JOIN the EASTERN NC TEA PARTY
Please consider joining the Eastern NC Tea Party. We are a concerned group of patriots who meet regularly to study the Constitution and other founding documents, to appreciate our founding principles, to discuss legislation and federal court decisions, and in general, to try to make sense of why our government continues to ignore its constitutional limits and therefore jeopardize the rights of the individual. For more information, please go to the next tab - "About."
Paul Ryan's Budget Plan - "Path to Prosperity"
Is summarized below. I have read the entire plan and have broken it down as follows: I've given a statement of where we are currently, what President Obama has proposed, and what the Paul Ryan plan provides. Read it - down further.
Kirk Cameron's Film Monumental Reminds Us of Our Christian Heritage
by Diane Rufino
A review of Kirk Cameron's movie, "Monumental: In Search of America's National Treasure."
We often hear people talk about America's Christian heritage. Usually it is in the context of some government action or judicial decision which denies this heritage. There is no denying that our government and other forces are operating in warp speed to remove all vestiges of our Christian roots, while at the same time attempting to reclassify our Founders as other than Christians and attempting to define and rewrite our very history.
And they are making tremendous headway. We saw the extent of the hostility towards our religious heritage when the delegates to Democratic Convention voted to remove the word "God" from its platform. The convention chairman, Antonio Villaraigosa, declared that the votes were sufficient to keep "God" in the platform but anyone who watched the vote knew the opponents really won the day.
But those who understand the significance of our Christian heritage are fighting to keep that heritage alive.
Kirk Cameron, the adorable teen actor from the (1985-1992) sitcom Growing Pains, is one who understands the significance. Furthermore, he understands that America needs a re-commitment to the values our founding Christians brought with them in the 17th century to colonies
like Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay to salvage our "rotting soul." Cameron says that when he looks around, he notices that the fruit on the tree of American liberty is rotten and the roots are poisoned. “As I look around I get this sinking feeling that we’re off track, that there’s something sick in the soul of our country. When I examine the fruit that’s hanging on the tree of America, I can see that it’s rotting. And that concerns me deeply.” His observations led him on a journey to find out the secret formula that made America great. He set out to find our "national treasure."
"I’m retracing the footsteps of our Founders from England to America in the hope of discovering our true “national treasure.” I want to listen to them, to learn from them. Because I suspect Forefathers knew we were a forgetful people, that someday we would lose our way as a nation. So they left us a map that would guide us back to the source of America’s success.
What I've discovered is amazing! The key to transforming our nation and securing our children's future is not complicated. Best of all, it’s not hidden away like something out of the Da Vinci Code. It's been right in front of us all along, and I can’t wait to show it to you in this film."
What he found was a simple truth. Our Pilgrim and Puritan forefathers carried the secret to successful self-government with them across the Atlantic. Their greatest contribution was the notion that only a religious and moral people could be trusted to govern themselves successfully. Only a religious and moral people could be trusted with liberty. Cameron documented his journey in a movie called Monumental: In Search of America's National Treasure.
What do we mean by "Our Christian Heritage"?
We certainly don't refer to it as a way to suggest that Christianity be the official religion of the United States. We have the First Amendment to protect us from the establishment of any one religion, so that our religious conscience is free from the coercion or criticism of other religions (or non-religion) and no one is forced to support an offensive religion with their tax dollars.
Our Christian heritage finds its roots in the very foundation of our government. Its principles and values affect many aspects of our lives, none more profoundly than the very form of government that we enjoy and benefit from. The concept of the sovereign person,
being "created in God's image," the inherent dignity of every human being, tolerance towards others, charity, service, equality before the law, and personal responsibility all come from the Christian message. Every person, old or young, strong or weak is equal before the Lord.
Religion plants the seeds of morality and ethics. It promotes strong families, which are the bedrock of a healthy, ordered, productive society. It gives the representative a servant's heart. It sets guidelines for conduct that benefit society as a whole. It structures government that is closest to the individual, where it can be most responsive. It establishes notions of fairness and equity. It establishes proper priorities for a strong community. When we speak today of the Christian heritage, we speak of institutions (mostly government) that come from the Hebrews and values that we owe to the Judeo-Christian culture. The basis of our law comes from Natural Law and from God's Law.
And as Kirk Cameron emphasizes in his movie Monumental, America was founded by settlers - Pilgrims and Puritans - who wanted to establish a new land where they could live the teachings of the gospel.
But this is only the surface. Everywhere Christianity has been able to penetrate culture and society, it has been successful. It has been so successful that others, such as atheists and extremists, have flocked to Christian empires to enjoy its freedom and prosperity. The humanization that derives from Christianity has touched the heart of civilization and civilization will never be the same again.
The gospel was introduced to America with the Pilgrims and the Puritans, and the timing of their voyages to America was significant. It coincided with two major events: First the Bible was translated from Latin into English in the late 16th century and then in 1610, the work went to press, becoming available in print the following year. It became known as "The King James Bible" in honor of England's king at the time. Monumental begins with Kirk Cameron's research into the Pilgrims and their famous voyage to the New World on the Mayflower. He traces their steps, from point to point, as they escape dfrom England to start a new colony, Plymouth Colony, in an unknown and uncharted new land. The story is told by Cameron, in the form of a narration and in dialogue with experts, as he goes from point to point along the Pilgrim's escape route from England.
We learn how the Pilgrims were part of the Puritan movement (a separatist movement, from the Church of England). We learn how they became spiritually aware when the printed English Bible became available. They could read the gospel of Jesus Christ firsthand and not have to wait to hear scripture read in the Church, headed by the King of England. This relatively small band of men, women, and children had a strong desire to serve God as they saw fit, free from the Church of England and the religious policies of the King. Being identified as "separatists" or "purists" made them potential traitors to the Crown and made them outcasts. In order to exercise religious freedom, they would have to leave England, settle in Holland (perhaps one of the only places they could be free from persecution) for 11 years, and eventually make their way back to England to commission a ship to take them to the New World. Monumental chronicles their trials and tribulations. We learn how God protected them and how their faith helped them endure each of the many setbacks that threatened to derail their mission. We learn that the Pilgrims and members of the crew signed a compact, the Mayflower Compact, in 1620 before departing the ship to express their desire to be rid of British law and to establish a form of self-government based on just and equal laws and for the advancement of the Christian faith. In the New World, government would be established to serve their interests and they would be masters of their government, unlike in England, where the government was the master of the people who exist to serve the interests of government.
By the time the film moves on to Plymouth, Cameron has already shown the Pilgrims to be far more courageous and principled that the stoic, starched creatures in black and white clothes with buckled black shoes that we learned about in elementary school. They were devout, hard-working, family-loving, persevering people who were committed to establishing a successful colony based on self-government and religious freedom.
One of the most striking parts of the movie was when Cameron visited a monument that I had never heard of - "The National Monument to the Forefathers in Plymouth, MA" (also referred to as "The Pilgrim's Monument"). In the film, the monument is referred to as the “Matrix of Liberty." The "Matrix of Liberty" is an enormous granite monument devoted to the principles that the Pilgrims embraced in Plymouth to order their society. The Pilgrims ordered their society on eternal truths, including faith, morality, justice, mercy, and education. In fact, the monument is structured and built to show the interdependence of these truths. The center of the monument is a giant women holding a Bible and pointing to the Heavens. She is Faith. At each of the four corners of the base of the monument is a pillar, representing Morality, Law, Education, and Liberty. The pillars have a certain order, starting with Morality and ending with Liberty, but always dependent upon Faith.
The monument describes the ordered foundation of the Pilgrim society. Here is how Cameron described Faith and the four pillars:
Faith - She is pointing to God because her faith is in the God of the Bible and in Jesus Christ. She is holding the Geneva Bible which is open, indicating that she is actively reading it. She has a star on her forehead to signify that she has wisdom, which comes from the
Bible. She believes in Jesus Christ, who was sent to Earth to set man free. The first pillar is faith. Faith is necessary for all the other pillars.
Morality - The statue is of a woman with no eyes, holding a Bible. She has no eyes to signify that morality is an internal characteristic. Morality means the "heart is right." To achieve morality, the heart must be transformed according to the word of God.
Law - The statue is of a woman holding the scales of justice. There must be some degree of order in society and order is established by a set of laws. Laws are based on God's law. They protect and promote goodness and punish and prevent evil. Hence, law must be morally just. She is holding the scales of justice to indicate that the law applies equally to everyone. Laws must be fair and equitable. Punishment, for example, must be in set in fair relation to the offense. Finally, society should be merciful, just as God offers mercy and grace.
Education - The statue is of a mother teaching her children. She is holding an open Bible and pointing to the Ten Commandments. Parents should educate and train their children in morality and religion so that they will grow up to be responsible citizens, capable of maintaining a free and ordered society.
Liberty - The statue is of a chiseled warrior, carrying a sword and draped in the skin of a lion. The lion's head is draped over his shoulder.
He is called "Liberty Man." The sword represents strength and the lion represents tyranny. The man is strong because he has faith and is moral. He has been educated and has defeated tyranny because his laws are strong and just. If all the other pillars are promoted in society, its people can be trusted with their self-government and will be strong enough to pass on liberty to the next generation. In other words, Liberty Man is the result of obeying the "Matrix of Liberty."
The so-called "Matrix of Liberty," and the values and priorities it represents, is the real legacy of the Pilgrims. Not the black and white dress or suit with the shoes with the black buckle. Not the hair up in a bun with a white kerchief or the turkey feast. Yet no one celebrates this. Public schools only teach about the successful harvest, and not the successful formula for religious liberty and other fundamental liberties.
The Pilgrims were British subjects looking for religious liberty, yet with the Mayflower Compact, they devised a special formula to protect all liberty. It is a magical recipe centered on the word of God and that provides a blueprint for the government of a free people and its protection. At the core of that recipe is the recognition that only a religious and moral people can be entrusted with the responsibility of securing so great a gift as Liberty. This is America's Christian heritage. Our Christian heritage is the reason we have a government system centered around the individual, bound to protect his sovereign rights. Our Christian heritage is inextricably connected to our founding principles. [Note that the word "principle" comes from a Latin root that means "first things."] Now that we know what this heritage is, we can see it clearly in our charter of freedom, the Declaration of Independence, and our very Constitution.
Did the "Matrix of Liberty" have any influence on our Founding Fathers? The last leg of Kirk Cameron's journey to find our "national treasure"
took him to Aledo, Texas where he met with David Barton, founder of Wallbuilders. Barton has an extensive collection of original documents and books from the era of our Founding Fathers. He was able to convince Cameron, using their writings and through the very fact that Congress published thousands of Bibles for public schools to use to instruct students, that indeed, the Pilgrim's special formula had been
embraced by the Founders when they crafted our government and secured our rights.
John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
In his farewell address (1796), George Washington spoke: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and
morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them." John Jay, author of five of the Federalist Papers and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, said: "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty and as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
In the United States, we enjoy a representative government. "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." Abraham Lincoln reaffirmed that fact in the Gettysburg Address - "A nation by the people, of the people, for the people...." The Constitution is a restraint on self-government. It forms the basis of our republic, which
essentially means that we have a form of government defined by laws so that complete power is never in the hands of the majority (which can become a mob). A republic respects the sovereignty of each individual, while in a democracy the majority exerts sovereign rights. In a republic, the sovereignty of the people is exercised through representatives they choose, to whom those powers are specially delegated and limited by the Constitution. For example, the Bill of Rights guarantees that no matter what the will of the majority is, they can never deny fellow Americans certain fundamental rights.
Our elected government officials do not exercise force and power by divine right. The authority they possess for making laws that the average citizen is expected to obey comes ultimately from the Constitution. Without explicit authorization, they have no power. Of course it takes principled, ethical, moral, and educated individuals to give proper respect to his or her oath of office and serve the people within constitutional bounds.
Our Founding Fathers were keenly aware of the limits of human reason and of the temptations of political power. History had taught them well. They drafted our Constitution with limiting language precisely because they knew that their successors would need constant reminders of the values that they believed were critical and of the foundational principles on which the government was built.
The preservation of liberty depends on two things: a constitution that limits the amount of government in people's lives and a citizenry that requires little government. We still have our Constitution to protect us from the reaches of government, although the government is slowly exceeding the power that was originally granted to it. What we don't have is a citizenry that is disciplined enough and moral enough to require as little government as possible. When laws are too numerous, they are just as dangerous to the exercise of liberty as having no law at all.
A just and enduring government depends equally on the integrity and faithful adherence to the Constitution and the morality of its people.
The full title of Kirk Cameron's film is "Monumental: In Search of America's National Treasure." So what is America's "national treasure"?
It is its Christian heritage. It is the lasting legacy of the Pilgrims in our founding documents and on our national fabric.
How does it all end? We won't know how our republic will end because that is ultimately up to the character and commitment of the American people. But the film Monumental ends with an optimistic message..... for those who will heed it, that is. Cameron reminds us that we are in a
constitutional crisis and according to many evangelicals and believers, we are on target to be destroyed in the end times because of the choices our nation has made. But he is not ready to give up on the United States. He tells us: "I still have children in this world. I want a bright future for them." The solution, he says, lies in the Pilgrim's statue - the "Matrix of Liberty." The solution is a return to the values, principles, and priorities that defined the first American government established here in the New World. Unfortunately, the statue is hidden away in a small remote park, tucked among residential developments in Plymouth, Massachusetts and not displayed proudly along with the rest of our history, where everyone can see it - in Washington DC. We don't advance our republic by ignoring our Christian heritage. We
save our republic by re-embracing it.
A review of Kirk Cameron's movie, "Monumental: In Search of America's National Treasure."
We often hear people talk about America's Christian heritage. Usually it is in the context of some government action or judicial decision which denies this heritage. There is no denying that our government and other forces are operating in warp speed to remove all vestiges of our Christian roots, while at the same time attempting to reclassify our Founders as other than Christians and attempting to define and rewrite our very history.
And they are making tremendous headway. We saw the extent of the hostility towards our religious heritage when the delegates to Democratic Convention voted to remove the word "God" from its platform. The convention chairman, Antonio Villaraigosa, declared that the votes were sufficient to keep "God" in the platform but anyone who watched the vote knew the opponents really won the day.
But those who understand the significance of our Christian heritage are fighting to keep that heritage alive.
Kirk Cameron, the adorable teen actor from the (1985-1992) sitcom Growing Pains, is one who understands the significance. Furthermore, he understands that America needs a re-commitment to the values our founding Christians brought with them in the 17th century to colonies
like Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay to salvage our "rotting soul." Cameron says that when he looks around, he notices that the fruit on the tree of American liberty is rotten and the roots are poisoned. “As I look around I get this sinking feeling that we’re off track, that there’s something sick in the soul of our country. When I examine the fruit that’s hanging on the tree of America, I can see that it’s rotting. And that concerns me deeply.” His observations led him on a journey to find out the secret formula that made America great. He set out to find our "national treasure."
"I’m retracing the footsteps of our Founders from England to America in the hope of discovering our true “national treasure.” I want to listen to them, to learn from them. Because I suspect Forefathers knew we were a forgetful people, that someday we would lose our way as a nation. So they left us a map that would guide us back to the source of America’s success.
What I've discovered is amazing! The key to transforming our nation and securing our children's future is not complicated. Best of all, it’s not hidden away like something out of the Da Vinci Code. It's been right in front of us all along, and I can’t wait to show it to you in this film."
What he found was a simple truth. Our Pilgrim and Puritan forefathers carried the secret to successful self-government with them across the Atlantic. Their greatest contribution was the notion that only a religious and moral people could be trusted to govern themselves successfully. Only a religious and moral people could be trusted with liberty. Cameron documented his journey in a movie called Monumental: In Search of America's National Treasure.
What do we mean by "Our Christian Heritage"?
We certainly don't refer to it as a way to suggest that Christianity be the official religion of the United States. We have the First Amendment to protect us from the establishment of any one religion, so that our religious conscience is free from the coercion or criticism of other religions (or non-religion) and no one is forced to support an offensive religion with their tax dollars.
Our Christian heritage finds its roots in the very foundation of our government. Its principles and values affect many aspects of our lives, none more profoundly than the very form of government that we enjoy and benefit from. The concept of the sovereign person,
being "created in God's image," the inherent dignity of every human being, tolerance towards others, charity, service, equality before the law, and personal responsibility all come from the Christian message. Every person, old or young, strong or weak is equal before the Lord.
Religion plants the seeds of morality and ethics. It promotes strong families, which are the bedrock of a healthy, ordered, productive society. It gives the representative a servant's heart. It sets guidelines for conduct that benefit society as a whole. It structures government that is closest to the individual, where it can be most responsive. It establishes notions of fairness and equity. It establishes proper priorities for a strong community. When we speak today of the Christian heritage, we speak of institutions (mostly government) that come from the Hebrews and values that we owe to the Judeo-Christian culture. The basis of our law comes from Natural Law and from God's Law.
And as Kirk Cameron emphasizes in his movie Monumental, America was founded by settlers - Pilgrims and Puritans - who wanted to establish a new land where they could live the teachings of the gospel.
But this is only the surface. Everywhere Christianity has been able to penetrate culture and society, it has been successful. It has been so successful that others, such as atheists and extremists, have flocked to Christian empires to enjoy its freedom and prosperity. The humanization that derives from Christianity has touched the heart of civilization and civilization will never be the same again.
The gospel was introduced to America with the Pilgrims and the Puritans, and the timing of their voyages to America was significant. It coincided with two major events: First the Bible was translated from Latin into English in the late 16th century and then in 1610, the work went to press, becoming available in print the following year. It became known as "The King James Bible" in honor of England's king at the time. Monumental begins with Kirk Cameron's research into the Pilgrims and their famous voyage to the New World on the Mayflower. He traces their steps, from point to point, as they escape dfrom England to start a new colony, Plymouth Colony, in an unknown and uncharted new land. The story is told by Cameron, in the form of a narration and in dialogue with experts, as he goes from point to point along the Pilgrim's escape route from England.
We learn how the Pilgrims were part of the Puritan movement (a separatist movement, from the Church of England). We learn how they became spiritually aware when the printed English Bible became available. They could read the gospel of Jesus Christ firsthand and not have to wait to hear scripture read in the Church, headed by the King of England. This relatively small band of men, women, and children had a strong desire to serve God as they saw fit, free from the Church of England and the religious policies of the King. Being identified as "separatists" or "purists" made them potential traitors to the Crown and made them outcasts. In order to exercise religious freedom, they would have to leave England, settle in Holland (perhaps one of the only places they could be free from persecution) for 11 years, and eventually make their way back to England to commission a ship to take them to the New World. Monumental chronicles their trials and tribulations. We learn how God protected them and how their faith helped them endure each of the many setbacks that threatened to derail their mission. We learn that the Pilgrims and members of the crew signed a compact, the Mayflower Compact, in 1620 before departing the ship to express their desire to be rid of British law and to establish a form of self-government based on just and equal laws and for the advancement of the Christian faith. In the New World, government would be established to serve their interests and they would be masters of their government, unlike in England, where the government was the master of the people who exist to serve the interests of government.
By the time the film moves on to Plymouth, Cameron has already shown the Pilgrims to be far more courageous and principled that the stoic, starched creatures in black and white clothes with buckled black shoes that we learned about in elementary school. They were devout, hard-working, family-loving, persevering people who were committed to establishing a successful colony based on self-government and religious freedom.
One of the most striking parts of the movie was when Cameron visited a monument that I had never heard of - "The National Monument to the Forefathers in Plymouth, MA" (also referred to as "The Pilgrim's Monument"). In the film, the monument is referred to as the “Matrix of Liberty." The "Matrix of Liberty" is an enormous granite monument devoted to the principles that the Pilgrims embraced in Plymouth to order their society. The Pilgrims ordered their society on eternal truths, including faith, morality, justice, mercy, and education. In fact, the monument is structured and built to show the interdependence of these truths. The center of the monument is a giant women holding a Bible and pointing to the Heavens. She is Faith. At each of the four corners of the base of the monument is a pillar, representing Morality, Law, Education, and Liberty. The pillars have a certain order, starting with Morality and ending with Liberty, but always dependent upon Faith.
The monument describes the ordered foundation of the Pilgrim society. Here is how Cameron described Faith and the four pillars:
Faith - She is pointing to God because her faith is in the God of the Bible and in Jesus Christ. She is holding the Geneva Bible which is open, indicating that she is actively reading it. She has a star on her forehead to signify that she has wisdom, which comes from the
Bible. She believes in Jesus Christ, who was sent to Earth to set man free. The first pillar is faith. Faith is necessary for all the other pillars.
Morality - The statue is of a woman with no eyes, holding a Bible. She has no eyes to signify that morality is an internal characteristic. Morality means the "heart is right." To achieve morality, the heart must be transformed according to the word of God.
Law - The statue is of a woman holding the scales of justice. There must be some degree of order in society and order is established by a set of laws. Laws are based on God's law. They protect and promote goodness and punish and prevent evil. Hence, law must be morally just. She is holding the scales of justice to indicate that the law applies equally to everyone. Laws must be fair and equitable. Punishment, for example, must be in set in fair relation to the offense. Finally, society should be merciful, just as God offers mercy and grace.
Education - The statue is of a mother teaching her children. She is holding an open Bible and pointing to the Ten Commandments. Parents should educate and train their children in morality and religion so that they will grow up to be responsible citizens, capable of maintaining a free and ordered society.
Liberty - The statue is of a chiseled warrior, carrying a sword and draped in the skin of a lion. The lion's head is draped over his shoulder.
He is called "Liberty Man." The sword represents strength and the lion represents tyranny. The man is strong because he has faith and is moral. He has been educated and has defeated tyranny because his laws are strong and just. If all the other pillars are promoted in society, its people can be trusted with their self-government and will be strong enough to pass on liberty to the next generation. In other words, Liberty Man is the result of obeying the "Matrix of Liberty."
The so-called "Matrix of Liberty," and the values and priorities it represents, is the real legacy of the Pilgrims. Not the black and white dress or suit with the shoes with the black buckle. Not the hair up in a bun with a white kerchief or the turkey feast. Yet no one celebrates this. Public schools only teach about the successful harvest, and not the successful formula for religious liberty and other fundamental liberties.
The Pilgrims were British subjects looking for religious liberty, yet with the Mayflower Compact, they devised a special formula to protect all liberty. It is a magical recipe centered on the word of God and that provides a blueprint for the government of a free people and its protection. At the core of that recipe is the recognition that only a religious and moral people can be entrusted with the responsibility of securing so great a gift as Liberty. This is America's Christian heritage. Our Christian heritage is the reason we have a government system centered around the individual, bound to protect his sovereign rights. Our Christian heritage is inextricably connected to our founding principles. [Note that the word "principle" comes from a Latin root that means "first things."] Now that we know what this heritage is, we can see it clearly in our charter of freedom, the Declaration of Independence, and our very Constitution.
Did the "Matrix of Liberty" have any influence on our Founding Fathers? The last leg of Kirk Cameron's journey to find our "national treasure"
took him to Aledo, Texas where he met with David Barton, founder of Wallbuilders. Barton has an extensive collection of original documents and books from the era of our Founding Fathers. He was able to convince Cameron, using their writings and through the very fact that Congress published thousands of Bibles for public schools to use to instruct students, that indeed, the Pilgrim's special formula had been
embraced by the Founders when they crafted our government and secured our rights.
John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
In his farewell address (1796), George Washington spoke: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and
morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them." John Jay, author of five of the Federalist Papers and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, said: "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty and as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
In the United States, we enjoy a representative government. "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." Abraham Lincoln reaffirmed that fact in the Gettysburg Address - "A nation by the people, of the people, for the people...." The Constitution is a restraint on self-government. It forms the basis of our republic, which
essentially means that we have a form of government defined by laws so that complete power is never in the hands of the majority (which can become a mob). A republic respects the sovereignty of each individual, while in a democracy the majority exerts sovereign rights. In a republic, the sovereignty of the people is exercised through representatives they choose, to whom those powers are specially delegated and limited by the Constitution. For example, the Bill of Rights guarantees that no matter what the will of the majority is, they can never deny fellow Americans certain fundamental rights.
Our elected government officials do not exercise force and power by divine right. The authority they possess for making laws that the average citizen is expected to obey comes ultimately from the Constitution. Without explicit authorization, they have no power. Of course it takes principled, ethical, moral, and educated individuals to give proper respect to his or her oath of office and serve the people within constitutional bounds.
Our Founding Fathers were keenly aware of the limits of human reason and of the temptations of political power. History had taught them well. They drafted our Constitution with limiting language precisely because they knew that their successors would need constant reminders of the values that they believed were critical and of the foundational principles on which the government was built.
The preservation of liberty depends on two things: a constitution that limits the amount of government in people's lives and a citizenry that requires little government. We still have our Constitution to protect us from the reaches of government, although the government is slowly exceeding the power that was originally granted to it. What we don't have is a citizenry that is disciplined enough and moral enough to require as little government as possible. When laws are too numerous, they are just as dangerous to the exercise of liberty as having no law at all.
A just and enduring government depends equally on the integrity and faithful adherence to the Constitution and the morality of its people.
The full title of Kirk Cameron's film is "Monumental: In Search of America's National Treasure." So what is America's "national treasure"?
It is its Christian heritage. It is the lasting legacy of the Pilgrims in our founding documents and on our national fabric.
How does it all end? We won't know how our republic will end because that is ultimately up to the character and commitment of the American people. But the film Monumental ends with an optimistic message..... for those who will heed it, that is. Cameron reminds us that we are in a
constitutional crisis and according to many evangelicals and believers, we are on target to be destroyed in the end times because of the choices our nation has made. But he is not ready to give up on the United States. He tells us: "I still have children in this world. I want a bright future for them." The solution, he says, lies in the Pilgrim's statue - the "Matrix of Liberty." The solution is a return to the values, principles, and priorities that defined the first American government established here in the New World. Unfortunately, the statue is hidden away in a small remote park, tucked among residential developments in Plymouth, Massachusetts and not displayed proudly along with the rest of our history, where everyone can see it - in Washington DC. We don't advance our republic by ignoring our Christian heritage. We
save our republic by re-embracing it.
OUR NATIONAL DEBT - Time Clock
Find out the national debt and the debt incurred by taxpayers by going to the following site. If you click at the top on "State Debt Clocks," you can pull up North Carolina and find out our population and our debt.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
"The New York Times" wrote a shocking article calling attention to the income
inequality caused by single parenthood. That's right, the liberal "New York
Times" found that inequality is caused more by marital status than by finance,
Wall Street, or tax policy. Are liberals encouraging the decline of marriage?
inequality caused by single parenthood. That's right, the liberal "New York
Times" found that inequality is caused more by marital status than by finance,
Wall Street, or tax policy. Are liberals encouraging the decline of marriage?
Paul Ryan's Budget Plan - "The Path to Prosperity" - as Compared to Obama's Plan for a Second Term
Anyone interested in this information in chart form - contact Diane Rufino (go to the "ABOUT" tab at the top of the page and "Contact Us."
Paul Ryan's Plan- "Path to Prosperity" (in simple terms)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242612172357504.html
The Path to Prosperity presents a meaningful alternative to Obama's massive spending and borrowing policy. It gives voters a choice between futures. Do we want a future where the United States and Americans are constrained by debt and important programs are increasingly undermined, or do we want a future where we are free from debt and our programs such as Social Security and Medicare are safe.
The Pat to Prosperity cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president's budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion.
A study just released by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects that The Path to Prosperity will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year, bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015, and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade. It spurs economic growth, with $1.5 trillion in additional real GDP over the decade. According to Heritage's analysis, it would result in $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average of $1,000 in additional family income each year.
Here are its major components:
• Statement of Revenue and Debt: The biggest driver of revenue to the federal government isn't higher tax rates.... it's economic
growth. Growth is the key to fiscal sustainability. And low tax rates are the key to growth.
Our current level of national debt (US debt held as a share of the economy) poses a fundamental challenge to our American way of life. When Obama took office, the national debt was $10 trillion. It has now surpassed $16 trillion. As a result of the conduct of all prior administrations, the debt grew to $10 trillion. In just 4 years under Obama alone, he has added $6 trillion. Since Election Day 2008, US debt has increased by 70%. Our national credit rating has been downgraded not once but twice. There is talk of another downgrade. Never before in our nation's history has our credit rating been anything but stellar. If our current path of government spending continues, the debt trajectory (as compared to economy) will increase exponentially and we will face economic collapse. Our current path is not sustainable.
Obama's budget proposal calls for spending increases of $1.5 trillion and tax increases totaling $1.9 trillion (over 10 years), with cuts primarily hitting our national defense.
• Lifting the Crushing Burden of Debt: A nation's indebtedness put simply is the amount it owes relative to the amount it makes (or takes in). Last year, our national debt (the money the government owes to others) surpassed the entire US economy. If left on the course proposed by Obama's current budget plan, the ever-rising debt will trigger an inevitable crisis that will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reverse once it takes hold and impacts our economy. Financial institutions (creditors) and foreign governments, like China, are financing our debt. Foreigners now own roughly half of all US debt. Ten years ago, foreigners owned just 5%. This makes our nation vulnerable to other nations. If the government fails to prevent the coming crisis (which is preventable at this point), it will rank among history's most infamous instances of political malpractice. Many of the great empire declines have resulted because of crushing government debt.
Warning signs of financial crisis would include the following: rising inflation, stagnant economy, high interest rates on mortgages, car loans, credit cards, etc, and a world decline in the dollar (the world's reserve currency). Obama's budget plan increases our national debt to the point where we won't be able to begin paying down our debt in the foreseeable future.
Under the Ryan plan, and predicated on the restoration of spending discipline in Washington, government spending will fall from its current elevated level of 24% of the economy to below 20% by 2015. Spending will be cut by more than $5 trillion over the next decade. Debt as a share of the economy will be cut by roughly 15% over the next decade. (The CBO estimates that this budget will produce annual surpluses by 2040 and the government can begin paying down its debt after that).
• Restoring Economic Freedom: The economic crisis of 2008 resulted from bad lending policies from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The federal take-over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continues to be the most costly taxpayer bailout to result from that crisis. So far, they have received over $185 billion in bailouts.
On one hand Obama urges: "No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important. We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules." But on the other hand, his administration plays crony politics and is in the business of picking winners and losers with bailouts and over-regulation, thereby frustrating economic freedom. (healthcare, energy, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, TARP, corporate welfare, redistribution of wealth)
Ryan's plan will repeal Obamacare and will eliminate provisions in financial-reform regulations to make it much harder to allow future Wall Street bailouts. It will put an end (will privatize) to the practice of corporate welfare and taxpayer bailouts in housing finance and will eliminate Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The government will no longer guarantee or subsidize mortgages. Other elements of Ryan's plan include:
-- The government will no longer provide subsidies for "green" energy companies.
-- The government will open up the US soil for further oil/coal/etc exploration. (Ex. the Keystone XL Pipeline)
-- Scale back the EPA
-- There will be a pay freeze on all federal employees until 2015. There will also be a 10% cut of the (federal) workforce, as well as a renegotiation of federal benefits (fed employees will have to contribute more to their retirement benefits).
-- There will be an increase in the budget for anti-fraud division.
-- There will be a fire sale of federal assets. This includes millions of acres of federal land, federal buildings federal cars etc...
• Washington's Culture of Spending: Washington has refused to adhere to the federal budget process, which has allowed government to spend recklessly and to put us further into a fiscal crisis. The Democrats have not put forth a budget plan. Obama recently proposed a plan, although it received no Congressional support.
The Ryan plan will effect Washington's culture of spending in the following ways:
-- Replace the discretionary sequester (automatic spending cut) in FY2013 (fiscal year 2013 budget) with a new cap, and maintain enforceable discretionary caps on spending throughout the next decade
-- Establish a binding cap on total spending as a percentage of the economy (GDP)
-- Cap the total size of government, enforced by a sequester
-- Create safeguards that would check Congress' appetite for spending on entitlement programs
-- Reform the budget 'baseline' to remove automatic inflation increases
-- Budget for the long-term by establish binding caps for major categories of spending
-- Require Congress to review long-term budget trends every 5 years in order to keep Congressional spending on a sustainable path
-- Authorize reconciliation of long-term savings up to 75 years for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid
-- Require CBO long-term estimates
-- Enact reforms to incorporate fair-value accounting principles
• Defense Spending: Currently, defense constitutes 20% of total federal spending. This is actually lower than under previous administrations (25%). Obama's budget proposal slashes defense spending by nearly $500 billion (= a 10% cut) over the next 10 years in order to focus on the costs of growing entitlement services. National Defense is being penalized and sacrificed b/c of the unstoppable spending of Congress, even though defense has not added to the debt crisis. A look at the numbers in Obama's budget proposal reveals that
American taxpayers and the Defense Department are being asked to bear the ENTIRE burden of deficit reduction. Government risks not being able to provide for the safety and security of the American people and our military forces overseas - the government's first priority.
Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta has acknowledged that the defense cuts would come at a time when there are ongoing global threats to the US and to Americans as well, including increasing nuclear threats from Iran, Korea, and other unstable totalitarian regimes.
Ryan's Path to Prosperity will fund our defense at levels to provide for a robust nation defense, in order to keep America safe. It will provide $554 billion for the next fiscal year and $6.2 trillion over the next decade, which meets military goals and strategies. Will restore most of the cuts made by Obama.
• Repairing the Social Safety Net: Poverty is growing in this country. Programs that were created to sustain Americans in difficult times (safety net) and help them get out of poverty and out of the inner cities have become generational entitlement programs. Entitlement programs foster dependence (and encourage fraud), and in our current spending-driven debt crisis, they put lower-income Americans at greatest risk because of the threat to the longevity and integrity of such programs. From a monetary perspective, these programs are growing at an unsustainable rate. The recent economic downturn has greatly increased the eligibility and the demand for government assistance
programs. Yet even prior to the 2008 financial crisis, there has been a dramatic increase in federal spending on public assistance programs. The two programs most directed to lower-income recipients are Medicaid and Food Stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, or SNAP). Medicaid spending has grown on the average of 9% each year (far faster than the growth of the overall economy) and federal spending on food stamps has quadrupled over the past ten years. Enrollment practically doubled from 2008 to the present ($26 million to $47 billion). and spending has more than doubled. The government cannot provide proper oversight of these programs (compare to the massive oversight provision in the Obamacare, where the government wants to make sure individuals pay their premiums; it doesn't seem to care when people improperly benefit from free services).
Another safety net is education and job training. The current dilemma is this: college students want federal financial aid and grants but they also want a job when they graduate. Obama has made financial aid and grants available but has taken away their opportunity to find
employment or to be compensated accordingly for a job. Unfortunately, studies show that increased federal financial aid is really just another wealth redistribution scheme. Increased federal financial aid is simply being absorbed by tuition increases. While financial aid is intended to make college more affordable, there is growing evidence that it has had the opposite effect. Decisions by colleges and universities to raise their prices would have been constrained if the federal government had not stepped in so often to subsidize rising tuitions. (in other words, why not raise tuition, the government is paying for it anyway?) In 2010, the government went from primarily guaranteeing student loans to
lending 100% of its student-loan money directly thru the Dept. of Education, turning the agency into one of the largest lending banks in the country. These student loans have to be borrowed from global credit markets at an average of at least $100 billion per year, adding to our already dangerous national debt levels. Even more problematic is the fact that these extremely risky loans are listed as "profit-making
investments" tending to encourage the government to want to offer more loans.
The unsustainable increase in cost of both Medicaid and the Food Stamp program is the result of a flawed federal state funding program that has fueled unsustainable growth. State governments receive federal dollars in proportion to the number of people they enroll in these programs, which gives them an incentive to add more individuals to the rolls. Like Medicaid, the states administer the SNAP program, but unlike Medicaid, the entire cost of benefits under the SNAP program is born by the US taxpayer. So with SNAP, state governments have little incentive to make sure that recipients are working, looking for work, or enrolled in job training programs, which leads to a high degree of waste, fraud, and abuse. Actually, both programs are rife fraud, and abuse.
Obama's budget plan is to provide for increases in entitlement programs (while slashing our national defense). Because the Medicaid system is broken yet continues to take on millions of more recipients each year (it is expected to more than double over the next 10 years), Americans will have to pay higher taxes to keep it going. Because Medicaid's reimbursement rates have been decreased to below-market levels, the quality of care that Medicaid recipients receive is declining below standard. At the same time, Obama wants the States to expand Medicaid to include more recipients. His plan proposes no change for SNAP and no change for the student loan program.
Ryan's plan will secure Medicaid benefits by:
-- Converting the federal share of Medicaid spending into a block grant that is indexed for inflation and population growth. This reform will end the failed one-size-fits-all approach that has tied the hands of many state governments and required them to follow strict program requirements and enrollment criteria. States will have the freedom and flexibility to tailor their own Medicaid programs to fit the needs of their populations and taking into account their unique resources.
-- Giving states the ability to offer their Medicaid beneficiaries more options and better access to care (where recipients can chose their own doctors and be involved in healthcare decisions)
-- Constraining Medicaid's growing costs by $810 billion over 10 years
Ryan's plan will secure the Food Stamps program as follows:
-- Convert the SNAP program into a block grant where states can have the freedom and flexibility to tailor their own programs to fit the needs of their low-income populations
-- Aid will be contingent on work or job training
Ryan's plan will reform the federal college loan program as follows:
-- reform the Credit Reform Act
-- give Pell grants to those low-income students who truly need it
• Welfare Reform: Obama's budget plan is to provide for increases in entitlement programs (while slashing our national defense). His plan encourages greater dependency, frustrates upward mobility, perpetuates poverty, encourages envy, and entrenches an entitlement mentality.
Ryan's budget plan will strengthen and improve welfare programs for those who need them and eliminate welfare for those who don't. It will build upon the historic welfare reforms of the late 1990s by:
-- imposing work requirements and time limits
-- transforming the system into a need-based safety-net program
-- incorporating education programs (with accountability requirements) and job-training programs to get people into the work force as quickly as possible
-- granting the states will be greater flexibility to design their own welfare systems
• Healthcare: With regard to healthcare, Obama has elevated it almost to a "fundamental right" and made it our newest entitlement. Obamacare will force an additional 20 million Americans by 2014 into a system that can hardly handle its current enrollment. Without an increase in physicians, the engorged system will be a nightmare, with long wait times, and limited resources. Ryan's plan requires that the healthcare reform bill (the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act) be repealed.
• Health and Retirement Security: Absent a budget plan and spending reform, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid will soon grow to consume every dollar of revenue that the government brings in through taxation. When Social Security was enacted in 1935, there were about 42 working-age Americans for each retiree. the average life expectancy was 60 years for men and 64 for women. Workers and employees each paid a 1% payroll tax. Today, the life expectancy for a man is 76 years and 80.6 years for a woman, and both workers and employees pay a 6.2% payroll tax. In 1945, the age of retirement was 69 years and now it is 63 years. Social Security was not designed to make good on its promise under current (expectancy and retirement) conditions. A Congressional report shows that Social Security's trust funds will be exhausted by 2036. Harry Reid said he is not willing to look at the problem now. When asked when the Democrats would put forward a plan to fix Social Security, Nancy Pelosi responded: "Never. Is never good enough for you?" Similarly, Medicare is threatened. Unless government acts, Medicare and Social Security will remain threatened for current seniors and will not be there for younger families when they reach retirement age and need the security.
Under the new healthcare law, healthcare decisions for the elderly will be made by bureaucrats and not physicians. The law creates an unaccountable board of 15 unelected bureaucrats - the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) - empowered to make decisions that will cut costs. In other words, it will help cut Medicare costs by rationing care (denying and restricting healthcare access and options) for seniors.
Under Obama's proposed plan, funding for Medicare will continue to increase. Eventually it will reach unsustainable spending levels and the system will be jeopardized for future generations. Obama's solution is to increase marginal tax rates. Furthermore, there is a 3.8% Medicare surtax included in Obamacare. Obama claims to be committed to Medicare yet he took $760 billion from Medicare to help fund Obamacare. He provided no mechanism or plan to pay the money back. He simply raided Medicare to help fund his new entitlement plan. Obama's plan for Social Security is to ignore it and deny there is a problem. The Obama policy of "raid, ration, raise taxes, and deny the problem" will mean painful benefits cuts for current seniors and huge tax increases on younger working families, robbing them of the
opportunity to save for their own retirements.
Ryan's budget reforms will protect health and retirement security. It will not increase taxation. Paul Ryan believes that the nation cannot fix its retirement security system by leaving young families with less to save. His plan starts with saving Medicare and getting rid of the IPAB (aka, "death panels"). In fact, it calls for the repeal of the entire healthcare reform bill.
Starting in 2023, under Ryan's plan, new Medicare beneficiaries will be enrolled in the same kind of health-care program that members of Congress enjoy. Future Medicare recipients will be able to choose a plan that works best for them from a list of guaranteed coverage options, including a traditional fee-for-service option. It is not a voucher program but rather a premium-support model. A Medicare premium-support
payment would be paid, by Medicare, to the plan chosen by the beneficiary, subsidizing its cost.
In addition, Medicare will provide increased assistance for lower- income beneficiaries and those with greater health risks. Reform that empowers individuals—with more help for the poor and the sick—will guarantee that Medicare can fulfill the promise of health security for America's seniors.
Under the Ryan plan, Social Security will be reformed to prevent severe cuts to future benefits. This budget forces policy makers to work together to enact common-sense reforms. Leaders in both the US House and Senate will be required to submit a plan to reform Social Security. Furthermore, it will establish a requirement that in the event Social Security goes bankrupt, the President, in conjunction with the Board of Trustees, must submit a plan for restoring a sufficient balance to the fund. The goal of this proposal is to save Social Security for current retirees and strengthen it for future generations by building upon ideas offered by the president's bipartisan fiscal commission.
• Tax Reform: When the tax code was established in 1913, it contained about 400 pages of laws and regulations. Now it includes over 70,000 pages. In the past 10 years alone, more than 4,400 changes were made (more than one change per day). Many of the major changes over the years involved carving out special preferences, exceptions, exclusions, or deductions for various activities or groups. These special tax breaks and preferences add up to more than $1 trillion per year. They also add to the code's unfairness. For example, the top 1% of taxpayers reap about 3x as much benefit from special tax credits and deductions than middle-income earners and 13x as much benefit than the lowest income earners. The special tax breaks and deductions narrow the tax base by roughly 50%. The special carve-outs and deductions necessitates the high tax rate that concerns taxpayers and which undermines US competitiveness in business. Furthermore, the tax code is so complex that 80% of Americans can't understand it or fear it and therefore don't prepare their tax returns themselves. The average fee for preparation is $230 an individual/couple and about $600 for small businesses.
The high corporate tax rate (the US has the highest in the world), in addition to the stifling effects of Obamacare, is severely hampering job creation. Obama's budget plan calls for $1.9 trillion in higher taxes on American families and businesses. He would increase the top two tax brackets from 33% to 36% and from 35% to 39.6%, respectively, starting in 2013. His plan would also phase out personal exemptions and itemized deductions for these income groups and limit the value of deductions against income. Combined with the 3.8% Medicare surtax
included in Obamacare, the President's proposed plan would raise the top marginal tax rate to 44.8%. Obama's plan would also increase the tax rate on capital gains from 15% to 20% for households making over $250,000 ($200,000 individuals) and would tax dividends at ordinary tax rates (as high as 39.6%) -raising taxes on investments at a time when new business investment is critical for sustaining the weak
economic recovery. His plan would add to the complexity of the tax code by adding new credits and deductions and new tax increases (such as the Buffett Rule, in honor of Warren Buffett).
The biggest driver of revenue to the federal government isn't higher tax rates.... it's economic growth. Growth is the key to fiscal sustainability. And low tax rates are the key to growth. Empirical studies suggest that a reduction in corporate tax rate, for example, could lead
to significant economic benefits, including a boost in GDP growth. The Ryan budget plan acknowledges that Washington doesn't have a revenue problem. It's problem isn't that people aren't paying enough in taxes. Washington has a spending problem, and the plan primarily addresses the spending problem. First, with respect to tax reform, the Ryan plan would focus on growth by reforming the nation's outdated tax code, consolidating brackets, lowering tax rates, and assuming top individual and corporate rates of 25%. Specifically, the plan will:
-- Reject any plan to increase taxes
-- Consolidate the current six individual income tax brackets into just two brackets of 10% and 25%.
-- Reduce the corporate tax rate from 35%-40% to 25%
-- Eliminate loopholes for upper-income individuals in order to provide fairness and broaden the tax base
-- Shift from a "worldwide" system of taxation to a "territorial" system which will encourage companies to bring their foreign earnings into the US for investment purposes.
This is America's moment to advance a plan for prosperity. The Ryan budget offers the nation a model of government that is guided by the timeless principles of the American idea: free-market democracy, open competition, a robust private sector bound by rules of honesty and fairness, a secure safety net, and equal opportunity for all under a limited constitutional government of popular consent.
Paul Ryan's Plan- "Path to Prosperity" (in simple terms)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242612172357504.html
The Path to Prosperity presents a meaningful alternative to Obama's massive spending and borrowing policy. It gives voters a choice between futures. Do we want a future where the United States and Americans are constrained by debt and important programs are increasingly undermined, or do we want a future where we are free from debt and our programs such as Social Security and Medicare are safe.
The Pat to Prosperity cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president's budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion.
A study just released by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects that The Path to Prosperity will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year, bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015, and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade. It spurs economic growth, with $1.5 trillion in additional real GDP over the decade. According to Heritage's analysis, it would result in $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average of $1,000 in additional family income each year.
Here are its major components:
• Statement of Revenue and Debt: The biggest driver of revenue to the federal government isn't higher tax rates.... it's economic
growth. Growth is the key to fiscal sustainability. And low tax rates are the key to growth.
Our current level of national debt (US debt held as a share of the economy) poses a fundamental challenge to our American way of life. When Obama took office, the national debt was $10 trillion. It has now surpassed $16 trillion. As a result of the conduct of all prior administrations, the debt grew to $10 trillion. In just 4 years under Obama alone, he has added $6 trillion. Since Election Day 2008, US debt has increased by 70%. Our national credit rating has been downgraded not once but twice. There is talk of another downgrade. Never before in our nation's history has our credit rating been anything but stellar. If our current path of government spending continues, the debt trajectory (as compared to economy) will increase exponentially and we will face economic collapse. Our current path is not sustainable.
Obama's budget proposal calls for spending increases of $1.5 trillion and tax increases totaling $1.9 trillion (over 10 years), with cuts primarily hitting our national defense.
• Lifting the Crushing Burden of Debt: A nation's indebtedness put simply is the amount it owes relative to the amount it makes (or takes in). Last year, our national debt (the money the government owes to others) surpassed the entire US economy. If left on the course proposed by Obama's current budget plan, the ever-rising debt will trigger an inevitable crisis that will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reverse once it takes hold and impacts our economy. Financial institutions (creditors) and foreign governments, like China, are financing our debt. Foreigners now own roughly half of all US debt. Ten years ago, foreigners owned just 5%. This makes our nation vulnerable to other nations. If the government fails to prevent the coming crisis (which is preventable at this point), it will rank among history's most infamous instances of political malpractice. Many of the great empire declines have resulted because of crushing government debt.
Warning signs of financial crisis would include the following: rising inflation, stagnant economy, high interest rates on mortgages, car loans, credit cards, etc, and a world decline in the dollar (the world's reserve currency). Obama's budget plan increases our national debt to the point where we won't be able to begin paying down our debt in the foreseeable future.
Under the Ryan plan, and predicated on the restoration of spending discipline in Washington, government spending will fall from its current elevated level of 24% of the economy to below 20% by 2015. Spending will be cut by more than $5 trillion over the next decade. Debt as a share of the economy will be cut by roughly 15% over the next decade. (The CBO estimates that this budget will produce annual surpluses by 2040 and the government can begin paying down its debt after that).
• Restoring Economic Freedom: The economic crisis of 2008 resulted from bad lending policies from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The federal take-over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continues to be the most costly taxpayer bailout to result from that crisis. So far, they have received over $185 billion in bailouts.
On one hand Obama urges: "No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important. We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules." But on the other hand, his administration plays crony politics and is in the business of picking winners and losers with bailouts and over-regulation, thereby frustrating economic freedom. (healthcare, energy, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, TARP, corporate welfare, redistribution of wealth)
Ryan's plan will repeal Obamacare and will eliminate provisions in financial-reform regulations to make it much harder to allow future Wall Street bailouts. It will put an end (will privatize) to the practice of corporate welfare and taxpayer bailouts in housing finance and will eliminate Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The government will no longer guarantee or subsidize mortgages. Other elements of Ryan's plan include:
-- The government will no longer provide subsidies for "green" energy companies.
-- The government will open up the US soil for further oil/coal/etc exploration. (Ex. the Keystone XL Pipeline)
-- Scale back the EPA
-- There will be a pay freeze on all federal employees until 2015. There will also be a 10% cut of the (federal) workforce, as well as a renegotiation of federal benefits (fed employees will have to contribute more to their retirement benefits).
-- There will be an increase in the budget for anti-fraud division.
-- There will be a fire sale of federal assets. This includes millions of acres of federal land, federal buildings federal cars etc...
• Washington's Culture of Spending: Washington has refused to adhere to the federal budget process, which has allowed government to spend recklessly and to put us further into a fiscal crisis. The Democrats have not put forth a budget plan. Obama recently proposed a plan, although it received no Congressional support.
The Ryan plan will effect Washington's culture of spending in the following ways:
-- Replace the discretionary sequester (automatic spending cut) in FY2013 (fiscal year 2013 budget) with a new cap, and maintain enforceable discretionary caps on spending throughout the next decade
-- Establish a binding cap on total spending as a percentage of the economy (GDP)
-- Cap the total size of government, enforced by a sequester
-- Create safeguards that would check Congress' appetite for spending on entitlement programs
-- Reform the budget 'baseline' to remove automatic inflation increases
-- Budget for the long-term by establish binding caps for major categories of spending
-- Require Congress to review long-term budget trends every 5 years in order to keep Congressional spending on a sustainable path
-- Authorize reconciliation of long-term savings up to 75 years for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid
-- Require CBO long-term estimates
-- Enact reforms to incorporate fair-value accounting principles
• Defense Spending: Currently, defense constitutes 20% of total federal spending. This is actually lower than under previous administrations (25%). Obama's budget proposal slashes defense spending by nearly $500 billion (= a 10% cut) over the next 10 years in order to focus on the costs of growing entitlement services. National Defense is being penalized and sacrificed b/c of the unstoppable spending of Congress, even though defense has not added to the debt crisis. A look at the numbers in Obama's budget proposal reveals that
American taxpayers and the Defense Department are being asked to bear the ENTIRE burden of deficit reduction. Government risks not being able to provide for the safety and security of the American people and our military forces overseas - the government's first priority.
Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta has acknowledged that the defense cuts would come at a time when there are ongoing global threats to the US and to Americans as well, including increasing nuclear threats from Iran, Korea, and other unstable totalitarian regimes.
Ryan's Path to Prosperity will fund our defense at levels to provide for a robust nation defense, in order to keep America safe. It will provide $554 billion for the next fiscal year and $6.2 trillion over the next decade, which meets military goals and strategies. Will restore most of the cuts made by Obama.
• Repairing the Social Safety Net: Poverty is growing in this country. Programs that were created to sustain Americans in difficult times (safety net) and help them get out of poverty and out of the inner cities have become generational entitlement programs. Entitlement programs foster dependence (and encourage fraud), and in our current spending-driven debt crisis, they put lower-income Americans at greatest risk because of the threat to the longevity and integrity of such programs. From a monetary perspective, these programs are growing at an unsustainable rate. The recent economic downturn has greatly increased the eligibility and the demand for government assistance
programs. Yet even prior to the 2008 financial crisis, there has been a dramatic increase in federal spending on public assistance programs. The two programs most directed to lower-income recipients are Medicaid and Food Stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, or SNAP). Medicaid spending has grown on the average of 9% each year (far faster than the growth of the overall economy) and federal spending on food stamps has quadrupled over the past ten years. Enrollment practically doubled from 2008 to the present ($26 million to $47 billion). and spending has more than doubled. The government cannot provide proper oversight of these programs (compare to the massive oversight provision in the Obamacare, where the government wants to make sure individuals pay their premiums; it doesn't seem to care when people improperly benefit from free services).
Another safety net is education and job training. The current dilemma is this: college students want federal financial aid and grants but they also want a job when they graduate. Obama has made financial aid and grants available but has taken away their opportunity to find
employment or to be compensated accordingly for a job. Unfortunately, studies show that increased federal financial aid is really just another wealth redistribution scheme. Increased federal financial aid is simply being absorbed by tuition increases. While financial aid is intended to make college more affordable, there is growing evidence that it has had the opposite effect. Decisions by colleges and universities to raise their prices would have been constrained if the federal government had not stepped in so often to subsidize rising tuitions. (in other words, why not raise tuition, the government is paying for it anyway?) In 2010, the government went from primarily guaranteeing student loans to
lending 100% of its student-loan money directly thru the Dept. of Education, turning the agency into one of the largest lending banks in the country. These student loans have to be borrowed from global credit markets at an average of at least $100 billion per year, adding to our already dangerous national debt levels. Even more problematic is the fact that these extremely risky loans are listed as "profit-making
investments" tending to encourage the government to want to offer more loans.
The unsustainable increase in cost of both Medicaid and the Food Stamp program is the result of a flawed federal state funding program that has fueled unsustainable growth. State governments receive federal dollars in proportion to the number of people they enroll in these programs, which gives them an incentive to add more individuals to the rolls. Like Medicaid, the states administer the SNAP program, but unlike Medicaid, the entire cost of benefits under the SNAP program is born by the US taxpayer. So with SNAP, state governments have little incentive to make sure that recipients are working, looking for work, or enrolled in job training programs, which leads to a high degree of waste, fraud, and abuse. Actually, both programs are rife fraud, and abuse.
Obama's budget plan is to provide for increases in entitlement programs (while slashing our national defense). Because the Medicaid system is broken yet continues to take on millions of more recipients each year (it is expected to more than double over the next 10 years), Americans will have to pay higher taxes to keep it going. Because Medicaid's reimbursement rates have been decreased to below-market levels, the quality of care that Medicaid recipients receive is declining below standard. At the same time, Obama wants the States to expand Medicaid to include more recipients. His plan proposes no change for SNAP and no change for the student loan program.
Ryan's plan will secure Medicaid benefits by:
-- Converting the federal share of Medicaid spending into a block grant that is indexed for inflation and population growth. This reform will end the failed one-size-fits-all approach that has tied the hands of many state governments and required them to follow strict program requirements and enrollment criteria. States will have the freedom and flexibility to tailor their own Medicaid programs to fit the needs of their populations and taking into account their unique resources.
-- Giving states the ability to offer their Medicaid beneficiaries more options and better access to care (where recipients can chose their own doctors and be involved in healthcare decisions)
-- Constraining Medicaid's growing costs by $810 billion over 10 years
Ryan's plan will secure the Food Stamps program as follows:
-- Convert the SNAP program into a block grant where states can have the freedom and flexibility to tailor their own programs to fit the needs of their low-income populations
-- Aid will be contingent on work or job training
Ryan's plan will reform the federal college loan program as follows:
-- reform the Credit Reform Act
-- give Pell grants to those low-income students who truly need it
• Welfare Reform: Obama's budget plan is to provide for increases in entitlement programs (while slashing our national defense). His plan encourages greater dependency, frustrates upward mobility, perpetuates poverty, encourages envy, and entrenches an entitlement mentality.
Ryan's budget plan will strengthen and improve welfare programs for those who need them and eliminate welfare for those who don't. It will build upon the historic welfare reforms of the late 1990s by:
-- imposing work requirements and time limits
-- transforming the system into a need-based safety-net program
-- incorporating education programs (with accountability requirements) and job-training programs to get people into the work force as quickly as possible
-- granting the states will be greater flexibility to design their own welfare systems
• Healthcare: With regard to healthcare, Obama has elevated it almost to a "fundamental right" and made it our newest entitlement. Obamacare will force an additional 20 million Americans by 2014 into a system that can hardly handle its current enrollment. Without an increase in physicians, the engorged system will be a nightmare, with long wait times, and limited resources. Ryan's plan requires that the healthcare reform bill (the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act) be repealed.
• Health and Retirement Security: Absent a budget plan and spending reform, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid will soon grow to consume every dollar of revenue that the government brings in through taxation. When Social Security was enacted in 1935, there were about 42 working-age Americans for each retiree. the average life expectancy was 60 years for men and 64 for women. Workers and employees each paid a 1% payroll tax. Today, the life expectancy for a man is 76 years and 80.6 years for a woman, and both workers and employees pay a 6.2% payroll tax. In 1945, the age of retirement was 69 years and now it is 63 years. Social Security was not designed to make good on its promise under current (expectancy and retirement) conditions. A Congressional report shows that Social Security's trust funds will be exhausted by 2036. Harry Reid said he is not willing to look at the problem now. When asked when the Democrats would put forward a plan to fix Social Security, Nancy Pelosi responded: "Never. Is never good enough for you?" Similarly, Medicare is threatened. Unless government acts, Medicare and Social Security will remain threatened for current seniors and will not be there for younger families when they reach retirement age and need the security.
Under the new healthcare law, healthcare decisions for the elderly will be made by bureaucrats and not physicians. The law creates an unaccountable board of 15 unelected bureaucrats - the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) - empowered to make decisions that will cut costs. In other words, it will help cut Medicare costs by rationing care (denying and restricting healthcare access and options) for seniors.
Under Obama's proposed plan, funding for Medicare will continue to increase. Eventually it will reach unsustainable spending levels and the system will be jeopardized for future generations. Obama's solution is to increase marginal tax rates. Furthermore, there is a 3.8% Medicare surtax included in Obamacare. Obama claims to be committed to Medicare yet he took $760 billion from Medicare to help fund Obamacare. He provided no mechanism or plan to pay the money back. He simply raided Medicare to help fund his new entitlement plan. Obama's plan for Social Security is to ignore it and deny there is a problem. The Obama policy of "raid, ration, raise taxes, and deny the problem" will mean painful benefits cuts for current seniors and huge tax increases on younger working families, robbing them of the
opportunity to save for their own retirements.
Ryan's budget reforms will protect health and retirement security. It will not increase taxation. Paul Ryan believes that the nation cannot fix its retirement security system by leaving young families with less to save. His plan starts with saving Medicare and getting rid of the IPAB (aka, "death panels"). In fact, it calls for the repeal of the entire healthcare reform bill.
Starting in 2023, under Ryan's plan, new Medicare beneficiaries will be enrolled in the same kind of health-care program that members of Congress enjoy. Future Medicare recipients will be able to choose a plan that works best for them from a list of guaranteed coverage options, including a traditional fee-for-service option. It is not a voucher program but rather a premium-support model. A Medicare premium-support
payment would be paid, by Medicare, to the plan chosen by the beneficiary, subsidizing its cost.
In addition, Medicare will provide increased assistance for lower- income beneficiaries and those with greater health risks. Reform that empowers individuals—with more help for the poor and the sick—will guarantee that Medicare can fulfill the promise of health security for America's seniors.
Under the Ryan plan, Social Security will be reformed to prevent severe cuts to future benefits. This budget forces policy makers to work together to enact common-sense reforms. Leaders in both the US House and Senate will be required to submit a plan to reform Social Security. Furthermore, it will establish a requirement that in the event Social Security goes bankrupt, the President, in conjunction with the Board of Trustees, must submit a plan for restoring a sufficient balance to the fund. The goal of this proposal is to save Social Security for current retirees and strengthen it for future generations by building upon ideas offered by the president's bipartisan fiscal commission.
• Tax Reform: When the tax code was established in 1913, it contained about 400 pages of laws and regulations. Now it includes over 70,000 pages. In the past 10 years alone, more than 4,400 changes were made (more than one change per day). Many of the major changes over the years involved carving out special preferences, exceptions, exclusions, or deductions for various activities or groups. These special tax breaks and preferences add up to more than $1 trillion per year. They also add to the code's unfairness. For example, the top 1% of taxpayers reap about 3x as much benefit from special tax credits and deductions than middle-income earners and 13x as much benefit than the lowest income earners. The special tax breaks and deductions narrow the tax base by roughly 50%. The special carve-outs and deductions necessitates the high tax rate that concerns taxpayers and which undermines US competitiveness in business. Furthermore, the tax code is so complex that 80% of Americans can't understand it or fear it and therefore don't prepare their tax returns themselves. The average fee for preparation is $230 an individual/couple and about $600 for small businesses.
The high corporate tax rate (the US has the highest in the world), in addition to the stifling effects of Obamacare, is severely hampering job creation. Obama's budget plan calls for $1.9 trillion in higher taxes on American families and businesses. He would increase the top two tax brackets from 33% to 36% and from 35% to 39.6%, respectively, starting in 2013. His plan would also phase out personal exemptions and itemized deductions for these income groups and limit the value of deductions against income. Combined with the 3.8% Medicare surtax
included in Obamacare, the President's proposed plan would raise the top marginal tax rate to 44.8%. Obama's plan would also increase the tax rate on capital gains from 15% to 20% for households making over $250,000 ($200,000 individuals) and would tax dividends at ordinary tax rates (as high as 39.6%) -raising taxes on investments at a time when new business investment is critical for sustaining the weak
economic recovery. His plan would add to the complexity of the tax code by adding new credits and deductions and new tax increases (such as the Buffett Rule, in honor of Warren Buffett).
The biggest driver of revenue to the federal government isn't higher tax rates.... it's economic growth. Growth is the key to fiscal sustainability. And low tax rates are the key to growth. Empirical studies suggest that a reduction in corporate tax rate, for example, could lead
to significant economic benefits, including a boost in GDP growth. The Ryan budget plan acknowledges that Washington doesn't have a revenue problem. It's problem isn't that people aren't paying enough in taxes. Washington has a spending problem, and the plan primarily addresses the spending problem. First, with respect to tax reform, the Ryan plan would focus on growth by reforming the nation's outdated tax code, consolidating brackets, lowering tax rates, and assuming top individual and corporate rates of 25%. Specifically, the plan will:
-- Reject any plan to increase taxes
-- Consolidate the current six individual income tax brackets into just two brackets of 10% and 25%.
-- Reduce the corporate tax rate from 35%-40% to 25%
-- Eliminate loopholes for upper-income individuals in order to provide fairness and broaden the tax base
-- Shift from a "worldwide" system of taxation to a "territorial" system which will encourage companies to bring their foreign earnings into the US for investment purposes.
This is America's moment to advance a plan for prosperity. The Ryan budget offers the nation a model of government that is guided by the timeless principles of the American idea: free-market democracy, open competition, a robust private sector bound by rules of honesty and fairness, a secure safety net, and equal opportunity for all under a limited constitutional government of popular consent.
PULPIT FREEDOM INITIATIVE - Sunday, October 7th
Help Spread the Word !!
You may already know about this, but if not, please take the time to check this important initiative out. The time has certainly come to take a stand for religious liberty. In fact, it's been a long time coming. For all those who remember growing up in a school system where prayer was said or at least religion was respected and the Ten Commandments were displayed to remind us of certain fundamental limits on conduct and remember the safe, moral, family-orientated communities that were conducive to raising families... For all those who remember the consequences in our communities when the great Wall of Separation was erected and the ACLU became a legal force for the promotion of evil and immorality.... For all who are becoming increasingly frustrated over the fact that we are going from a "Nation Under God" to a "Nation Under the Control of the Federal Government"........ For all who were offended to the core when the Democratic delegates took God out of its platform at its Convention in Charlotte and then, even after an ordained Methodist minister made a motion to re-insert the language, they fought that motion with everything they had, in full view of the American people. They denied God three times, and even after that third vote, they expressed their collective will - to remove God from their ideological and political platform. The moderator may have declared that the motion to re-insert "God" had passed, but all those who heard the vote know that that it did not. The boo's that emerged after the moderator's decision was what sealed it and will be seered in our collective conscience for a long time....... We need it will be fresh in our minds on November 6th.
For all those who are frustrated, disappointed, disillusioned, and personally affected by the growing trend on the part of government to show hostility to religion, to promote immorality, to force Americans to choose between duty to government and their rights of conscience, to ignore the rights of the unborn, to promote the misuse of a woman's body, to erode traditional marriage, to fight against the rights of parents to raise their children with religious and other productive values, and to support such groups as the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups that want "an America without God," then please, please, please take the time to help promote this Pulpit Freedom Initiative.
Contact your churches and see if they will be participating. If they haven't heard of it, please send them the information below. Help spread the word !!
I've pasted the email that I sent the priests at my church. Please feel free to cut and paste and use as you will to send to the leaders of your church.
Father,
I wanted to send you this information about the Pulpit Freedom Initiative on October 7th. It is an Alliance Defense Fund initiative.
I support the NC Family Policy Council and the organization helps to promote the work of the ADF, which is the counter-part to the ACLU, the un-American organization that works tirelessly to erode religion and conservative institutions from all aspects of society. The ADF is a
non-profit legal group which takes on cases to advocate for religious liberty, the rights of conscience, the rights of the unborn, and traditional marriage. I'm an attorney and I try to keep up with religion cases here in the state and I know the ADF has been fighting over the years to protect the right of faithful Americans to say a prayer in school and to open public meetings and hearings with a prayer that does not exclude Jesus Christ.
There is a lot of information on the website: http://www.speakupmovement.org/church/LearnMore/details/4702
http://blog.speakupmovement.org/church/tag/pulpit-initiative/ (Why the Pulpit Initiative Movement)
From the website: "The future of religious freedom depends on a free pulpit to communicate fundamental, biblical principles to congregations across America. Join a growing movement of bold pastors preaching biblical Truth about candidates and elections from their pulpits on October 7, 2012."
Diane Rufino, Greenville, NC
Links:
Alliance Defense Fund, overview - http://www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org/about
Alliance Defense Fund, on their mission to promote religious liberty - http://www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org/issues/religious-liberty
You may already know about this, but if not, please take the time to check this important initiative out. The time has certainly come to take a stand for religious liberty. In fact, it's been a long time coming. For all those who remember growing up in a school system where prayer was said or at least religion was respected and the Ten Commandments were displayed to remind us of certain fundamental limits on conduct and remember the safe, moral, family-orientated communities that were conducive to raising families... For all those who remember the consequences in our communities when the great Wall of Separation was erected and the ACLU became a legal force for the promotion of evil and immorality.... For all who are becoming increasingly frustrated over the fact that we are going from a "Nation Under God" to a "Nation Under the Control of the Federal Government"........ For all who were offended to the core when the Democratic delegates took God out of its platform at its Convention in Charlotte and then, even after an ordained Methodist minister made a motion to re-insert the language, they fought that motion with everything they had, in full view of the American people. They denied God three times, and even after that third vote, they expressed their collective will - to remove God from their ideological and political platform. The moderator may have declared that the motion to re-insert "God" had passed, but all those who heard the vote know that that it did not. The boo's that emerged after the moderator's decision was what sealed it and will be seered in our collective conscience for a long time....... We need it will be fresh in our minds on November 6th.
For all those who are frustrated, disappointed, disillusioned, and personally affected by the growing trend on the part of government to show hostility to religion, to promote immorality, to force Americans to choose between duty to government and their rights of conscience, to ignore the rights of the unborn, to promote the misuse of a woman's body, to erode traditional marriage, to fight against the rights of parents to raise their children with religious and other productive values, and to support such groups as the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups that want "an America without God," then please, please, please take the time to help promote this Pulpit Freedom Initiative.
Contact your churches and see if they will be participating. If they haven't heard of it, please send them the information below. Help spread the word !!
I've pasted the email that I sent the priests at my church. Please feel free to cut and paste and use as you will to send to the leaders of your church.
Father,
I wanted to send you this information about the Pulpit Freedom Initiative on October 7th. It is an Alliance Defense Fund initiative.
I support the NC Family Policy Council and the organization helps to promote the work of the ADF, which is the counter-part to the ACLU, the un-American organization that works tirelessly to erode religion and conservative institutions from all aspects of society. The ADF is a
non-profit legal group which takes on cases to advocate for religious liberty, the rights of conscience, the rights of the unborn, and traditional marriage. I'm an attorney and I try to keep up with religion cases here in the state and I know the ADF has been fighting over the years to protect the right of faithful Americans to say a prayer in school and to open public meetings and hearings with a prayer that does not exclude Jesus Christ.
There is a lot of information on the website: http://www.speakupmovement.org/church/LearnMore/details/4702
http://blog.speakupmovement.org/church/tag/pulpit-initiative/ (Why the Pulpit Initiative Movement)
From the website: "The future of religious freedom depends on a free pulpit to communicate fundamental, biblical principles to congregations across America. Join a growing movement of bold pastors preaching biblical Truth about candidates and elections from their pulpits on October 7, 2012."
Diane Rufino, Greenville, NC
Links:
Alliance Defense Fund, overview - http://www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org/about
Alliance Defense Fund, on their mission to promote religious liberty - http://www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org/issues/religious-liberty
NATIONAL "EMPTY CHAIR" WEEK
IF YOU WANT OBAMA OUT OF THE PRESIDENT'S CHAIR, JOIN THE "EASTWOODING" OBAMA MOVEMENT !!
For everyone who watched the last night of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, you'll remember that Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair. The chair, of course, was the president's chair. We loved the imagery of Obama not physically being in that chair anymore !! And so, that image is becoming a political statement. Let's all share an "Eastwood" moment in honor of the Democratic National Convention and put an EMPTY CHAIR out on our front lawn, starting tomorrow and lasting all week.
Depending on the success, maybe we can keep it up until election day.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE.... SHARE ON FACEBOOK. SHARE ON YOUR WEBSITES. SHARE IN YOUR PUBLICATIONS. SHARE THIS MESSAGE with your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and let's start a statewide movement that will hopefully draw national attention while the Convention is being held in our state this week.
For everyone who watched the last night of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, you'll remember that Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair. The chair, of course, was the president's chair. We loved the imagery of Obama not physically being in that chair anymore !! And so, that image is becoming a political statement. Let's all share an "Eastwood" moment in honor of the Democratic National Convention and put an EMPTY CHAIR out on our front lawn, starting tomorrow and lasting all week.
Depending on the success, maybe we can keep it up until election day.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE.... SHARE ON FACEBOOK. SHARE ON YOUR WEBSITES. SHARE IN YOUR PUBLICATIONS. SHARE THIS MESSAGE with your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and let's start a statewide movement that will hopefully draw national attention while the Convention is being held in our state this week.
2016: Obama's America
by Diane Rufino, August 28, 2012
Beginning in August, we learned of a controversial documentary that would be released in select theatres in time for this presidential election season. 2016: Obama's America. It would tell the story of just who Barack Obama is and how his story defines his presidency and his plans for America. The documentary is based on the research accumulated by bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza, who traveled to three continents to gather first-hand information on the history of our president. Dinesh immersed himself in those cultures, tried to understand their politics, and conducted interviews with Obama and Soetero family members. The documentary is based on D'Souza'a book, Obama’s America, which itself built on his earlier, New York Times bestseller, The Roots of Obama’s Rage. The movie is produced by Gerald Molen, who has produced some of Hollywood's more memorable films - Jurassic Park, Hook, Minority Report, Rain Man, and academy-award winner, Schindler's List.
The question was whether the documentary would see the light of day and whether it would be shown in enough theatres to get the message out. At first, chances looked slim. North Carolinians who went to the movie website were told that only 2 theatres in their state would be showing it. Then magically, and quickly, more and more theatres began to be added to the list. A miracle!! In an era when liberals control the media, media outlets, and the film industry, no one could have expected the film to be shown even in a place like Greenville, NC !! We remember the hassle we went through to try to see the Atlas Shrugged.
As it turned out, people have been flocking to see the documentary. I went to see it on a Friday night, and even though Sylvester Stallone's
movie The Expendables 2 and Will Ferrell's movie The Campaign were showing, the showing was packed. Absolutely packed !! The
earlier showings were full as well. Not packed necessarily, but full.
2016: Obama's America is already a commercial success! It has become the top-grossing conservative political film of all time since its expanded opening on Friday, August 24. As of Monday, August 27, the film had grossed an estimated $10.5 million, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com... This amidst the scurry of getting children ready and back to school and sending college-age children off to campus !!
Director and star Dinesh D’Souza is hoping that “2016: Obama’s America” will eventually eclipse the total earned by Michael Moore’s left-leaning 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11, which ranks as the highest-grossing documentary in box-office history. It also had the backing and promotion of a major motion picture studio - Lions Gate (which 2016 did not have).
As the movie's website explains: "2016: Obama's America takes audiences on a gripping visual journey into the heart of the world's most powerful office to reveal the struggle of whether one man's past will redefine America over the next four years. The film examines the question: 'If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?' Across the globe and in America, people in 2008 hungered for a leader who would unite and lift us from economic turmoil and war. True to America's ideals, they invested their hope in a new kind of president, Barack Obama. What they didn't know is that Obama is a man with a past, and in powerful ways that past defines him - who he is, how he thinks, and where he intends to take America and the world.
Had Americans not obsessed over the color of Barack Obama's skin, delighted in the fact that we could relieve our collective guilt for keeping African-Americans repressed, and not gushed at the chance to elect a young, handsome 'rock star' in the office of the presidency and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him, as D'Souza suggests, lies with his identification with his father, his deep-seeded need to make him proud, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in post-colonial Africa
Again, as the website announces: "America as we know it - wealthy, powerful, assertive - is not what Obama wants. He wants a smaller America, a poorer America, an America unable to exert its will, an America happy to be one power among many, an America in decline so that other nations might rise - all in the name of global fairness. To Obama, the hated “one percent” isn’t just wealthy Americas; it is America itself. In Obama’s view, America needs to be taken down a notch."
In the documentary, as in his book, Obama's America, D’Souza lays out what Obama plans to do in a second administration (hence the year in the title 2016). He predicts a makeover of America so drastic that the “shining city on a hill” will become a shantytown in a rather dangerous global village.
As mentioned above, author Dinesh D'Souza traveled all across the country and to Africa and Asia (Indonesia) in order to research the background of the enigma who the American people have entrusted with the presidency of the United States. Obama's father lived most
of his life in Kenya, an African nation once colonized by the British (The British Protectorate of Kenya). In 1959, he received a grant and was admitted to study at the University of Hawaii, where he ultimately met Ann Dunham ("Stanley Ann Dunham") in a Russian language class in September of 1960. She would drop out of school shortly after that, after becoming pregnant by Barack Sr., who was still married to another woman - a woman named Kezia, back in Kenya - with whom he's had two children. Ann and her foreign lover were married in a secretive ceremony in 1961, to which no one was invited. She was 3 months pregnant at the time. Barack Jr. was born on August 4, in Honolulu, as the reports go. Dunham and Obama Sr. separated in June 1962, when he moved to Massachusetts to pursue further education - this time at
Harvard. In 1964, she filed for divorce after finding out that he was, in fact, married to Kezia. Barack Sr. simply moved on to another - an American school teacher - who bore him 2 more children. They moved to Kenya in 1965 after he received his Masters from Harvard in economics. In 1965, Ann re-married as well. She married Lolo Soetero, an Indonesian student she met when she resumed her studies at the University of Hawaii. Lolo was Muslim.
Although Obama Sr. and Dunham divorced, she continued to hold him in the highest regard. She was mesmerized by his intellect and his radical ideology. She shared his left-leaning, third-world view. As D'Souza details in 2016, Soetero tried very hard to provide Ann, Barack Jr., and the daughter they had together with a good quality of life. He quickly worked himself up in the business world, but instead of making Ann happy, it only increased the tension in their marriage. During their years in Indonesia, Dunham became increasingly interested in the country's
culture, while Soetoro became more interested in Western culture, and their relationship was in conflict over differing values. He was becoming too "westernized" for her.
At that time, Obama was sent to spend the summer with his grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, in Hawaii. That was 1970 and he was getting ready to enter the 4th grade. During that summer, his grandparents took him to interview with the Punahou School, the most prestigious prep school in Hawaii.
Ann sought to separate Obama (young "Barry") from Lolo's growing pro-Western influence. She went him back to Hawaii to live with her parents so he could be educated at Punahou, where he would be indoctrinated with the anti-colonial views of the Hawaiian natives who
believed they were coerced and marginalized by the US government for sugar cane and other resources, in becoming the 50th state. "Oppression studies, if you will. Obama got plenty of that when he was here in Punahou," D'Souza says in the documentary, standing on the school's campus.
Although Obama barely knew his father - he would only visit him once, in Hawaii in 1971 when he was 10 years old - Obama is clearly obsessed with this undefined and unfulfilled relationship. Perhaps as is the case when a child feels "abandoned" by a parent, he is going through extreme pains to find a connection with him in order to ultimately make him proud, even posthumously. D'Souza sees a clue for this explanation in Obama's book title: DreamsFrom My Father, and not Dreams of My Father. Obama admits in the book that his father's struggle and politics are "my birthright." The father died at age 46 in a car crash, after drinking heavily. D'Souza believes that this short life and the estranged relationship is what reinforced rather than weakened the president's ties to his father. Obama went to great lengths to try to figure out who he was and why his mother had such great respect for him, as a thinker.
What is the source of Obama's political rage? D'Souza concludes that his "birthright" includes the rage of Third World nations which have been victimized by 'colonial' nations like Britain and the United States. What is the dream that he got 'from' his father? D'Souza believes that it is the demise of the stature and influence of such countries in the world so that Third World nations can rise and take their rightful place, finally enjoying wealth and prosperity because of an opportunity to compete.
Indonesia and Kenya were both colonized and exploited to some degree by the Dutch and the British, respectively. They are both poor nations. Obama came to believe that third-world nations are poor because of this colonization and exploitation and for that reason, he is pushing a policy of neutralizing world powers to level the playing field for third world nation. This is the basis of Obama's "anti-colonial" approach. This is the dream 'from' his father. Given a second term, Obama would continue down a destructive path for the United States, and the stability of a world that ultimately seeks freedom and respect for the dignity of human life. He would further reduce the power of the United States (both economically and militarily), he would favor the empowerment and rise of the Third World, greatly reduce Israel's influence, further distance the US from that gem in the Middle East, shred the US Constitution in order to erode individual rights and stifle ambition (which is one reason for America's economic power), concentrate power in the presidency, and cede the U.S. role as a superpower.
Is Obama's patriotism secretly rooted in the Third World? Does he intend to weaken the United States to offer retribution for its many years of interfering in the affairs of others? Is that why he apologizes for this country? Is that why he bows to Islamic leaders and is distancing the US from our ally in the Middle East - Israel? In the film, through family and other contacts in Kenya, we learn that that Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., viewed Israel with distrust and referred to it as "a Trojan Horse in the Middle East."
The movie taught me many things but one thing that stood out very clear is that Obama is a Muslim at heart. So far, he is using the force of the US government to encourage and empower Muslims everywhere, from New York City and Dearborn to Egypt to Syria and other areas
experiencing Arab Spring. If given another term, he will give the Muslim world the one thing they want most --- the ability to destroy Israel.
This became evident first when D'Souza showed a map of Europe and the Middle East which showed a huge area that was shaded gray. He
labeled the gray region the "United States of Islam." He predicted that if things continue on the path that that they are on, we might soon see a powerful, consolidated Islamic state. Taking note of current world affairs, the erosion of western values because of the growing demand for tolerance of Islam, the bloodshed in the Middle East, the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood, the infiltration of vulnerable nations by terror networks, the attacks and beheadings of Christians, the glorification of Islam by President Obama, acknowledgement and celebration of Ramadan in the White House, and the politics of guilt by our government with respect to the Muslim world (even though we were attacked on 9/11 with wholesale slaughter), it was not hard to understand how D'Souza came up with this potential new empire - the "United States of Islam."
This goal to see Israel (the "Trojan Horse") destroyed became further evident when D'Souza detailed Obama's current nuclear strategy.
Obama has cut our nuclear warhead arsenal from 5000 to 1500 and intends to take that number to 300 and then to 0. I believe when he spoke off-mic to the Russian official about upcoming promises and assurances to Russia (in his second term), this is precisely what he was referring to. No other problematic nation in the world is cutting their nuclear weapons. Iran is building its arsenal. With a nuclear-free America, we offer no assistance to Israel. There will no longer be a deterrent in the eyes of the Islamic world. On paper we can be "friends" to Israel but in reality Obama is giving Islamists the green light to annihilate Israel.
While the documentary was especially compelling and clearly the result of impeccable research, as defines all of Dinesh D'Souza's books, I was left wishing that he could have spent more time on two topics - the authorship of Obama's book Dreams From My Father and the authenticity of his Hawaii "Certificate of Live Birth."
Dreams of My Father was first published in 1995, as Barack Obama was preparing to launch his political career, and five years after being elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review (in 1990). There is speculation that Obama's book - described as a book about "race and inheritance" and promoted as his memoir - was not written by him, but rather was written by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. I was hoping D'Souza would have addressed this claim, and if it is indeed true that Ayers penned the book, what was the relationship between he and the-Senator Obama.
In the movie, D'Souza states that Obama was born in Hawaii. He says "it was announced in two newspapers." Yet Obama has never released an authentic birth certificate. It has never been produced. I've gone through many stages in my life, and at several of those stages, including my marriage and education, I had to produce my birth certificate. What we all know, thanks to Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Cold Case possee, is that the Hawaii birth certificate that Obama released in 2011 and which the White House posted on its official site is a proven forgery. Other sources (British records) show that Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Mombasa, Kenya (officially, the "British Protectorate of Kenya") and not in Hawaii.
Aside from his marxist/socialist leanings, his disrespect for the US Constitution, his embarrassment over the history of the United States, his traitorous position with respect to Israel, and his rebellion against all traditional American institutions, one of the most offensive aspects of Obama's presidency is his promotion of Islam and the Muslim agenda. We find it offensive that just 11 years after the brutal, cold-hearted massacre of 3000 innocent American lives in planes and in twisting, burning, crashing high-rise towers, we have a president that celebrates Ramadan in the White House, yet declines to offer a prayer from the White House in honor of the National Day of Prayer, which acknowledges our Christian heritage. In the United States, Christians have never slaughtered their fellow countrymen. We find it offensive that while Obama claims to be a Christian, he spent his time in a church that spewed hatred - thanks to Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Yet he consistently refers to Islam as a religion of peace. Is Barack Obama a Muslim or Christian? His actions tell us that in his heart and conscience, he is a Muslim. We are told that his father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr, was a Muslim. There are some accounts, however, that say he converted to Christianity before he met Ann Dunham, but was forced to do in order to study at the boarding school he attended (a Christian boarding school). We have also read that Lolo was a Muslim as well. But reports say that he was very relaxed when it came to religion. So where did Obama's deep Muslim roots come from? 2016 didn't address this question.
For me, the documentary made its point very clear: No matter what our personal opinion may be of Barack Obama, there is one common truth. We didn't know him when we elected him. For me this profound realization begs the question: How is it that we've reached a point where we are so cavalier with our country, our foundations, and our Constitution as to elect an unknown who has seen to use his time in the
Senate to vote "Present" rather than strengthen American values? Looking at the movie, it is clear that his decision to vote "Present" was
a crafted and scripted plan so that he could run on 'Hope & Change" without a record to define that campaign promise.
Let us reflect on who the culprits are. The American people are guilty, of course. They elected him. But they were constrained to some degree by the choice given them and naive because they think it's reasonable to trust the powers above them to do the right thing. But the Democratic Party didn't do the right and honorable thing. It intentionally deceived and lied to the American people by putting forth a
candidate not loyal to America and not even able to prove he is a natural born citizen. They knew his background. They knew his ties to Chicago corruption. They knew his mentors and his distorted views of race relations, thanks to 20 years of Reverend Wright. They knew of his deep-seeded resentment of America because of what he wrote in his book. The Democratic Party was dishonest in taking advantage of Obama's race and the guilty conscience that Americans collectively feel in the history of their country over slavery and civil rights by putting forth a radical-minded candidate who would promote a collectivist government agenda.
The way I see it is that since political parties are so heavily regulated by the federal government, this government action is sufficient to indict the government in this massive scheme of fraud and deception. Will the election of Barack Obama be this era's "Kennedy Assassination" ?
Every American who is concerned as to the direction our country is heading, who isn't naive enough to believe that Obama isn't making a profound footprint on the international scene, and who wants to understand who this man is that we elected on a huge leap of faith should see this important and well-researched documentary. It's time we connect the dots.
References:
Barack Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate - http://thepowerhour.com/news4/obama_kenyan_birth_certificate.htm
L.E. Okenga, "Obama, the African Colonial," The Obama File. Referenced at: http://theobamafile.com/_opinion/TheAfricanColonial.htm
Joseph Farah, "Where Was Obama Born?" WND, November 26, 2008. Referenced at: ttp://www.wnd.com/2008/11/81964/
Barack Obama Sr. timeline - http://www.barack-obama-timeline.com/barack_obama_sr/
2016: Obama's America. Official Website: http://2016themovie.com/
Beginning in August, we learned of a controversial documentary that would be released in select theatres in time for this presidential election season. 2016: Obama's America. It would tell the story of just who Barack Obama is and how his story defines his presidency and his plans for America. The documentary is based on the research accumulated by bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza, who traveled to three continents to gather first-hand information on the history of our president. Dinesh immersed himself in those cultures, tried to understand their politics, and conducted interviews with Obama and Soetero family members. The documentary is based on D'Souza'a book, Obama’s America, which itself built on his earlier, New York Times bestseller, The Roots of Obama’s Rage. The movie is produced by Gerald Molen, who has produced some of Hollywood's more memorable films - Jurassic Park, Hook, Minority Report, Rain Man, and academy-award winner, Schindler's List.
The question was whether the documentary would see the light of day and whether it would be shown in enough theatres to get the message out. At first, chances looked slim. North Carolinians who went to the movie website were told that only 2 theatres in their state would be showing it. Then magically, and quickly, more and more theatres began to be added to the list. A miracle!! In an era when liberals control the media, media outlets, and the film industry, no one could have expected the film to be shown even in a place like Greenville, NC !! We remember the hassle we went through to try to see the Atlas Shrugged.
As it turned out, people have been flocking to see the documentary. I went to see it on a Friday night, and even though Sylvester Stallone's
movie The Expendables 2 and Will Ferrell's movie The Campaign were showing, the showing was packed. Absolutely packed !! The
earlier showings were full as well. Not packed necessarily, but full.
2016: Obama's America is already a commercial success! It has become the top-grossing conservative political film of all time since its expanded opening on Friday, August 24. As of Monday, August 27, the film had grossed an estimated $10.5 million, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com... This amidst the scurry of getting children ready and back to school and sending college-age children off to campus !!
Director and star Dinesh D’Souza is hoping that “2016: Obama’s America” will eventually eclipse the total earned by Michael Moore’s left-leaning 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11, which ranks as the highest-grossing documentary in box-office history. It also had the backing and promotion of a major motion picture studio - Lions Gate (which 2016 did not have).
As the movie's website explains: "2016: Obama's America takes audiences on a gripping visual journey into the heart of the world's most powerful office to reveal the struggle of whether one man's past will redefine America over the next four years. The film examines the question: 'If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in 2016?' Across the globe and in America, people in 2008 hungered for a leader who would unite and lift us from economic turmoil and war. True to America's ideals, they invested their hope in a new kind of president, Barack Obama. What they didn't know is that Obama is a man with a past, and in powerful ways that past defines him - who he is, how he thinks, and where he intends to take America and the world.
Had Americans not obsessed over the color of Barack Obama's skin, delighted in the fact that we could relieve our collective guilt for keeping African-Americans repressed, and not gushed at the chance to elect a young, handsome 'rock star' in the office of the presidency and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him, as D'Souza suggests, lies with his identification with his father, his deep-seeded need to make him proud, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in post-colonial Africa
Again, as the website announces: "America as we know it - wealthy, powerful, assertive - is not what Obama wants. He wants a smaller America, a poorer America, an America unable to exert its will, an America happy to be one power among many, an America in decline so that other nations might rise - all in the name of global fairness. To Obama, the hated “one percent” isn’t just wealthy Americas; it is America itself. In Obama’s view, America needs to be taken down a notch."
In the documentary, as in his book, Obama's America, D’Souza lays out what Obama plans to do in a second administration (hence the year in the title 2016). He predicts a makeover of America so drastic that the “shining city on a hill” will become a shantytown in a rather dangerous global village.
As mentioned above, author Dinesh D'Souza traveled all across the country and to Africa and Asia (Indonesia) in order to research the background of the enigma who the American people have entrusted with the presidency of the United States. Obama's father lived most
of his life in Kenya, an African nation once colonized by the British (The British Protectorate of Kenya). In 1959, he received a grant and was admitted to study at the University of Hawaii, where he ultimately met Ann Dunham ("Stanley Ann Dunham") in a Russian language class in September of 1960. She would drop out of school shortly after that, after becoming pregnant by Barack Sr., who was still married to another woman - a woman named Kezia, back in Kenya - with whom he's had two children. Ann and her foreign lover were married in a secretive ceremony in 1961, to which no one was invited. She was 3 months pregnant at the time. Barack Jr. was born on August 4, in Honolulu, as the reports go. Dunham and Obama Sr. separated in June 1962, when he moved to Massachusetts to pursue further education - this time at
Harvard. In 1964, she filed for divorce after finding out that he was, in fact, married to Kezia. Barack Sr. simply moved on to another - an American school teacher - who bore him 2 more children. They moved to Kenya in 1965 after he received his Masters from Harvard in economics. In 1965, Ann re-married as well. She married Lolo Soetero, an Indonesian student she met when she resumed her studies at the University of Hawaii. Lolo was Muslim.
Although Obama Sr. and Dunham divorced, she continued to hold him in the highest regard. She was mesmerized by his intellect and his radical ideology. She shared his left-leaning, third-world view. As D'Souza details in 2016, Soetero tried very hard to provide Ann, Barack Jr., and the daughter they had together with a good quality of life. He quickly worked himself up in the business world, but instead of making Ann happy, it only increased the tension in their marriage. During their years in Indonesia, Dunham became increasingly interested in the country's
culture, while Soetoro became more interested in Western culture, and their relationship was in conflict over differing values. He was becoming too "westernized" for her.
At that time, Obama was sent to spend the summer with his grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, in Hawaii. That was 1970 and he was getting ready to enter the 4th grade. During that summer, his grandparents took him to interview with the Punahou School, the most prestigious prep school in Hawaii.
Ann sought to separate Obama (young "Barry") from Lolo's growing pro-Western influence. She went him back to Hawaii to live with her parents so he could be educated at Punahou, where he would be indoctrinated with the anti-colonial views of the Hawaiian natives who
believed they were coerced and marginalized by the US government for sugar cane and other resources, in becoming the 50th state. "Oppression studies, if you will. Obama got plenty of that when he was here in Punahou," D'Souza says in the documentary, standing on the school's campus.
Although Obama barely knew his father - he would only visit him once, in Hawaii in 1971 when he was 10 years old - Obama is clearly obsessed with this undefined and unfulfilled relationship. Perhaps as is the case when a child feels "abandoned" by a parent, he is going through extreme pains to find a connection with him in order to ultimately make him proud, even posthumously. D'Souza sees a clue for this explanation in Obama's book title: DreamsFrom My Father, and not Dreams of My Father. Obama admits in the book that his father's struggle and politics are "my birthright." The father died at age 46 in a car crash, after drinking heavily. D'Souza believes that this short life and the estranged relationship is what reinforced rather than weakened the president's ties to his father. Obama went to great lengths to try to figure out who he was and why his mother had such great respect for him, as a thinker.
What is the source of Obama's political rage? D'Souza concludes that his "birthright" includes the rage of Third World nations which have been victimized by 'colonial' nations like Britain and the United States. What is the dream that he got 'from' his father? D'Souza believes that it is the demise of the stature and influence of such countries in the world so that Third World nations can rise and take their rightful place, finally enjoying wealth and prosperity because of an opportunity to compete.
Indonesia and Kenya were both colonized and exploited to some degree by the Dutch and the British, respectively. They are both poor nations. Obama came to believe that third-world nations are poor because of this colonization and exploitation and for that reason, he is pushing a policy of neutralizing world powers to level the playing field for third world nation. This is the basis of Obama's "anti-colonial" approach. This is the dream 'from' his father. Given a second term, Obama would continue down a destructive path for the United States, and the stability of a world that ultimately seeks freedom and respect for the dignity of human life. He would further reduce the power of the United States (both economically and militarily), he would favor the empowerment and rise of the Third World, greatly reduce Israel's influence, further distance the US from that gem in the Middle East, shred the US Constitution in order to erode individual rights and stifle ambition (which is one reason for America's economic power), concentrate power in the presidency, and cede the U.S. role as a superpower.
Is Obama's patriotism secretly rooted in the Third World? Does he intend to weaken the United States to offer retribution for its many years of interfering in the affairs of others? Is that why he apologizes for this country? Is that why he bows to Islamic leaders and is distancing the US from our ally in the Middle East - Israel? In the film, through family and other contacts in Kenya, we learn that that Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., viewed Israel with distrust and referred to it as "a Trojan Horse in the Middle East."
The movie taught me many things but one thing that stood out very clear is that Obama is a Muslim at heart. So far, he is using the force of the US government to encourage and empower Muslims everywhere, from New York City and Dearborn to Egypt to Syria and other areas
experiencing Arab Spring. If given another term, he will give the Muslim world the one thing they want most --- the ability to destroy Israel.
This became evident first when D'Souza showed a map of Europe and the Middle East which showed a huge area that was shaded gray. He
labeled the gray region the "United States of Islam." He predicted that if things continue on the path that that they are on, we might soon see a powerful, consolidated Islamic state. Taking note of current world affairs, the erosion of western values because of the growing demand for tolerance of Islam, the bloodshed in the Middle East, the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood, the infiltration of vulnerable nations by terror networks, the attacks and beheadings of Christians, the glorification of Islam by President Obama, acknowledgement and celebration of Ramadan in the White House, and the politics of guilt by our government with respect to the Muslim world (even though we were attacked on 9/11 with wholesale slaughter), it was not hard to understand how D'Souza came up with this potential new empire - the "United States of Islam."
This goal to see Israel (the "Trojan Horse") destroyed became further evident when D'Souza detailed Obama's current nuclear strategy.
Obama has cut our nuclear warhead arsenal from 5000 to 1500 and intends to take that number to 300 and then to 0. I believe when he spoke off-mic to the Russian official about upcoming promises and assurances to Russia (in his second term), this is precisely what he was referring to. No other problematic nation in the world is cutting their nuclear weapons. Iran is building its arsenal. With a nuclear-free America, we offer no assistance to Israel. There will no longer be a deterrent in the eyes of the Islamic world. On paper we can be "friends" to Israel but in reality Obama is giving Islamists the green light to annihilate Israel.
While the documentary was especially compelling and clearly the result of impeccable research, as defines all of Dinesh D'Souza's books, I was left wishing that he could have spent more time on two topics - the authorship of Obama's book Dreams From My Father and the authenticity of his Hawaii "Certificate of Live Birth."
Dreams of My Father was first published in 1995, as Barack Obama was preparing to launch his political career, and five years after being elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review (in 1990). There is speculation that Obama's book - described as a book about "race and inheritance" and promoted as his memoir - was not written by him, but rather was written by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. I was hoping D'Souza would have addressed this claim, and if it is indeed true that Ayers penned the book, what was the relationship between he and the-Senator Obama.
In the movie, D'Souza states that Obama was born in Hawaii. He says "it was announced in two newspapers." Yet Obama has never released an authentic birth certificate. It has never been produced. I've gone through many stages in my life, and at several of those stages, including my marriage and education, I had to produce my birth certificate. What we all know, thanks to Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Cold Case possee, is that the Hawaii birth certificate that Obama released in 2011 and which the White House posted on its official site is a proven forgery. Other sources (British records) show that Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Mombasa, Kenya (officially, the "British Protectorate of Kenya") and not in Hawaii.
Aside from his marxist/socialist leanings, his disrespect for the US Constitution, his embarrassment over the history of the United States, his traitorous position with respect to Israel, and his rebellion against all traditional American institutions, one of the most offensive aspects of Obama's presidency is his promotion of Islam and the Muslim agenda. We find it offensive that just 11 years after the brutal, cold-hearted massacre of 3000 innocent American lives in planes and in twisting, burning, crashing high-rise towers, we have a president that celebrates Ramadan in the White House, yet declines to offer a prayer from the White House in honor of the National Day of Prayer, which acknowledges our Christian heritage. In the United States, Christians have never slaughtered their fellow countrymen. We find it offensive that while Obama claims to be a Christian, he spent his time in a church that spewed hatred - thanks to Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Yet he consistently refers to Islam as a religion of peace. Is Barack Obama a Muslim or Christian? His actions tell us that in his heart and conscience, he is a Muslim. We are told that his father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr, was a Muslim. There are some accounts, however, that say he converted to Christianity before he met Ann Dunham, but was forced to do in order to study at the boarding school he attended (a Christian boarding school). We have also read that Lolo was a Muslim as well. But reports say that he was very relaxed when it came to religion. So where did Obama's deep Muslim roots come from? 2016 didn't address this question.
For me, the documentary made its point very clear: No matter what our personal opinion may be of Barack Obama, there is one common truth. We didn't know him when we elected him. For me this profound realization begs the question: How is it that we've reached a point where we are so cavalier with our country, our foundations, and our Constitution as to elect an unknown who has seen to use his time in the
Senate to vote "Present" rather than strengthen American values? Looking at the movie, it is clear that his decision to vote "Present" was
a crafted and scripted plan so that he could run on 'Hope & Change" without a record to define that campaign promise.
Let us reflect on who the culprits are. The American people are guilty, of course. They elected him. But they were constrained to some degree by the choice given them and naive because they think it's reasonable to trust the powers above them to do the right thing. But the Democratic Party didn't do the right and honorable thing. It intentionally deceived and lied to the American people by putting forth a
candidate not loyal to America and not even able to prove he is a natural born citizen. They knew his background. They knew his ties to Chicago corruption. They knew his mentors and his distorted views of race relations, thanks to 20 years of Reverend Wright. They knew of his deep-seeded resentment of America because of what he wrote in his book. The Democratic Party was dishonest in taking advantage of Obama's race and the guilty conscience that Americans collectively feel in the history of their country over slavery and civil rights by putting forth a radical-minded candidate who would promote a collectivist government agenda.
The way I see it is that since political parties are so heavily regulated by the federal government, this government action is sufficient to indict the government in this massive scheme of fraud and deception. Will the election of Barack Obama be this era's "Kennedy Assassination" ?
Every American who is concerned as to the direction our country is heading, who isn't naive enough to believe that Obama isn't making a profound footprint on the international scene, and who wants to understand who this man is that we elected on a huge leap of faith should see this important and well-researched documentary. It's time we connect the dots.
References:
Barack Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate - http://thepowerhour.com/news4/obama_kenyan_birth_certificate.htm
L.E. Okenga, "Obama, the African Colonial," The Obama File. Referenced at: http://theobamafile.com/_opinion/TheAfricanColonial.htm
Joseph Farah, "Where Was Obama Born?" WND, November 26, 2008. Referenced at: ttp://www.wnd.com/2008/11/81964/
Barack Obama Sr. timeline - http://www.barack-obama-timeline.com/barack_obama_sr/
2016: Obama's America. Official Website: http://2016themovie.com/
THE PATH to NATIONAL REDEMPTION
by Diane Rufino, August 27, 2012
This week marks the start of the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will be named the GOP ticket for November’s election. We already know that Barack Obama and Joe Biden will be the Democratic ticket.
So now we know who the candidates and personalities will be. The big question is what the election itself will be about. We know the bottom line. The election of 2012 will determine the type of country we wish to be going forward. It’s a moral question, and one that must be decided by a country that is steadily and quickly losing its morality. The moral question is whether we should have more spending and bigger government with less liberty or less spending with a smaller government and more liberty. Do we continue with a mindset towards individual liberty or with a mindset that government’s role includes taking care of people cradle to grave and stimulating and controlling the economy. Entitlements entitle the government to bargain away human liberty and stimulus money only stimulates one thing – the size, scope, and power of government.
In the movie “The Pride of the Yankees,” Lou Gehrig’s mother is disappointed when she finds out her son has given up plans to finish college and become an engineer. She tells him: “In America, you can be anything. We didn’t come here from Italy for you to play ball.” (She didn’t understand that professional baseball players make a lot of money). Her point was that the decision of foreigners back in the early-mid 20th century to leave their homes, their countries, and their families was one that was balanced by the enormous opportunity to become personally
successful in America. The ambition of our forefathers and our immigrant ancestors has been dulled by the entitlement mentality and the eagerness of our government to put everyone on some kind of government program, making them dependent on the government and on the Democratic party as well.
Mark Levin, author of Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” puts the election in these terms: “The truth is, ladies and gentlemen — the truth is, if you’re a parent or a grandparent, this election is not about us. It’s not about parents and grandparents. This election is about our children and our grandchildren. Now, we’ve lost perspective. We’re losing our focus. The president of the United States, as I have said before, is the greatest political child abuser in modern American history.” The reason he is so harsh on the president, he explains, is because “government spending and debt, at 100% percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), will put the country in a vulnerable position when my
children and grandchildren are older.”
On his radio program, he said: “We talk about the debt, which is almost $16 trillion, that’s 100% of the GDP. That’s over 100% of all goods and services produced by our economy in any given year. We talk about the unfunded liabilities, which I estimate to be over $70 trillion now, some estimate it to be over $100 trillion. It’s mind-numbing. Now the fact of the matter is, those of us who are in our 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s….. we’re going to be dead and gone when our children and their children are going to have to deal with this. All of these politicians you see on TV today, they’re going to be distant memories, if they’re memories at all. They’re going to be gone. And all of this doublespeak, all this political gamesmanship.” He pleaded with his listeners to remove Obama from office. “We have to save our society – our culture, our
economy, and our rule of law. We have to save it for our children and our grandchildren, or they’re going to live in some kind of a tyranny
In a sense, we are talking about national redemption. Political redemption. We need to talk about spiritual redemption as well, but that’s a topic for another day.
Redemption us defined as “deliverance or rescue.” (Free Dictionary) It is "the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.” (Dictionary.com) For example, we can talk about “God’s plans for the redemption of his world.” Another definition is “the recovery of something mortgaged.” (Free Dictionary)
This November, we need the GOP to put forth a plan for the redemption of our country. We need the Romney and Ryan to outline a plan that will recover the country from a mortgaged future that will bind and saddle our children and grandchildren. The government is financing its programs by deficit spending – that is, borrowing now and taxing later. In other words, Congress and the President are forcing future generations to pay for our problems, for problems we generated. We are shifting the costs of this massive spending scheme to our children. We are mortgaging their future. Every dollar the government spends, even if borrowed, has to come out of someone’ pocket and therefore preempts the use of that dollar somewhere else in the economy, both now and in the future.
On June 5, Congressman Paul Ryan posted the most recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) - “The Long-Term Budget Outlook” – on his US House website. The report outlined a very bleak fiscal and economic future, and underscored the painful consequences for American families should policymakers fail to advance fiscally responsible reforms. Some of the key points from the CBO’s “Budget Outlook” include:
---- The Federal government’s unsustainable government spending will increase the likelihood of a devastating crisis: The CBO report states that “Growing debt also will increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget and the government will thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates.”
---- The CBO report affirms that the massive health-care overhaul fails to address the explosion in health care costs. Mandatory federal spending on health care will increase by 93% from 5.4% of GDP today to 10.4% of GDP over the next 25 years.
---- The CBO projects that government spending as a share of the economy will increase by nearly 53% between now and 2037, up from its historical average of roughly 20%. Taxes are projected to rise to the historical average in the years ahead, yet the unprecedented growth in
government spending is projected to rise much faster, driving an unsustainable explosion in debt.
---- The long-term budget outlook continues to worsen with each passing year Congress fails to act. While total debt has already eclipsed the size of the entire US economy, debt held by the public is on pace to eclipse the economy shortly after 2022.
---- The crushing burden of debt is driven primarily by the nation’s largest entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – along with the compounding growth in interest payments on the debt. Government spending on health care entitlements, Social Security, and interest on the national debt will consume 100% of total revenues by 2025.
---- According to the CBO report, the federal government’s interest payments alone are projected to consume 9.5% of our entire economy by 2037, up from about 1.4% today.
---- The CBO reports warns of the economic consequences of the President and his administration's insistence on increasing tax rates and raising barriers to job creation and economic growth. With the respect to counterproductive efforts to reduce the deficit by increasing tax rates, CBO states that “the extent that additional tax revenues were generated by boosting marginal tax rates, those higher rates will discourage people from working and saving, further reducing output and income.”
So today, August 27, the Republican National Convention opened in Tampa, Florida. Americans will soon get a sense of what the dynamics will be for the election season. And of course, we will find out who the major players will be. Conservatives want to know if they have a ticket that can beat Obama. They want to know if the message will resonate with conservatives and especially independents. They want to know if their ideas will offer a suitable alternative to those disillusioned with the failed policies of the Democrats. Tea Partiers want to know what the dialogue will be on Constitutional governance, reducing the size of government, restoring fiscal conservatism, cutting back on regulations and promoting free markets, and emphasizing personal responsibility.
But there is a slight problem. Tropical storm Isaac has made an unwelcomed visit to the coast of Florida and it’s likely to rain on the RNC’s parade (or convention).
So where do we stand at this time? We are headed for a cliff. Since January 2009, Obama’s policies have increased our national debt by over 45%. We are headed for a recession if things don’t change. That recession could hit as early as beginning of next year. We are heading towards bankruptcy. Social programs make up most of our debt and Obama is increasing dependence on government. Obamacare is looming and in fact, provisions are already being implemented. It will present the largest middle class tax hike in history, they say. 70% of
businesses say they cannot hire new employees or expand because of this healthcare bill. Obama is turning the full force of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the Department of Defense inwards on American citizens.
We know of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which permits the targeting, indefinite detention, torture, and even death of American citizens, and we know the President has used unmanned drones to kill Americans abroad, but most of us don’t know that in May of this year, the US House passed a law that would allow American citizens to be targeted with the same government propaganda campaigns that it communicates to our global enemies and friends. Not only did Obama assume power under the Afghanistan Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) as a justification for being able to enter American homes to grab people, detain them indefinitely, and disregard their rights of habeas corpus and other Bill of Rights, but now his can use “U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population.” In other words, Obama is using war powers against American citizens by unilaterally accusing them of being enemies of the United States and wants to engage in propaganda campaigns to influence and control them. Does this sound like Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes? As one commentator wrote: “Nothing speaks more urgently to the creeping fascism of American politics than the assertion by our representatives, who apparently have never read a book on Germany in the 1930s-1940s or on the Soviet Union in the Stalin period, that forbidding the Department of Defense and the State Department from subjecting us to government propaganda “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.” And mind you, they want to use our own money to wash our brains!”
Despite the politics of oppression, Obama is still leading in national polls for the presidential election. An average of all the national polls shows Obama leading by 1.2% (as of August 27). Rasmussen, the most consistently reliable national poll, shows Obama ahead by 3%. A breakdown of blue states vs. red states gives an electoral college standing of 221 electoral votes for Obama and 181 electoral votes for Romney
The battle for the White House, according to Real Clear Politics (which takes an average of all polls) stands as follows, and I’ve listed the number of electoral votes for each state
Solid for Obama (142 electoral votes) - CA (55), DC (3), IL (20), MA (21), RI (4), DE (3), HW (4), MD (10), NY (29), VT (3)
Likely for Obama – ME (4), NJ (14), WA (12)
Leaning towards Obama – CT (7), MN (10), NM (5), OR (7), PA (20)
Either Way – CO (9), FL (29), IA (6), MI (16), MO (10), NV (6), NH (4), NC (15), OH (18), VA (13), WI (10)
Leaning towards Romney – AZ (11), GA (16), IN (11), SC (9)
Likely for Romney – MT (3), ND (3), SD (3), TN (11), TX (38)
Solid for Romney (76 electoral votes) – AL (9), AR (6), KS (6), LA (8), NE (5), WV (5), MS (6), OK (7), UT (6), WY (3), AK (3), ID (4), KY (8)
There are 11 states – swing states or battleground states – that will determine this election and determine the course of our country for the next 4 years. Those states are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Last week, Real Clear Politics announced that Obama has lost his lead in all of those swing states, except NH. The greatest movement was in Colorado, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Last week Obama was leading in Florida by only 1% and only slightly higher in Ohio. Today’s Real Clear Politics shows Romney and Obama in a tie now in both those battleground states. In Missouri, Romney is leading now by 4.3% and in North Carolina, he is leading by 1%. The question is whether Paul Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin will vote for the GOP ticket. Currently Obama is still leading by 1.4%.
It is worth noting that in these swing states, the two most important issues are the economy and Obamacare. According to polling data, in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida, voters who strongly disapprove of the healthcare bill greatly outnumber those who approve of the bill. So healthcare is a big issue. In Florida, this is countered by the concern for Medicare. Remember the liberal superPAC ad that shows Ryan throwing grandma off the cliff. Romney and Ryan still have to clear the record on the Medicare issue. Once the facts are made known, Florida should go to Romney. What are the facts?
– Who is the candidate putting Medicare at risk? Obama took $760 billion out of Medicare to help fund Obamacare.
– Ryan seeks to secure and save Medicare, not destroy it. For those seniors 55 and older, there is no change in the program with his plan. Nothing changes for them. They have nothing to worry about. Those who are 54 and younger, starting in 2023, they will receive a fixed amount of money from the government to pick either private health insurance or a federal plan modeled on Medicare. Ryan says that will keep the program solvent.
As you probably already know, Ryan’s plan first and foremost calls for the repeal of Obamacare. Second, it puts more emphasis on managing disease and treating health issues rather than wellness, unlike what Obamacare does.
And that is the status of the race – red vs. blue – going into the Republican National Convention.
The question on everyone’s mind is whether Romney and Ryan unveil a winning strategy in Tampa.
We already know that Romney is committed to getting our finances in order. He intends to turn this country around, just as he did for the Olympics in 2002 when he served as president and CEO of the Olympics Organizing Committee. To show that commitment, he selected as his running mate a member of the US House who has served for 14 years, was elected by a traditionally democratic state, serves on the House Budget Committee, has a firm grasp of economics and numbers, and is the only member of Congress to come up with a budget plan to meaningfully address the national debt and put our country back on the path of prosperity. The budget plan he proposed in 2011 was passed by the House but rejected by the Senate. The budget plan he proposed this year – The 2013 Path toProsperity- was overwhelmingly passed by the House.
What a stark contrast Congressman Paul Ryan is to then-Senator Barack Obama. Ryan is a thinker with the discipline and courage to propose bold solutions to real problems. He is not afraid to talk straight with the American people about their shared interest in the economy. Obama can’t even articulate what “Hope and Change” means. All he can do is use his ethnic appeal to accuse wealthier Americans of not “doing enough,” while telling dependent Americans he will give them more.
The Path to Prosperity is a blueprint for American renewal. It will cut more than $5 trillion in spending from the President’s budget over the next 10 years, will put the nation on a path to pay off our national debt, offers pro-growth reforms to our broken and burdensome tax code, saves and strengthens the social safety net, and will balance the budget in 20 years.
Ryan’s budget plan sets forth a model of government guided by the timeless principles of our great American experiment: free enterprise and economic liberty; limited government and spending restraint; traditional family and community values; and a strong national defense. While it’s true that our government has strayed from these timeless principles, Ryan’s plan budget offers a set of fundamental reforms that will restore those principles and put the nation back on the right track.
Specifically, The Path to Prosperity will do the following:
(1). Repeal of Obamacare. Ryan’s plan calls for the repeal of Obamacare.
(2). Change Washington’s Culture of Spending. Ryan’s budget plan offers responsible spending cuts now and structural reforms of government spending programs going forward, to ensure that government spending remains on a sustainable path. Under this budget, government spending will fall from its current elevated level of 24% of the economy to below 20% by 2015. Relative to the President’s budget, this budget cuts spending by more than $5 trillion over the next ten years, producing $3 trillion in lower deficits. By restoring discipline to Congressional spending, this budget also tackles the drivers of our debt and averts the fiscal crisis ahead – by cutting debt as a share of the
economy by roughly 15% over the next decade.
(3). Strengthening Health and Retirement Security. Ryan’s budget puts an end to empty promises from Washington, offering instead real security through reasonable reforms. Medicare is facing an unprecedented fiscal challenge. Its failed reliance on bureaucratic price controls, combined with rising health care costs, is jeopardizing seniors’ access to critical care and threatening to bankrupt the system – and ultimately the nation. According to the Medicare trustees, without substantial changes, the Medicare program will collapse in 2024. This budget saves Medicare by fixing flaws in its structure so it will be there for future generations. By putting these solutions in place now, this budget ensures that changes will not affect those in and near retirement in any way. No changes will be made to Medicare for anyone 55 and older.
When younger workers become eligible for Medicare a decade or more from today, they will be able to choose from a list of guaranteed coverage options, including traditional Medicare. This flexibility will allow seniors to enjoy the same kinds of choices in their plans that members of Congress and federal employees enjoy. Starting in 2023, Medicare will provide a payment to subsidize the cost of the plan, which seniors can then use to pick either private health insurance or a federal plan modeled after Medicare. By forcing plans to compete
against each other to serve the patient, the government will help ensure the best medical program for the dollar. It will therefore guarantee affordability. In addition, Medicare will provide increased assistance to lower-income beneficiaries and to those with greater health risks. Plans will not be able to “cherry pick” beneficiaries or deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. And there will be a strengthened safety net for the poor and sick. This essential reform offers one of the benefits of Obamacare (no denial because of pre-existing conditions) yet empowers individuals to make healthcare decisions based on their own situation. It will guarantee that Medicare can fulfill the promise of health and security for America’s seniors.
In contrast, President Obama’s health care law takes $500 billion from the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for the costs of his new health care entitlement. With no serious plan to save and preserve Medicare for current and future seniors, the President would allow parts of Medicare to go bankrupt in 2024. The President’s law also empowers a board of unelected bureaucrats, known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, to cut Medicare through formulaic rationing and determine what services your doctor and hospital can and cannot give you, hurting both Medicare recipients and health care providers. Conversely, Ryan’s budget plan ends the raid on the Medicare Trust Fund by
repealing the President’s health care law, including IPAB, and ensures that any potential savings in current law would go to help Medicare, not to pay for new entitlements. In addition to repealing the health care law’s new rationing board and its unfunded long-term care entitlement, the budget stabilizes plan choices for current seniors.
This budget also calls for action on Social Security by requiring both the President and the Congress to put forward specific ideas and legislation to ensure the sustainable solvency of this critical program. The risk to Social Security, driven by demographic changes – namely 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day – is nearer at hand than most acknowledge. According to the 2011 Social Security Trustees Report, beneficiaries will face a painful 23% benefit cut in 2036 when the Social Security Trust fund is exhausted. Both parties must work together to chart a path forward on common-sense reforms, and this budget provides the nation’s leaders with the tools to get there.
(4). Pro-Growth Tax Reform. The current tax code for individuals is too complicated, with high marginal rates that discourage hard work and
entrepreneurship. Ryan’s plan embraces the widely acknowledged principles of pro-growth tax reform by proposing to consolidate tax brackets and lower tax rates, to just two rates of 10% and 25%, while clearing out the burdensome tangle of loopholes that distort economic activity and primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans.
American businesses are also overburdened by the highest corporate income tax rates in the developed world. The perverse incentives created by the corporate income tax do a lot of damage to both workers and investors, yet the tax itself raises relatively little revenue. Ryan’s budget improves incentives for job creators to work, invest, and innovate in the United States by lowering the corporate rate from 35% (the highest in the industrialized world) to a much more competitive 25% (the international average) and by shifting to a territorial system that will ensure a level playing field for American businesses.
It is also important to remember that most small businesses file their taxes as individuals, and not as corporations. Ryan notes that 9 out of 10 small businesses in Wisconsin file their taxes as individuals. These small businesses, known as “sub-chapter S corporations,” limited liability
corporations (LLCs), and partnerships, employ more than half of all private sector workers. The President is proposing that the top tax rate for these businesses be raised to 45% in January of 2013. With two thirds of the net new jobs in America being created by small businesses, the President’s tax proposal is a plan to kill job creation. Some of our foreign competitors are lowering their tax rates on businesses to as low as 15%. As noted above, our budget lowers the top individual tax rate to a more competitive 25% while broadening the tax base by eliminating loopholes and tax shelters.
(5). Providing for the Common Defense. With American men and women in uniform currently engaged with a fierce enemy and dealing with emerging threats around the world, Ryan’s budget takes several steps to ensure that national security remains government’s top priority. It rejects proposals to make thoughtless, across-the-board cuts in funding for national defense. Instead, it provides $554 billion for national defense spending, an amount that is consistent with America’s military goals and strategies. The budget preserves necessary defense spending to protect vital national interests today and ensures future real growth in defense spending to modernize the armed forces for the
challenges of tomorrow.
The defense budget is slated to be cut by $55 billion, or 10%, in January of 2013 through the sequester mechanism enacted as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011. This reduction would be in addition to the $487 billion in cuts over ten years proposed in President Obama’s budget. The President’s proposal for defense spending represents a budget-driven strategy, not a strategy-driven budget. Ryan’s budget eliminates these additional cuts in the defense budget by replacing them with other spending reductions. Spending restraint is critical,
and defense spending needs to be executed with effectiveness and accountability. But government should take care to ensure that spending is prioritized according to the nation’s needs, not treated indiscriminately when it comes to making cuts. The nation has no higher priority than safeguarding the safety and liberty of its citizens from threats at home and abroad.
The Ryan budget plan also honors the brave soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who have served our country and made tremendous sacrifices on behalf of this nation. Not only does it match the President’s FY2013 request for $61.34 billion to spend on veterans, it calls for more than $16.6 billion in additional spending on veterans and their families over the next ten years. As a country, we must remember the sacrifices of our veterans and their families, who have bravely served our nation, and this budget proves committed to providing the best care possible for them and uniformed service members.
Not exactly a “radical” and “extreme” plan, as President Obama accused it of being.
[After reading what Paul Ryan's plan provides, you will notice that there are several advertisements - "approved by President Obama" - which appear not to be truthful].
The budget that Rep. Paul Ryan wrote came up for a vote before the House on March 29 and was passed by a margin of 228 – 191. Americans were encouraged that the House again voted in favor of a Paul Ryan budget plan instead of continuing down the path of debt, doubt, and decline. Before voting to pass this budget proposal, the House had the opportunity to vote on President Obama’s budget proposal for FY2013. The House unanimously rejected the President’s proposal, by a vote of 0 – 414, a clear indication that Republicans and Democrats alike did not believe the President put forth a credible plan to address America’s challenges.
The economy is the number one issue in this upcoming election. People want jobs. Fathers and mothers want to earn a living for their family. They want the dignity that comes with earned success and not the indignation that comes from accepting a hand-out without producing anything or offering a service in return. Our elderly and disabled want to know that our economy is strong enough to protect the programs on which they depend. Businesses want to trust that the government supports their efforts to invest and grown their operations and create jobs and not punish them for taking risks or for their success. Is it reasonable that small businesses must incur the debt and provide their female
employees contraceptives so they can live a sexually-free lifestyle? Is that the role of a business owner?
We all secretly, or openly, are looking for certain promises from the Republicans at their convention this week. For those disillusioned Democrats, they want to know that if they take the chance and vote against their party, they will not be worse off in the next 4 years. Independents, who have been frustrated with both parties, have to hear something from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan that affirm their faith in American and not add to their distrust of government. And Republicans want to be inspired so they can organize their communities as they’ve never been able to do before.
To defeat Obama, the Romney-Ryan duo must contrast our great Legacy of Liberty with the oppressive socialist doctrines advocated by the Left. They must energize the largest conservative grassroots movement in history and enlist the support of American Patriots from all walks of life. They must alert fellow countrymen that we are on the downside of the fatal cycle of human liberty and the only way to turn things around is by restoring constitutional integrity and governance.
We see the same themes and issues that Ronald Reagan highlighted when he ran for the presidency in 1980. Under Jimmy Carter, Americans were suffering from out-of-control social programs, a recession, inflation, high unemployment, deficit spending, and runaway taxes. He asked the country if they were better off than they were 4 years earlier. He asked the people if they believe that a small, political elite in Washington can plan their lives for them better than they can. He urged a return to the timeless government principles our Founding
Fathers wanted for us. Mitt Romney needs to do the same thing. Unlike Reagan, Romney is not necessarily a great speaker. But that shouldn’t stop him from talking about great things and great ideas. Like Reagan did.
The election of 1980, an election poised on the choice to the American people of opposing government ideology, was not unlike the election we face in November. Extreme government control with limited freedom OR limited government with extreme freedom !!
At several events and fundraisers (2011 and 2012), President Obama attempted to compare himself to Reagan. Not to cheapen a good line, but I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan.
In his acceptance speech of 1980, Reagan proclaimed
“I want my candidacy to unify our country; to renew the American spirit and sense of purpose. I want to carry our message to every American, regardless of party affiliation, who is a member of this community of shared values…… Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity. The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership – in the White House and in Congress – for this unprecedented calamity, which has befallen us. They expect you to tell your children that America has had her day in the sun and that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.
We need a rebirth of the American tradition of leadership at every level of government and in private life as well. Back in 1976, Mr. Carter said, ‘Trust me.’ And a lot of people did. Now, many of those people are out of work. Many have seen their savings eaten away by inflation. Many others on fixed incomes, especially the elderly, have watched helplessly as the cruel tax of inflation wasted away their purchasing power.
‘Trust me’ government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs – in the people. The responsibility to live up to that trust is where it belongs, in their elected leaders. That kind of relationship, between the people and their elected leaders, is a special kind of compact.
Three hundred and sixty years ago, in 1620, a group of families dared to cross a mighty ocean to build a future for themselves in a new world. When they arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, they formed what they called a ‘compact’; an agreement among themselves to build a community and abide by its laws. This single act – the voluntary binding together of free people to live under the law – set the pattern for what was to come.
A century and a half later, the descendants of those people pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to found this nation. Some forfeited their fortunes and their lives; none sacrificed honor.
Isn’t it once again time to renew our compact of freedom; to pledge to each other all that is best in our lives, for the sake of this, our beloved and blessed land?
We must overcome something the present administration has cooked up: a new and altogether indigestible economic stew, one part inflation, one part high unemployment, one part recession, one part runaway taxes, one party deficit spending and seasoned by an energy crisis. It’s an economic stew that has turned the national stomach.
Ours are not problems of abstract economic theory. Those are problems of flesh and blood; problems that cause pain and destroy the moral fiber of real people who should not suffer the further indignity of being told by the government that it is all somehow their fault.
Can anyone look at the record of this administration and say, ‘Well done?’ Can anyone compare the state of our economy when the Carter Administration took office with where we are today and say, ‘Keep up the good work?’ Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, ‘Let’s have four more years of this?’
I believe the American people are going to answer these questions the first week of November and their answer will be, ‘No! We’ve had enough.’ And, then it will be up to us, beginning next January 20th, to offer an administration and congressional leadership of competence and more than a little courage. We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people.
I believe it is clear our federal government is overgrown and overweight. Indeed, it is time for our government to go on a diet. Therefore, my first act as chief executive will be to impose an immediate and thorough freeze on federal hiring. Then, we are going to enlist the very best minds from business, labor and whatever quarter to conduct a detailed review of every department, bureau and agency that lives by federal appropriations. We are also going to enlist the help and ideas of many dedicated and hard working government employees at all levels who want a more efficient government as much as the rest of us do. I know that many are demoralized by the confusion and waste they confront in their work as a result of failed and failing policies.
Our instructions to the groups we enlist will be simple and direct. We will remind them that government programs exist at the sufferance of the American taxpayer and are paid for with money earned by working men and women. Any program that represents a waste of their money — a theft from their pocketbooks–must have that waste eliminated or the program must go — by executive order where possible; by congressional action where necessary. Everything that can be run more effectively by state and local government we shall turn over to state and local government, along with the funding sources to pay for it. We are going to put an end to the money merry-go-round where our money becomes Washington’s money, to be spent by the states and cities exactly the way the federal bureaucrats tell them to.
I will not accept the excuse that the federal government has grown so big and powerful that it is beyond the control of any president, any administration or Congress. We are going to put an end to the notion that the American taxpayer exists to fund the federal government. The federal government exists to serve the American people. On January 20th, we are going to re-establish that truth.
Also on that date we are going to initiate action to get substantial relief for our taxpaying citizens and action to put people back to work. None of this will be based on any new form of monetary tinkering or fiscal sleight-of-hand. We will simply apply to government the common sense we all use in our daily lives.
Work and family are at the center of our lives; the foundation of our dignity as a free people. When we deprive people of what they have earned, or take away their jobs, we destroy their dignity and undermine their families. We cannot support our families unless there are jobs; and we cannot have jobs unless people have both money to invest and the faith to invest it.
There are concepts that stem from an economic system that for more than 200 years has helped us master a continent, create a previously undreamed of prosperity for our people and has fed millions of others around the globe. That system will continue to serve us in the future if our government will stop ignoring the basic values on which it was built and stop betraying the trust and good will of the American workers who keep it going.
The American people are carrying the heaviest peacetime tax burden in our nation’s history – and it will grow even heavier, under present law, next January. We are taxing ourselves into economic exhaustion and stagnation, crushing our ability and incentive to save, invest and produce.
This must stop. We must halt this fiscal self-destruction and restore sanity to our economic system.
I have long advocated a 30% reduction in income tax rates over a period of three years. This phased tax reduction would begin with a 10% ‘down payment’ tax cut in 1981, which the Republicans and Congress and I have already proposed. A phased reduction of tax rates would go a long way toward easing the heavy burden on the American people. But, we should not stop here.
Within the context of economic conditions and appropriate budget priorities during each fiscal year of my presidency, I would strive to go further. This would include improvement in business depreciation taxes so we can stimulate investment in order to get plants and equipment replaced, put more Americans back to work and put our nation back on the road to being competitive in world commerce. We will also work to reduce the cost of government as a percentage of our gross national product.
The first task of national leadership is to set honest and realistic priorities in our policies and our budget and I pledge that my administration will do that.
When I talk of tax cuts, I am reminded that every major tax cut in this century has strengthened the economy, generated renewed productivity and ended up yielding new revenues for the government by creating new investment, new jobs and more commerce among our people.
The present administration has been forced by us Republicans to play follow-the-leader with regard to a tax cut. But, in this election year we must take with the proverbial ‘grain of salt’ any tax cut proposed by those who have given us the greatest tax increase in our history. When those in leadership give us tax increases and tell us we must also do with less, have they thought about those who have always had less – especially the minorities? This is like telling them that just as they step on the first rung of the ladder of opportunity, the ladder is being pulled out from under them. That may be the Democratic leadership’s message to the minorities, but it won’t be ours. Our message will be: we have to move ahead, but we’re not going to leave anyone behind. Thanks to the economic policies of the Democratic Party, millions of
Americans find themselves out of work. Millions more have never even had a fair chance to learn new skills, hold a decent job, or secure for themselves and their families a share in the prosperity of this nation.
It is time to put America back to work; to make our cities and towns resound with the confident voices of men and women of all races, nationalities and faiths bringing home to their families a decent paycheck they can cash for honest money.
For those without skills, we’ll find a way to help them get skills. For those without job opportunities, we’ll stimulate new opportunities, particularly in the inner cities where they live. For those who have abandoned hope, we’ll restore hope and we’ll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!
When we cast our eyes abroad, we see an equally sorry chapter on the record of the present administration. We are not a warlike people. Quite the opposite. We always seek to live in peace. We resort to force infrequently and with great reluctance – and only after we have determined that it is absolutely necessary. We are awed–and rightly so – by the forces of destruction at loose in the world in this nuclear era. But neither can we be naive or foolish. Four times in my lifetime America has gone to war, bleeding the lives of its young men into the sands of beachheads, the fields of Europe and the jungles and rice paddies of Asia. We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted. We simply cannot learn these lessons the hard way again without risking our destruction.
Of all the objectives we seek, first and foremost is the establishment of lasting world peace. We must always stand ready to negotiate in good faith, ready to pursue any reasonable avenue that holds forth the promise of lessening tensions and furthering the prospects of peace. But let our friends and those who may wish us ill take note: the United States has an obligation to its citizens and to the people of the world never to let those who would destroy freedom dictate the future course of human life on this planet. I would regard my election as proof that we have renewed our resolve to preserve world peace and freedom. This nation will once again be strong enough to do that.
It is impossible to capture in words the splendor of this vast continent which God has granted as our portion of this creation. There are no words to express the extraordinary strength and character of this breed of people we call Americans.
Everywhere we have met thousands of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans from all economic conditions and walks of life bound together in that community of shared values of family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom. They are concerned, yes, but they are not frightened. They are disturbed, but not dismayed. They are the kind of men and women Tom Paine had in mind when he wrote, during the darkest days of the American Revolution, ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’
Nearly 150 years after Tom Paine wrote those words, an American president told the generation of the Great Depression that it had a ‘rendezvous with destiny.’ I believe that this generation of Americans today has a rendezvous with destiny.
Tonight, let us dedicate ourselves to renewing the American compact. I ask you not simply to ‘Trust me,’ but to trust your values–our values–and to hold me responsible for living up to them. I ask you to trust that American spirit which knows no ethnic, religious, social, political, regional, or economic boundaries; the spirit that burned with zeal in the hearts of millions of immigrants from every corner of the Earth who came here in search of freedom.
Some say that spirit no longer exists. But I have seen it – I have felt it – all across the land; in the big cities, the small towns and in rural America. The American spirit is still there. The time is now, my fellow Americans, to recapture our destiny, to take it into our own hands. But, to do this will take many of us, working together. I ask you tonight to volunteer your help in this cause so we can carry our message throughout the land.”
And then he ended with these words: “I’ll confess that I’ve been a little afraid to suggest what I’m going to suggest – I’m more afraid not to – that we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer. God bless America.”
Isn’t this the same message we want to hear again, in 2012? As conservatives? As independents? As disillusioned and demoralized Democrats? As Tea Partiers? As Americans? Isn’t this the message we need to hear?
With the economy in shambles as it is and with our national debt mounting as quickly as it is, and with the only response Obama offers is more blame, division, and class warfare, don’t we need bold solutions like Reagan offered? We already know that Paul Ryan’s budget plan includes a tax restructuring reform like the Gipper implemented. And we know his plan puts us on a path that will rescue the debt from our children and will relieve us from the need to increase taxes. Our social programs will be safe.
The lesson of 1980 is this: Out of severe inflation, economic depression, joblessness, and high taxes came an era of extreme prosperity. It was possible simply by the exchange of policies – the former centered around government and the latter centered around the individual.
Romney and Ryan must make Americans truly see that they are not better off today than they were 4 years ago. And then they must follow it up with a bold free-enterprise plan for economic recovery. Ryan has to explain his Path to Prosperity plan in a way that Americans can understand it. They must boost American morale, and continue to speak forcibly about Obama’s failed socialist regime.
They must touch the patriotic core in all of us and ask if we truly want to transform this great land of ours, as Obama is committed in doing, or restore it to its intended glory. They must remind Americans what Obama told a crowd at Georgetown University in April 2009 when he talked about his new ‘foundation’ and the task he faced of re-building this country, according to the policies that his administration designed. He used such words as “reform” and “transform.” He talked about needing “new legal authority” to make the changes necessary. He said that the Reagan model (that is, of limited government) was not a sustainable model for long-term prosperity” and needed to be abandoned.
Romney needs to condemn this idea that a President needs “new constitutional powers” to do so.
Thomas Jefferson is always a good Founder to quote. He’s my favorite. I hope Romney finds wisdom in all that he’s written. For example, in 1816, Jefferson wrote to a friend: ”To preserve the independence of the people, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."
The election has to be about liberty. It can’t be about temporary solutions. It has to be about reapplying our founding principles and restoring a culture of liberty.
Paul Ryan ended his rally speech on Wednesday, August 22 in Raleigh NC with these words: “Vote as if liberty still matters.”
With a message like that, I have optimism that the Romney-Ryan ticket will deliver a message as important and bold as the message Ronald Reagan delivered in 1980. The Republican National Convention just might be exciting after all… and perhaps historic as well.
References:
Real Clear Politics (accessed on August 27, 2012). http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/nc/north_carolina_romney_vs_obama-1784.html
Mark Levin, “Obama Mortgaging Our Children’s Future,” Daily Caller, August 16, 2012. Referenced at: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/16/levin-obama-the-greatest-political-child-abuser-in-modern-american-history/
“CBO Report: Danger Ahead Unless America Charts New Course,” June 5, 2012. Referenced at: http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=298284
“Bipartisan Congressional Bill Would Authorize the Use of Propaganda on Americans Living Inside America,” Washington Blog, May 18, 2012.
Referenced at: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/18/house-oks-642-billion-defense-bill-eds/#ixzz24mw4u47J
Paul Ryan, “The GOP Path to Prosperity,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2011. Referenced at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242612172357504.html
Ronald Reagan’s GOP Acceptance Speech (July 17, 1980) – http://www.nationalcenter.org/ReaganConvention1980.html
This week marks the start of the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will be named the GOP ticket for November’s election. We already know that Barack Obama and Joe Biden will be the Democratic ticket.
So now we know who the candidates and personalities will be. The big question is what the election itself will be about. We know the bottom line. The election of 2012 will determine the type of country we wish to be going forward. It’s a moral question, and one that must be decided by a country that is steadily and quickly losing its morality. The moral question is whether we should have more spending and bigger government with less liberty or less spending with a smaller government and more liberty. Do we continue with a mindset towards individual liberty or with a mindset that government’s role includes taking care of people cradle to grave and stimulating and controlling the economy. Entitlements entitle the government to bargain away human liberty and stimulus money only stimulates one thing – the size, scope, and power of government.
In the movie “The Pride of the Yankees,” Lou Gehrig’s mother is disappointed when she finds out her son has given up plans to finish college and become an engineer. She tells him: “In America, you can be anything. We didn’t come here from Italy for you to play ball.” (She didn’t understand that professional baseball players make a lot of money). Her point was that the decision of foreigners back in the early-mid 20th century to leave their homes, their countries, and their families was one that was balanced by the enormous opportunity to become personally
successful in America. The ambition of our forefathers and our immigrant ancestors has been dulled by the entitlement mentality and the eagerness of our government to put everyone on some kind of government program, making them dependent on the government and on the Democratic party as well.
Mark Levin, author of Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” puts the election in these terms: “The truth is, ladies and gentlemen — the truth is, if you’re a parent or a grandparent, this election is not about us. It’s not about parents and grandparents. This election is about our children and our grandchildren. Now, we’ve lost perspective. We’re losing our focus. The president of the United States, as I have said before, is the greatest political child abuser in modern American history.” The reason he is so harsh on the president, he explains, is because “government spending and debt, at 100% percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), will put the country in a vulnerable position when my
children and grandchildren are older.”
On his radio program, he said: “We talk about the debt, which is almost $16 trillion, that’s 100% of the GDP. That’s over 100% of all goods and services produced by our economy in any given year. We talk about the unfunded liabilities, which I estimate to be over $70 trillion now, some estimate it to be over $100 trillion. It’s mind-numbing. Now the fact of the matter is, those of us who are in our 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s….. we’re going to be dead and gone when our children and their children are going to have to deal with this. All of these politicians you see on TV today, they’re going to be distant memories, if they’re memories at all. They’re going to be gone. And all of this doublespeak, all this political gamesmanship.” He pleaded with his listeners to remove Obama from office. “We have to save our society – our culture, our
economy, and our rule of law. We have to save it for our children and our grandchildren, or they’re going to live in some kind of a tyranny
In a sense, we are talking about national redemption. Political redemption. We need to talk about spiritual redemption as well, but that’s a topic for another day.
Redemption us defined as “deliverance or rescue.” (Free Dictionary) It is "the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.” (Dictionary.com) For example, we can talk about “God’s plans for the redemption of his world.” Another definition is “the recovery of something mortgaged.” (Free Dictionary)
This November, we need the GOP to put forth a plan for the redemption of our country. We need the Romney and Ryan to outline a plan that will recover the country from a mortgaged future that will bind and saddle our children and grandchildren. The government is financing its programs by deficit spending – that is, borrowing now and taxing later. In other words, Congress and the President are forcing future generations to pay for our problems, for problems we generated. We are shifting the costs of this massive spending scheme to our children. We are mortgaging their future. Every dollar the government spends, even if borrowed, has to come out of someone’ pocket and therefore preempts the use of that dollar somewhere else in the economy, both now and in the future.
On June 5, Congressman Paul Ryan posted the most recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) - “The Long-Term Budget Outlook” – on his US House website. The report outlined a very bleak fiscal and economic future, and underscored the painful consequences for American families should policymakers fail to advance fiscally responsible reforms. Some of the key points from the CBO’s “Budget Outlook” include:
---- The Federal government’s unsustainable government spending will increase the likelihood of a devastating crisis: The CBO report states that “Growing debt also will increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget and the government will thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates.”
---- The CBO report affirms that the massive health-care overhaul fails to address the explosion in health care costs. Mandatory federal spending on health care will increase by 93% from 5.4% of GDP today to 10.4% of GDP over the next 25 years.
---- The CBO projects that government spending as a share of the economy will increase by nearly 53% between now and 2037, up from its historical average of roughly 20%. Taxes are projected to rise to the historical average in the years ahead, yet the unprecedented growth in
government spending is projected to rise much faster, driving an unsustainable explosion in debt.
---- The long-term budget outlook continues to worsen with each passing year Congress fails to act. While total debt has already eclipsed the size of the entire US economy, debt held by the public is on pace to eclipse the economy shortly after 2022.
---- The crushing burden of debt is driven primarily by the nation’s largest entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – along with the compounding growth in interest payments on the debt. Government spending on health care entitlements, Social Security, and interest on the national debt will consume 100% of total revenues by 2025.
---- According to the CBO report, the federal government’s interest payments alone are projected to consume 9.5% of our entire economy by 2037, up from about 1.4% today.
---- The CBO reports warns of the economic consequences of the President and his administration's insistence on increasing tax rates and raising barriers to job creation and economic growth. With the respect to counterproductive efforts to reduce the deficit by increasing tax rates, CBO states that “the extent that additional tax revenues were generated by boosting marginal tax rates, those higher rates will discourage people from working and saving, further reducing output and income.”
So today, August 27, the Republican National Convention opened in Tampa, Florida. Americans will soon get a sense of what the dynamics will be for the election season. And of course, we will find out who the major players will be. Conservatives want to know if they have a ticket that can beat Obama. They want to know if the message will resonate with conservatives and especially independents. They want to know if their ideas will offer a suitable alternative to those disillusioned with the failed policies of the Democrats. Tea Partiers want to know what the dialogue will be on Constitutional governance, reducing the size of government, restoring fiscal conservatism, cutting back on regulations and promoting free markets, and emphasizing personal responsibility.
But there is a slight problem. Tropical storm Isaac has made an unwelcomed visit to the coast of Florida and it’s likely to rain on the RNC’s parade (or convention).
So where do we stand at this time? We are headed for a cliff. Since January 2009, Obama’s policies have increased our national debt by over 45%. We are headed for a recession if things don’t change. That recession could hit as early as beginning of next year. We are heading towards bankruptcy. Social programs make up most of our debt and Obama is increasing dependence on government. Obamacare is looming and in fact, provisions are already being implemented. It will present the largest middle class tax hike in history, they say. 70% of
businesses say they cannot hire new employees or expand because of this healthcare bill. Obama is turning the full force of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the Department of Defense inwards on American citizens.
We know of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which permits the targeting, indefinite detention, torture, and even death of American citizens, and we know the President has used unmanned drones to kill Americans abroad, but most of us don’t know that in May of this year, the US House passed a law that would allow American citizens to be targeted with the same government propaganda campaigns that it communicates to our global enemies and friends. Not only did Obama assume power under the Afghanistan Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) as a justification for being able to enter American homes to grab people, detain them indefinitely, and disregard their rights of habeas corpus and other Bill of Rights, but now his can use “U.S. propaganda intended to influence foreign audiences to be used on the domestic population.” In other words, Obama is using war powers against American citizens by unilaterally accusing them of being enemies of the United States and wants to engage in propaganda campaigns to influence and control them. Does this sound like Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes? As one commentator wrote: “Nothing speaks more urgently to the creeping fascism of American politics than the assertion by our representatives, who apparently have never read a book on Germany in the 1930s-1940s or on the Soviet Union in the Stalin period, that forbidding the Department of Defense and the State Department from subjecting us to government propaganda “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.” And mind you, they want to use our own money to wash our brains!”
Despite the politics of oppression, Obama is still leading in national polls for the presidential election. An average of all the national polls shows Obama leading by 1.2% (as of August 27). Rasmussen, the most consistently reliable national poll, shows Obama ahead by 3%. A breakdown of blue states vs. red states gives an electoral college standing of 221 electoral votes for Obama and 181 electoral votes for Romney
The battle for the White House, according to Real Clear Politics (which takes an average of all polls) stands as follows, and I’ve listed the number of electoral votes for each state
Solid for Obama (142 electoral votes) - CA (55), DC (3), IL (20), MA (21), RI (4), DE (3), HW (4), MD (10), NY (29), VT (3)
Likely for Obama – ME (4), NJ (14), WA (12)
Leaning towards Obama – CT (7), MN (10), NM (5), OR (7), PA (20)
Either Way – CO (9), FL (29), IA (6), MI (16), MO (10), NV (6), NH (4), NC (15), OH (18), VA (13), WI (10)
Leaning towards Romney – AZ (11), GA (16), IN (11), SC (9)
Likely for Romney – MT (3), ND (3), SD (3), TN (11), TX (38)
Solid for Romney (76 electoral votes) – AL (9), AR (6), KS (6), LA (8), NE (5), WV (5), MS (6), OK (7), UT (6), WY (3), AK (3), ID (4), KY (8)
There are 11 states – swing states or battleground states – that will determine this election and determine the course of our country for the next 4 years. Those states are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Last week, Real Clear Politics announced that Obama has lost his lead in all of those swing states, except NH. The greatest movement was in Colorado, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Last week Obama was leading in Florida by only 1% and only slightly higher in Ohio. Today’s Real Clear Politics shows Romney and Obama in a tie now in both those battleground states. In Missouri, Romney is leading now by 4.3% and in North Carolina, he is leading by 1%. The question is whether Paul Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin will vote for the GOP ticket. Currently Obama is still leading by 1.4%.
It is worth noting that in these swing states, the two most important issues are the economy and Obamacare. According to polling data, in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida, voters who strongly disapprove of the healthcare bill greatly outnumber those who approve of the bill. So healthcare is a big issue. In Florida, this is countered by the concern for Medicare. Remember the liberal superPAC ad that shows Ryan throwing grandma off the cliff. Romney and Ryan still have to clear the record on the Medicare issue. Once the facts are made known, Florida should go to Romney. What are the facts?
– Who is the candidate putting Medicare at risk? Obama took $760 billion out of Medicare to help fund Obamacare.
– Ryan seeks to secure and save Medicare, not destroy it. For those seniors 55 and older, there is no change in the program with his plan. Nothing changes for them. They have nothing to worry about. Those who are 54 and younger, starting in 2023, they will receive a fixed amount of money from the government to pick either private health insurance or a federal plan modeled on Medicare. Ryan says that will keep the program solvent.
As you probably already know, Ryan’s plan first and foremost calls for the repeal of Obamacare. Second, it puts more emphasis on managing disease and treating health issues rather than wellness, unlike what Obamacare does.
And that is the status of the race – red vs. blue – going into the Republican National Convention.
The question on everyone’s mind is whether Romney and Ryan unveil a winning strategy in Tampa.
We already know that Romney is committed to getting our finances in order. He intends to turn this country around, just as he did for the Olympics in 2002 when he served as president and CEO of the Olympics Organizing Committee. To show that commitment, he selected as his running mate a member of the US House who has served for 14 years, was elected by a traditionally democratic state, serves on the House Budget Committee, has a firm grasp of economics and numbers, and is the only member of Congress to come up with a budget plan to meaningfully address the national debt and put our country back on the path of prosperity. The budget plan he proposed in 2011 was passed by the House but rejected by the Senate. The budget plan he proposed this year – The 2013 Path toProsperity- was overwhelmingly passed by the House.
What a stark contrast Congressman Paul Ryan is to then-Senator Barack Obama. Ryan is a thinker with the discipline and courage to propose bold solutions to real problems. He is not afraid to talk straight with the American people about their shared interest in the economy. Obama can’t even articulate what “Hope and Change” means. All he can do is use his ethnic appeal to accuse wealthier Americans of not “doing enough,” while telling dependent Americans he will give them more.
The Path to Prosperity is a blueprint for American renewal. It will cut more than $5 trillion in spending from the President’s budget over the next 10 years, will put the nation on a path to pay off our national debt, offers pro-growth reforms to our broken and burdensome tax code, saves and strengthens the social safety net, and will balance the budget in 20 years.
Ryan’s budget plan sets forth a model of government guided by the timeless principles of our great American experiment: free enterprise and economic liberty; limited government and spending restraint; traditional family and community values; and a strong national defense. While it’s true that our government has strayed from these timeless principles, Ryan’s plan budget offers a set of fundamental reforms that will restore those principles and put the nation back on the right track.
Specifically, The Path to Prosperity will do the following:
(1). Repeal of Obamacare. Ryan’s plan calls for the repeal of Obamacare.
(2). Change Washington’s Culture of Spending. Ryan’s budget plan offers responsible spending cuts now and structural reforms of government spending programs going forward, to ensure that government spending remains on a sustainable path. Under this budget, government spending will fall from its current elevated level of 24% of the economy to below 20% by 2015. Relative to the President’s budget, this budget cuts spending by more than $5 trillion over the next ten years, producing $3 trillion in lower deficits. By restoring discipline to Congressional spending, this budget also tackles the drivers of our debt and averts the fiscal crisis ahead – by cutting debt as a share of the
economy by roughly 15% over the next decade.
(3). Strengthening Health and Retirement Security. Ryan’s budget puts an end to empty promises from Washington, offering instead real security through reasonable reforms. Medicare is facing an unprecedented fiscal challenge. Its failed reliance on bureaucratic price controls, combined with rising health care costs, is jeopardizing seniors’ access to critical care and threatening to bankrupt the system – and ultimately the nation. According to the Medicare trustees, without substantial changes, the Medicare program will collapse in 2024. This budget saves Medicare by fixing flaws in its structure so it will be there for future generations. By putting these solutions in place now, this budget ensures that changes will not affect those in and near retirement in any way. No changes will be made to Medicare for anyone 55 and older.
When younger workers become eligible for Medicare a decade or more from today, they will be able to choose from a list of guaranteed coverage options, including traditional Medicare. This flexibility will allow seniors to enjoy the same kinds of choices in their plans that members of Congress and federal employees enjoy. Starting in 2023, Medicare will provide a payment to subsidize the cost of the plan, which seniors can then use to pick either private health insurance or a federal plan modeled after Medicare. By forcing plans to compete
against each other to serve the patient, the government will help ensure the best medical program for the dollar. It will therefore guarantee affordability. In addition, Medicare will provide increased assistance to lower-income beneficiaries and to those with greater health risks. Plans will not be able to “cherry pick” beneficiaries or deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. And there will be a strengthened safety net for the poor and sick. This essential reform offers one of the benefits of Obamacare (no denial because of pre-existing conditions) yet empowers individuals to make healthcare decisions based on their own situation. It will guarantee that Medicare can fulfill the promise of health and security for America’s seniors.
In contrast, President Obama’s health care law takes $500 billion from the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for the costs of his new health care entitlement. With no serious plan to save and preserve Medicare for current and future seniors, the President would allow parts of Medicare to go bankrupt in 2024. The President’s law also empowers a board of unelected bureaucrats, known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, to cut Medicare through formulaic rationing and determine what services your doctor and hospital can and cannot give you, hurting both Medicare recipients and health care providers. Conversely, Ryan’s budget plan ends the raid on the Medicare Trust Fund by
repealing the President’s health care law, including IPAB, and ensures that any potential savings in current law would go to help Medicare, not to pay for new entitlements. In addition to repealing the health care law’s new rationing board and its unfunded long-term care entitlement, the budget stabilizes plan choices for current seniors.
This budget also calls for action on Social Security by requiring both the President and the Congress to put forward specific ideas and legislation to ensure the sustainable solvency of this critical program. The risk to Social Security, driven by demographic changes – namely 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day – is nearer at hand than most acknowledge. According to the 2011 Social Security Trustees Report, beneficiaries will face a painful 23% benefit cut in 2036 when the Social Security Trust fund is exhausted. Both parties must work together to chart a path forward on common-sense reforms, and this budget provides the nation’s leaders with the tools to get there.
(4). Pro-Growth Tax Reform. The current tax code for individuals is too complicated, with high marginal rates that discourage hard work and
entrepreneurship. Ryan’s plan embraces the widely acknowledged principles of pro-growth tax reform by proposing to consolidate tax brackets and lower tax rates, to just two rates of 10% and 25%, while clearing out the burdensome tangle of loopholes that distort economic activity and primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans.
American businesses are also overburdened by the highest corporate income tax rates in the developed world. The perverse incentives created by the corporate income tax do a lot of damage to both workers and investors, yet the tax itself raises relatively little revenue. Ryan’s budget improves incentives for job creators to work, invest, and innovate in the United States by lowering the corporate rate from 35% (the highest in the industrialized world) to a much more competitive 25% (the international average) and by shifting to a territorial system that will ensure a level playing field for American businesses.
It is also important to remember that most small businesses file their taxes as individuals, and not as corporations. Ryan notes that 9 out of 10 small businesses in Wisconsin file their taxes as individuals. These small businesses, known as “sub-chapter S corporations,” limited liability
corporations (LLCs), and partnerships, employ more than half of all private sector workers. The President is proposing that the top tax rate for these businesses be raised to 45% in January of 2013. With two thirds of the net new jobs in America being created by small businesses, the President’s tax proposal is a plan to kill job creation. Some of our foreign competitors are lowering their tax rates on businesses to as low as 15%. As noted above, our budget lowers the top individual tax rate to a more competitive 25% while broadening the tax base by eliminating loopholes and tax shelters.
(5). Providing for the Common Defense. With American men and women in uniform currently engaged with a fierce enemy and dealing with emerging threats around the world, Ryan’s budget takes several steps to ensure that national security remains government’s top priority. It rejects proposals to make thoughtless, across-the-board cuts in funding for national defense. Instead, it provides $554 billion for national defense spending, an amount that is consistent with America’s military goals and strategies. The budget preserves necessary defense spending to protect vital national interests today and ensures future real growth in defense spending to modernize the armed forces for the
challenges of tomorrow.
The defense budget is slated to be cut by $55 billion, or 10%, in January of 2013 through the sequester mechanism enacted as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011. This reduction would be in addition to the $487 billion in cuts over ten years proposed in President Obama’s budget. The President’s proposal for defense spending represents a budget-driven strategy, not a strategy-driven budget. Ryan’s budget eliminates these additional cuts in the defense budget by replacing them with other spending reductions. Spending restraint is critical,
and defense spending needs to be executed with effectiveness and accountability. But government should take care to ensure that spending is prioritized according to the nation’s needs, not treated indiscriminately when it comes to making cuts. The nation has no higher priority than safeguarding the safety and liberty of its citizens from threats at home and abroad.
The Ryan budget plan also honors the brave soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who have served our country and made tremendous sacrifices on behalf of this nation. Not only does it match the President’s FY2013 request for $61.34 billion to spend on veterans, it calls for more than $16.6 billion in additional spending on veterans and their families over the next ten years. As a country, we must remember the sacrifices of our veterans and their families, who have bravely served our nation, and this budget proves committed to providing the best care possible for them and uniformed service members.
Not exactly a “radical” and “extreme” plan, as President Obama accused it of being.
[After reading what Paul Ryan's plan provides, you will notice that there are several advertisements - "approved by President Obama" - which appear not to be truthful].
The budget that Rep. Paul Ryan wrote came up for a vote before the House on March 29 and was passed by a margin of 228 – 191. Americans were encouraged that the House again voted in favor of a Paul Ryan budget plan instead of continuing down the path of debt, doubt, and decline. Before voting to pass this budget proposal, the House had the opportunity to vote on President Obama’s budget proposal for FY2013. The House unanimously rejected the President’s proposal, by a vote of 0 – 414, a clear indication that Republicans and Democrats alike did not believe the President put forth a credible plan to address America’s challenges.
The economy is the number one issue in this upcoming election. People want jobs. Fathers and mothers want to earn a living for their family. They want the dignity that comes with earned success and not the indignation that comes from accepting a hand-out without producing anything or offering a service in return. Our elderly and disabled want to know that our economy is strong enough to protect the programs on which they depend. Businesses want to trust that the government supports their efforts to invest and grown their operations and create jobs and not punish them for taking risks or for their success. Is it reasonable that small businesses must incur the debt and provide their female
employees contraceptives so they can live a sexually-free lifestyle? Is that the role of a business owner?
We all secretly, or openly, are looking for certain promises from the Republicans at their convention this week. For those disillusioned Democrats, they want to know that if they take the chance and vote against their party, they will not be worse off in the next 4 years. Independents, who have been frustrated with both parties, have to hear something from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan that affirm their faith in American and not add to their distrust of government. And Republicans want to be inspired so they can organize their communities as they’ve never been able to do before.
To defeat Obama, the Romney-Ryan duo must contrast our great Legacy of Liberty with the oppressive socialist doctrines advocated by the Left. They must energize the largest conservative grassroots movement in history and enlist the support of American Patriots from all walks of life. They must alert fellow countrymen that we are on the downside of the fatal cycle of human liberty and the only way to turn things around is by restoring constitutional integrity and governance.
We see the same themes and issues that Ronald Reagan highlighted when he ran for the presidency in 1980. Under Jimmy Carter, Americans were suffering from out-of-control social programs, a recession, inflation, high unemployment, deficit spending, and runaway taxes. He asked the country if they were better off than they were 4 years earlier. He asked the people if they believe that a small, political elite in Washington can plan their lives for them better than they can. He urged a return to the timeless government principles our Founding
Fathers wanted for us. Mitt Romney needs to do the same thing. Unlike Reagan, Romney is not necessarily a great speaker. But that shouldn’t stop him from talking about great things and great ideas. Like Reagan did.
The election of 1980, an election poised on the choice to the American people of opposing government ideology, was not unlike the election we face in November. Extreme government control with limited freedom OR limited government with extreme freedom !!
At several events and fundraisers (2011 and 2012), President Obama attempted to compare himself to Reagan. Not to cheapen a good line, but I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan.
In his acceptance speech of 1980, Reagan proclaimed
“I want my candidacy to unify our country; to renew the American spirit and sense of purpose. I want to carry our message to every American, regardless of party affiliation, who is a member of this community of shared values…… Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence, any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity. The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership – in the White House and in Congress – for this unprecedented calamity, which has befallen us. They expect you to tell your children that America has had her day in the sun and that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.
We need a rebirth of the American tradition of leadership at every level of government and in private life as well. Back in 1976, Mr. Carter said, ‘Trust me.’ And a lot of people did. Now, many of those people are out of work. Many have seen their savings eaten away by inflation. Many others on fixed incomes, especially the elderly, have watched helplessly as the cruel tax of inflation wasted away their purchasing power.
‘Trust me’ government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs – in the people. The responsibility to live up to that trust is where it belongs, in their elected leaders. That kind of relationship, between the people and their elected leaders, is a special kind of compact.
Three hundred and sixty years ago, in 1620, a group of families dared to cross a mighty ocean to build a future for themselves in a new world. When they arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, they formed what they called a ‘compact’; an agreement among themselves to build a community and abide by its laws. This single act – the voluntary binding together of free people to live under the law – set the pattern for what was to come.
A century and a half later, the descendants of those people pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to found this nation. Some forfeited their fortunes and their lives; none sacrificed honor.
Isn’t it once again time to renew our compact of freedom; to pledge to each other all that is best in our lives, for the sake of this, our beloved and blessed land?
We must overcome something the present administration has cooked up: a new and altogether indigestible economic stew, one part inflation, one part high unemployment, one part recession, one part runaway taxes, one party deficit spending and seasoned by an energy crisis. It’s an economic stew that has turned the national stomach.
Ours are not problems of abstract economic theory. Those are problems of flesh and blood; problems that cause pain and destroy the moral fiber of real people who should not suffer the further indignity of being told by the government that it is all somehow their fault.
Can anyone look at the record of this administration and say, ‘Well done?’ Can anyone compare the state of our economy when the Carter Administration took office with where we are today and say, ‘Keep up the good work?’ Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, ‘Let’s have four more years of this?’
I believe the American people are going to answer these questions the first week of November and their answer will be, ‘No! We’ve had enough.’ And, then it will be up to us, beginning next January 20th, to offer an administration and congressional leadership of competence and more than a little courage. We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people.
I believe it is clear our federal government is overgrown and overweight. Indeed, it is time for our government to go on a diet. Therefore, my first act as chief executive will be to impose an immediate and thorough freeze on federal hiring. Then, we are going to enlist the very best minds from business, labor and whatever quarter to conduct a detailed review of every department, bureau and agency that lives by federal appropriations. We are also going to enlist the help and ideas of many dedicated and hard working government employees at all levels who want a more efficient government as much as the rest of us do. I know that many are demoralized by the confusion and waste they confront in their work as a result of failed and failing policies.
Our instructions to the groups we enlist will be simple and direct. We will remind them that government programs exist at the sufferance of the American taxpayer and are paid for with money earned by working men and women. Any program that represents a waste of their money — a theft from their pocketbooks–must have that waste eliminated or the program must go — by executive order where possible; by congressional action where necessary. Everything that can be run more effectively by state and local government we shall turn over to state and local government, along with the funding sources to pay for it. We are going to put an end to the money merry-go-round where our money becomes Washington’s money, to be spent by the states and cities exactly the way the federal bureaucrats tell them to.
I will not accept the excuse that the federal government has grown so big and powerful that it is beyond the control of any president, any administration or Congress. We are going to put an end to the notion that the American taxpayer exists to fund the federal government. The federal government exists to serve the American people. On January 20th, we are going to re-establish that truth.
Also on that date we are going to initiate action to get substantial relief for our taxpaying citizens and action to put people back to work. None of this will be based on any new form of monetary tinkering or fiscal sleight-of-hand. We will simply apply to government the common sense we all use in our daily lives.
Work and family are at the center of our lives; the foundation of our dignity as a free people. When we deprive people of what they have earned, or take away their jobs, we destroy their dignity and undermine their families. We cannot support our families unless there are jobs; and we cannot have jobs unless people have both money to invest and the faith to invest it.
There are concepts that stem from an economic system that for more than 200 years has helped us master a continent, create a previously undreamed of prosperity for our people and has fed millions of others around the globe. That system will continue to serve us in the future if our government will stop ignoring the basic values on which it was built and stop betraying the trust and good will of the American workers who keep it going.
The American people are carrying the heaviest peacetime tax burden in our nation’s history – and it will grow even heavier, under present law, next January. We are taxing ourselves into economic exhaustion and stagnation, crushing our ability and incentive to save, invest and produce.
This must stop. We must halt this fiscal self-destruction and restore sanity to our economic system.
I have long advocated a 30% reduction in income tax rates over a period of three years. This phased tax reduction would begin with a 10% ‘down payment’ tax cut in 1981, which the Republicans and Congress and I have already proposed. A phased reduction of tax rates would go a long way toward easing the heavy burden on the American people. But, we should not stop here.
Within the context of economic conditions and appropriate budget priorities during each fiscal year of my presidency, I would strive to go further. This would include improvement in business depreciation taxes so we can stimulate investment in order to get plants and equipment replaced, put more Americans back to work and put our nation back on the road to being competitive in world commerce. We will also work to reduce the cost of government as a percentage of our gross national product.
The first task of national leadership is to set honest and realistic priorities in our policies and our budget and I pledge that my administration will do that.
When I talk of tax cuts, I am reminded that every major tax cut in this century has strengthened the economy, generated renewed productivity and ended up yielding new revenues for the government by creating new investment, new jobs and more commerce among our people.
The present administration has been forced by us Republicans to play follow-the-leader with regard to a tax cut. But, in this election year we must take with the proverbial ‘grain of salt’ any tax cut proposed by those who have given us the greatest tax increase in our history. When those in leadership give us tax increases and tell us we must also do with less, have they thought about those who have always had less – especially the minorities? This is like telling them that just as they step on the first rung of the ladder of opportunity, the ladder is being pulled out from under them. That may be the Democratic leadership’s message to the minorities, but it won’t be ours. Our message will be: we have to move ahead, but we’re not going to leave anyone behind. Thanks to the economic policies of the Democratic Party, millions of
Americans find themselves out of work. Millions more have never even had a fair chance to learn new skills, hold a decent job, or secure for themselves and their families a share in the prosperity of this nation.
It is time to put America back to work; to make our cities and towns resound with the confident voices of men and women of all races, nationalities and faiths bringing home to their families a decent paycheck they can cash for honest money.
For those without skills, we’ll find a way to help them get skills. For those without job opportunities, we’ll stimulate new opportunities, particularly in the inner cities where they live. For those who have abandoned hope, we’ll restore hope and we’ll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!
When we cast our eyes abroad, we see an equally sorry chapter on the record of the present administration. We are not a warlike people. Quite the opposite. We always seek to live in peace. We resort to force infrequently and with great reluctance – and only after we have determined that it is absolutely necessary. We are awed–and rightly so – by the forces of destruction at loose in the world in this nuclear era. But neither can we be naive or foolish. Four times in my lifetime America has gone to war, bleeding the lives of its young men into the sands of beachheads, the fields of Europe and the jungles and rice paddies of Asia. We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted. We simply cannot learn these lessons the hard way again without risking our destruction.
Of all the objectives we seek, first and foremost is the establishment of lasting world peace. We must always stand ready to negotiate in good faith, ready to pursue any reasonable avenue that holds forth the promise of lessening tensions and furthering the prospects of peace. But let our friends and those who may wish us ill take note: the United States has an obligation to its citizens and to the people of the world never to let those who would destroy freedom dictate the future course of human life on this planet. I would regard my election as proof that we have renewed our resolve to preserve world peace and freedom. This nation will once again be strong enough to do that.
It is impossible to capture in words the splendor of this vast continent which God has granted as our portion of this creation. There are no words to express the extraordinary strength and character of this breed of people we call Americans.
Everywhere we have met thousands of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans from all economic conditions and walks of life bound together in that community of shared values of family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom. They are concerned, yes, but they are not frightened. They are disturbed, but not dismayed. They are the kind of men and women Tom Paine had in mind when he wrote, during the darkest days of the American Revolution, ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’
Nearly 150 years after Tom Paine wrote those words, an American president told the generation of the Great Depression that it had a ‘rendezvous with destiny.’ I believe that this generation of Americans today has a rendezvous with destiny.
Tonight, let us dedicate ourselves to renewing the American compact. I ask you not simply to ‘Trust me,’ but to trust your values–our values–and to hold me responsible for living up to them. I ask you to trust that American spirit which knows no ethnic, religious, social, political, regional, or economic boundaries; the spirit that burned with zeal in the hearts of millions of immigrants from every corner of the Earth who came here in search of freedom.
Some say that spirit no longer exists. But I have seen it – I have felt it – all across the land; in the big cities, the small towns and in rural America. The American spirit is still there. The time is now, my fellow Americans, to recapture our destiny, to take it into our own hands. But, to do this will take many of us, working together. I ask you tonight to volunteer your help in this cause so we can carry our message throughout the land.”
And then he ended with these words: “I’ll confess that I’ve been a little afraid to suggest what I’m going to suggest – I’m more afraid not to – that we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer. God bless America.”
Isn’t this the same message we want to hear again, in 2012? As conservatives? As independents? As disillusioned and demoralized Democrats? As Tea Partiers? As Americans? Isn’t this the message we need to hear?
With the economy in shambles as it is and with our national debt mounting as quickly as it is, and with the only response Obama offers is more blame, division, and class warfare, don’t we need bold solutions like Reagan offered? We already know that Paul Ryan’s budget plan includes a tax restructuring reform like the Gipper implemented. And we know his plan puts us on a path that will rescue the debt from our children and will relieve us from the need to increase taxes. Our social programs will be safe.
The lesson of 1980 is this: Out of severe inflation, economic depression, joblessness, and high taxes came an era of extreme prosperity. It was possible simply by the exchange of policies – the former centered around government and the latter centered around the individual.
Romney and Ryan must make Americans truly see that they are not better off today than they were 4 years ago. And then they must follow it up with a bold free-enterprise plan for economic recovery. Ryan has to explain his Path to Prosperity plan in a way that Americans can understand it. They must boost American morale, and continue to speak forcibly about Obama’s failed socialist regime.
They must touch the patriotic core in all of us and ask if we truly want to transform this great land of ours, as Obama is committed in doing, or restore it to its intended glory. They must remind Americans what Obama told a crowd at Georgetown University in April 2009 when he talked about his new ‘foundation’ and the task he faced of re-building this country, according to the policies that his administration designed. He used such words as “reform” and “transform.” He talked about needing “new legal authority” to make the changes necessary. He said that the Reagan model (that is, of limited government) was not a sustainable model for long-term prosperity” and needed to be abandoned.
Romney needs to condemn this idea that a President needs “new constitutional powers” to do so.
Thomas Jefferson is always a good Founder to quote. He’s my favorite. I hope Romney finds wisdom in all that he’s written. For example, in 1816, Jefferson wrote to a friend: ”To preserve the independence of the people, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."
The election has to be about liberty. It can’t be about temporary solutions. It has to be about reapplying our founding principles and restoring a culture of liberty.
Paul Ryan ended his rally speech on Wednesday, August 22 in Raleigh NC with these words: “Vote as if liberty still matters.”
With a message like that, I have optimism that the Romney-Ryan ticket will deliver a message as important and bold as the message Ronald Reagan delivered in 1980. The Republican National Convention just might be exciting after all… and perhaps historic as well.
References:
Real Clear Politics (accessed on August 27, 2012). http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/nc/north_carolina_romney_vs_obama-1784.html
Mark Levin, “Obama Mortgaging Our Children’s Future,” Daily Caller, August 16, 2012. Referenced at: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/16/levin-obama-the-greatest-political-child-abuser-in-modern-american-history/
“CBO Report: Danger Ahead Unless America Charts New Course,” June 5, 2012. Referenced at: http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=298284
“Bipartisan Congressional Bill Would Authorize the Use of Propaganda on Americans Living Inside America,” Washington Blog, May 18, 2012.
Referenced at: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/18/house-oks-642-billion-defense-bill-eds/#ixzz24mw4u47J
Paul Ryan, “The GOP Path to Prosperity,” Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2011. Referenced at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242612172357504.html
Ronald Reagan’s GOP Acceptance Speech (July 17, 1980) – http://www.nationalcenter.org/ReaganConvention1980.html
THE REAL HISTORY of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY
The 14th Amendment was adopted JULY 28, 1868, because Southern States, though forced to end slavery, did not grant State citizenship to freed slaves.
The 14th Amendment reversed the Dred Scott decision of 1857, where the Supreme Court, with 7 of the 9 Justices being Democrat, decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen, but property belonging to his owner.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, appointed by Democrat President Andrew Jackson, wrote that slaves were "so far inferior...that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for their own benefit."
Southern Democrat Legislatures passed Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws, requiring freed slaves to be "apprenticed" to "employers" and
punished any who left.
November 22, 1865, Republicans denounced Mississippi's Democrat legislature for enacting "black codes" institutionalizing racial discrimination.
February 5, 1866, Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens introduced legislation to give former slaves "40 acres and a mule," but Democrats opposed it, led by President Andrew Johnson.
April 9, 1866, Republicans in Congress overrode Democrat President Johnson's veto and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring rights of citizenship on African-Americans.
On May 10, 1866, in the House, and June 8, 1866, in the Senate, Republicans passed the 14th Amendment, despite 100 percent of
Democrats voting against it. Due process and equal protection of the laws was now guaranteed to all citizens.
January 8, 1867, Republicans granted voting rights to African-Americans in the District of Columbia, after overriding Democrat President Andrew Johnson's veto.
July 19, 1867, Republicans passed legislation protecting voting rights of African-Americans, after overriding Democrat President Andrew Johnson's veto.
March 30, 1868, Republicans began impeachment of Democrat President Andrew Johnson.
September 12, 1868, Democrats in Georgia's Senate expelled Civil rights activist Tunis Campbell and 24 other Republican African-Americans, who would later be reinstated by a Republican Congress.
October 22, 1868, while campaigning for re-election, Republican Congressman James Hinds was assassinated by Democrat terrorists who organized as the Ku Klux Klan.
February 3, 1870, overcoming 97% Democrat opposition, the 15th Amendment was passed with 98% Republican support, granting the right to vote to all Americans regardless of race.
May 31, 1870, Republican President U.S. Grant signed the Enforcement Act, providing stiff penalties for depriving any American of their civil rights.
June 22, 1870, Republican Congress created the U.S. Department of Justice to safeguard the civil rights of African-Americans against Democrats in the South.
February 28, 1871, Republican Congress passed the Enforcement Act providing federal protection for African-American voters.
April 20, 1871, Republican Congress enacted the Ku Klux Klan Act, outlawing Democratic Party-affiliated terrorist groups which oppressed
African-Americans.
October 10, 1871, African-American Republican civil rights activist Octavius Catto was murdered by a Democratic Party operative, after repeated threats by Philadelphia Democrats against black voting.
October 18, 1871, Republican President Ulysses S. Grant deployed U.S. troops to combat violence committed by Democrat terrorists who formed the Ku Klux Klan.
Explaining the reason for the 14th Amendment, Republican Congressman John Farnsworth of Illinois stated, March 31, 1871: "The reason for the adoption (of the 14th Amendment)...was because of...discriminating...legislation of those States...by which they were punishing one class of men under different laws from another class."
The 14th Amendment reversed the Dred Scott decision of 1857, where the Supreme Court, with 7 of the 9 Justices being Democrat, decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen, but property belonging to his owner.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, appointed by Democrat President Andrew Jackson, wrote that slaves were "so far inferior...that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for their own benefit."
Southern Democrat Legislatures passed Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws, requiring freed slaves to be "apprenticed" to "employers" and
punished any who left.
November 22, 1865, Republicans denounced Mississippi's Democrat legislature for enacting "black codes" institutionalizing racial discrimination.
February 5, 1866, Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens introduced legislation to give former slaves "40 acres and a mule," but Democrats opposed it, led by President Andrew Johnson.
April 9, 1866, Republicans in Congress overrode Democrat President Johnson's veto and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring rights of citizenship on African-Americans.
On May 10, 1866, in the House, and June 8, 1866, in the Senate, Republicans passed the 14th Amendment, despite 100 percent of
Democrats voting against it. Due process and equal protection of the laws was now guaranteed to all citizens.
January 8, 1867, Republicans granted voting rights to African-Americans in the District of Columbia, after overriding Democrat President Andrew Johnson's veto.
July 19, 1867, Republicans passed legislation protecting voting rights of African-Americans, after overriding Democrat President Andrew Johnson's veto.
March 30, 1868, Republicans began impeachment of Democrat President Andrew Johnson.
September 12, 1868, Democrats in Georgia's Senate expelled Civil rights activist Tunis Campbell and 24 other Republican African-Americans, who would later be reinstated by a Republican Congress.
October 22, 1868, while campaigning for re-election, Republican Congressman James Hinds was assassinated by Democrat terrorists who organized as the Ku Klux Klan.
February 3, 1870, overcoming 97% Democrat opposition, the 15th Amendment was passed with 98% Republican support, granting the right to vote to all Americans regardless of race.
May 31, 1870, Republican President U.S. Grant signed the Enforcement Act, providing stiff penalties for depriving any American of their civil rights.
June 22, 1870, Republican Congress created the U.S. Department of Justice to safeguard the civil rights of African-Americans against Democrats in the South.
February 28, 1871, Republican Congress passed the Enforcement Act providing federal protection for African-American voters.
April 20, 1871, Republican Congress enacted the Ku Klux Klan Act, outlawing Democratic Party-affiliated terrorist groups which oppressed
African-Americans.
October 10, 1871, African-American Republican civil rights activist Octavius Catto was murdered by a Democratic Party operative, after repeated threats by Philadelphia Democrats against black voting.
October 18, 1871, Republican President Ulysses S. Grant deployed U.S. troops to combat violence committed by Democrat terrorists who formed the Ku Klux Klan.
Explaining the reason for the 14th Amendment, Republican Congressman John Farnsworth of Illinois stated, March 31, 1871: "The reason for the adoption (of the 14th Amendment)...was because of...discriminating...legislation of those States...by which they were punishing one class of men under different laws from another class."
The Pitt County Board of Elections Gives the Green Light to ACORN
by Diane Rufino
This morning at the Pitt County Board of Elections, "Organizing for America" (ACORN) succeeded in pushing its brand of "community organizing" in Pitt County for this November's election by convincing the board to approve Sunday voting. And not just your garden-variety "Sunday" voting, but a full-throttle, balls-to-the-walls effort that would surely make Barack Obama and Eric Holder extremely proud. During early voting, which will begin on Thursday, Oct. 18th, Pitt County will allow voting on two Sundays - Oct. 21& 28th.
The Pitt County Board of Elections voted 2-to-1 to approve Sunday voting. Because the vote was not unanimous, the decision will go to the NC State Board of Elections and a 5-member panel of attorneys will render that in the coming month or so. But being that the panel was appointed by Governor Perdue, a liberal Democrat who vetoed the Voter ID law, we can almost predict what their decision will be.
Voters were notified of the hearing this morning when word just happened to spread by email. And it's a good thing the word got out. Many concerned voters showed up to voice their opposition to Sunday voting, just as they had done in 2008 and 2010. This year, opponents filled
the room so completely that people were left standing and many lined the hallway. "Organizing for America" was present, as well as the NAACP. Betsy Leech, chairwoman of the Pitt County Democratic Party, sent a representative. Members of the Pitt County GOP, including its chairwoman Ginny Cooper, Republican Women for Pitt County, including its president Kitty Staskelunas, and the Eastern NC Tea Party were there. Several pastors were in attendance. But the overwhelming number of people who showed up were just concerned citizens and taxpayers. All waited patiently to have their concerns voiced and recorded.
One of the first persons to speak from the crowd was a black woman who said she moved to NC from NJ. Her name was Ms. Kimberly Carney. I mention her race only because of the message she delivered. She began by saying that "her people" have been treated terribly and then made the general assertion that people are still trying to deny them rights. She used the "N" word and accused people in the room of snickering at her because of her color. Mr. Nelson, a member of the board, took great offense to her comments and fired back at her. (He later apologized for raising his voice but said he will not tolerate anyone accusing him of trying to disenfranchise anyone's voting rights).
Several black persons in the room spoke up in favor of Sunday voting. They said that they need every opportunity possible to make it out to the polls, including two Sundays when they can be bused to the polls after church service. They claimed that the other days - Monday thru Saturday - were not sufficient. They said that without Sunday voting, they would be disenfranchised, even though there wasn't even an early voting period at all in Pitt County prior to 2000. There was simply one-day voting - on Election day (with a limited absentee ballot provision). There were a few pastors who addressed the board and supported Sunday voting for the same reason - so that church buses could take their members to the polls.
Other pastors in the room, however, went on record to oppose Sunday voting. They asked the board to recognize the Sabbath and to recognize the Christian traditions on which our country was based. They acknowledged that proponents of Sunday voting like the fact that their churches can organize trips to the polls. But these pastors suggested that if churches wanted to do the good stewardship thing, they would find ways to help their church members to get to the polls on Monday thru Friday and on the two Saturdays that are provided. Many others spoke to the same theme, about churches and even individuals coming to the aid of those who need rides to the polls - but doing so on Monday thru Saturday so that Sunday could continue to be a day of worship and family time for election officials, poll workers, and others involved in the election and political process.
Others see the reverence of Sunday as an individual obligation to God and the government's endorsing of Sunday voting as an impermissible violation of Church and State without a "compelling state interest." One woman, Mrs. Coral Whichard, gave an eloquent review of the Constitution, the role that God's law has played in our country, and how our early presidents and government representatives used Sunday to worship (in fact, as Coral explained, the Capitol building itself housed 4 different churches on Sundays for 50 years!). Several people, including Ms. Pat Terry and Diane Rufino, spoke against Sunday voting for personal reasons. They said that they are poll workers and having to work on Sunday offends their right of religious conscience. One black lady made a suggestion to the board that they come up with a policy of replacing any poll worker who has a religious issue with another worker for Sunday voting. While the proponents of Sunday voting supported that suggestion and two of the board members even nodded in agreement, many found it offensive because it did not address those people who volunteer at the polls. For those people who feel deeply compelled to volunteer and serve at the polls to disseminate truthful information and promote candidates, they will be forced to miss church service, miss Sunday time with family, and offend God's law by not observing the Sabbath. In other words, Sunday voting forces people to choose between two fundamental rights and privileges - the rights of religious conscience and the right to participate in the political and election process. The government is not supposed to do such things, absent a "compelling state interest" and means that are the "least restrictive" of the exercise of individual rights.
Ginny Cooper, as the chairwoman of the Pitt County GOP and a woman deeply committed to her faith, listened carefully to the comments made - by both sides. Although she wanted to raise her hand to speak several times, she chose her issues very carefully. She said she didn't want to make Sunday voting a political issue. And that's why she made the point that the early voting period, together with the absentee ballot option, is more than adequate and more than fair for everyone - regardless of race or politics.
A former ECU professor got up to say that in all the years (27 years, if I remember correctly) that she has worked, she has never heard a single person complain that they could not find the opportunity to vote, even when voting was held on only one day. Others offered similar testimony, noting that they themselves, working over 40 hours and even working far distances, never missed an opportunity to vote.
After many comments were made touching on the issue of religion and the issue of the intentional disenfranchisement of black voters, a sharply-dressed young man named Jude Watts took the discussion in a different direction. He stated that: "Sunday voting is not a religious issue or a racial issue. It is a taxpayer issue." He said that there is ample opportunity for everyone to vote in the early-voting period and that adding two Sundays will cost the county and recklessly spend taxpayer money. The board noted that the money had already been set aside, to which Mr. Watts shot back: "It doesn't mean you have to spend it. Save it for something more important." When Ms. Lisa Taylor, a member of the board, commented flippantly that it only amounted to about $1000 dollars extra, Watts retorted: "I don't care if it is only $1. It isn't your money to spend. It's the people's. As public servants, you are supposed to be good stewards of the peoples' money." Another man raised his hand and told the board that he is a small business owner and hasn't had a job in over a year. He said: "I'm sorry that $1,000 doesn't sound like a lot to you. But it does to me and I could sure use it."
But the real meat of the discussion came when Mr. Lawrence Watts asked the board to state, for the record, the options open to ALL voters during the early-voting period. Mr. Davis, the director of the Pitt County Board of Elections, explained that all voters can vote at one-stop voting locations for 2 1/2 weeks prior to Election Day, with hours that can certainly accommodate persons who work full time. Locations are open at 8:00 in the morning and while some may close down at 5:00 pm, there are locations that remain open until 7:00 pm. In addition, those who can't physically travel to a polling location have 60 days to submit an absentee ballot to the Board of Elections. The enormity of early voting really hit home to the crowd of people. People who want to vote have two full months to do so. They have options to do so in person or by mail. There are no racial or religious barriers. As Mr. Watts emphasized: "Clearly, anyone who really wants to vote has
ample opportunity to do so."
Just when it seemed that the hearing was coming to some type of conclusion and comments were concluding, Mr. John Born asked a simple question. He wanted to know why the board was even considering Sunday voting. Was the change something the board itself initiated or was an outside request made? Two members of the board - David Conradt and Lisa Taylor - refused to divulge who made the request, but Patrick Nelson was willing to give the information, after the conclusion of the meeting. It wasn't until the crowd became frustrated and restless that the director, Mr. David Davis, offered to reveal the information by reading the requests directly from the record. It was Organizing for America (ACORN) , the NAACP, and Betsy Leech who had made the request. The request for the change in early voting came not from concerned citizens but from political machines with a political agenda. The request came not from individuals themselves who had real issues of voter disenfranchisement but from political organizations who want to make it more effective to get voters out for Barack Obama.
The NAACP representative who was present said his organization supports Sunday voting because, as he put it, Sunday is the only opportunity that many blacks have to vote. When asked about why they can't take advantage of the absentee ballot option, he said "well, maybe I don't have enough money for a stamp." Of course, that opens a whole 'nother can of worms... maybe the government's decision to raise the price of stamps is racially discriminatory. Someone, get on that please !!
Diane Rufino made one of the last comments of the morning. She noted that for most of her life as a voter, voting has been limited to one day- Election Day. Before she moved to North Carolina and except for the last several years in Greenville, she had never even heard of early-voting. At that point, Mr. Nelson offered a quick history of early-voting in Pitt County. He said that prior to 2000, individuals were allowed by law to vote early if they fell into 3 exceptions (that is, if they had a legally "recognizable" excuse to vote early). In 2000, the state Board of Elections decided to provide an early-voting period as an alternative to everyone.
Diane then finished her comment by asking how long do we intend to allow people the opportunity to vote. It's 60 days now. Do we intend to extend it to 6 months? If we provide Sunday voting to accommodate black voters, where do we draw the line? We can find ways to make voting easier and more convenient for every single voter, but we have to draw the line with respect to reasonable limits and accommodations. What about those people who travel for a living? If blacks can't find it possible to submit absentee ballots within a
60-day window, as the comments made in the hearing made clear, can it be expected that a businessman who travels for a living can find such opportunity? What accommodation should be made for someone like him? What about the person who works long days and wants to sleep on Saturday and go to church on Sunday? Where's his accommodation?
I want to emphasize the reason I've taken note of race in this discussion. It is because the issue of Sunday voting, within the confines of the hearing before the Pitt County Board of Elections, was clearly a racial issue. As Organizing for America and the NAACP made abundantly clear, they aren't concerned about the ability of voters in general to get out; they are only concerned about getting out the black votes. The term "equal rights" was thrown around many times at the meeting, by those urging the board to vote for Sunday voting. What is often hard to
understand, and it was exemplified by the debate for Sunday voting, is why black people still accuse everyone of trying to deny them "equal
rights" when often what they want is a different set of rules to play by. In this case, they stressed that they need a special day to vote, even when it is at great odds to other groups and even if it costs the taxpayers more money. But then one has to put the hearing in proper perspective. Sunday voting was the brain-child not of ordinary citizens but of ambitious political organizations. The people pushing Sunday
voting were most likely more motivated by political goals than their true understanding of equality and fairness. [In fact, when the hearing was concluded, there were a few black women who spoke to some of the women who opposed Sunday voting and they thanked them for their comments and expressed their disgust over the majority vote by the board].
Towards the end of the meeting, the board talked about the different voting plans presented and because most people weren't able to get a hand-out listing the options (they didn't anticipate so many people would show up), this was the first time they were hearing about the differences among them. The plans presented by Organizing for America and the Democratic Party not only included Sunday voting but also included greatly expanded hours at a newly-added location on the ECU campus. As at least two persons wanted to know why extended hours were needed on a college campus when students notoriously have lots of time and opportunity to vote during the day. They also noted that the polling location will likely be at Minges Auditorium which is heavily under construction (the parking area, that is) and not easily accessible to those who aren't students. There was no answer given. The extended hours at the ECU location will cost the taxpayers an additional
$4,000.
When a political organization suggests all of a sudden that new and separate accommodations are needed for certain voters - in particular, those making up an important voting bloc - in order to exercise their voice, and especially when that organization is ACORN ("Organizing for America") which has been found guilty of many counts of widespread and systemic voter fraud, there is reasonable cause for suspicion and concern. It is unfortunate.
When the discussion period concluded, the board took a 10-minute break before it deliberated its decision. When it returned, each member offered some comments before the vote was taken. Mr. Nelson gave a very passionate explanation of his prior votes (against Sunday voting in 2008 and again in 2010) and said he continues to take a position against Sunday voting because the early voting period gives an ample opportunity for ALL votes. He also said: "Make no mistake, Sunday voting was politically motivated. It was not a voter initiative but was requested for a political purpose." Mr. Conradt said he will continue to support Sunday voting because "it works!" He said that 635 people voted on Sunday in 2008 and 316 in 2010. He called that a "huge success." But of course, he was exceedingly misleading in his facts and mistaken in his conclusion. Those who voted on Sunday didn't do so because they absolutely couldn't on the other days but simply because it happened to be more convenient to do so.
The board then proceeded to address the early-voting plans (Plan A - no Sunday voting and Plan F - two Sundays). Mr. Nelson made an extraordinary offer to Ms. Taylor and Mr. Conradt. He said in the interest of having the Pitt County Board come up with a unanimous decision so that the State Board wouldn't have to make the decision, he would agree to only one Sunday. He extended quite an olive branch. But the other two refused to compromise. And so, the vote was 2-to-1 in favor of Sunday voting and it will be appealed to the State Board of Elections. Despite the overwhelming commentary and preference by residents and voters of Pitt County for Plan A, the board nonetheless chose to endorse and support the plan urged by ACORN.
The bottom line is that the early-voting period, which provides extended hours at convenient locations for 2 1/2 weeks and allows 60 days for anyone to submit an absentee ballot, is an inclusive, neutral accommodation for ALL voters. It is more than enough of an opportunity to get out and vote. It is more than accommodating. Anyone who can make it to church on Sunday can also come up with a way, whether through church stewardship or by neighborly kindness, to make it to the polls to vote any day Monday thru Saturday. Anyone who is truly committed to exercising their right to vote will do so and will find the time and opportunity. If it important enough, individuals will make it a priority to vote.
This morning at the Pitt County Board of Elections, "Organizing for America" (ACORN) succeeded in pushing its brand of "community organizing" in Pitt County for this November's election by convincing the board to approve Sunday voting. And not just your garden-variety "Sunday" voting, but a full-throttle, balls-to-the-walls effort that would surely make Barack Obama and Eric Holder extremely proud. During early voting, which will begin on Thursday, Oct. 18th, Pitt County will allow voting on two Sundays - Oct. 21& 28th.
The Pitt County Board of Elections voted 2-to-1 to approve Sunday voting. Because the vote was not unanimous, the decision will go to the NC State Board of Elections and a 5-member panel of attorneys will render that in the coming month or so. But being that the panel was appointed by Governor Perdue, a liberal Democrat who vetoed the Voter ID law, we can almost predict what their decision will be.
Voters were notified of the hearing this morning when word just happened to spread by email. And it's a good thing the word got out. Many concerned voters showed up to voice their opposition to Sunday voting, just as they had done in 2008 and 2010. This year, opponents filled
the room so completely that people were left standing and many lined the hallway. "Organizing for America" was present, as well as the NAACP. Betsy Leech, chairwoman of the Pitt County Democratic Party, sent a representative. Members of the Pitt County GOP, including its chairwoman Ginny Cooper, Republican Women for Pitt County, including its president Kitty Staskelunas, and the Eastern NC Tea Party were there. Several pastors were in attendance. But the overwhelming number of people who showed up were just concerned citizens and taxpayers. All waited patiently to have their concerns voiced and recorded.
One of the first persons to speak from the crowd was a black woman who said she moved to NC from NJ. Her name was Ms. Kimberly Carney. I mention her race only because of the message she delivered. She began by saying that "her people" have been treated terribly and then made the general assertion that people are still trying to deny them rights. She used the "N" word and accused people in the room of snickering at her because of her color. Mr. Nelson, a member of the board, took great offense to her comments and fired back at her. (He later apologized for raising his voice but said he will not tolerate anyone accusing him of trying to disenfranchise anyone's voting rights).
Several black persons in the room spoke up in favor of Sunday voting. They said that they need every opportunity possible to make it out to the polls, including two Sundays when they can be bused to the polls after church service. They claimed that the other days - Monday thru Saturday - were not sufficient. They said that without Sunday voting, they would be disenfranchised, even though there wasn't even an early voting period at all in Pitt County prior to 2000. There was simply one-day voting - on Election day (with a limited absentee ballot provision). There were a few pastors who addressed the board and supported Sunday voting for the same reason - so that church buses could take their members to the polls.
Other pastors in the room, however, went on record to oppose Sunday voting. They asked the board to recognize the Sabbath and to recognize the Christian traditions on which our country was based. They acknowledged that proponents of Sunday voting like the fact that their churches can organize trips to the polls. But these pastors suggested that if churches wanted to do the good stewardship thing, they would find ways to help their church members to get to the polls on Monday thru Friday and on the two Saturdays that are provided. Many others spoke to the same theme, about churches and even individuals coming to the aid of those who need rides to the polls - but doing so on Monday thru Saturday so that Sunday could continue to be a day of worship and family time for election officials, poll workers, and others involved in the election and political process.
Others see the reverence of Sunday as an individual obligation to God and the government's endorsing of Sunday voting as an impermissible violation of Church and State without a "compelling state interest." One woman, Mrs. Coral Whichard, gave an eloquent review of the Constitution, the role that God's law has played in our country, and how our early presidents and government representatives used Sunday to worship (in fact, as Coral explained, the Capitol building itself housed 4 different churches on Sundays for 50 years!). Several people, including Ms. Pat Terry and Diane Rufino, spoke against Sunday voting for personal reasons. They said that they are poll workers and having to work on Sunday offends their right of religious conscience. One black lady made a suggestion to the board that they come up with a policy of replacing any poll worker who has a religious issue with another worker for Sunday voting. While the proponents of Sunday voting supported that suggestion and two of the board members even nodded in agreement, many found it offensive because it did not address those people who volunteer at the polls. For those people who feel deeply compelled to volunteer and serve at the polls to disseminate truthful information and promote candidates, they will be forced to miss church service, miss Sunday time with family, and offend God's law by not observing the Sabbath. In other words, Sunday voting forces people to choose between two fundamental rights and privileges - the rights of religious conscience and the right to participate in the political and election process. The government is not supposed to do such things, absent a "compelling state interest" and means that are the "least restrictive" of the exercise of individual rights.
Ginny Cooper, as the chairwoman of the Pitt County GOP and a woman deeply committed to her faith, listened carefully to the comments made - by both sides. Although she wanted to raise her hand to speak several times, she chose her issues very carefully. She said she didn't want to make Sunday voting a political issue. And that's why she made the point that the early voting period, together with the absentee ballot option, is more than adequate and more than fair for everyone - regardless of race or politics.
A former ECU professor got up to say that in all the years (27 years, if I remember correctly) that she has worked, she has never heard a single person complain that they could not find the opportunity to vote, even when voting was held on only one day. Others offered similar testimony, noting that they themselves, working over 40 hours and even working far distances, never missed an opportunity to vote.
After many comments were made touching on the issue of religion and the issue of the intentional disenfranchisement of black voters, a sharply-dressed young man named Jude Watts took the discussion in a different direction. He stated that: "Sunday voting is not a religious issue or a racial issue. It is a taxpayer issue." He said that there is ample opportunity for everyone to vote in the early-voting period and that adding two Sundays will cost the county and recklessly spend taxpayer money. The board noted that the money had already been set aside, to which Mr. Watts shot back: "It doesn't mean you have to spend it. Save it for something more important." When Ms. Lisa Taylor, a member of the board, commented flippantly that it only amounted to about $1000 dollars extra, Watts retorted: "I don't care if it is only $1. It isn't your money to spend. It's the people's. As public servants, you are supposed to be good stewards of the peoples' money." Another man raised his hand and told the board that he is a small business owner and hasn't had a job in over a year. He said: "I'm sorry that $1,000 doesn't sound like a lot to you. But it does to me and I could sure use it."
But the real meat of the discussion came when Mr. Lawrence Watts asked the board to state, for the record, the options open to ALL voters during the early-voting period. Mr. Davis, the director of the Pitt County Board of Elections, explained that all voters can vote at one-stop voting locations for 2 1/2 weeks prior to Election Day, with hours that can certainly accommodate persons who work full time. Locations are open at 8:00 in the morning and while some may close down at 5:00 pm, there are locations that remain open until 7:00 pm. In addition, those who can't physically travel to a polling location have 60 days to submit an absentee ballot to the Board of Elections. The enormity of early voting really hit home to the crowd of people. People who want to vote have two full months to do so. They have options to do so in person or by mail. There are no racial or religious barriers. As Mr. Watts emphasized: "Clearly, anyone who really wants to vote has
ample opportunity to do so."
Just when it seemed that the hearing was coming to some type of conclusion and comments were concluding, Mr. John Born asked a simple question. He wanted to know why the board was even considering Sunday voting. Was the change something the board itself initiated or was an outside request made? Two members of the board - David Conradt and Lisa Taylor - refused to divulge who made the request, but Patrick Nelson was willing to give the information, after the conclusion of the meeting. It wasn't until the crowd became frustrated and restless that the director, Mr. David Davis, offered to reveal the information by reading the requests directly from the record. It was Organizing for America (ACORN) , the NAACP, and Betsy Leech who had made the request. The request for the change in early voting came not from concerned citizens but from political machines with a political agenda. The request came not from individuals themselves who had real issues of voter disenfranchisement but from political organizations who want to make it more effective to get voters out for Barack Obama.
The NAACP representative who was present said his organization supports Sunday voting because, as he put it, Sunday is the only opportunity that many blacks have to vote. When asked about why they can't take advantage of the absentee ballot option, he said "well, maybe I don't have enough money for a stamp." Of course, that opens a whole 'nother can of worms... maybe the government's decision to raise the price of stamps is racially discriminatory. Someone, get on that please !!
Diane Rufino made one of the last comments of the morning. She noted that for most of her life as a voter, voting has been limited to one day- Election Day. Before she moved to North Carolina and except for the last several years in Greenville, she had never even heard of early-voting. At that point, Mr. Nelson offered a quick history of early-voting in Pitt County. He said that prior to 2000, individuals were allowed by law to vote early if they fell into 3 exceptions (that is, if they had a legally "recognizable" excuse to vote early). In 2000, the state Board of Elections decided to provide an early-voting period as an alternative to everyone.
Diane then finished her comment by asking how long do we intend to allow people the opportunity to vote. It's 60 days now. Do we intend to extend it to 6 months? If we provide Sunday voting to accommodate black voters, where do we draw the line? We can find ways to make voting easier and more convenient for every single voter, but we have to draw the line with respect to reasonable limits and accommodations. What about those people who travel for a living? If blacks can't find it possible to submit absentee ballots within a
60-day window, as the comments made in the hearing made clear, can it be expected that a businessman who travels for a living can find such opportunity? What accommodation should be made for someone like him? What about the person who works long days and wants to sleep on Saturday and go to church on Sunday? Where's his accommodation?
I want to emphasize the reason I've taken note of race in this discussion. It is because the issue of Sunday voting, within the confines of the hearing before the Pitt County Board of Elections, was clearly a racial issue. As Organizing for America and the NAACP made abundantly clear, they aren't concerned about the ability of voters in general to get out; they are only concerned about getting out the black votes. The term "equal rights" was thrown around many times at the meeting, by those urging the board to vote for Sunday voting. What is often hard to
understand, and it was exemplified by the debate for Sunday voting, is why black people still accuse everyone of trying to deny them "equal
rights" when often what they want is a different set of rules to play by. In this case, they stressed that they need a special day to vote, even when it is at great odds to other groups and even if it costs the taxpayers more money. But then one has to put the hearing in proper perspective. Sunday voting was the brain-child not of ordinary citizens but of ambitious political organizations. The people pushing Sunday
voting were most likely more motivated by political goals than their true understanding of equality and fairness. [In fact, when the hearing was concluded, there were a few black women who spoke to some of the women who opposed Sunday voting and they thanked them for their comments and expressed their disgust over the majority vote by the board].
Towards the end of the meeting, the board talked about the different voting plans presented and because most people weren't able to get a hand-out listing the options (they didn't anticipate so many people would show up), this was the first time they were hearing about the differences among them. The plans presented by Organizing for America and the Democratic Party not only included Sunday voting but also included greatly expanded hours at a newly-added location on the ECU campus. As at least two persons wanted to know why extended hours were needed on a college campus when students notoriously have lots of time and opportunity to vote during the day. They also noted that the polling location will likely be at Minges Auditorium which is heavily under construction (the parking area, that is) and not easily accessible to those who aren't students. There was no answer given. The extended hours at the ECU location will cost the taxpayers an additional
$4,000.
When a political organization suggests all of a sudden that new and separate accommodations are needed for certain voters - in particular, those making up an important voting bloc - in order to exercise their voice, and especially when that organization is ACORN ("Organizing for America") which has been found guilty of many counts of widespread and systemic voter fraud, there is reasonable cause for suspicion and concern. It is unfortunate.
When the discussion period concluded, the board took a 10-minute break before it deliberated its decision. When it returned, each member offered some comments before the vote was taken. Mr. Nelson gave a very passionate explanation of his prior votes (against Sunday voting in 2008 and again in 2010) and said he continues to take a position against Sunday voting because the early voting period gives an ample opportunity for ALL votes. He also said: "Make no mistake, Sunday voting was politically motivated. It was not a voter initiative but was requested for a political purpose." Mr. Conradt said he will continue to support Sunday voting because "it works!" He said that 635 people voted on Sunday in 2008 and 316 in 2010. He called that a "huge success." But of course, he was exceedingly misleading in his facts and mistaken in his conclusion. Those who voted on Sunday didn't do so because they absolutely couldn't on the other days but simply because it happened to be more convenient to do so.
The board then proceeded to address the early-voting plans (Plan A - no Sunday voting and Plan F - two Sundays). Mr. Nelson made an extraordinary offer to Ms. Taylor and Mr. Conradt. He said in the interest of having the Pitt County Board come up with a unanimous decision so that the State Board wouldn't have to make the decision, he would agree to only one Sunday. He extended quite an olive branch. But the other two refused to compromise. And so, the vote was 2-to-1 in favor of Sunday voting and it will be appealed to the State Board of Elections. Despite the overwhelming commentary and preference by residents and voters of Pitt County for Plan A, the board nonetheless chose to endorse and support the plan urged by ACORN.
The bottom line is that the early-voting period, which provides extended hours at convenient locations for 2 1/2 weeks and allows 60 days for anyone to submit an absentee ballot, is an inclusive, neutral accommodation for ALL voters. It is more than enough of an opportunity to get out and vote. It is more than accommodating. Anyone who can make it to church on Sunday can also come up with a way, whether through church stewardship or by neighborly kindness, to make it to the polls to vote any day Monday thru Saturday. Anyone who is truly committed to exercising their right to vote will do so and will find the time and opportunity. If it important enough, individuals will make it a priority to vote.
SIGN THE PETITION TO URGE THE NC GENERAL ASSEMBLY TO NULLIFY OBAMACARE
Please go to the site below and sign the petition to urge our NC General Assembly to take action to protect the state and fellow North Carolinians from the constitutional hazard that is Obamacare -
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-nc-legislature-nullify-obamacare
What do we do when the Federal Government steps outside of it's constitutional boundaries? Do we ask federal bureaucrats in black robes to enforce the limits of it's own power? Thomas Jefferson and James Madison didn't think so, and neither do we. The rightful remedy to federal tyranny rests in the hands of the people and the several States. It's called "nullification" or "interposition." It's an idea whose time has come.
This documentary from the Foundation for a Free Society and the Tenth Amendment Center features Thomas Woods, Michael Boldin, Debra Medina, Stewart Rhodes, Sheriff Richard Mack, Charles Goyette, Kevin Gutzman, Mike Maharrey, and others. In it we explore the
history of state nullification, the constitutional legitimacy of the idea, and how nullification can be used today to push back against the encroachment of federal power.
This documentary from the Foundation for a Free Society and the Tenth Amendment Center features Thomas Woods, Michael Boldin, Debra Medina, Stewart Rhodes, Sheriff Richard Mack, Charles Goyette, Kevin Gutzman, Mike Maharrey, and others. In it we explore the
history of state nullification, the constitutional legitimacy of the idea, and how nullification can be used today to push back against the encroachment of federal power.
ROMNEY FIRES BACK AFTER OBAMA TELLS AMERICANS THAT THEY DON'T DESERVE THE CREDIT FOR CREATING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSIn a speech to his supporters in Roanoke, Virginia, Obama went off-teleprompter to say: "If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." That speech, with those immortal words - "If you've got a business, you didn't build that - somebody else made that happen" - is rapidly becoming an OMG moment. On Tuesday, July 17, Romney held a rally in a Pittsburgh suburb and gave a 30-minute speech without notes or a teleprompter, and it was nothing short of fabulous. Romney is fired up and gunning to take Obama's job !! Click on the link below to watch the speech. http://www.c-span.org/Events/Mitt-Romney-Meets-with-Voters-in-Pennsylvania/10737432378-1 A Government "FOR" the People?by Diane Rufino, June 29, 2012
What a sad day when the Supreme Court loses sight of what the Constitution’s purpose is – to protect the rights of individuals, and not to take them away. Historically, we’ve come to expect this from Congress and the President, but not the Supreme Court. In our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..” With those words, he defined the character of our new nation. He then cited several“injuries and usurpations” by King George against the colonies which justified our secession from England, including “taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Government….” Today, not only does the federal government NOT secure our rights but it is doing the very same thing King George was guilty of ... “altering fundamentally our form of government.” All three branches are guilty. Jefferson never trusted the Supreme Court. He saw it as part of the problem. For one, it was itself a branch of the federal government and thus not an impartial arbiter. He warned: “If the federal government has the exclusive right to judge the extent of its own powers, it will continue to grow– regardless of elections, the separation of powers, and other limits on government power.” But it’s been the people who’ve allowed the power grab to continue because they like the freebies. They like being taken care of. A people who would trade freedom for comfort are a people who are in need of a master and deserve one. I hope you’ll think twice about voting to re-elect King George in November. SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS KEY PROVISION of ARIZONA'S IMMIGRATION LAW BUT WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN FOR ARIZONA?Today, Monday June 25, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the constitutionality of Arizona's controversial immigration law, S.B. 1070. It was a split decision, with groups on both sides of the issue claiming a victory. Specifically at issue were 4 controversial provisions of the bill, all of which the government alleged were pre-empted by federal immigration law and thus violative of the Supremacy clause. The majority of the Court agreed and 3 provisions were struck down:
-- Section 3. This provision makes it a crime not to register with the federal government and not carry a registration card. -- Section 5(C). This provision makes it a crime to solicit work in the state if not authorized to work in the US -- Section 6. This provision permits State and local police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrant in some cases. But the heart of the bill, the most popular provision of the bill, Section 2(B), was upheld unanimously by the Court. Section 2(B) gives Arizona officials the authority to determine an individual's immigration status if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is in the country illegally. Justice Kennedy, usually a supporter of states' rights, wrote the opinion and upheld the federal government's broad federal authority over immigration, stating that only marginal participation on the part of states is permissible. He wrote: "Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the State may not pursue policies that undermine federal law." Justice Scalia, who concurred in part but dissented in part (because it was his opinion that all of the provisions should have been upheld) said that the case boils down to States' Rights. He wrote: "So the issue is a stark one. Are the sovereign states at the mercy of the federal Executive's refusal to enforce the nation's immigration laws?" While the President's recent executive order to stop deportations of young adults who were brought into the country illegally but who are getting an education not an issue before the Court, Justice Scalia took occasion to go after Obama directly on that order. He said that the President's executive order realized Arizona's worse fears - that the federal government, charged with enforcing the nation's immigration laws, would refuse to do so. In a scathing dissent, Justice Scalia wrote: "It has come to pass, and is with us today, the specter that Arizona and the States that support it predicted: A Federal Government that does not want to enforce the immigration lawsas written, and leaves the States’ borders unprotected against immigrants whom those laws would exclude. So the issue is a stark one. Are the sovereign States at themercy of the Federal Executive’s refusal to enforce the Nation’s immigration laws? A good way of answering that question is to ask: Would the States conceivably have entered into the Union if the Constitution itself contained the Court’s holding? Today’sjudgment surely fails that test. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the delegates contended with "the jealousy of the states with regard to their sovereignty." He also wrote: "The laws under challenge here do not extend or revise federal immigration restrictions, but merely enforce those restrictions more effectively. If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State. I dissent." What is the practical result of this decision? While the key provision - the most popular provision - of Arizona's law was upheld, that holding for all intents and purposes might be meaningless under the Obama administration's enforcement scheme. Unfortunately, Section 2(B) lacks teeth. It may require state law enforcement to make immigration status determinations, but there isn’t much that the state can do once those determinations are made. The state can pass the information along to federal immigration authorities (ICE), who are then free to do nothing. If the federal government intends to do nothing with the information, nothing will be done. In other words, Section 2(B) won’t result in anybody being deported. Was this just an exercise in futility on the part of Arizona? 55% of Americans were hoping the Arizona law would have been upheld in its entirety. 55% of Americans said they would like to see such a strict immigration law passed in their own states. Do we have a constitutional republic? Or do we have a government run by a tyrant, a man of questionable background and dubious intentions who defines the Constitution as he sees fit and enforces only those laws he wants to? References: Arizona v. United States (2012), decision: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-182b5e1.pdf http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/06/courts-strikes-down-much-of-arizona-immigration-law/ http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/06/supreme-court-mostly-guts-s-b-1070/ |
KRISANNE HALL on the SMALL ARMS TREATYKrisAnne Hall says that there is NO WAY Congress can meet the standards required in the UN Arms Trade Treaty and still uphold their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Ratifying this treaty will be turning over our government to foreign rule and would be an act of treason. Read what she wrote --
http://www.krisannehall.com/index.php/blog/131-why-the-un-arms-trade-treaty-violates-the-constitution SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATEToday is a very sad day for this country. With the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare, our Constitution has been rendered useless at
protecting our fundamental rights, let alone our basic right to "left alone" by government. The government has all but signed the death warrant to this nation as a "Land of the Free." We were founded upon the notion of individual liberty and limited government, but it has been too many years since the Supreme Court has gotten than memo. Today, the Supreme Court upheld the insidious Individual Mandate as a rightful exercise of the government’s taxing power. The same government, it should be noted, had gone out of its way to make sure it was NOT classified as a “tax,” and for that reason it attempted to justify the law under the Commerce Clause. It seems the Supreme Court, itself a branch of the federal government, also went out of its way, with the help of Chief Justice John Roberts, to find justification to keep the Individual Mandate alive. Thomas Jefferson never trusted the Supreme Court. He saw how quickly the Federalists (who were the ones most strongly in support of the Constitution and government of limited powers and who were the first to be named to the bench) were willing to expand the powers of the government, contrary to the promises and warnings made in the Federalist Papers, and never trusted the high court again. In fact, when Congress passed the Alien & Sedition Act in 1796, which made it a crime to speak and write critically of the government (and in fact, hundreds were imprisoned, including men who fought in the Revolutionary War), Jefferson looked at what options the people had when the government overstepped its constitutional bounds. He noted there were 3 rightful options: judicial review, nullification, and secession. He knew Congress wouldn’t do the right thing and overturn the law and he knew that the President – John Adams –wouldn’t instruct the Congress to strike it. He saw secession as too extreme and he saw judicial review as untrustworthy. Jefferson saw the Supreme Court as part of the problem. For one, it was itself a branch of the federal government and thus not an impartial arbiter. As he reasoned, the Supreme Court was comprised of human beings who, like the rest of mankind, are subject to passions, ambitions, allegiances, whims, and depravities. As he wrote: "To consider the Judges of the Superior Court as the ultimate arbiters of constitutional questions would be a dangerous doctrine which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. They have with others, the same passion for party, for power, and for the privileges of their corps - and their power is the most dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the Elective control. The Constitution has elected no single tribunal. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves." Jefferson wasn’t alone in his distrust of the courts, as well as other branches. Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison separately wrote and warned: “If the federal government has the exclusive right to judge the extent of its own powers, it will continue to grow – regardless of elections, the separation of powers, and other limits on government power.” Finally, William Jasper, editor of “The New American,” an affiliate of the John Birch Society, wrote: “Clearly, a federal law which is contrary to the Constitution is no law at all; it is null, void, invalid. And a Supreme Court decision (which is only that, a “decision” and not a law) has no ‘supremacy,' even if it is faithfully interpreting the Constitution. So it is the height of absurdity to claim that a Supreme Court decision that manifestly violates the Constitution is the‘supreme law of the land.’ “ Today is a sad day indeed. The people do not have a friend in the Supreme Court. Was There a Method Behind Chief Justice John Roberts' Madness?A friend of mine who writes for the Canada Free Press had a conference call with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli today and she said that Mr. Cuccinelli said that there is a "silver lining" to today's Supreme Court decision, authored by Chief Justice Roberts. He said that if the
Supreme Court had upheld the Individual Mandate under the Commerce Clause, it would have required 60 Congressional votes to repeal. But since the Court upheld the Individual Mandate under the taxing power (the President's plan is now finally exposed as a middle-class tax hike) it will only take 51 votes to repeal. And according to Cuccinelli, “we are almost there… we just need two or three more votes.” There is certainly an incentive now to defeat any candidate who doesn’t run on repealing Obamacare, yes? CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE: "Why Chief Justice John Roberts Made the Right Long-Term Decision With Obamacare" -- http://www.ijreview.com/2012/06/9398-why-chief-justice-roberts-made-the-right-long-term-decision-with-obamacare/ |