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"O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave"
-- Francis Scott Key (excerpt from the U. S. National Anthem) |
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Be still and know that I am GOD…I will be exalted in the earth.
-- Psalms 46:10
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
-- Cicero - 55 BC
Senate Democrats had hoped to offer President Obama a legislative victory with an $80 billion "jobs bill," otherwise known as "Stimulus II" (or is it III, IV or V?). But Thursday, they dropped the bill in favor of a leaner version without unrelated pork. The centerpiece is still $13 billion to exempt companies from Social Security payroll taxes for previously unemployed new hires in 2010. Other incentives include renewing expired business tax credits, extending unemployment benefits, and suspending a cut in Medicare payments to physicians. The White House is predicting growth of 95,000 jobs per month in 2010, but not even the Associated Press buys that. The AP notes the obvious: "[C]ompanies are unlikely to hire workers just to receive a tax break." Besides, after hiding the loss of over 800,000 additional jobs in 2009, who can trust any figures that these elitists produce?
Blue Dog Democrats plan to propose a bill that will cap discretionary spending at specific levels, going further than the president's anemic $250 billion decade-long non-discretionary spending freeze. The sheer size of the Blue Dog coalition -- 54 House Democrats -- means that whatever proposal they come up with will have to be given serious consideration by the majority.
A bill by Rep. Peter King (D-NY) to prevent federal funding for civilian trials of Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian courts is picking up steam. Sixteen Republican and two Democrat cosponsors have joined King, and he is confident the bill will pass if it is brought to a floor vote. Beyond the House bill, both U.S. senators from New York, the New York City mayor, police commissioner, and the state Senate have voiced opposition to holding the 9/11 terror trials in Manhattan.
Countdown to Nuclear Iran
On Thursday, Iranian Wing-Nut-in-Chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had enriched uranium to 20 percent and could, if it wishes, enrich to 80 percent. During remarks in Tehran amid the celebrations surrounding Revolution Day, Ahmadinejad also claimed Iran would soon greatly increase its production of 3.5 percent enriched uranium.
Ahmadinejad's defiant claim came just days after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated that the "only path left" is more diplomacy and more sanctions to force Iran into compliance with its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations. Gates went on to opine, "If the international community will stand together and bring pressure on the Iranian government, I believe there is still time for sanctions and pressure to work. But we must all work together."
Apparently Secretary Gates missed the memo regarding the five existing UN Security Council Resolutions urging Iran to desist from making nukes; also Iran's kidnapping of 15 British sailors and marines, Iran's Revolutionary Guard being officially listed as a terrorist organization, Iran's providing anti-ship missiles and long-range rockets to Hezbollah, Iran's providing explosively formed penetrators and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to al-Qa'ida in Iraq, Iran's providing weapons and training to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, Iran's secret nuclear facility at Qom, Iran's attempted shipment of arms to Hamas onboard the merchant ship FRANCOP intercepted by Israel, Iran's blatantly fraudulent election last June, Iran's receipt of Russian SA-15b surface-to-air missile system and rumored receipt of the even more capable SA-20, Iran's numerous ballistic missile launches, the hundreds of statements by Iranian leaders that they will never give in to outside pressure, and, finally, China's continued veiled threats to veto any further sanctions against Iran.
All of these and more occurred during the previous six and a half years of "bringing pressure on the Iranian government," a period in which the "international community" most assuredly did
not work together. Why in the world would Gates think things will be different now, especially after Obama spent his first year in office bowing to every foreign leader on the planet?
Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons will not be stopped by UN talk or the "international community." It will be stopped only by American resolve, or perhaps Israeli resolve, though we have wasted nearly seven years so far.
Department of Military Readiness: Missiles in Romania
Romanian President Trian Basescu recently announced approval of U.S. plans to install missile defense sites in his country aimed at thwarting potential Iranian missile threats. Our readers may recall that Barack Obama reversed earlier agreements to site defensive missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic as a worthless gesture to Russian President Putin. The Russian response was less than encouraging to our EU allies, and in a surprising (and dare we say encouraging) turn of events, Obama's DOD has now agreed to a four-phased defensive missile plan for Romania and the region.
Such a plan should be seen as less intrusive to Russian ballistic missile capability and would actually improve response times to any Iranian missile launch. Naturally, however, Moscow still doesn't see it that way and has raised new veiled threats concerning the future of any new START talks and perhaps even our agreements over Black Sea deployments of Aegis cruisers.
How Obama responds to this renewed Russian intransigence will be interesting to watch, especially in light of recent news from Iran. Russian threats worked once. Any more such about-faces will surely decrease our EU allies' reliance on U.S. security assurances and may even lead to an unwanted rapprochement with Russia by some of the former Soviet states. Stick to a good plan, Mr. President.
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia is hearing oral arguments today regarding citizens' privacy while using mobile phones. With federally mandated GPS locators built into the hardware of all new cellular phones, police have been tapping mobile phones to find the location of criminals for years, but the laws regarding such tactics are ambiguous and outdated.
The Obama administration has argued that Americans don't enjoy a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when it comes to their whereabouts as revealed by their cell phones, and therefore warrant-less tapping is allowed. Not only that, but lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" showing where calls were placed or received.
According to
CNET news, "Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed."
Kevin Bankston, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney who is arguing the case, paints it as "a critical question for privacy in the 21st century," adding, "If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment."
Income Redistribution: Expect to Fail if You Plan to Fail
Leftists consistently deny that raising taxes harms the economy, insisting instead that higher taxes and draconian government regulations
boost the economy. This, of course, runs contrary to the actual outcome that the tax-and-regulate approach has incurred every time it's been tried.
The Laffer curve -- the theory that reducing tax rates causes economic growth and a corresponding growth in overall government taxation revenues -- and supply-side economics inspired the Reagan tax cuts of 1981, which significantly lowered the Carter administration's high tax rates and sparked an unprecedented 25 years of economic prosperity. Counterintuitive though it might be for liberals, these cuts generated
higher tax revenues for the federal government by increasing overall economic activity and growth.
The Obama administration is being forced to face these previously established hard truths. The Congressional Budget Office forecast in August that 2010 tax collections would bring in $2.264 trillion. Only the government has grown over the last year, however, not the economy. Therefore, tax revenues are down and, this week, the CBO revised its estimate down to $2.175 trillion.
Sadly, the Obama administration's insanity continues with its willful ignorance of the third prong necessary for economic growth, which is a reduction of government spending. So long as overspending, high-taxing and over-regulating leftists are in power, the economy will suffer.
Recession Continues, But Salaries Skyrocket
There's good news and bad news. The (seemingly) good news is that the number of six-figure salaries is rising -- skyrocketing, actually. The bad news is that you're footing the bill. According to an analysis by USA Today, the number of federal workers making $100,000 or more has risen from 14 percent to 19 percent since the start of the recession. At the end of 2007, 1,868 civilian Defense Department employees made $150,000 or more. By June 2009, the number was 10,100. Spikes in the Transportation Department were even more shocking, with the number of employees making $170,000 or more growing from one -- yes,
one -- to 1,690.
Jessica Klement, government affairs director for the Federal Managers Association, says the high skill level of government workers such as scientists and physicians is the reason for the high pay, and she claims federal salaries are actually 26 percent below private-sector salaries for equivalent jobs. Yet, USA Today's study of the more than two million federal employees found their average salary stands at $71,206, while average private-sector pay is only $40,331. Surely, not all the nation's best and brightest work for Uncle Sam.
USA Today names pay hikes and a new merit-based raise system for Defense workers as among the chief culprits for the rising salaries. Still, as Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) notes, "There's no way to justify this to the American people. It's ridiculous." With 7.3 million private-sector jobs lost, "ridiculous" is an understatement.
And Last...
First Lady Michelle Obama has taken up childhood obesity as the cause worthy of her attention. As ABC News reports, "The far-reaching, nationwide campaign called 'Let's Move' calls for ... myriad initiatives that target what Obama calls four key pillars: Getting parents more informed about nutrition and exercise, improving the quality of food in schools, making healthy foods more affordable and accessible for families, and focusing more on physical education."
We have to give Michelle credit for acknowledging that it'll take far more than government to tackle such a problem. "There's no expert on this planet who says that the government telling people what to do actually does any good with this issue. This is going to require an effort on everyone's part." However, her husband has a few connections and has created the first-ever federal task force for "optimal coordination" between private companies, nonprofits and government agencies. Optimal coordination doesn't sound like a phrase that describes government, but who knows super-sized better than Barack Obama?
In other news from the Village Academic Curriculum, the 2011 Obama budget makes further funding cuts for the District of Columbia's Opportunity Scholarship Program, an education voucher system for low-income, mostly minority students. The 2010 budget had cut funding altogether, but in response to protests, some funding was restored. Now that amount will face an additional 30 percent cut. So, while these kids may not receive a good education, at least they'll be skinny.
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The National Debt is growing at an alarming rate...faster and larger than ever before in our country's history. And who, by default, is responsible for paying this debt? We are! What's worse, our children and grandchildre are set to inherit this atrocious result of Government spending. Remember, the Government makes money in only two ways: 1) the printing of new money, which devalues our current dollar, and 2) taxes. Just look at how fast our legislators are spending OUR money!
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Pauley The Patriot - The voice of reason, common sense and the Constitution who reminds America of where we came from, comments on where we're headed and points the way on where we should go not based on a whim, but with the Constitution and everything that went into writing it as our compass.
Pauley The Patriot's mission is to inspire, persuade, and encourage all Americans to live the common sense values and principles of our Founding Fathers that have guided our nation since its birth in 1776 through a weekly cartoon series and related projects.
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