines.

On the 11th Hour, of the 11th Day, of the 11th Month . . . . . .

"Of the four wars in my lifetime,

none came about because the U.S. was too strong."

- Ronald Reagan

Today we stop to thank the men and woman of the United States military who have always been there to defend the very umbrella of liberty that we as a nation prosper under. Nothing in this great country would be here if a tiny minority of our citizens were not willing to, as a quote from a movie once said, “pick up a weapon and stand a post”. 

As our government struggles with out-of-control spending that threatens to bankrupt our country, the progressives always try to balance their social spending with cuts to defense spending. The end result of this is that we send our sons and our daughters off to fight wars under-equipped and under-trained for the missions at hand. From Manassas in the Civil war to Corregidor in WWII to Pusan Perimeter in Korean to Black Hawk down in Somalia, American combat forces have died because of a lack of resolution of Americas to fund our military at the levels required to carry out what our elected official’s demand of them.

Let us never forget the sacrifice of the American fighting man and let us resolve to always pressure our government to maintain the best trained and best equipped fighting force on earth.

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported for Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”   - John Adams

"Mighty men of valor, men trained for war, who could handle shield and spear, and whose faces were like the faces of lions."  - 1 Chronicles 12:8

"Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn."  - Gen. Douglas MacArthur

"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."  - John Stuart Mill

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." –Ronald Reagan.

"He which hath no stomach to this fight let him depart. But we in it shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!! For today, he that sheds his blood with me shall always be my brother.”  - William Shakespeare

 

Thank you to all Veterans past and present

and a special thanks to CAAT Black of the 2/2 Marines.

What’s in a name?

We are now over 5 years into the “Affordable Care Act”.  Our Democratic Senate leader declared we have to pass the bill to know what is in it and little did we know how true that was.

Now, over 30 delays in key provisions later, we find out:

• we can’t really keep our insurance if we like it as the President said, that was a lie
• we can’t really keep our doctor as the President said, that was also a lie.

There are a number of provisions in the law that may be beneficial and the goal of working toward good health care for everyone is commendable; but a 960 page bill and the federal government taking over 1/6^th of the US economy were not necessary to achieve those goals.

So what has the bill achieved?

As opposed to the stated purpose of the bill, to increase the number of people with insurance, the bill has caused upward of 6 million people to have their insurance canceled.

As stated, the main purpose of the bill was to reduce costs; yet a main prevision of the law is a 2.9% tax on all medical devises, therefore increase the cost of medical care.

The bill is so destructive that one of the bill’s main supporters, unions like the AFL-CIO, declared that the bill will “Destroy the Very Health and Well-being of Workers” and key a Democratic Senator referred to the bill as “a train wreck”.

The President stated many times in the run up to passage of the bill that “it will reduce health insurance premiums by $2,500 per family”, but now we know that the cost of health insurance has gone up, not down in the last year. 

Thousands of Americans come forward with horror stories after losing their insurance and getting caught in a bureaucratic nightmare when forced in to the health care exchanges and the democratic leader of the house calls them liars, and then contrary to the video showing him saying that exact thing returns to the floor of the house to deny he said it.

But the biggest lie of all, the biggest dishonesty about the whole program is the name itself, “affordable”. Nothing in the almost 1000 pages says or does anything to truly reduce the cost of health care. Except for a provision to cut the amount paid to doctors seeing Medicaid patents, which will just reduce the doctors who will accept Medicaid patents, the bill does nothing to lower the cost of health care, just shift who will pay for it.

There is a reason a bill supposedly about health care uses the word “tax” 210 times and the word “doctor” 0.

So –

• high wage earners get a 3.9% insurance tax surcharge
• low and middle class workers get a subsidy
• People are forced to buy policies that they will never use because the deductibles are so high,
• insurance companies get millions of new customer
• Millions more get included in the Medicaid rolls , paid for by the tax payers
• Doctors take a cut in pay, so their patents get lower premiums on the insurance
• anyone using a medical devise pays an extra 2.9% so the government can use that money to provide free insurance to someone else.
• The government gets thousands of new employees to administer the bill, including 5000 new IRS agents to oversee compliance to the new mandate and subsequent tax if you fail to comply, and
• the taxpayers get an increase in federal spending to pay for.

If the President and his progressive supporters were being honest (not one of their strong suits) they would have called it

 “The Wealth Redistribution Care Act” or  “The Government Takes Control of Your Healthcare Act”.

But I did say if….

"The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"

Margaret Thatcher

A Congressional Budget Office study released Tuesday reported that 2.3 million people will lose their full time jobs as a result of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The report said the ACA will lead to a decrease of total hours worked by 2% by 2017.

That’s not the scary part though, when questioned about this report, a White house spoke person said it was not a bad thing because many of those workers will voluntarily work less hours so they can keep their income low enough to continue to qualify for federal subsidies for their health insurance.

Today Nancy Pelosi released a statement that people now have more freedom because they can choose  to work less hours or not even work at all because their health insurance is being subsidized by the government  (using other tax payers money). 

No word from Ms. Pelosi about the freedoms of the people who ARE working to subsidized those collecting subsidies.

The President and Democrats in congress apparently believe that a federal incentive to stop supporting yourself and instead rely on someone else to pay a portion of your health insurance is a good thing.

So now we have a health insurance law that:

• did not sign up many of the people who were uninsured,
• caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose their health insurance,
• increased the cost of health insurance for millions,
• costs at least three times the amount the President told us it would (according to the most recent government numbers),

and on top of all that, destroyed full time jobs AND decreased American productivity.

What’s not to love?

Also this week, the National Bureau of Economic Research reported that extended unemployment benefits have held the unemployment numbers at least 3% higher than if the benefits were not available.  And why not? Everyone is forced to pay into unemployment through mandated payments, it’s hard to argue with the logic that if the government is going to hand out money I might was well get some.

The problem is, the government is not handing out its own money, its handing out our money – yours and mine, and if it’s handing out a bunch, it’s going to have to turn around and ask citizens to just replace what has beend handed out.

So is there any mystery why the recovery from this recession that ended in 2009 is so slow, why unemployment is so high, why so many people have just given up looking for work? We have government policy after government policy that rewards not working and through higher taxes punishes working.  Much of the work force and most of the business that are so slow to recover from this recession are the same people and business that quickly recovered from the last recession.

Yet in 2013, the number of people in the work force is at the lowest point in 30 years, black participation in the labor force is at the lowest point ever recorded!  Unemployment is still at record levels, people on food stamps have doubled, people on disability is up from 4.3 million in 1990 to over 10 million today and the only three years the % of the population living under the poverty line has stayed above 15 % consistently is the last three years .  This has been the worse recovery in history and there is no end in sight.

The fact is this President’s economic policies have been a major factor in the total lack of a recovery and the suffering that goes along with them. The really sad thing is a majority of the people suffering believed in the rhetoric and voted for the current president.  

The scariest thing of all is I am not sure many of them learned a lesson,

The road to hell paving company

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

On this date in 1964 President Johnson declared a “War on Poverty”.

At the time of Johnson’s speech, the poverty rate in this country stood at about 19%. Poverty rates had been falling steadily since at least 1959 which was the first year there was a real statistic. At that time, most people agreed that poverty had been falling steadily since 1930. During the depression it is estimated the number of people living below the poverty rate reached 50%. We would have to attribute this decline in poverty to our basic economic system since there were virtually no government anti-poverty programs in place before President Johnson’s great initiative.

In fact, the poverty rate had been declining at almost 1% a year for the five years leading up to the President Johnson’s declaration of war.  From 1964 until 1970 the poverty rate declined further from the 19% to the historic low of about 13%. This was a little better than 1% a year. In other words, the poverty rate declined at about the same rate from 1959 until 1970. If we want to be fair we can say the rate of decline increased slightly after Johnson’s speech and we can even give the credit to the massive new anti-poverty program that was part of the president’s “war”.

But a funny thing happened after 1970, the poverty rate actually went up. The rate increased to 15% at the end of the recession in the early 80’s. Since then, the poverty rate has mostly hovered around 13-15% for the next 30 years and today stands at about 15.6% (the highest rate in over 40 years). This level of poverty has been constant whether Republican or Democrat leaders and both have largely maintained and expanded the federal programs of welfare, food stamps, head start, unemployment insurance, disability insurance and over 100 other programs designed to address poverty and its causes.

Despite the trillions of dollars spent on hundreds of federal government anti-poverty programs, the amount of people in this country living below the government defined poverty line remains about the same or even worse since at this date in time we are at a 40 year high

But it might be worse.  Remember before the “war on poverty”? When the poverty rate had steadily been declining?  What changed?  Our economic system that had been producing a steadily decreasing rate of poverty has only become stronger.  The number of jobs and our country’s level of efficiency have increased dramatically. The big difference between then - when the poverty rate was falling and now - when it has leveled out is the federal government programs.  You would have to be crazy to not at least consider that these programs have hurt people’s ability to get out of poverty.

It may be in a country this large that some percent will always live in poverty and maybe that percentage is where we are now.  But one absolute fact is that the almost $1,000,000,000.00 (one billion dollars) a year we spend to eradicate poverty is having no effect. And yet whenever anyone talks about changing, eliminating or modifying any entitlement program, the progressives absolutely explode. (Witness the recent debate on continuing unemployment benefits to pay for up to two years.)

For some reason the people in Washington think that if we keep doing the same thing over and over we will eventually get different results.

But what did I say about being crazy.

Your government at work.

During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, the U.S. Produced;

 22 aircraft carriers,

8 battleships, 48 cruisers,

349 destroyers, 420 destroyer escorts,

203 submarines,

34 million tons of merchant ships,

100,000 fighter aircraft,

98,000 bombers,

24,000 transport aircraft,

58,000 training aircraft,

93,000 tanks,

257,000 artillery pieces,

105,000 mortars,

3,000,000 machine guns,

2,500,000 military trucks.

 

We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services,  invaded Africa, invaded Sicily and Italy, won the battle for the Atlantic, planned and executed D-Day, marched across the Pacific and Europe, developed the atomic bomb and ultimately conquered Japan and Germany.

It's worth noting, that during the almost exact amount of time, the Obama administration couldn't build a functioning web site.

The most transparent administration in history.

We recently told you about Toni Townes-Whitley, the senior vice president at CGI Federal, which was awarded the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Healthcare.gov fiasco. Toni was a classmate of Michelle Obama (Princeton '85) and they share membership in the Association of Black Princeton. Evidently, the two are still close friends. Townes-Whitley, in a Facebook album titled "Christmas with the Obamas," published a personal photo from inside the White House in 2010. Daniel Greenfield quips, "A 600 million dollar website that doesn't work made by a company with a lousy track record and a top executive who's a pal of the First Lady. It's the free market at work. I blame the private sector." - Patriot Post

How did we survive all this time without the progressives running our life?

Recently Daniel Henninger wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal that really hit the nail on the head not only about this administration but about the whole progressive movement in general.  Mr. Henninger labeled it “the politics of cram down”.  Whether it is forcing people to purchase a product they don’t want, like Obamcare, or suing Boeing for opening a plant in South Carolina, that will employee thousands of workers, the progressives motto appears to be “you will do as you are told”.

The article also points out that unlike the liberal policies in the past that merely attempted to redistribute wealth through a host of taxes and social programs, the progressive policy is the government knows better and you will like it no matter how much it hurts. Mandates are for you own good say the progressives, but I wonder, if it is such a good idea, why it would need to be mandatory in the first place?.

The true progressive is so arrogant that he truly believes that he knows better. They also believe they must force change on us non-progressives because we are just too ignorant to make our own decisions or know what is for our own good. Their underlying belief is some people will just have to be sacrificed for the common good with common good defined by them. One of the statistics used by the progressives to force Obamcare down our throats is the fact that the United States spends more on health care than the rest of the world. Well, we also spend more on housing, cars, food, and TV sets. Are they all in a crisis also?  So the fact that Americans have access to more medical care than the rest of the world and are wealthy enough to take advantage of this benefit, has now become a problem to the progressives. Who do these self-appointed saviors think they are to tell me when I have spent too much?  And what is too much?  If I want to have an MRI done every day and I can pay for it, who are they to say this is a problem?

Progressives feel the need to control every aspect of your life and Obamcare is just the biggest example. Progressives are waging a war against ever American who works in the coal industry. They believe that coal miners and workers must be sacrificed on the altar of global warming, The same policy not only cost the workers who would build and operate XL pipeline but cost Americans in the form of higher energy cost. None of this is a concern for the progressives for they know what is best.

Progressives, supporting the failed public school system in New York State, needed to kill the school voucher program.  This lead to thousands of parents protesting on the Brooklyn bridge because it was a chance for their children to escape the failed schools, “sorry folks, you just think your children being able to go to a better school is a good idea”. In Louisiana the federal administration is actually suing the state for providing vouchers that help poor families escape their failed progressive schools. In the progressive mind it’s better to have predominately minority children go to run down, crime ridden, underperforming schools than let the racial mix of the progressive schools change, the progressives will desire what is really important.

Of course, it might be hard for the progressives to force all the changes you “need” on a well armed populace.  So now, nothing is more important to a progressive that seizing your weapons. Removing a citizen’s ability to defend themself is for their own good and only the people in the government can be trusted with firearms. I recently heard the ambassador from Australia point out that one of the main points of their gun confiscation law was to make sure “the police are never out gunned”, he forgot to add the average citizen always will be. Self-protection is another thing that needs to be removed to promote “the common good”

The IRS, FDA, SEC, EPA, DHS, Department of Education and Department of Commerce are attacking Americans at record rates all under of the guise of “for the common good”. And the parameters of what classifies as the common good will once again be defined by the progressives. The founding father’s ideas of individual liberty limited not only the federal government’s ability to hurt the individual citizen but also to help the individual citizen. In the progressive version of America, it is difficult to tell the difference and the progressive helping looks an awful lot like hurting to most Americans.

But then again, how would we know without a progressive telling us?

How good is a law if you have to lie about it in order to get it to pass?

 "If you had one of these substandard plans before the Affordable Care Act became law and you really liked that plan, you're able to keep it. That's what I said when I was running for office. That was part of the promise we made." -  President Obama 11/2013

The following week reports surfaced that as many as 90 million people might lose their existing policies.

"I want to speak plainly, clearly, honestly, about what the Affordable Care Act means for you and for the people you care about. Let's start with a fact. About 85% of Americans already have health insurance. If you're one of these folks, it's reasonable that you might worry that health care reform includes changes that are a problem for you, especially when you're bombarded with all sorts of fear mongering. So the first thing you need to know is this. If you already have health care you don't have to do anything."           - President Obama Sept 26 2013.

So less than one month later at the small company I work for we received notice that our existing health insurance policy was no longer available and the replacement plan will cost us 142% more. Yes you read that correctly 142%.

In defense of the Obama lies about keeping your insurance,   Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer said "If the president were to allow people to have those [insurance] plans be downgraded, or insurance companies to keep selling barebones plans ... he'd be violating [an] even more important promise to the American people -- that everyone would have a guarantee to access of quality affordable health insurance."

 I guess that means it was OK that we were lied to because it was for our own good.

But our plan was not downgraded before it was canceled; it was eliminated because it now violated Obamacare rules. This was not a “barebones plan” but a HSA high deductible plan that everyone in the company loved. Our plan covered 100% of all medical expenses after you satisfied your deductible.    Prior to meeting your deductible, medical expenses were covered by the employees HSA plan that was 50% funded by the company.

The President at first acted surprised that plans were being canceled, but we now know that the President and Congress were warned a number of times that the ACA would result in millions of insurance policies being canceled.  

So the President lied that we could keep our plans, then the President lied again that he knew nothing about it. Then the President said that it was a good thing our plans are canceled because we will get better insurance after the ACA was enacted, which also is a lie.

And for our small company the biggest lie of all - Obama promised, "We're gonna lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year."

Finally the President tells us that the number of people who had plans canceled was a “small minority” about 5% of the population. I guess that makes those 5% expendable for the common good. The ACA at best will provide insurance to 10% of the population who did not have insurance previously and even after the plan bill is fully implemented will still leave an estimated 5% of the population with no insurance.

So let’s look at what has happen since the Obamacare bill was voted on over 3 years ago:

·         The progressive speaker of the house first told us “we have to pass the bill to know what’s in it”. (Three years later the administration still does not know what is in the bill and a 600 billion dollar web site to explain it to us is a total failure.)

·         The President lied to us about the fate of existing polices

·         The President lied about not knowing there would be cancelations.

·         The President then told us it was OK he lied because it was for our own good and that it was really not a big deal because it only affected 5% of the population.

·         American citizens are forced to buy products they do not want at drastically inflated prices from what they had before the ACA was passed.

We fought and won WWII in less time than this administration has had to enact this law and they can’t even make a web site work.

Is this what a country based on individual liberty looks like? Is our national motto now “some must suffer so others gain, and the government will decide who suffers and who gains”?

Should the government of a free people lie to those people to get policy enacted and then tell them it is ok to lie as long as “it for your own good”?

Do you really want these people controlling your health care . . . . . . or anything else for that matter!

Is this the most ignorant President or just the most incompetent?

On Tuesday, a representative from the White House said that the President did not know that the NAS was spying on Allied world leaders.

Now, either the White House is lying or they are telling the truth. But if they truly did not have any knowledge of what was going on, then we have reached a tipping point and are now faced with the worst case scenario. If this was done without White House knowledge, then our government has gotten so big that our elected officials can no longer administer it. And the result is that we now have unelected bureaucrats making the decision to spy on foreign leaders. 

More proof of this is that we apparently have IRS officials selectively deciding to approve or reject                                                                                                     applications for tax-exempt corporations.  The White house denies knowing anything about this also.

We also have ATF officials running guns to Mexican drug gangs that the White House AND the Justice Department know nothing about.

Congress apparently is just as uninformed; Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the committee that oversees the NSA, insists that they (Congress) knew nothing about the spying on allies.

According to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the President did not know about all the problems that had been identified with the Affordable Care Act website prior to its “rollout”. 

Allegedly, the President did not know the Department of Justice was seizing the phone records of Associated Press reporters or that General Petraeus was being investigated. No one in the government supposedly knew that the diplomatic mission in Libya had requested more security and no one in Congress knew exactly what was in the Affordable Care Act as speaker Pelosi informed us we had to pass the bill to know what was in it. The President must have been terribly ignorant of what was in the Affordable Care Act also because he assured us “if you like your health care you can keep it” and hundreds of thousands of Americans are finding out that was a lie, me being one of them.

So who IS running this country? Apparently not our elected officials. Congress works an average of 3 days a week and the President has managed to get 146 rounds of golf in since being elected. They have not apparently had time to keep track of the tens of thousands of federal bureaucrats that ARE making decisions that change and effect our lives.  So in the absence of anyone else in charge, we let some unsupervised bureaucrat at the NSA decide to offend world leaders who are supposed to be our allies? We will let some low level ATF officer decide to ship military grade weapons to drug dealers who then use those weapons to murder American border patrol officers? And who knows who is authorizing the drone strikes that are used to kill US citizens.

Is this the most ignorant President or just the most incompetent? Could Congress get any less effective at supervising the government?

Harry Truman one said “The buck stops here”. I would think our President, who is supposedly a history scholar, would have heard that.

Bu then, maybe it is just one more thing the President does not know.  

The Left’s Central Delusion (or somethings are to good to not reprint part 4)

By  Thomas Sowell

The fundamental problem of the political Left seems to be that the real world does not fit their preconceptions. Therefore they see the real world as what is wrong, and what needs to be changed, since apparently their preconceptions cannot be wrong.

A never-ending source of grievances for the Left is the fact that some groups are “over-represented” in desirable occupations, institutions, and income brackets, while other groups are “under-represented.”

From all the indignation and outrage about this expressed on the left, you might think that it was impossible that different groups are simply better at different things.

Yet runners from Kenya continue to win a disproportionate share of marathons in the United States, and children whose parents or grandparents came from India have won most of the American spelling bees in the past 15 years. And has anyone failed to notice that the leading professional basketball players have for years been black, in a country where most of the population is white?

Most of the leading photographic lenses in the world have — for generations — been designed by people who were either Japanese or German. Most of the leading diamond-cutters in the world have been either India’s Jains or Jews from Israel or elsewhere.

Not only people but things have been grossly unequal. More than two-thirds of all the tornadoes in the entire world occur in the middle of the United States. Asia has more than 70 mountain peaks that are higher than 20,000 feet and Africa has none. Is it news that a disproportionate share of all the oil in the world is in the Middle East?

Whole books could be filled with the unequal behavior or performances of people, or the unequal geographic settings in which whole races, nations, and civilizations have developed. Yet the preconceptions of the political Left march on undaunted, loudly proclaiming sinister reasons why outcomes are not equal within nations or between nations.

All this moral melodrama has served as a background for the political agenda of the Left, which has claimed to be able to lift the poor out of poverty, and in general make the world a better place. This claim has been made for centuries and in countries around the world. And it has failed for centuries in countries around the world.

Some of the most sweeping and spectacular rhetoric of the Left occurred in 18th-century France, where the very concept of the Left originated in the fact that people with certain views sat on the left side of the National Assembly.

The French Revolution was their chance to show what they could do when they got the power they sought. In contrast to what they promised — “liberty, equality, fraternity” — what they actually produced were food shortages, mob violence, and dictatorial powers that included arbitrary executions, extending even to their own leaders, such as Robespierre, who died under the guillotine.

In the 20th century, the most sweeping vision of the Left — Communism — spread over vast regions of the world and encompassed well over a billion human beings. Of these, millions died of starvation in the Soviet Union under Stalin and tens of millions in China under Mao.

Milder versions of socialism, with central planning of national economies, took root in India and in various European democracies.

If the preconceptions of the Left were correct, central planning by educated elites who had vast amounts of statistical data at their fingertips and expertise readily available, and were backed by the power of government, should have been more successful than market economies where millions of individuals pursued their own individual interests willy-nilly.

But, by the end of the 20th century, even socialist and communist governments began abandoning central planning and allowing more market competition. Yet this quiet capitulation to inescapable realities did not end the noisy claims of the Left.

In the United States, those claims and policies have reached new heights, epitomized by government takeovers of whole sectors of the economy and unprecedented intrusions into the lives of Americans, of which Obama care has been only the most obvious example.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2013 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Politics win and the American people lose

The main stream media is having a field day blaming house Republicans for the inability of the federal government to get anything done.  This includes passing a budget resolution to fund the government. There is a continuing story line that seems to imply that the Democrats are more than willing to compromise but the Republicans will have none of it.

The President himself said recently in a NPR interview, “From the start I have said I am happy to talk to republicans about any issue”. Unfortunately when ask by the interviewer what he might be able to offer Republicans to forge a deal, our President responded, “what can I offer?....I shouldn’t have to offer anything”.

And there we have the Democrats idea of negotiations. “I shouldn’t have to offer anything”. In other words, there will be NO negotiations. To Mr. Obama the minority party and the millions of citizens they represent have no rights, have no voice, he won the election, that settles it, get over it.

But, as our supposed constitutional scholar President should know, that is not how it should work.  That is not how it has worked in the past and that is not how our founding fathers intended it to work - ever. The government was designed with separate branches and separate houses of Congress to keep the majority from steam rolling the over the minority. The rules were laid out to give the minority some power to affect the outcome of votes, to give the people the minority party represents some voice. Whether your party won the election or not your opinion as an American citizen is just as important as any other citizen

The Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obama-care, yes they ARE all the same) was pushed through with no input from Republicans.  This was at a time when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress AND the White House. A large minority or maybe even a majority of Americans see this bill as detrimental to the country, our economy and an attack on individual liberty. After the last election, we sent our elected officials to Washington with the instructions to attempt to do something about it.

The minority party in Congress has very limited tools to attempt to carry out the mandate that we elected them to carry forward.  Republicans will never be able to move a bill to the floor in the Senate, so the Republican controlled House is using the Budget Bill to attempt to force some concessions on the ACA. That is how the system works and all that is necessary is for the Democrats to come to the table and negotiate.

You would think that a bill like the ACA, that a majority of democrats have referred to as, “a train wreck” and the head of the AFL-CIO has said will, “wreck the middle class as we know it”, could use some work.

But in the recent words of a senior White House official, “we are winning, it doesn’t really matter to us how long the shut down last”.

Its fine for the Democrats to refuse to negotiate to score political points at the cost to the American citizen but let’s stop acting like it is all House Republican’s fault that the government is shut down.  The attitude of “I should not have to offer anything” is not how a real leader would begin to negotiate a settlement.

But then we don’t have a real leader with this President do we?

Extraordinary citizens make a extraordinary country

In recent discussions with many Republicans about the continued government shut down, numbers of people have expressed fear that the United States will lose its position as world leader if our government is to stay shut down for an extended time.  There is also concern that a government default would relegate our country to third-world status.

While a government shut down or default is serious and not the ideal situation, our over dependence on the government and government programs has lead us to forget a couple of things.

First, there is no doubt that some people will experience hardship because of the shutdown. But let’s not fool ourselves.  Someone suffers from every government action. Every time a bill is passed or not passed there are some winners and some losers.

Secondly and most important, the government is not what makes this country successful or extraordinary.  It is due to the individual citizen and the individual liberties that our government has, at least in the past, respected.

 The USA does not maintain the most lethal fighting force in the world because of the government. It is able to maintain a professional military because our amazing economy funds the entire thing and also because of the strength and resolve of the individual American service members. Every other western power has a robust federal government; but they do not have the economy to support a military like the USA nor do they have citizens with the deep resolve to protect our extraordinary way of life.

Our economy is not due to our government; it is due to the extraordinary individual business owners, inventors and workers that are, by far, the most productive in the world.

The amazing amount of public charity in the USA is not a product of the government. It is a product of the generous society and standard of living that affords ordinary people the finances and time to help their fellow man at a rate for beyond the rest of the world.

The individual citizen that pays all the taxes to make this government possible and produces all the wealth is not the product of the government put a by-product of limited government.

A federal government is an absolute necessity for a prosperous and functional republic. But a limited federal government is the one thing that makes this country so much more successful and prosperous than any other country in history. Every step the government takes that expands the governmental reach beyond the constitutional limits set forth by the founding fathers, limits the very liberty that makes the whole system possible.

The one thing that separates our citizens from those in other countries is our Constitution - the same Constitution that limits our government from the infringing on the very freedoms that were “endowed by our creator”.

People come to the United States of America from failed countries with failed governments all the time. They do extraordinary things with their lives that were not possible in their home countries. In American the government does not make individual, the individual makes the government. And that my friends is what makes this country so great.

The ACA and "if we only knew then what we know now".

Did you ever notice the number of unintended consequences to federal government action?

During WWI, federal farm policies artificially inflated wheat prices causing over production. That not only caused a huge surplus of wheat and eventually a bust in wheat prices; but they lead to the over planting of the land that then lead to the dust bowl.    

In an attempt to spur low income home ownership, Bill Clinton’s “Community Reinvestment Act” encouraged banks, along with Fanny Mae and Freddie Mack to make more risky loans to people who traditionally would not qualify for traditional mortages.  This law led directly to the housing bubble and subsequent recession. 

Mandatory air bag laws lead to the deaths of thousands of children who were buckled in child seats placed in front seat positions.

The banning of DDT chemicals lead directly to worldwide outbreaks of malaria that has killed millions.

Of course no one supporting these actions intended for bad things to happen, it’s just hard to see all the ramifications for huge far reaching programs on all 50 states when the programs are conceived and enacted in Washington.

This brings us to the so called “Affordable Care Act” (ACA).

In my home state of North Carolina, Blue Cross and Blue Shield has just announced price increases of 50-100% for many health insurance policies.  The “affordable” part is a little hard to see.  We have already learned that the President’s promise that “if you like your insurance policy you can keep it” was a bold face lie. And just in case anyone thinks criticism of the ACA is just from right wing extremists, we have Sen. Max Baucus, (D-Mont) calling the bill a “train wreak” and major union leaders calling for massive changes to the bill in the letter below to Democratic leaders in Congress.

               

Dear Leader Reid and Leader Pelosi:

When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.

Like millions of other Americans, our members are front-line workers in the American economy. We have been strong supporters of the notion that all Americans should have access to quality, affordable health care. We have also been strong supporters of you. In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision.

Now this vision has come back to haunt us.

Since the ACA was enacted, we have been bringing our deep concerns to the Administration, seeking reasonable regulatory interpretations to the statute that would help prevent the destruction of non-profit health plans. As you both know first-hand, our persuasive arguments have been disregarded and met with a stone wall by the White House and the pertinent agencies. This is especially stinging because other stakeholders have repeatedly received successful interpretations for their respective grievances. Most disconcerting of course is last week’s huge accommodation for the employer community—extending the statutorily mandated “December 31, 2013” deadline for the employer mandate and penalties.

Time is running out: Congress wrote this law; we voted for you. We have a problem; you need to fix it. The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe. Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios:

First, the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation, and many of them are doing so openly. The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits.

 Second, millions of Americans are covered by non-profit health insurance plans like the ones in which most of our members participate. These non-profit plans are governed jointly by unions and companies under the Taft-Hartley Act. Our health plans have been built over decades by working men and women. Under the ACA as interpreted by the Administration, our employees will treated differently and not be eligible for subsidies afforded other citizens. As such, many employees will be relegated to second-class status and shut out of the help the law offers to for-profit insurance plans.

And finally, even though non-profit plans like ours won’t receive the same subsidies as for-profit plans, they’ll be taxed to pay for those subsidies. Taken together, these restrictions will make non-profit plans like ours unsustainable, and will undermine the health-care market of viable alternatives to the big health insurance companies.

On behalf of the millions of working men and women we represent and the families they support, we can no longer stand silent in the face of elements of the Affordable Care Act that will destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.

We believe that there are common-sense corrections that can be made within the existing statute that will allow our members to continue to keep their current health plans and benefits just as you and the President pledged. Unless changes are made, however, that promise is hollow.

We continue to stand behind real health care reform, but the law as it stands will hurt millions of Americans including the members of our respective unions.

We are looking to you to make sure these changes are made.

                               

I have no doubt that the bill was conceived, written and voted on with the best possible intentions. But as a wise man once said, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. It is time that the government stops making citizens pay for their bad decisions. (Actually it is time for our elected officials to stop making bad decisions!) Since the ramifications are hard to see and understand of a bill one thousand pages in length, maybe the government should take a line from the Hippocratic oath and at first “do no harm”.

A limited federal government is the only why I can see this happening.

I am sorry Mr. Putin but you are absolutely wrong.

 

This week we were treated to an op-ed article from President Putin who decided to lecture the American people on the proper use of military force and international cooperation. The whole thing would be funny if it was not so tragic.

 

It is amazing that Mr. Putin would  lecture Americans on human rights when his previous employer, the KGB of the now debunked USSR, single purpose was to deny rights to its countries own citizens and deal with anyone who resisted the crushing communist government with violence only exceeded by previous USSR governments. 

 

It is ironic that Mr. Putin uses the violence in Afghanistan, since the US lead the invasion, as an example of the problem with the use of military force and states “We need to use the United Nations Security Council to preserve law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world”. I don’t remember any UN resolutions Mr. Putin when hundreds of thousands of Russian troops flooded across the Afghan border. I don’t remember any UN resolutions Mr. Putin when that action started the violent down-spiral that eventually lead to Al Qaeda having complete run of Afghanistan. I don’t remember any UN resolutions Mr. Putin that stopped Al Qaeda from using that county to train and plan attacks like 9-11. I don’t remember you or any representative of the USSR objecting to the mass killing of civilians with Mi-24 attack helicopters during the USSR occupation. You showed no concern for international law or UN sanctions as the government YOU worked for carted political prisoners off to Siberia or as your Russian tanks crushed Chechen rebels.

 

Save us the lectures Mr. Putin.

We do not need them from a man who worked for one of the most murderous governments in history. The USS has supported proxy wars throughout history.  Your country has always been and still is on the side of tyranny, ruthlessness and brutal governments. Even today, in the country where YOU are President, citizens are beaten, imprisoned and killed just for voicing opposition to your polices.

Maybe in your country, with government controlled media and thug police, maybe there you can get away with the outlandish lies your article expounds. But in a country with a free press, in a country that encourages free thinking people, YOU are a hypocrite and a clown. You have stumbled on to a political opportunity to increase Russian influence.  This opportunity was brought about mainly due to the total incompetence of the current US President and his team of advisors. But don’t assume the majority of Americans are as ignorant as our current leader.

Your biggest error, your biggest misconception, is your belief that America is not exceptional. It is not the individual per say but something much greater. What makes America exceptional is the concepts of individual liberty and individual freedom that allows Americans to achieve exceptional things.  There is a reason that America had to supply wheat to feed your Russian citizens during the communist reign of terror. There is a reason why the US economy dwarfs all others and is 8 times the size of the Russian economy. It’s not because America’s citizens are smarter or harder working than any others. History has shown the brilliance and resolve of the Russian people. The difference is, the American Constitution that allows American individuals to achieve their maximum potential and not be limited by a corrupt and overbearing bureaucratic government.

Immigrants flock to the United States of America because in the USA; you can be or achieve anything. Our country is not perfect:  we are lead and governed by imperfect people.  But, our Founding Father’s concept of unalienable rights is perfect. It is the light that lead the world out of 10,000 years of darkness; that proved that the individual has value.  A person has value not because it was granted by some government or some King or some President; a person has value just because the individual exists.

If you were a great leader, you would understand this concept.

If you were a great leader, you would emulate this concept.

But then, I did say “if”………

 

 

Does anyone remeber the last war?

As we contemplate going to war in Syria; it might be a good idea to remember that we still are at war in Afghanistan. When we think about the people dying in the Syrian conflict; it would be nice to not forget we still have soldiers, airman and Marines dying in far off lands. A scan of major newspapers and news web sites show little or no mention of the continued combat operations in Afghanistan. So if being a “war weary nation” (our President’s words) means that we ignore the sacrifices of our military, maybe it would be best if we do not engage them in any other conflicts. If we are so bored and complacent that we don’t even notice that there is a war is going on, maybe we do not deserve their continued service and sacrifice.  

Thankfully internet sites like “The War on Terror” (http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/) are doing an excellent job keep us informed about where our military is deployed and, like the reports below, remind us that some are still making the ultimate sacrifice.

Maybe we could take a minute away from talking about the next war to remember those that are dying defending us in the current war.

Today, the Department of Defense announced the deaths of service men that were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom for the last 30 days.

           Staff Sgt. Todd J. Lobraico Jr., 22, of New Fairfield, Conn., died Sept. 5, 2013, from wounds sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with small arms fire near Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 105th Security Forces Squadron at Stewart Air National Guard Base, N.Y

   Staff Sgt. Joshua J. Bowden, 28, of Villa Rica, Ga., died Aug. 31, in Ghazni, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with small arms fire while on dismounted patrol.  He was assigned to the 242nd Ordnance Battalion (EOD), 71st Ordnance Group (EOD), Fort Carson, Colo

          Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, 24, of Staten Island, N.Y., died Aug. 28, in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device, small arms and indirect fire. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light), Fort Drum, N.Y.

       1st Lt. Jason Togi, 24, of Pago Pago, American Samoa, died Aug. 26, in Hasan Karez, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.    He was assigned to the 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

       The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom   They died Aug. 23 in Haft Asiab, Afghanistan, from wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device during combat operations. Both soldiers were assigned to 2nd Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.

           Spc. Kenneth Clifford Alvarez, 23, of Santa Maria, Calif., and

           Pvt. Jonathon Michael Dean Hostetter, 20, of Humphreys, Mo

     Master Sgt. George A. Bannar Jr., 37, of Orange, Va., died Aug. 20, of injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with small arms fire in Wardak Province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Died Aug. 11, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their unit with indirect fire. The soldiers were assigned to the 4th Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.

           Staff Sgt. Octavio Herrera, 26, of Caldwell, Idaho,

           Sgt. Jamar A. Hicks, 22, of Little Rock, Ark., and

           Spc. Keith E. Grace Jr., 26, of Baytown, Texas

 

As citizens we have a responsibility to stay informed about things our nation is involved in.   I invite everyone to read “The War on Terror” blog regularly to stay informed. The main stream media has apparently moved on to the next big headline.  And remember, just because they are not reporting it, does not mean it is not happening.